NEWS Blizzard shuts down WoW mod

(This article is from PC Gamer)

Earlier this week, YouTuber BellularGaming announced one of the most ambitious mods for World of Warcraft I've ever seen. Warcraft Tales was more than the typical user interface overhaul: the plan was to rewrite the entirety of World of Warcraft's level 1-60 quests zone-by-zone to make the story more interesting. I say "was" because today BellularGaming announced that Blizzard's legal team had nixed the idea.

"Essentially, [Blizzard's] legal department does not see the project as just an addon as governed by the addon policy, rather it's seen as a third-party expansion set," Michael of BellularGaming explains. Originally, the team was optimistic that Warcraft Tales would have been OK thanks to the precedent set by Starcraft Universe, a mod that turns Starcraft 2 into an RPG with some multiplayer elements.




Warcraft Tales wasn't a game within a game like Starcraft Universe, however. Instead, it would utilize World of Warcraft's robust modding tools to essentially redesign how quests and the story were presented to the player. You'd still be collecting boar livers and all that fun stuff, but instead of a page of dry text accompanying each quest, Warcraft Tales would utilize voice acting to deliver a more lively experience. "Our goal is to create a more narratively compelling and immersive experience for you to play through," Michael explains.


One of the bigger features included re-engineering some of the game design so that the story could be told alongside gameplay instead of broken up in-between. As one example, Michael points to an early quest to explore a mine during which all the exposition is given beforehand, you run over to the mine and step inside, the objective is marked as complete, and you run back. Warcraft Tales' version of the quest would've given you some voice-acted dialogue to send you off, but upon reaching the mine you'd overhear a conversation between a villain of the whole zone's storyline.

The redesign would've happened in an episodic format, which each zone being redesigned per episode starting with the human questline in Elwynn Forest. To help cover the cost of a team of four developers in addition to hiring voice actors and renting office space, BellularGaming was turning to Patreon. The campaign page is now taken down, but BellularGaming was looking for $2,500 a month as its first goal, with stretch goals going from there. When I checked yesterday, they were well on their way to reaching that goal and the community response was universally positive—until Blizzard pulled the plug on everything.
In his video announcing that Warcraft Tales would cease development, Michael explains that he believes they were within Blizzard's policies for addons, but suspects the policy wasn't designed to handle a project of this scope.

For now, Warcraft Tales is as good as dead, which is a shame.