Reading through the complaints about the Skyborne elves across the community, it’s frustrating to see how quickly people jump on a blind hate-train. A lot of the loudest voices are dismissing the race without a basic understanding of game development, creativity, or, most importantly,the established lore.
Yes, they use the Thalassian model. Why? Because they are high elves. Let’s recap the history:
After the Sundering, two major Highborne groups escaped the Night Elf society. The first group, led by Dath’remar, sailed east with a vial of the Well of Eternity, eventually founding Quel’Thalas. These are the Thalassian elves we know (Quel’dorei, Sin’dorei, Ren’dorei).
The second group went south to Feralas, hiding in Eldre’Thalas (the Shen’dralar). While Dath’remar created the Sunwell in the east, Prince Tortheldrin grew desperate without an arcane source and turned to demonic siphoning. A small band of Shen’dralar Highborne rebelled against this fel corruption, lost, and fled in an attempt to catch up with Dath’remar’s eastern expedition.
They never found their kin and never reached the Eastern Kingdoms. Instead, they crash-landed on Zephras Isle. The elemental forces of the island took them in, satiated their arcane hunger, and hid them in the safety of the skies for millennia. Basically, they are a lost branch of High Elves. Their backstory weaves perfectly into the Vanilla lore we’ve had since 2004.
Beyond the lore, the zone itself is fantastic. Zephras Isle is gorgeous, and the architecture is a perfect homage to classic high elven aesthetics. The view of their city is breathtaking, and the actual layout and navigation feel as traditionally “Classic” as it gets. The reality is that most of the people complaining haven’t even set foot on Zephras Isle; they are just parroting negative talking points for the sake of it.
I’ve been with this franchise since Beyond the Dark Portal in 1996 and played the WoW MMO since release week. I hold this game dear. But when the official Classic servers released a few years ago, they failed to recapture the magic for me. Why? Because I had moved on. The literal 2004 mechanics and graphics did not match the idealized, lived-in world I held in my memory.
In contrast, what I’ve seen in Forever actually brings back that original feeling of wonder, exploration, and novelty.
This toxic, knee-jerk repudiation of the Skyborne (or improvements in Forever) is exactly what happened when Blood Elves were announced, or when EverQuest players mocked vanilla WoW for being a “Fisher-Price MMO.” Pepperidge Farm remembers. I’m that old.
So let’s cut the crap. Play what you like, and let others enjoy the game. Forever is giving me the authentic Vanilla experience, and I’m loving it… Skyborne included.
I loved WoW two decades ago because it was an immersive world driven by exploration and horizontal progression, not because of some misaligned nostalgia fetish for outdated graphics. It’s like saying you love your grandmother just because she’s old. No, man, I love my granny because she was a wonderful person.
EDIT: Some of the comments seem to be replying to the title (and not the actual content of the post), so I repeated a more concise version of this in this comment below: The Skyborne Hate-Train is Exhausting (And Lore-Blind) - #164 by Willow-3188433
PPS: Search for Azshara artwork, and compare to the Skyborne in the cinematic; especially the skin tone and eye color. That was pretty neat!
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). Skyborne have strong Vanilla roots: the Shen’dralar, the Eldre’thalas conflicts, and the Wind Elemental plane are all established early lore.