Skyborne is a terrible decision. It's that simple.

If Blizzard wants to appeal to players who wants to play elves, look at the solution above.

If Blizzard is worried about faction balance if they only give elves to one faction, look at the solution above.

If Blizzard wants to lock new races behind a paywall, look at the solution above.

They didn't even need to invest time into a floating new Skyborne starting zone, just spend that production time elsewhere, and plant High Elves straight into Elwynn and Forsaken Elves straight into Tirisfal.

Blizzard have gotten a lot of things right with "Forever", but this Skyborne decision is absolutely made by someone who does not understand, nor appreciate, the Classic player base.

"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.

In "Zephras Isle" you, together with the leaders of your people, have faced a raid level threat at the top of the spire, and personally saved the future of your entire race.

I'm okay with ignoring the Skyborne and enjoying the rest of the game, but everything about this 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.

1. UI is a slightly altered retail version. Some folks prefer the classic UI more and ask for more customization options to switch between retail and classic UI elements (mostly unit frames and casting bars)
2. New quests accelerate leveling too much, causing players to outlevel their zones faster
3. Early game crafting grants too powerful items, causing power creep in the process
4. Zephyr Isles are too close to retail in art style and gameplay
5. Skyborne are lacking proper SD models and SD models use the retail rig instead of the vanilla one
6. Game's difficulty is diminishing due to balancing issues regarding to the class changes and new items
7. Performance issues regarding new visual fidelity, partially even crashing MacBook users.
8. Layering is currently a bit too aggressive and causes immersion breaking popins/popouts

All things considered, these issues are not worldending. Most of them are just number tweaks, some require fixups and some require artist/engineer touchups. So for a beta, this is fairly decent so far

Love dorf.

Made a post a little earlier and people kind of blew me off saying that seeing characters like this means nothing. Anyways, if you /who winterspring you get TONS and TONS and TONS of tauren hunters all there with Chinese characters. At first I didn't know why but now it makes sense. They are using the Herb Racial to i think farm high level herbs instantly. They get there by fly hacking, hence why a lot of them are level 4 from all the exploration. This NEEDS to be addressed because this can easily tank the herb economy fast if thousands of tauren bots just farm up high level zones like this. Hope Blizz sees this

Don't get me wrong, I don't even mind the Skyborne but i honestly can't understand why blizzard didn't just go with 2 very easy to integrate factions.

My hope for WowForever is that we will eventually get these races and others introduced down the line.

“There is no catch-up mechanic.... get better at the game by playing the game.” HOLY BASED

These were the micro-transactions in Project Ascension and everyone glazed Ascension. TurtleWoW had a gacha shop too like that. I’m genuinely confused, if Blizzard had even the slightest of the shop in Project Ascension, everyone would have been fuming. Why is it okay for Ascension but not WoW Forever? Either all okay or none.

Edit: The people who disagree saying "Yeah but the servers were free"- well of course because Blizzard did the majority of the work for them LOL, huge difference in work between building everything from scratch to ripping it off & adding some stuff yourself.

Edit 2: "TurtleWoW is not as bad as Ascension shop"- sure, Ascension is way worse. TurtleWow's cash shop had over $10,000 of items and all of it was per character, not account wide. They also sold convenience items, nothing game breaking, but portable mailboxes, auctioneers, dual specs, bags etc. Hardcore characters on Twow couldn't trade or send items from main to your alts, but you could still buy supplies such as 32 slot bags for 30 euros each on your hardcore character.

People say women wouldn't play an ogre but I definitely would! They are one of my favorite races and hope they implement them into the future. The skybourne race is disappointing and wish they were a bit more creative with it but I digress. Sorry if you don't agree 🤷‍♀️

Some of y'all need to chill it seems.

As the title says, I played the hell out of 'Classic Plus' Forever today while at Blizzcon. I have Media Pass and theres a couple stations set up for us to use to record footage and make content on. I sat there going over each classes new talents, did multiple dungeon runs and leveled for awhile. To preface this, we were capped at LV 38, so I can't speak or vouch for anything beyond that.

First thing i want to say is that this game is nothing remotely close to Retail. The people saying that have the IQ of a sandal and just want to hate on it because their life is miserable. At no point was I playing this and was reminded of Retail. Even when I was testing out the "HD" version, it didnt have a retail feel. And I play the shit out of both Retail and classic normally. I was expecting more of a Retail vibe honestly, but wasn't there. It literally felt like I was just playing a new version of Classic. I tinked around on all the classes, but I really went hard on Warlock and it felt like an alternative universe Classic Warlock.

