One World of Warcraft: Forever player is working on a first-person mod that's a love letter to retro RPGs like Hexen and Morrowind

One World of Warcraft: Forever player is working on a first-person mod that's a love letter to retro RPGs like Hexen and Morrowind

UI've got to see this.

One World of Warcraft: Forever player is attempting to turn Blizzard's new MMO endeavour into a Morrowind-esque first-person fantasy RPG, full of retro animations harkening back to the good ol' days. And there's no generative AI in sight.

The project, known as Retro Forever, is the work of modder Arhkain, who's so far published two dev vlogs detailing the nature of his work. He opens the first vlog by describing how he always wanted to view the world of Azeroth through his character's eyes, but was met with a lack of adequate options to support this style of play. That encouraged him to find his own solutions, which is how Retro Forever was born.

The result is a WoW Forever mod aiming to incorporate "fully immersive" first-person graphics - whether it be for combat, cooking, or flying across the world - with a presentation style reminiscent of classic first-person fantasy games like Morrowind or Hexen. In fact, the mod currently uses assets pulled and modified from those games.

Retro Forever - which is described as a "clever combination of addons that already exist" - includes a custom user interface, as well as animations attached to specific spells and abilities. That means, if you're a mage and attack an enemy with a spell, you'll see a custom animation of your character doing that spell.

The bad news is the mod isn't publicly available right now, and currently only works with a selection of mage spells and other class abilities. However, that's set to expand - and Arhkain recently revealed an artist has expressed interest in joining the project for original asset creation.

As for the no-generative AI deal, Arhkain said the tool "wouldn't help" in the mod's development. And when Retro Forever has been updated with original art to replace its currently borrowed assets, it should also dodge any legal pitfalls too. Nice!

With World of Warcraft: Forever set to release this Wednesday, 4th November, excitement is abound for the new spin on an old MMO. Judging from my time with the beta, the game is looking rather good!

Mac, PC