Blizzard is intentionally making WoW Forever’s controversial Skyborne Race look worse, and that’s a good thing

Blizzard announced that it would give away its somewhat controversial new product World of Warcraft: Forever race, the Skyborne, a significant overhaul early next year, to bring them more in line with the older models of the original game, which look “worse”. And most people are happy with it!

In a blog post, Blizzard said that in early 2027 it would redo both the regular standard definition models for the Skyborne, as well as the SD and HD models for all Druid animal forms, to bring them more in line with the look of the rest of the game.

As it stands, all of these models seem a little…dissonant inside. WoW: foreverGeneral presentation. WoW: forever is based on the original, vanilla World of Warcraftso everything is a bit polygonal. A little sharp. A slightly… aggressive texture, sometimes. That’s part of its charm (just look at the humble prairie dog)! NOW, WoW: forever offers improved lighting and water effects and other graphical enhancements that give the entire world a really interesting and updated look while preserving the wonderfully retro feel of the whole thing. And you TO DO You have the option to enable HD character models instead, if you prefer to play with the more modern version of your character.

But through it all, the Skyborne still seem distinctly out of place, both in their elf and druid animal forms. Their colors are very bright, they lack the sharp edges and textures of older models, and overall they look too smooth and modern. For example, here is my Skyborne in beta right now, in its SD model:

If you say “SD, no way!” ” You’re right. It’s just the HD model. The Skyborne only have an HD model. So if you turn on SD graphics and find yourself in Orgrimmar with all the orcs, tauren, and trolls, you look ridiculous.

Compare with the SD model of a night elf:

And a tauren for fun:

Just different vibes! Blizzard is therefore currently working on an update for this.

We also got a glimpse of what’s planned for Druid Forms, which currently have a similar type of problem, not only in that there is no SD version, but also in their HD versions. Really come out.

People seem really happy with it! The comments section under this post on the Blizzard forums is admittedly a bit mixed; a few people hate that the models look “worse”, and some people are still angry that Skyborne exists. But many others are happy with the change; even those who admit to not being interested in the Skyborne race as a whole think this is a step in the right direction.

I’ve played with SD models and it’s pretty remarkable how well all of Skyborne stand out, so I’m excited about this change, even if we won’t get it until months after the game launches in November. This appears to be part of a broader effort on Blizzard’s part recently to somewhat rehabilitate Skyborne after players complained about everything from their appearance to their general existence to the fact that they’re not just high-born elves. In a recent interview, the developers attempted to explain why Skyborne was in WoW: forever at all, saying TechRadar that it was partly out of a desire to bring back the underutilized Air Elemental architecture (which, hell, yes) and that making Skyborne cross-faction was an effort to avoid major player bias to one side or the other, as happened with the Blood Elves when they were added. The Burning Crusade.