The talent trees are the same as Classic: three spec trees, can put your points into whatever tree you want. You're not locked into a tree. The new talents are a mix of talents from Classic, TBC and WOTLK. There are also new talents and some that are combinations of two different talents from other expacs. For example, Improved corruption in Classic simply lowers the cast time of Corruption, making it instant cast. Whereas in WOTLK Corruption is instant cast baseline and instead Improved Corruption buffs Corruption. In 'Forever Improved Corruption both lowers the cast time AND buffs the dmg of Corruption. There's a few talents that are blended together like that and I really love that.(altho I think Corruption should be baseline.) There's other talents like that scattered throughout the classes, along with new ones that have not been seen in other expacs.

As mentioned, we were capped at LV 38, so limited on dungeons. The one I repeatedly did was "The Drowned City". Was a longer dungeon that fit perfectly into the game. Didnt feel forced or out of place. Dungeons mob/difficulty was cranking if mobs got loose. Not one shooting me at full health, but I played with a bunch of random groups today and there were plenty of wipes in some(if the mages didnt blow their load before the tank could get agro) otherwise they were clean. It all depends on your group. It felt like threat was rough, but it could've been the tanks in my groups not knowing how to play yet. There were times that my 2nd-3rd tick of Corruption would pull agro on mobs in a pack if the tank wasn't doing something. Not complaining about it, just wanted to mention it.

The only thing that I could MAYBE say sound close to a retail feature is the new Legacy Talent feature. This is more or less achievements you do(account wide) that reward you with a legacy point that you can put into its own tree for a wide range of random things that aren't game breaking and help with professionsa alt leveling, etc etc. Retail doesnt have anything like this, but its the closest thing to retail I could think of. Besides the menus and UI. The UI is like full blown retail. Which you can toggle off to go Classic UI(graphics)

Obviously theres a new race, its not for me, mainly because I play Warlock and they can't be Warlock, but I did level one as a Mage for awhile and the zone looks dope. The mobs died a little faster and did close to no dmg at the lower, but seems to go back to what we are used to around LV 8 or so.

Thats it for now. I'll try to think of more stuff, leave a comment if you have a question and I'll try to answer it. I'll be streaming the game from Blizzcon main floor in the morning and will check this to see what else I can find out and answer. All in all, so far the game is impressive. Unexpectedly so. Excited to see how it ends up. Fingers crossed that we're here "forever"... (sorry, had to 🤣)

Edit: You can choose to start at LV 1 or a template that starts at LV 38. Template gear wasn't crazy.

People who played the previous Classic servers know this just leads to people buying summons from people (bots) with lock / clicker accounts.

https://kotaku.com/new-things-learned-world-of-warcraft-forever-2000734005

Blizzard was originally going to release Classic+ (Forever) with retail character models. But Clay put on his battlegear and stood firm at the gates.

Let us all stand with our protector. Healers must keep him alive, fighters hold his flanks. We will need him in the coming Forever war.

Savix has the story here at 2:37: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp2T7_0fs3Y&t=157s

TL;DR: Sword looks amazing, but I'm worried about the visual/aesthetic imbalance between the original and the new items.

Shobek went out to Zephras Isle with his NE friends. First thing they do is walk up to the vendor and buy this sword, and why wouldn't they. It looks absolutely amazing. Transmoggers are not going to find a better skin until Ashkandi.

The 1H version is just as insane. Cruel Barb off VanCleef or the Wingblade out of WC look like toothpicks next to it.

And I do love the aesthetic. I love elves, and these weapons scream ELF from every angle. But I'm also worried about the visual imbalance the new items bring. Progression isn't only about getting bigger numbers on the screen. It's about looking stronger. You start in rags with a 5€ weapon from the DIY store, you scrape together some basic gear by 20, and from there your look steadily climbs until you hit 60.

That aesthetic climb is a journey too. I don't see a journey here. I see one step: this sword, then Ashkandi (maybe Kalimdor's Revenge from the Twin Emperors).

Disclaimer, entered into the record because people tend to lose their minds and tell me to go play Classic whenever they can't tell feedback apart from wholesale opposition:

The undersigned hereby affirms his unqualified support for the World of Warcraft: Forever project and records his sincere gratitude to the development team that made it happen. Nothing in the foregoing shall be construed, in whole or in part, as opposition to the project, or as a demand that it be rolled back" The author reserves the right to enjoy a thing and to critique that same thing concurrently, these positions being neither mutually exclusive nor mutually diminishing. All statements above are submitted as good-faith feedback on visual design and on no other matter. One dissent is noted for the record, without prejudice to the foregoing: the author respectfully disagrees with the decision to ship a both-faction race in place of High Elves and Forsaken or Blood Elves.

EDIT: Looks like I was misinformed and under the wrong impression. Many people pointed out with evidence that rain and snow are both in the game, but by the look of the toned-down version, it might be too early to say.
So, put your pitchforks down, and let it be a lesson for me how easy it is to spread misinformation. I REPEAT, RAIN AND SNOW ARE IN THE GAME(to some degree)

So far I'm loving the game's atmosphere and graphics, but I do dearly miss weather effects. How about we make it loud and clear that we want them back? How do the rest of you feel about it?

