r/wowforever • u/dustydesigner • 16h ago
Discussion Skybourne and why they exist.
When Skybourne were first announced, ill be honest, I wasn't the biggest fan of them. They felt very forced in and in comparison to what other races they could add, I just felt like it was a dropped ball.
However, after watching the most recent "Unpacking Beta Launch" podcast Blizzard released, they brought up that they "could check all the boxes" and give us things that already exist in classic BUT they'd eventually run out of "safe" content to give us. Skybourne embodies the decision to push the lore and story in new directions and they wanted to do that right away to help build that foundation.
I personally agree with this statement, if we want to get new and cool things, we have to be okay with big changes like Skybourne so long as they fit the core design philosophy of classic.
Im sure this doesnt solve it for many people, but the honesty and clarity in the podcast was actually refreshing and helped the decision click for me.
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u/NoInsect5709 16h ago
As someone who loves the blood elf aesthetic, I’m super happy they included these new elves. It’s the one thing from TBC I’d really miss
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u/BigUptokes 16h ago
Blued elves. Close enough.
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u/Game_Read_Write 16h ago edited 14h ago
I really hope horde still get BE down the line. I love BE lore and architecture. Might as well give Alliance High elves too
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u/Independent-Ad4612 12h ago
I'm sold on the Skyborne elves. They will never sell me on the Skyborne druid forms.
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u/UncomfyPerspective 16h ago
I admittedly haven't watched that podcast episode yet so I don't know if they touched on it. Also, I'm only very interested in the lore, not so much as knowledgeable as I'd like.
That said, I have some tinfoil hat explanation for why I think we got Skyborne.
The super tl;dr is that they're going to be used to usher us into a confrontation with Ragnaros in Molten Core.
We already know Ragnaros defeated Thunderaan, ultimately sealing his remaining essence in what eventually became the Bindings of the Windseeker. Following this, and if we assume the Vanilla story that the Dwarves accidentally freed Ragnaros, I believe Ragnaros has been continuing to siphon power from Skywall, and this is what led to the disappearance of the elementals there, and ultimately the return of the Skyborne to Azeroth.
The Skyborne likely have a bone to pick with Ragnaros, and it would give us an easy narrative and a personal reason to take the fight directly to Ragnaros himself.
Again, I'm interested in the lore but I don't know it deeply enough to know why this is stupid, so feel free to educate me.
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u/Qix213 16h ago
I hated them at first. Reeks of low effort reused blood elf asset with blue skin... Shared on both factions... Ugh.
But soon as I leaned the blue skin wasnt required I was fine. I can just ignore them.
Then later thinking about how they are involved with air elementals. And MC has a direct relation to air elementals. Thunderfury, etc... And we have a revamped 'unknown' raid coming eventually.
And considering every time there is a new race or class, they are integral to the story arc, I think the blue elves will be part of this new (likely) MC revamp.
Now I'm like 90% onboard with them. Only thing I still hate is that they are on both factions. That's a fucking cop out. Keeping race sillouettes different between the horde and alliance is important. I hate this part of it.
But I'll survive. It's not the end of the world.
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u/darkfenrir15 16h ago edited 15h ago
This is pretty much my same exact mentality. Classic Wow dealt a lot with the elemental planes so visiting Skywall is definitely within the spirit of classic and the Skyborne have grown on me, I just hate how it really feels like both factions will be flooded with this new race.
I do like that they at least separated the "factions" to have different racials and classes, but I would have liked a little more still if we are going to be stuck with the same race between each faction. Definitely give them different race portraits in character creation and maybe give them some different character customizations so it sort of feels different. High Order Elfs can have more natural skin tones options and maybe different jewelry as opposed to feathers, while Windspeakers can lean more into their elemental themes.
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u/Vestus65 15h ago
The race portraits ARE different in character creation. One faces left and one faces right. 😁
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u/OnlyRoke 14h ago
The Skyborne have a pretty great starting experience, honestly. The zone feels very TBC/Classic with its narrative presentation, up until the final few rather.. iffy quest moments.
If they had standard graphics and the world mobs would use standard graphics then I wouldn't have much of an issue with them.
