The Skyborne—also known as the shen’dorei, or hidden people—are a new playable race in World of Warcraft: Forever. Their journey begins on Zephras Isle, a level 1–12 starting experience that blends classic Warcraft aesthetics with elemental architecture and a story shaped by wind and ancestry. At character creation, you’ll choose whether your Skyborne joins the proud Horde or the noble Alliance.
Hello, when are we getting an answer about MOP Classic and TBC Anniversary? This level of disrespect that you are showing us is disgusting and unacceptable. We demand an answer. All of the top posts on the Classic/Anniversary forums are asking this same question and you’ve completely ignored them all.
Why? Why are you pretending we don’t exist? I don’t care about your Turtle WoW ripoff. I want an answer for what’s going to happen to our characters on the Classic realms.
Like Terrence and Phillip?
*not my joke 
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/wow-forever-meet-the-new-skyborne/2358236/2
PS : Thank you blizzard, I ll spare 30€ only because you decided to not include the priest class in this skyborne race.
I ll play a night elf priestess and for free, thank you 
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How to lose big whales like me and many others and in the same time women community in the horde who wanted to play skyborne priestess
Clap clap blizzard, hilarious
The most hilarious thing is that Elune worshipping is older than druidism
The second hilarious thing is that Restoration druide is hugely trash tier in PvE and regarding to new spells its not gonna change
Imagine forcing players to pay a new Race 30€ and in the same time not including BASIC class which is not a calling like paladin or else.
Imagine insulting elvish players by giving priest class to GNOMES but not to skybornes
Imagine refusing playable high elves in retail, classic and now in forever and refusing players who wanted to play High elves through skyborne and play a PRIEST as a HEALER of the ALLIANCE
like for example… the priest unit in warcraft 3 who is … oh yes a high elf.
Someone can explain why Haranirs, Pandaren, Goblins etc on retail can be priests but not skybornes on Forever ? Lorewise? and with a minimum of logic sense?
So Gnomes, with probably human influence in the alliance, are now able to be priest but alliance skyborne cannot be priest by the human influence?
BIG L blizzard if you want to play a healer skyborne on alliance side your fate is to be trash tier
Yes, I am very upset and disappointed.
This tbh ^^^^^^^
Totally agree, Big L tbh.
Been a horde player since 2006, specifically a Mage. I’m not planning to reroll Alliance to play Skyborne Mage and I’ve also have friends who play horde from the same time I started, they are happy, one is warrior and the other hunter, and me as a mage I cant play with my friends from the start, and besides what am I paying the race for? Imo Alliance should get access to shamans while horde should get access to mage also. Priest should be there also if we are to consider this a High Elf. We got so hyped with hundreds of videos before they even announced forever, hyped again at the announcement. Sadly I was working when they actually announced it otherwise I wouldnt have payed for this race if I knew I wont be able to play horde mage on it. So after the huge hype, here comes the huge dissapointment…
The Skyborne Bear form looks so bad, and they’re so bright you can see them glowing like half a mile away.
Kindly reminder this forum is for retail. Please move this to forever section
say it to the moderator 
1.hello team,i think the skyborn great idea,they are similar to high elves but they are not as them you can unite the high order skyborn alliance with the original high elves under Vereesa,
2.the skyborn don’t have much represent and even minor settlments outside their sky island
3.about horde skyborn the community will be happy to more lore to side and red tatto and to see them spend time spirituality with the taurn and to see those horde skyborn embress kalidmor as their home while the alliance side embraces the eastern kingdom,you can fix this all
Can we have another race instead of the Skyborne that actually already exists in Classic WoW lore?
There are plenty of existing races and factions that could have been developed organically. Creating a completely new race of Elves, then retrospectively writing them into the world and splitting them between Horde and Alliance is narratively jarring.
It also weakens faction identity aesthetically and narratively. It’s hard to buy suddenly seeing Skyelves everywhere among both the Alliance and Horde, as though they’ve been deeply intertwined with both factions for years in the Classic universe. Something like that needs significant lore build-up beforehand, ideally over years. Retrospectively writing in enough history to make them immediately central to both factions doesn’t create the same sense that they genuinely grew out of the world. It makes the world feel retrofitted around flashy new content and weakens the sense of continuity and history that makes Classic feel so special and believable.
At BlizzCon, Blizzard said Forever would focus on what made Classic so memorable in the first place. Surely that should mean building on the world and lore that already existed, rather than awkwardly writing in something completely new that jars with faction identity both narratively and aesthetically.
