Highlights
- Talented fans continue to recreate and update World of Warcraft assets, with one recent project envisioning how a portion of the game's map would look using Unreal Engine 5.
- While World of Warcraft has received graphical updates for new areas, some fans argue that a complete world revamp is long overdue.
- The fan recreation showcases the impressive visuals and improvements that Unreal Engine 5 can bring to the game, highlighting the engine's potential for upcoming titles in various genres.
One talented Blizzard fan recently went through the effort of envisioning how a portion of the World of Warcraft map would look in Unreal Engine 5. His feat is just the latest in a long list of World of Warcraft recreations and asset updates that have surfaced online in recent times.
While many World of Warcraft expansions that released over the years shipped with graphical updates to the game, such improvements were most often reserved for whatever new areas Blizzard added to the MMO. Meanwhile, the game's last complete graphical overhaul happened in 2010, with some fans consequently arguing that a world revamp for World of Warcraft is already long overdue.
YouTuber Frits Mulder recently envisioned one such updated version of World of Warcraft powered by Unreal Engine 5, the latest major release of Epic Games' popular engine which was first unveiled in mid-2020 before launching two years later. In order to make the undertaking more feasible for a one-man project, Mulder decided to limit his recreation to Westfall, the Kingdom of Stormwind's fiefdom that was part of World of Warcraft since the MMO's late 2004 debut. The author of this fan recreation revealed that he had zero experience with 3D rendering software beforehand, labeling his desire to learn as one of the reasons for why he embarked on what ended up being a three-month development journey.
Apart from Westfall, Mulder also recreated many World of Warcraft mobs as part of the project. The Unreal Engine 5 newcomer eventually showcased the result of his efforts in a well-received YouTube video with a runtime of over seven minutes. Apart from gorgeously lit scenery, the recreation also stands out from the current World of Warcraft graphics due to its lack of pop-in and extremely realistic water effects, among other improvements.
This impressive fan project serves as yet another teaser for the level of visuals that gamers can expect from the titles powered by Epic's latest and greatest engine. Although it only launched in April 2022, Unreal Engine 5 has already been adopted by dozens of upcoming games spanning a wide variety of genres.
And though Mulder's recreation also underlines how Blizzard's hit game is nowadays showing its age in some areas, there are still plenty of things that World of Warcraft does better than most other MMOs. This state of affairs likely contributed to its ongoing success, with third-party server tracker MMO Population estimating that World of Warcraft still boasts over 1.2 million daily active players as of July 2023.
World of Warcraft is available on PC.
Source: MMO Population