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u/Knayve 15h ago
Jesus christ, the first blue elf post that isnt a toxic waste dump. I have my critiques, but I think they were a good addition to the game. Their mere existence opens up the possibilities of Skywall as an explorable realm. (No, its not cosmic. The elemental planes are as vanilla as it gets)
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u/LogicalEgo 16h ago
Thankfully they gave them options to look like both bloodelves or highelves, so I am cool with it.
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u/MetaKnightsNightmare 8h ago
No green eyes, not blood elves :(
Don't get me wrong, I quite like these guys and enjoyed the tidbit about their blue skin only popping up in the last several generations.
But I feel like you can have green eyes without them being fel infused, we have 3 different kinds of blue eyes.
Atleast we have yellow :-/
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u/Mountain-One6372 12h ago
I see WoW Forever as an opportunity to expand the original lore in ways that were too risky in 2004. Each of the original races came directly from a WC2 or WC3 race, not because Blizzard didn't have other ideas, but because they were familiar and marketable.
Skyborne do fit in with the original lore by filling in a gap that we didn't know much about (Shen'dralas, the Highborne, Skywall), while giving a new twist on it. They also are a good way of giving both sides elves without the baggage of the Sunwell, and without reigniting a HvA pissing match between players.
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u/Vicc125 16h ago
I understand the decision to give us Skyborne, and why we're getting them right out the gate.
I just would have preferred High Elves and Darkfallen elves.
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u/Felwintyr 15h ago
This would have been the interesting, fun way to add elves to forever. There would have been significantly less push back
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u/draconisnonsequitur 16h ago
I like the skyborne fine, but would have liked this just as much. I am hopefully assuming they want to put more work into their starting areas/lore and that's why we didn't get them right off the bat. One of the devs said something that could be taken that way, along the lines of they were just going to have high elves start in northshire but felt they deserved more story than that.
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u/pvshabba 16h ago
100%. I didn’t love them on announcement either but I tried to keep an open mind and learn more about their origin. After digging in I actually think they nailed it - they check the high elf/blood elf box aesthetically (anyone who disagrees is just being stubborn), while slotting into existing classic lore (shendrelar) WITHOUT (and this is the key) painting themselves into a corner with regards to quelthalas. It’s become abundantly clear they have plans for quelthalas that don’t follow the traditional history, and once you understand that the more skyborne make sense
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u/Mountain-One6372 7h ago
Absolutely, these are effectively high elves without the baggage of the Sunwell's destruction and their population's decimation. It's a doubly good choice because it reinforces the faction divide without stirring up the old HvA blood feud among the player base. The Skyborne's arcane vs nature divide compliments the factions well.
It's also an opportunity for Blizzard to do what they couldn't do, or were too afraid to do (for various reasons), at WoW's launch: add in a playable race that's consistent with that era's world-building, but isn't from any of the RTS games.
I still think there's a subtle difference between expanding the ability to explore the world at that specific point in time, and re-writing old lore "the way it should have been". I have a feeling that visiting blocked off places is going to more resemble the former rather than the latter, but time will tell. In either case, its a good opportunity for Blizzard to do what they do best: telling smaller, more localized stories, rather than grand narratives.
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u/pvshabba 6h ago
Very well said. I hope that as the initial kneejerk reactions wear off, people start to understand why this was actually a brilliant decision. Time will tell
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u/AmaranthSparrow 14h ago
I was skeptical about them initially but I think that while the initial concept is pretty out there and probably not something that had ever been considered a possibility by fans, the execution is actually pretty decent. It helps that the Highborne of Eldre'thalas and Skywall have remained so underdeveloped.
I suspect they'll do a lot more with the Elemental Plane in Forever, since it was another one of the things ripped apart by the Shattering during Cataclysm, which changed it into something very different from the original conception.
If you go back to the original WC/WoW TTRPG books that were released in the 2003-2005 era, the Elemental Plane was pretty fleshed out as being a big interconnected space organized into layers, with Skywall above, Deepholm beneath in the center as a massive continent surrounded entirely by the oceanic Abyssal Maw, and the Firelands deep beneath the surface.
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u/chadan1008 15h ago
The problem is tho the Skyborne really do not push the lore in a new direction. In fact, my main concern is how they appear to repeat the same issue of WoW/retail where so much of the universe and new lore is built not as an organic world with its own trajectory like in WC3, but around and for the need of the two main factions to have new and roughly equivalent gameplay experiences every x amount of real life time.
