Summary
A group of highly skilled modders have turnedWorld of Warcraftinto a virtual reality game. Called WoVR, theirWorld of WarcraftVR mod is now available for download free of charge.
The project itself comes from Flatscreen 2 VR, a long-time modding community with a self-explanatory name. Over the years, this collective has managed tobring VR functionality to theResident Evil 4remake,Amnesia,Crysis,Portal 2, and many other popular games.
World of Warcraft Version 3.3.5a Now Playable in VR
The group’s latest feat of engineering arrives in the form of WoVR, which transforms Blizzard’s iconic MMORPG into a full-fledged virtual reality experience. The mod works with the 3.3.5a version of the game, which is the original June 2010 release and not the modernlive server version ofWorld of Warcraft Classic. That particular build incorporates the MMORPG’s first two expansions,The Burning CrusadeandWrath of the Lich King.
WoVR doesn’t simply make the game run onmodern VR headsets, but comes with full-fledged 6DOF tracking support. Short for “six degrees of freedom,” this technique enables tracking of both the position and orientation of the headset in a three-dimensional space, so that head movements can always be accurately translated to camera actions. The initial version of WoVR, released on April 12, requires VR controllers and cannot be played with a mouse and keyboard. Flatscreen 2 VR said it might look into such a feature if the mod proves popular enough.
Be that as it may, the modding community currently has no plans to continue active development of the project. Even this initial release of WoVR was approximately a decade in the making, having been initially envisioned as a mod for the Oculus Rift DK1, the headset’s very first dev kit from 2013. After years of on and off work followed by a four-year hiatus, the team decided to return to the project in January 2024. The 1.0 version of the mod that they finally delivered supports both first- and third-person gameplay, as well as a floating UI with occlusion, the ability to hide interface elements behind in-game objects.
World of Warcraftisn’t the first MMORPG to receive VR treatment from this dedicated modding community; back in late 2022, the same team debuted a similarvirtual reality mod forFinal Fantasy 14. Instructions for downloading and installing both of those and other Flat2VR mods can be found on the group’s Discord server.
World of Warcraft
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World of Warcraft is an incredibly successful MMORPG that has been going strong for almost two decades. It’s one of the highest-grossing franchises in history and is widely considered the most popular MMORPG ever made.