I believe Skyborne are not some well developed race that deserves to be behind a pay wall but were in fact cobbled together and rushed out the door
Exibit A: The models are just re textured blood elf models. Not that I mind this particularly but it’s very obvious and combined with the others just adds to my case.
Exibit B: All the animations apart from the dance are blood elf animations. Even the twirly jump. You’d have thought of all the races to give a fancy jump to air elemental aligned elves was the one. No work went into any of them to make them different from blood elves.
Exibit C: The buildings are all identical to Night Elf buildings just with different textures on. Which makes no sense. Why would highborne elves make buildings like night elves? You’d have thought air elves would have tall towers and wind bridges. Swirling walk ways etc etc.
Exibit D: only 3 /silly emotes. This may seem inconsequential but it’s what got me thinking. The other races have 6 or 7 (shut up) each. Just feels like another symptom of them putting as little effort in as possible.
So yeah, I think they put in as little effort as they could and it’s a disgrace they’re charging for them.
This was the biggest disappointment in the announcement for me. A race that has absolutely nothing to do with classic. Yet another elf race that we’ve had way too many of already. I really feel that if we truly had to add a race we had plenty of options for races that were already in the classic world instead of making up something completely new and removing the classic feel. Races like ogres, naga, murlocs, gnolls even could’ve all been introduced without feeling completely out of place.
Secondly blizzard hammered on wanting to keep the alliance vs horde feel but by adding a race that can be both contradicts this completely.
I would much rather prefer the blood elves, who are the reason I kept coming back to this game on-and-off since TBC. As they are not in the game, I have no interest in trying it. I’ll just still to retail and the lovely revamped Silvermoon city <3
I think when the vast majority of people realized that the new race was essentially just a color palette change for the blood elves, the developers expected everyone to bend the knee and accept it. Hence the lazy approach: a simple color palette change, very poorly done lore injection that can only be characterized as a failed attempt at using AI, and then, on top of that, a complete lack of the extra oomph people were expecting.
From what I can see, the island starting area is sad, dull, and boring, and the race itself is no different. It’s literally someone sitting there going, “What should we do for new races?” I’m sure two or three people came up with genuinely good ideas, and someone leading the project said, “You know what? We’ll save those for later and make them more expensive for people to buy. For now, let’s rip people off and make them pay a minimum of €30 for a class that required virtually no effort on our part beyond changing a color palette.”
That’s how I feel about meeting the new Na’vi race.
Dude, go outside and get some fresh air.
Agree, realising that I can’t play a priest as Skyborne was a huge bummer, doesn’t make much sense at all…
I don’t mind the lore. I don’t mind they’re blue. But please… don’t let them be another blood elf recolor. They deserve to be more distinct.
Oh, that is particularly strange - Elves a deeply devotional beings, priestess omission is odd.
Lorewise, there is no reason for the Shen’dralar to abandon Elune, Highborne or not - the Thalassians had a reason as they abandoned all things to do with the original nocturnal kaldorei traditions - maybe felt Elune abandoned them, but they turned their devotional aspirations to the Sun and the light instead of the moon and stars - in the original elven tradition.
I would expect Skyborne Priests of Elune or Priests of the stars - especially with druidism available - they can cast both arcane and Elune arcane based spells - and while they are opposite sides of the coin - Elune being associated with the Arcane and the Well of Eternity, while Cenarius with nature and druidism, technically Elune is Cenarius’ mother [which is why Cenarians wield arcane spells too] - I see no reason for the priest calss not to be available.
It does seriously baffle me - tbh, magical classes - Priest, Mage, Druid - should be bread and butter of all Elven classes as they reflect the Devotional /worshipful nature of elves, the magical nature of elves, and the nature loving side of elves - all 3 magical.
Warlock/shaman/Paladin are the more specialised with race specific history - but Elves should easily be able to be all 3 - just not tied to their main societies. Warlock elves are mavericks/loners/exiles, Shaman elves are essentially Elemental Mages, regarded as mages by elves/humans etc, but regarded as shaman by shamanistic races because of their deep knowledge and wielding of the elements, Paladin elves are elves who’ve gotten involved with human culture.
I really feel more accurately the following classes should be added:
Technically tbh, when High elves and Blood elves become playable - you will have BELf horde Paladins, High Elf warlocks, BElf mages etc.