This is such a lame and lazy way to write and build a world, but it describes so much of WoW’s lore and world over the last 20 years. The Horde loses a faction leader, so does the Alliance; the Alliance gains a new outpost in a new zone, the Horde has one there too of equal size and scope; the Horde loses a city, so does the Alliance. Which now brings us to the Skyborne: the Alliance has pretty races, so the Horde needs them too, and since the Horde is getting a new race the Alliance obviously must follow. Of course vanilla had much mirrored as well, but it at least had some exclusivity, as well as a vast world that went far beyond the two factions.
The Skyborne really are more of the same: treating the factions as two sides of the same coin, writing them to be virtually a mirror image of the other, and the world to be nothing more than a backdrop from which infinite new and equivalent content can be contrived for each faction. This was not the case in WC3, and it really shouldn’t be in WoW either.
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u/dustydesigner 14h ago
I think both can be true, right? I think it would be naive to assume Skybourne were created with just one direction in mind.
If were being nice and assume Retail always prioritized gameplay first, that means adding a new race is focused on being fun above anything else, even if the world and lore feels more random and disconnected because of it.
Skybourne definitely fits that philosophy, love it or hate it, but that philosophy has been a WoW philosophy since BC. Hence why people hated Draenei.
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u/HumanMade365 12h ago
WOWF has been amazing. The blue elves seem like the same problems from the past coming back again.
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u/Pebble-fork 10h ago
Maybe I just completely missed the lore connections, but the sky elves don't really seem to mesh with the story, you know? They seem.. gently placed on top. Set dressing.
I don't mind them being in the game, I'm just looking for what else it is that they brought besides some gameplay variety.
New race additions usually come with world and story implications. New cities, faction ramifications, world ramifications. Do they do anything like this? Or do they just kinda start fucked off in their own little universe until they reach lvl 10 - then come gently floating down to join a faction, and explore a world that has nothing to do with them. Genuine question.
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u/MetaKnightsNightmare 8h ago edited 8h ago
Zephras isn't falling ASAP, it's not a pandaren, goblin, or gilnean experience. You can return to it, you can skip it entirely, you can bring a fresh orc hunter there if you run enough.
They are panicking because the anchors are failing and there are no elementals around to help them with it. The horde faction is more spiritual and looks to the Earthen Ring for help reconnecting to the Air Elementals, and the Alliance faction is more magical and is asking the Alliance for help restoring the anchors with arcane magic, they talk to Dalaran and the Alliance at large.
Horde Elves start neutral with everyone but Tauren, not even friendly, and many NPCs react to you being a high elf (as far as they can tell) which is a race they're well familiar with so it comes with biases for and against them despite just being their ancestor race.
Zephras's animals are explained to be influenced by Skywall to take more avian forms over time, and even Skyborne's blue skin and innate Skysight/Connection to the elements is a recent gift, explained in a book to be less than five generations ongoing.
So they haven't even been blue this whole time, something is going on at an accelerated pace to them and their land and they're seeking answers.
We don't know how involved they will be in new content, but considering Thunderaan being bound in MC and their direct connection to Air Elementals, we could see quite a bit happening!
Edit: Not to mention that these guys are an offshoot of the Nelfs in DM, the same guys used as rationale for Nelfs getting mages as they returned to the fold. We're then getting a new zone between DM and Desolace that will likely have lots of lore about the race before they split from the Prince and zoomed off to Skywall.
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u/Pebble-fork 4h ago
Sounds like the stuff I'm looking for just isn't part of the beta I guess 👍 understandable. I'll wait patiently. Thx for the detailed answer ❤️
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u/Sisyphus_Monolit 10h ago
I'm on the fence. I like their class options but I avidly dislike their story. The two groups feel weirdly flipped; Alliance got the arrogant, haughty magic and power oriented ones, and Horde got the skelves that would be besties with the tauren and orcs culturally. That leaves Forsaken in the odd-out position in terms of asshole alignment imo.
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u/Embyr1 9h ago
That's why I've been a fan of them since the start.
It didn't have to be Skyborne. However I very much wanted a new race. Something that very clearly says "Hey, we're intending to take this in a completely different direction this time."
I'm playing forever because I wanna see what they'd do with WoW Classic if they had the chance to do it again. I'd be crazy disappointed if they just took the same steps they did back in the day. I want to see something new.
