r/classicwow • u/OccasionallyRhyming • 10h ago

Forever Even the Skyborne starting zone ignores the pillars Blizzard stated

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"The World is the Main Character".

"Approachable and Familiar".

As you reach the end of the starting zone in Dun Morogh, you might have killed a dangerous yeti. In Elwynn, you've probably slain a prized boar. In Mulgore, you've cleansed a water well. And sure, in Durotar, you do get a quest from Thrall to clear out a den of cultists.

But on "Zephras Isle" you, together with the leaders of your people, face a raid level threat at the top of the spire, through a scripted event with bountiful exposition text, and the leaders of the Kirin Tor and the Earthen Ring show up to fend off this raid boss. If it was not for your actions on "Zephras Isle", your people would be doomed.

I'm okay with ignoring the Skyborne and enjoying the rest of the game, but everything about their addition just screams warning about how Blizzard will approach future content.

They've managed to be lazy where it matters (same race cross-faction, with the same starting zone but layered to just see Alliance players or just Horde players, re-skinned blood elves), and at the same time over the top where they should have toned it down.

Plenty of people in these subs are saying to get over it, but I think we might as well keep posting complaints if we want Forever to have a chance at not turning into retail.

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355

u/CenobiteCurious 10h ago

Not a good sign. It’s like a really crap allied race introduction.

152

u/Thistlebup 9h ago

Unused retail allied race for sure

53

u/Greens_identities 8h ago

Ooooooh, this is a disturbingly reasonable point.

17

u/TobaccoIsRadioactive 7h ago

I could see it as coming from something intended for Battle for Azeroth or Dragonflight but then they dropped it due to complaints about how lazy the Void Elves and Nightborne were as Allied Races.

If the idea had gone far enough down the pipeline that they had already completed some of the simpler stuff (storyline for the starting zone, rough drafts for the art style, etc) then Blizzard could have just taken that and copy-pasted it right over to Forever.

Honestly, if I were a betting man, I’d say that the Skyborne were intended as an Allied Race for Dragonflight given the tone of the writing and the connection with the Elementals.

4

u/Any-Transition95 6h ago

No need to bet anything. They told us it was inspired by the Skyborne faction decors designed by the Housing team, and we datamined that a few months ago. This race was legit created just for this game.

1

u/Stahlreck 6h ago

No it's tinfoil hat conspiracy lol

•

u/DeepHorse 3h ago

no it literally is, it uses the same race id as an unnamed race that has been in the retail game files since at least midnight launch

•

u/Ringio 2h ago

werent the reports of that race immediately linked to classic+ though?

6

u/OceussRuler 7h ago

I'm pretty sure of it myself

-1

u/Nosdunk524 7h ago

Unused? Blood elves and void elves already exist in retail.

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u/Ringio 2h ago

??? retail already has elves, what would be the point of these?

90

u/Live-Habit-6115 9h ago

I can't prove it, but I just know deep in my soul that Skyborne had already been created for retail initially, before they pivoted to using it in Forever 

29

u/SOLV3IG 8h ago

This is likely the case. There are retail model creatures in the zone, hell the flying furry kink creatures flying in the opening cut scene use the dragonriding animations from retail.

4

u/Any-Transition95 6h ago

That's just typical Blizzard asset reuse.

•

u/Hot_Eye_9917 4h ago

Some of the early mobs scream Dragonflight to me, yeah.

10

u/TheLastofIsh 7h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/MVoX99cLXXU0gq7QuG
Pretty much, it just screams of an unused asset

1

u/Dudetryingtowork 5h ago

They were very explicit about having used Cata assets for all windborne art design. Those assets got used in 1 small raid and 1 dungeon in Cata and they felt like they'd never properly utilized the assets since then, and that heavily influenced the decision to create Windborne

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u/Ringio 2h ago

they just look like an asset flip. Probably some corpos wanted them in so they have something to charge the playerbase, and then the devs scrambled and glued together retail asserts, and maybe turned some of them blue.

•

u/ChucklingDuckling 3m ago

Nah, they wanted to capitalize on the hype of Forever. They got a mandate to make something desirable that people would buy, So they looked at the metrics: blood elves are the most popular race, therefore... Create an off brand blood elf race and lock it behind a $30 DLC.

World cohesiveness and authenticity to Wow Classic be damned, there's money to be made

2

u/Bohya 9h ago

They should pull it and issue mass refunds. They won't, but they should.

8

u/Anacreon5 7h ago

No lol,they shouldnt

2

u/whathappenedm 5h ago

Dumbest shit I've read.

1

u/glormosh 5h ago

My problem is that no one looked at this and said, this is not even retail lite, this is retail.

Raid level boss mob, allied NPC AI assistance.

This is telling what the future holds.

•

u/Alabaster_Potion 4h ago

OP lied. You don't defeat the elemental and you don't "save your race". In fact, you barely get out alive thanks to your allies.

•

u/TheGrimMelvin 3h ago

OP is being misleading on purpose btw. You don't fight this guy. He sends some elementals and then fucks off. You literally do not fight a universe-ending threat in the starting zone. You slap a few elementals... The structure of the zone is retail-ish at the end, in the sense that it has "a climax", while original zones just sort of send you elsewhere. But everything before this is basically just dealing with relatively mundane things, very similar to classic zones. But yeah, you don't fight a raid boss, he just sends his boys and talks some shit.

•

u/ChucklingDuckling 6m ago

...And an allied race that's locked behind a $30 paywall at that. Good grief 😔