WoW Forever: Sylvanas finally gets her own model

Lady Sylvanas Windrunner has a new model in WoW: Forever, and it puts right something that has looked wrong since the game first shipped. In the original World of Warcraft she was built on the female night elf model, which left the former ranger-general of Quel'Thalas standing there as a night elf in a dark robe. That was a technical shortcut of the day rather than a decision about who she is.

On the beta she now uses the later elf model, the one that arrived with the blood elves, which is what her origin asks for in the first place. The grey skin and the red glow in the eyes are still there, so nobody is going to mistake her for a living elf. It is the same Banshee Queen, finally assembled out of the right parts.

The change sits next to a wider point about Forever. The game restarts from the original Azeroth instead of retelling the modern story, and back there the faction leaders were figures in the background rather than the centre of every plot. Whether that gives her a different story is open; the model is the part you can look at today.

The new look is on the beta now. Forever opens on 4 November, which is midnight on 5 November in Central Europe.