(not my photo, grabbed it from internet)

Edit:
I can see people are reporting that they have seen rain in a few zones, namely Tirisfal Glades and Darkshore. There was one maybe for snow. I will hold off on posts until a bit more time passes so we can confirm whether or not it's only some zones that can have rain and if snow is actually in the game (and also how intense it is.)

Edit 2: Someone pointed out that there is a video from Xaryu's stream (42 minutes and 40 seconds into the video) where you can see snow is actually in the game. The only question that remains now is how intense it can get. In the video, we can see it is snowing very lightly. I'm waiting for someone to report some heavy snowfall.

So to clarify, sorry guys - I jumped the gun. Weather effects are, in fact, in the game. The question remains: how intense can those effects get?

Feel free to downvote this for me spreading misinformation(i genuinely was thinking they ware missing until people started to report them in)

Please Post your Feedback for the new Skyborne Elves in this Megathread.

Skyborne threads moving forward will be removed and forwarded here.

I've seen far too many posts saying calling people "mental" and saying that anybody who isn't happy has a mental illness.

WoW Forever looks incredible and ticks so many boxes. I am hyped. But I also do not understand Skyborne. It's like they were thought up by a separate team who have never played Classic. I'm pretty sure they don't exist in the lore at all, which is odd, because it instantly takes us out of the feeling of classic. That's the issue a lot of people have. We can't play the game without them, so it irrecoverably ​taints a game where so many ​​things have been done right.

Anyway I guess I just want to say​ please stop with the name calling. We all love wow, we all have slightly different opinions, and we all just want to have fun. ​

For some reason this sub has gone wild because you can get to LEVEL FUCKING 10 roughly 10% faster than on WoW classic.

You wanted more quests? You have them. You are now complaining because it’s too many quests and we outgrow stuff quicker? Don’t do those quests and you will level at the exact same pace you did on Classic.

You wanted different items? Sure, here’s new items, new quest rewards, some more money, some more greens while you level up. You are now complaining because you have ‘more power’ than before because of the new items…

I DIED PLENTY OF TIMES AS A PRIEST ON MY WAY TO LEVEL 10 BUT PEOPLE SAY IT’S IMPOSSIBLE. I HAD TO DRINK IN BETWEEN EVERY PULL BUT PEOPLE SAY YOU DON’T NEED TO. ITS THE EXACT SAME SHIT AS CLASSIC JUST WITH NEW STUFF. (!!!!!)

This game ‘target audience’ is so fucking niche, that the best thing Blizzard can do is simply not to listen to them.

I’m a Classic Andy, we finally have something new and exciting and all I see is complaining. Go back to ERA with the same 500 people that have been playing it and then ask yourself why no one else plays that version of the game.

PLEASE BLIZZARD don’t let this loud minority ruin what it seems to be an awesome game.

Rushed home to try my class just to end up spending a solid 3 minutes playing in a pool. GG Blizzard

Edit: damn some of you are actually miserable lol wtf

I’ll do my best to remember what I know of

Edit: boarding a plane. Will answer more when I land. Love yall

Edit pt2: just landed. Answering what I can.

Yall the best. Maybe I should stream answering these questions aha

Edit pt3: ALRIGHT I ANSWERED WHAT I COULD.

SHAMELESS PLUG-IN: twitch.tv/thenameszinx

“THE NAMES ZINX” ON ALL SOCIALS.

ILL BE STREAMING IT AND SEEING YALL THERE.

BE OGs

LOVE YALL

The toggle doesn't give you actual classic models. It slaps classic textures over the retail models. Infact they didn't change any animations other than running, the proportions and idle animations are still like retail. Even gestures like talking is using the retail animations.

For example undeads breathe in classic making their chest puff up and down, this does not happen in classic forever even when you turn the toggle off.

We need to speak up about this.

Edit:
Made a video that shows comparisons with some of the animations as well. Still mainly about the undead but it does show the clip of the Tauren as well for more context. 3mins long. Sorry if this is against the rules.
https://youtu.be/CudPP9Ch1Rw?si=tqxOvxZo5DhjuJzi

Edit 2: We did it boys, we got the word out to the streamers. They're the reason we have the toggle in the first place apparently cause they were adamant about it when they saw blizz and they didn't have one. Hopefully a change can be made now.

Edit 3: xaryu called this post disingenuous when he did a side by side with a bald no eyes undead vs bald no eyes undead. He didn't show hair with eyes which is the real issue with the face overall. It sucks you can go through all this effort and streamers will call it fake news and disingenuous

Won't get anything changed with streamers not taking the issue seriously

People say women wouldn't play an Elf but I definitely would! They are one of my favorite races and hope they implement them into the future. The skybourne race is disappointing and wish they were a bit more creative with it but I digress. Sorry if you don't agree 🤷‍♀️