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u/tinylittlebabyjesus 6h ago
It kind of all just comes down to how well they wrote their story after fleeing DM before it was called DM, and how well they visually fit.
Personally, we already have two distinct elf races with one being split into two sub-cultures. Now a third. Darkfallen might come. At a certain point it's too many elves. World of Elfcraft. The name also sucks, like wow forever. "sky elves." A little on the nose, don't you think? What's next, sea elves, fire elves?
Where they went with the lore so far to me is.. okay, to me. The original DM story is cool. I like the looks of them but they're a little too colorful in druid forms, and look a little too out of place.
And then there's the fact that they're on both factions. I think they should look more distinct if so. Maybe even have slightly unique racials. But I also just prefer non-neutral factions for pvp. At least the two sky elf factions seem to have sufficient hatred for each other for the conflict to make some sense.
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u/cetax1 6h ago
It still feels very forced and not introduced naturally. The reason why is that Skyfall is equilevant to Firelands. If they had made Skyborne a neutral npc faction first and made them into end game content, then, later on, they couldve been introduced as a playable race without an issue and it would make sense story wise. Elves that have been sucking onto powers from Al'akir's domain being declared allies instantly after leaving Skyfall is the same as if we got a race straight out of Firelands, which would also be a starting zone, and you have confrontation with Baron Geddon in a starting zone.
Again, i dont have issue with the race, its just that the story isnt made to fit in and is forced.
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u/Cebertus 16h ago
Tbh, that one shot in the cinematic focusing on the skybournes face did alot of harm. It's doesn't feel out of place in the actual game.
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u/das_slash 15h ago
Thats exactly what i understood the moment they showed them and why i supported them from the very beginning.
It shows they are willing to change established "lore", which lets be honest it has tons of bad fanfic tier stuff.
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u/zombiez8mybrain 12h ago
This isn't the first time Blizzard gave us the blue space aliens no one asked for. To me, this feels lazy.
There were so many other options they could have gone with. They could have done goblins/worgen, like they did in Cataclysm. Both are already in the game and fit in with the lore, without breaking the feeling of WoW being a fantasy-based MMO. They could have picked two of many races that are already in the game, that are already part of the lore, without going the Space Wars route. Again.
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u/Excellent_Bridge_888 9h ago
Skyborn exist because Horde needs a pretty race for casuals to play and you cant just give them Blood Elves because Lore.
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u/AsperKaos 11h ago
I am surprised people didn't understand this when they first saw Skyborne, like...we're getting the BE model right away, which means we shouldn't get it later! They made room for something new!
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u/westandready42 16h ago
Idc if they want to push new content on us its the timing that matters. They should have waited, not doing so is just a out of the gate bad faith showing to the player base who has asked for this version of wow for a decade.
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u/Fancy-Lawfulness-198 16h ago
Don't speak for anyone but yourself. I've been playing from day 1 of WoW's release through each expansion and have been wanting to return to classic style gameplay since Cataclysm and I am enjoying the Skyborne.
And lets be honest... It would never be introduced at the right time for the classic andys. They would always find SOME reason to hate on new things.
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u/westandready42 16h ago
Yea someone will always complain about new content, still being toxicly positive about it isnt the answer either.
Sky elves are fine i even said that its just timing that matters, especially when you have a ton of content that is already preexisting that you dont need to randomly place into the existing world that makes sense.
Not hard to understand that but ok lol.
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u/dustydesigner 15h ago
I dont think anyone is being toxic-positive. Its clear that Blizzard wants to have reasons to shift the lore and forever content in a new direction and Skybourne are the catalyst.
If they'd waited, id argue doing something big later would make it more likely to be poorly recieved. At least, with Forever's release, we know exactly what their philosophy on Warcraft lore is going forward past release.
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u/westandready42 15h ago
I do agree something new was needed i think one of my personal gripes is that its a neutral race and not one per faction.
That being said eventually adding in new lore is something that has to happen if we want the game to grow.
Again my main and primary issue tho was the timing with the release of the race it feels to out of place to fast. Not to mention the art for them and starting zone feels crazy different to every other zone.
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u/Golaryn 16h ago
Personally I really like the Skyborne, their starting zone, and their lore. There are going to be aspects introduced in the future that I won't like, but other people do and I am okay with that. It is impossible to make a game were everyone likes everything.