Blizzard has confirmed the Skyborne as a brand-new playable race in World of Warcraft: Forever, split across both Horde and Alliance so players choose their faction from the very start, with Lead Game Designer Tim Jones revealing that Executive Creative Director Chris Metzen specifically challenged the team to not play it safe with the Skyborne rather than defaulting to the obvious expansion locations. Jones and Senior Game Designer Josh Greenfield discussed the decision on the Countdown to Classic podcast with host Josh Corbett and streamer Josh ‘Xaryu’ Lujan on Sunday 27 September.
Here’s the context: The Skyborne reveal split opinion almost immediately, with the initial presentation leading some players to dub them ‘blue elves,’ despite other color options being available. Greenfield says the team expected some divided reaction but believes the story it wants to tell is one everyone up to Metzen stands behind, and he describes the moment as a personal full-circle callback to his own early skepticism toward the Draenei years ago.
Jones explained that Blizzard’s first instinct for Forever was to check off the locations players have wanted for years, name-checking Gilneas, Uldum, and Quel’Thalas as the kind of ‘Classic Plus’ wishlist zones the team could have leaned on. Instead, worried about running out of content if it moved too aggressively through fan-favorite territory, Blizzard opted to swing for the fences with an entirely new race, as covered in our breakdown of Forever’s beta setup and reborn-MMORPG framing. The Skyborne’s internal divide, between elves drawn to arcane magic and those tied to shamanistic naturalism, lets Blizzard play up what Jones called the underlying ‘war in Warcraft’ tension within a single race. Officially, that split manifests as Horde-aligned Windshapers who can become Shaman and Alliance-aligned High-Order Skyborne who can become Mages, according to Blizzard’s own racial traits page.
Honestly, the Skyborne is a meaningful test of whether Forever can carve out a genuine identity without abandoning what makes an old-school MMORPG feel old-school. Jones was firm that Forever is meant to be its own pillar, separate from both Classic Era and modern World of Warcraft, which is why the team built distinct menus rather than offering a Classic-style UI toggle, though add-ons remain an option for anyone who wants a different look. The real tension here isn’t cosmetic; it’s whether ambition wins out over the safer path players openly wanted, and Blizzard has clearly bet on the former.
Greenfield and Jones also shared numbers that show how Forever’s leveling pace compares to the original Classic experience, and how Blizzard is already tuning loot to avoid gear fatigue.
- Leveling speed – average time from level 1 to 20 is 20.4 hours in Classic Era versus 20.5 hours in Forever, per an analytics report Greenfield cited on the podcast.
- Visual fidelity – the team is reviewing feedback that new Skyborne and druid forms look too modern for the old-school SD art style, specifically around excess geometry.
- Item rewards – Blizzard has already changed some quests to grant only experience and gold instead of gear, and reduced other quest rewards from four blue items down to one.
- Class options – Blizzard’s official racial traits breakdown lists nine playable classes and new race combinations across both factions, including the Skyborne’s own class access.
What remains unclear is how far Blizzard will go to address the SD visual complaints, since no specific revision or timetable has been announced beyond Greenfield’s acknowledgment that the team is dialing in the right fidelity range. It’s also unclear whether the current blue-item adjustments are a one-time correction or an ongoing recalibration as more players reach the affected levels.
What to watch: Greenfield confirmed the next episode will dig deeper into class design, following a first Forever patch that already introduced a sweeping set of class balance changes, as detailed in our coverage of the beta’s evolving class tuning and tools. Expect further tweaks to loot distribution and visual polish as Blizzard keeps iterating on the beta in the weeks ahead, building on the rollout context in our look at Forever’s beta access and early technical issues.
Is introducing a brand-new race like the Skyborne the kind of risk World of Warcraft: Forever actually needed, or should Blizzard have leaned harder into familiar Classic Plus territory first? And does the faction split, paired with Forever’s deliberately distinct UI, make this feel like a genuinely separate pillar rather than just Classic Era with new paint?
