'A Lot of Players Don't Want to Play a Monster' – WoW Forever Principal Designer Sheds More Light on Why the Skyborne Were Added

World of Warcraft Forever has its full launch a week from now on November 4, but ahead of time, Blizzard principal game designer Kris Zierhut shared a little bit of insight on why the new Skyborne race was added to the game.

When I asked Zierhut about Skyborne's addition, he told me that the goal was to add more elves to the game but to maintain the faction balance in the process. "We knew that we wanted to bring in more of the elves into the game. We know they're the most popular races in World of Warcraft historically. And in particular, the current alliance and Horde races from the Classic Era have the unfortunate feature that they tend to cause a faction imbalance," he told me.

As for why Blizzard needed to add elves specifically, it's because there's a segment of the player base that doesn't want to play some of WoW's more unique races. …