Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

World of Warcraft in Unreal Engine 4 is very pretty

Jon Martindale
By
Westfall recreated in Unreal 4 (early build)
World of Warcraft is a game that despite having many visual upgrades over the years, does show its age a little. Of course it does, it’s over a decade old, and it’s stylised with a cartoony feel that was never designed to be photo-realistic. But if it were to be redesigned with a modern engine and given the care and treatment its vast and detailed landscapes deserves, it could be truly beautiful.

That much is obvious now that we’ve seen Youtuber DanielL’s recreation of Azeroth’s Westfall area in Unreal Engine 4 (thanks PCG). It not only features detailed texturing, better modelling and lighting, but wind effects, grass that blows in the wind, and clouds that travel with time.

Recommended Videos

No NPCs or players are present in this quick flyby and there are still issues with pop-in effects when the camera moves at particularly high speed, but it is nevertheless a stunning visualisation of what WoW might have looked like had it been made just a few years later.

Related

Related: World of Warcraft subscribers drop to seven million

This isn’t the only area of the Warcraft world that DanielL has rebuilt though. Earlier this year he put together a recreation of the Elwynn Forest in the latest Unreal Engine. While the frame rate isn’t quite so smooth and the lighting effects aren’t so natural, it’s still offers a striking new perspective on the game, and it’s clear a lot of time has gone into faithfully recreating the woody area with new technology.

Elwynn Forest recreated in Unreal Engine 4 (early build)

It’s certainly making more than a few fans of the game consider taking a step back into it, as it’s likely that their rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia painted something quite similar to this rendering in their memories of the different areas.

Moving forward, DanielL is considering releasing the areas as explorable environments for VR headset users. Here’s hoping.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Jon Martindale
Jon Martindale
Computing Coordinator
Jon Martindale is the Evergreen Coordinator for Computing, overseeing a team of writers addressing all the latest how to…
Street Fighter 6 director reveals World Tour mode’s true purpose
A player stands in Metro City's Times Square equivalent in Street Fighter 6 World Tour.

While Street Fighter 6’s traditional Fighting Ground experience made a solid first impression at Summer Game Fest, its significantly more ambitious World Tour mode is still shrouded in mystery. We briefly got a look at this ambitious mode during the game's State of Play trailer. We see what appears to be a player-created character explore Metro City and other locations from a third-person perspective, breaking boxes and getting into fights with the people he meets.
In the press release for Street Fighter 6, Capcom describes World Tour mode as a "single-player immersive story mode that pushes the boundaries of what a fighting game is and allows players to leave their own legacy with their player avatar." While Capcom isn't revealing more about the mode's moment-to-moment gameplay just yet, I spoke with Game Director Takayuki Nakayama at Summer Game Fest Play Days and learned how World Tour is emblematic of Capcom's goal to make Street Fighter 6 the premier entry point to the fighting game genre.
Street Fighter 6 - Announce Trailer
Finding World Tour's Purpose
In World Tour, players will explore Metro City and other iconic Street Fighter locales with a player-created avatar. Nakayama hopes this experience will strengthen Street Fighter 6's appeal to those who aren't already diehard fans of the series or genre.
"World Tour is a completely different mode that delivers a completely different experience than the traditional fighting," he said. "Even if someone's not a hardcore fan of fighting games, we wanted to incorporate things to make people become fans of Street Fighter outside of the traditional fights."
World Tour certainly looks unlike anything the Street Fighter series has done before. Still, Nakayama hopes that World Tour players will learn more about the world and characters of Street Fighter along the way and fall in love with fighting games as a whole."We want players to dive into this mode and be able to learn how to love fighting games through the things that you do during the journey of World Tour," Nakayama proclaimed. "There will also be opportunities to meet some of the fans' favorite characters, like Ryu and Chun-Li, through World Tour. We want to provide an experience where players can learn more about those characters' backstories and discover what kind of people they are within Street Fighter 6."

World Tour is one of Street Fighter 6's three main pillars, the others being the standard Fighting Ground mode and the multiplayer-focused Battle Hub. He commented how it's always hard to tell how much is enough to put in a game for fans, especially following Street Fighter V's rocky reception at launch due to a lack of content. However, he hopes World Tour provides enough to negate that criticism.
"We were definitely aware of some of the criticism that we faced with Street Fighter 5, and we want to continue to learn from those criticisms and make Street Fighter 6 a better product," he explained. "It's challenging to decide how much is enough for the users, but we continue to work very hard on it and strive to create something that will get appreciation from players."
Still, World Tour seems like it could occupy players for a long time while introducing them to the concept of fighting games and the world of Street Fighter. That's not too shabby of an addition when Street Fighter 6's core fighting game mechanics are already fantastic. And Capcom's goal to make Street Fighter 6 one of the most approachable fighting games ever can be seen outside of World Tour mode.
Everyone is here to fight
During our discussion, Nakayama constantly reiterated that he wants Street Fighter to be something that can entertain and entice those who've never played a fighting game before. Part of the developer's method for making Street Fighter 6 more approachable and accessible is the addition of the Modern Control Type, which allows players to execute flash combos with simple button presses.

Read more
6 Disney worlds we need to see in Kingdom Hearts 4
Moana and Maui riding a boat.

The trailer for Kingdom Hearts 4 introduced fans to the world of Quadratum, which bears a striking resemblance to the real world ( hence Sora's realistic-looking, Final Fantasy-esque makeover). Strelitzia, the girl who resides there and in the Tokyo apartment Sora wakes up in, tells Sora that Quadratum is like an afterworld for people like them, but it's full of life for everyone else. As series creator Tetsuya Nomura pointed out in a recent interview with Famitsu, it's a different reality than the one Sora came from, therefore he won't stay there forever, nor will he keep his new look once he leaves and gets back to his universe.

That being said, there will be plenty of other worlds for Sora and company (once Donald and Goofy find him, of course) to travel to where he'll maintain his original look -- spiky hair, clown shoes and all (or whatever outfit he wears in accordance to the motif of the world he finds himself in). Nomura did confirm that multiple worlds are in development but did not reveal what they are.

Read more
3 Unreal Engine 5 features PC gamers need to know about
A character standing in the Unreal Engine 5 demo.

Epic just opened up Unreal Engine 5 to all developers, after releasing the game engine into early access in 2021. It's being used to develop a new Tomb Raider game, and it promises to provide a true generational leap in how games are developed for PC and consoles.

Short of Fortnite, we don't have any Unreal Engine 5 games at the moment. But there's still a lot to get excited about. Here are the three most important Unreal Engine 5 features that will make PC games look and play better than ever.
Temporal Super Resolution

Read more