After playing through the entirety of Zephras Isle I decided to sit with the story and reflect on my outlook of it. I really enjoyed the zone. I thought the landscape was gorgeous which seems to be the running theme of all of Forever. The quests were engaging and honestly a perfect length in my opinion. I have heard people say they didn’t like the finale of the area, but honestly I disagree with that. I thought it put up some nice stakes for the race and gave them a true motivation to leave for Azeroth.
I did have one issue as I was playing through and that was the divide between the High Order and Windshaper Skyborne. Truthfully even doing the quests it felt much more like we should have been a neutral faction and aligned with the Peacekeepers as we report to and assist them more than either of the other factions. I personally think that having this divide before we even create our character made the race feel a bit lackluster when it came to the faction conflict especially when you need to rally together all factions for the finale of the campaign. I would have much rather assisted both factions throughout the story and learn a little bit more about them each.
I believe it would be in the best interest of the race, zone, story and most importantly player agency for Blizzard to reconsider making them one neutral faction at the start and at the end of the story handing the agency over to the player to decide which of the 2 factions they more closely align with as they both already have a foothold in Azeroth.
I think doing so would make the classes like Warrior, Hunter, Rogue and Druid feel more connected as a part of the High Order or Windshaper. While also opening up the possibility of a Mage Horde and Shaman Alliance as your character was neutral during the time they would have learned their class.
Lastly this would allow for the 2 unique active abilities to get reworked into one shared active that could be more themed around their Wind Element ancestry or give them both some sort of ancient elven ability as some of the logs suggest the Skyborne have taken significantly longer to be altered by this plane of existence. I would consider a defensive or control ability of some sort to align with the neutral Peacekeepers. I believe doing so could make a better bond shared between all Skyborne players regardless of being Horde or Alliance.
My final thoughts is that the campaign was pretty good and I do like what Blizzard is doing here. I can see how they are setting up to return with further knowledge, and definitely nothing to do with the Thunderfury whatsoever. I hope this feedback can be taken constructively and to any devs that read this please know I think you are doing an excellent job!
Thank you! 
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Hard disagree with this. Shaman has always been a more Horde centric class. Doing this keeps from having a huge % of elf mages in the Horde and keeps Alliance shamans having to roll Dwarf. I think it’s going to help reduce the amount of Elfs on both sides
I found the last quests against the cult to be a bit much. I would have liked to leave before fighting the cult to get help from our chosen faction rather than destroying it easily and watching the deux ex fight against the big bad. That way when we visit all the leaders, they could just tweak the dialogue to “we can’t help now, but maybe after you prove yourselves” etc, and then return to Zephyras later as a higher level chain with a dungeon, which would also let other races have a reason to come visit.
That would also give better reasons to fight for your faction. I picked windshaper and ran into a quest in stonetalon (cenarius’ legacy) where I’m now helping a blood elf warlock murder some druids. There’s zero reason to do that quest beyond “oh you picked windshaper? that means you’re 100% on board with the horde now. get to killing”
Does the high order have similar incongruencies? It feels like you should butt heads with the night elves or something.
I found the whole zone pretty underwhelming. Played as Horde, so maybe as usual the Alliance side has a better story.
I couldn’t even tell there was a racial divide until like the capstone quest, so my first experience with that was… working together with the “other side?” So no division at all.
I read all the quests and couldn’t really ever tell why we were doing anything. Why did the cultists break off? Why are the peacekeepers stretched thin? Why are there two factions? There was no worldbuilding that really gave force to any of those choices. There are some voice lines about blood being spilled between the factions. WHEN? Where? Was I part of this? It didn’t seem like it.
And then the capstone. I’m not going to go into detail on it because I don’t want to spoil anyone who hasn’t done it, but I’ll just say… no stakes. Nothing risked, nothing lost, nothing changed. They clearly wrote how it was going to end first, and then backed into how nothing had to happen in order to accomplish that. That’s not good writing.
The zone was also too short. I know people complain about how big it is, but this is actually the same problem. It needed two zones, 1-20, with time for conflict and mistakes and problems and rewarding quests and elites to actually arrive at a meaningful conclusion. Instead it is one zone stretched very thin where most of the time you spend is running back and forth to the same area you were just in.
Overall, meh.
That’s a secret I’m not sharing my speed leveling new route
I kind of agree and disagree.
I think it may have been better if we got a chance to fight the cult leader, and after we beat her let her have her “I did it 25 minutes ago moment” and just left it there. (For now)
Get more follow up quests as you level, kind of like the Defias chain for the humans.
After reading through these other opinions first I would like to thank you all for weighing in as I think only the community will be able to properly shape what this game is and will become.
I watched a couple of videos dissecting the Skyborne both as a race, their zone and what they and their art style mean to the future of Forever. I will be honest I was swayed, especially by what Cataclysmia said about the the zone being rushed and a lot of the conflict and worldbuilding being much more show than tell. Looking at the ending of the zone in another light I can also see that at the end of the zone their was probably much better ways to leave breadcrumbs for our return and a better way to tie in the other races within the game. Unfortunately it does seem pretty true that the Skyborne are pretty stapled on to a lot of what makes classic feel so special. From their models being re-used Blood Elves rather than something more closely aligned with the character we seen in the trailer to the re-colored Night Elf architecture. It has classic “vibes” but more like a classic coat of paint smeared over the experience.
I stand by the zone overall being an enjoyable experience. It certainly had its faults, I suppose comparing it to my more recent new experiences in Retail it was a breathe of fresh air but ultimately still feels out of place in the Classic world. I would consider them to feel like something that would have been added in during Cataclysm maybe? I think Blizzard is killing it with the Environmental Art, Music, and capturing the feel of playing the game as a kid. But there is some big question marks. The Skyborne while not terrible in my eyes are significantly less favorable to the multiple other options of Elves that we could have gotten. The ties between them and the rest of the classic world are not the strongest. I also very much dislike how Blizzard has been treating the Classic Art Style. In multiple interviews they have talked about harnessing the feel of Classic’s style but as far as new content everything I have seen when it comes to Characters, Armors, and Monsters it all feels very Retail and obviously way to HD for the world of Classic. I feel like they are using very PR wordage to gather support from the community while serving us something different. This is very disappointing to me, I wish that they would change some of these much larger details and really ground the game in its classic roots as so far I can see the slippery slope. Right now I am very nervous for how Forever will turn out. The gameplay feels incredible and brings me right back to childhood playing Vanilla in 2004. But the art style and philosophy for the new content seems to be pushing some boundaries that I can absolutely see leading them right back into retails art and alienating the exact people that this game was made for.
I do understand though that it is a business. The Skyborne are created. While I wish they could be removed and replaced with what players actually are begging for I do know that they will probably never take that route. My only hope would be that they can give us SD models, shuffle around some of the experience, rewrite some of the story a bit to create some more dense lore and hone in on what makes classic special so that we can all enjoy going forward.
I would love for Forever to become the Classic + that all classic players want, and I think if they can capture that magic it would grow them in the market to get an even larger audience. I think they really need to listen to the community feedback to help them figure out how to get that Classic magic back or else I could see this game being made for nobody.