A tension that will never go away as long as World of Warcraft: Forever exists is how true it is to the 2004 MMO. Blizzard signed up for this by creating an MMO that is trying to blend the old with the new so that anyone, regardless of their experience with WoW, can get into it.
That tension has been at its highest concentration with the new blue elves it debuted with WoW: Forever. The Skyborne have never existed in WoW before; they look almost exactly like the Blood Elves from The Burning Crusade expansion, but their lore tells us they’re a faction of High Elves.
Some players love the twist on a race they’ve been asking to play for years, while others believe they tarnish the authenticity of an MMO that’s trying to recreate the joys of playing the oldest era of the MMO. Even though the debate over the Skyborne will probably never be resolved, most players agreed that, at the very least, they looked way too new alongside WoW’s crunchy old player models.
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Blizzard said it would respond to the feedback about the Skyborne visuals before WoW: Forever launches in November and today it has done just that in a blog post promising to give them a retro makeover.
“Over the course of development, we have been aligning on the right range of fidelity and what feels like it belongs in the WoW: Forever world and what does not,” Blizzard writes. “The team has learned much in the process, and that will continue to strengthen more with future content.”
Blizzard says the Skyborne “didn’t quite meet the consistency and cohesion we are aiming for,” and will be tweaking how they look with the “HD” player models setting on. There’s an example of their druid forms in the post and you can see how the feathers and fur have harsher lines and shapes that fit much better with WoW’s original style. The old version used to look extremely smooth with a bright light blue gradient covering their bodies and now everything is much more muted.
The people who play with the “SD” models on to fully live like it’s 2004 will also get visually updated Skyborne, but they won’t come until early next year. Blizzard’s work-in-progress image shows a bunch of elves who have had their smooth features replaced with jagged, low-poly shapes. They’re basically Skyborne on low settings and I think they look great. Blizzard says they’ll have another update on the models—and their SD druid forms—when they’re closer to being finished.
I wasn’t convinced Blizzard would be willing to technically downgrade a race that costs $30 to unlock, but I’m glad it did. It sets a precedent for how close it wants the newest stuff in WoW: Forever to adhere to the classic MMO, and, hey, maybe it’ll convince some people to chill out and see how things go when it’s out of beta on November 4.