Unreal Azeroth Review

custom game client powered by Unreal Engine 5

Turtle WoW 2.0

If you missed it, here's a short recap

Well now

emberveil.org

the first project on which this launcher works, let's take a look

The client doesn't support new processors, but that doesn't matter

The launcher also asks you to install some kind of publisher certificate (which I don’t recommend doing, but in principle it works without it)

Having downloaded 11 Gb of the client, we immediately burst into the world

First impression: the textures are the same, but something is wrong
New high-quality grass grows on old ground textures

if you press esc, the first option is Donation Rewards, which doesn’t work yet (probably because I haven’t played enough yet)

The client actually has voice chat right in the game and it seems it will even work<br data-empty="true"><br> — The client actually has voice chat right in the game and it seems it will even work

There are a lot of interface settings, as well as settings in principle, there are even streamer modes, etc.

I went to the nearby caves to check the set's reflections and effects

In general, the textures of the world (maps, walls, floors, mountains) remained the same; new character models were put on them (essentially an upscale without edits); NPC models are also new, more detailed, they are also beautiful (but I won’t say that they are all redesigned)
The interface is 40/80% all old, the textures are old but numbers are superimposed on them from the new engine (and it doesn’t look nice everywhere yet, for example in the middle at the bottom of the last screen the number of the bottom bar panels has clearly flown up somewhere).

But at the same time, the game world works, NPCs walk, swim, fly, bags drop, it’s just as difficult to play as the classics, and just as interesting.

I didn’t notice any shadows or reflections or glows,
but I'm sure they may appear in updates

Noticed a change in the time of day
(global illumination really changes the colors of the world and it’s cool and unusual)

Here the glow is classic, nothing new, but the NPC model and the object of the lantern he holds are new.

In the game menu everything is also Class-sic, the texts float (but this can be fixed), <br>but with excessive detail, it seems to me that nothing can be done. — In the game menu everything is also Class-sic, the texts float (but this can be fixed),
but with excessive detail, it seems to me that nothing can be done.

22/08/2006 — 25/08/2026<br>20 years have passed, and we still come back here — 22/08/2006 — 25/08/2026
20 years have passed, and we still come back here

here you can see how much detail has been added, the picture on the hay looks beautiful, the beams, the floors... well, in general it’s nice, cozy, I want to walk around and look

But there’s a problem with water... although maybe at 1.12 it should have been like that

Well, these textures of the Elvin Forest, which Blizzard still hasn’t redrawn even in 12.1.0, look even more creepy here

NPCs could be pulled from new clients and adapted to the new engine, so Blizzard's work lives on even here

I can’t really say anything online, somewhere < 10,000 exactly, in the game for the Alliance it shows 103... you can meet players, but of course I would like 10 times more

It’s interesting that there are players from all regions!<br data-empty="true">Realm only 1<br> — It’s interesting that there are players from all regions!
Realm only 1

I really like the stained glass window on the left, and overall it’s cozy

Results

The client is really on Unreal Engine, indeed they were able to adapt old textures and create new game mechanics based on this... the upscales look very decent in some places, and in some places they are even beautiful. The declared features of net gen such as Ray Tracing could not be found, but the groundwork for this can be felt. But with the animations of the characters (banal sit down, stand up, jump) everything is still very bad. Blizzard spent 4-5 years on development for the 1.0 release in 2004 and were able to do something that the creators of this client have not yet been able to do :(
The vanilla server is classic, I think there’s no point in discussing it separately.

As a game that is somehow different from World of Warcraft, it does not smell, and in general it goes more into the past, trying to repeat it without attempting any rethinking. Do you want to play this? - yes, honestly, I do. Will I actually play this? Probably not.

The client is generally playable; developing it into a presentable form requires more resources and a team, which is clearly not enough right now. I would like to see this all in open source code and with the support of an external community, perhaps then it would have some chance.

Konstantin Goncharov
25/08/2026 17:51