Fan-Built First-Person Mod for World of Warcraft Takes Shape as Retro Forever

A modder called Arhkain is building Retro Forever, a first-person mod for World of Warcraft, the long-running online game. Eurogamer reports that the project aims to show combat, cooking and flying from the character's own eyes.

A mod, short for modification, is a change to a game made by fans rather than by the company that publishes it. Retro Forever is not publicly available yet. Arhkain has posted two development vlogs, video diaries that show work in progress.

The project's look draws on older games. Its presentation is reminiscent of Morrowind and Hexen, two earlier first-person titles. It currently uses assets, meaning models, textures and other game files, pulled from those two games and modified for this project.

Eurogamer describes Retro Forever as a combination of add-ons that already exist. Add-ons are small programs that players install to change how a game works. The mod also adds a custom user interface, along with animations tied to specific spells and abilities.

For now, the mod only works with a selection of mage spells and other class abilities. A class is the character type a player picks, such as a mage. Expanding that list is still ahead.

Arhkain said generative AI, the kind that creates images or text from prompts, "wouldn't help" with the project's development. An artist has also expressed interest in joining to create original assets, which would replace borrowed files with new artwork.

The Eurogamer article also lists World of Warcraft: Forever as set to release on Wednesday, 4 November. The name is close to the mod's.

Fans who follow the project will have Arhkain's vlogs as the main window into progress for now. Anyone curious about how a first-person view changes familiar spells can watch those videos once they are online.