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. Zierhut explained, "There's a certain... a lot of players who don't want to play a monster, to put it really honestly. They don't want to be an Orc or a Troll or a Tauren or Undead. They want to have something that looks prettier. It's not everybody."

There are other possibilities for elves in Azeroth, like the Blood Elves, but the Forever team doesn't want to step on the retail team's toes. Elsewhere in the interview, I asked about Silvermoon, the home of the Blood Elves, and Zierhut referenced that, saying, "You mentioned Silvermoon, and this is a story that Retail had recently told, and we didn't want to get in each other's way of telling that story.

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