But I draw the line at priests, so if none of the above happen for Skyborne, at the very least the Priest should happen - High elves and Blood elves will cover everything else but Shaman - but then who knows, you might get High elf elemental mages as “shaman”
WHat you call “night elf buildings” are elven rural style buildings. Thalassian High elves also build these if you look at Farstrider Lodge in Loch Modan, and the High elf lodges in Hinterlands and EPL - these are the type of buildings elves have used since well before the sundering. The night elf lodge in Winterspring is over 12,000 years old. Quel’thalas has been well developed and occupied as the home of Thalassian elves for 7,000 years, they would not really have those remote buildings even in their Forests - remember they haven’t expanded their territory in 7.000 years, so they just developed what was there - which is what you see - it won’t have rural buildings, even in remote rural locations. But they would have in outposts like Loch Modan and Hinterlands or EPL which are not elven territories but human and dwarven lands - which is why they have what you call night elf buildings.
Furthermore, when night elves build cities, they will have buildings like the marble ones in Darnassus [classic model] or the ones in Legion like Suramar, Zin’Azshari or Nar’thalas [in Azsuna], Tel’anor town or Merildar town [ruins in Suramar] - this is what night elf urban buildings look like - and if you look at Silvermoon, the style is similar in a way Amani buildings are similar but different to Drakkari and Gurubashi buildings] - their texturing and colouring are different and the style slightly varied but not by much.
What I’m saying that, as exiled night elven Highborne, the Skyborne would build kaldorei buildings like in Suramar, Darnassus and Eldre’thalas [old or new versions] or they’ll build similar to the style in SKywall - for all we know, the Skywall architecture could have been Elven design.
I think they wanted to give the most popular models to both factions, which is why they look like blood/void elves rather than night elves or something new.
They also wanted to do something a bit more exciting and unique than just give you blood elves and high elves -which would come later. It’s classic period, if they gave blood elves, the community would expect it to be Horde only, and those who play retail void elves on the alliance and want High elves would feel left out and it would repeat the same old argument we’ve had ever since Blood elves surfaced on the horde instead of the Alliance. But back then, the horde needed a beautiful race to keep the numbers up - and is exactly why the originally intended playable high elves went horde.
This doesn’t exist today, so it would be tricky just to give blood elves. Off course they coudl have also given high elves as playable. Technically while the blood elves joined the horde, the High elves were still part of the Alliance - and they could have given pre-TBC blood elves who are half out of the Alliance and made them able to join either the Alliance or Horde - problem with this is that blood elves do go Horde in the end, so that would have been problematic - but not impossible. They could solve that by designating any Alliance Thalassian as High elf playable - players would have loved this - but they decided to do something new/different.
I want to commend them for this, they should always do new things. It had to be that model, so it was something new with an existing but very popular model - I think this was a good choice - especially since they have said Blood elves and High elves will becoming later.
Doing Skyborne elves gave us a new starting zone, some interesting customisations to the popular Thalassian model - now no longer exclusively Thalassian - as the Skyborne are Darnassian speaking [it’s just the high elf model]
It gave us a good reason for Skyborne Druids and Skyborne Shaman - and I prefer this than just opening up shaman and druid to blood elves without lore the way Retail is going on ab out it - almost like rush mode - damaging that exclusive /distinctive feel classic had - where at least new additions had serious lore to them.
It allowed us to play the most popular and loved model earlier to by using a different people - afterall think about it, night elves, nightborne, void elves are just variations of the High elf of Warcraft 2 [the first in-game elf] - wow was the first to use different models for the two elf groups who shared the same model up to the original classic - and that was because blood elves went horde and was felt they needed a unique silhouette and they made extra effort to make them extra attractive so players would play them and populate the horde. Did you know that all trolls had the same model until classic? When they altered the beta troll model to look more elven, but it was only the Jungle trolls [who were playable through the Darkspear tribe] that had this model - it was to highlight the connection between trolls and elves which was new lore modified later on in wow’s classic development that came towards the end of the initial production , which was after the release of warcraft 3, which is why in warcraft 3, elf origin and troll origin have no similarity and the manual states the night elves were the first to awaken. That phrase was later officially recast as the first to be enlightened due to the Well’s enhancement - but originally it was the first mortal race to walk the world.
Why can’t they be priests? paladins? warlock? also they need darkfallen skin/eye color option for horde, if you even care
Great, but give them some racial buffs, now its the weekest racial pack…