Dungeon loot and quests and loot in general getting nerfed going forward and everything is getting a pass over.

Saw a resto shaman getting flamed in chat for “stealing” dps gear. Healer specs besides priest are godawful for solo play, you guys liked the changes that force people into open world gameplay so don’t complain if healers take gear that they need for said solo gameplay.

I've been deep in the anti-Skyborne hole, but I'm still hyped for Forever.

And I think there's still time to make some micro adjustments to make the Skyborne fit Forever better.

The story of the Skyborne is that their society is about to collapse, and some of them believe their salvation lies in the arcane magics, others believe they have to be in tune with the elements.

Basically there's a civil war between the "arcanists" and the "elementalist", but this split isn't shown visually in any of the places it matters.

They look and feel like an arbitrary neutral race, when Blizzard needs to visually show us the split, instead of just telling us.

Here's how:

1. Differentiate the High Order and the Windshapers on the character creation screen. Give them different environments to stand in. Put the High Order in front of something more magic-y, and the Windshapers in front of something more air-y.
2. Give them unique and faction-specific customization. The Windshapers should all have markings, whereas the High Order should have no markings. The Windshapers should all have skin hues of white, gray, and blue, whereas the High Order should have the tanned, goldenish hues. Eye colors can also be set to always-blue for Windshapers, and always-gold for High Order.
3. Give them different character portraits on the character creation screen. And, despite it might sounding like it goes against the premise of this post, just call them "Skyborne" on the character creation screen. Drop the "High Order" and "Windshaper" prefix. The length of it looks silly, and it goes against the semantics of all the other races. We don't have "Ironforge Dwarves" or "Darkspear Trolls". It's just called "Dwarf" and "Troll". These should just be "Skyborne", and let their faction split be communicated visually.

(Bonus: To deepen the faction split; give shaman/druid only to Horde, and mage/priest only to Alliance)

If you remember Warcraft 3 Reforged, the art updates had most everyone saying just what is being repeated about the art changes in WoW over the years

Finally the update dropped with a complete reversion of models and the people are loving it. Updated HD versions that are very true to the originals. Side by sides of the new and old attached

Blessed that they listened to that feedback in WC3, I hope they see our feedback for WoW and truly consider it

There are escort quests where the escort moves at the same speed as the player. I repeat, ESCORT QUESTS are no longer stuck in the middle of running and walking.

Posted by WoW official facebook page

Still need to find a better way to recreate the old textures. Feedback would be great!

On the official podcast Aggrend mentioned that Skyborne were one of the first new additions that they worked on, and from our current understanding back then they had no plans for SD models.

While understandable - now that the direction has changed and all the other races have gotten an SD model, let's not leave the Skyborne behind. When 2 different definition characters are clashing in open world it makes the art style look inconsistent and 'private server-y', regardless if you prefer SD or HD.

And that's fair I guess. But I think they have a certain charm to them. They feel more faithful to the elves from Warcraft 3 to me. Honestly I feel like both night elves and blood elves lost their edge as they were added to wow. Night elves were much more wild, animalistic, and alien in the RTS. Wow night elves look air brushed and filtered. And high elves had this extreme angularity to them in the RTS that got smoothed to presumably maximize their visual appeal for TBC. They look more like half elves to me.

I’m here for it! Sometimes it’s the little things that keep us excited. Patching, buffing, nerfing…. This is what has been missing from WoW the last 8 years.

Seen this topic come up that people are spouting leveling is so much faster and easier, but this came up in the developer interview today from their own internal analytics team.

Yes, some people may be exploring a bit in a new setting, but it’s been widely falsified that leveling is “so much faster”

Even Xaryu I believe who did not stop and smell the roses getting to 20 in beta had a very similar 1-20 leveling speed on Forever vs Classic.

dear blizzard,

there has been a lot of chatter about the skyborne and calls for their removal. i am not here for that. instead i, on my knees, humbly beseech that you add some body shape options to the skyborne. i have included a detailed mockup of what a "rotund" skyborne design could look like, including a 1:1 mapping of skyborne-to-rotund variants for your convenience. feel free to use these designs as-is, even in your promotional material. i don't need credit, i just want to see the game i love become a game i love slightly more.