Questing in World of Warcraft can be a slog. This is especially true during the game’s early levels, before you reach recent expansion content. Warcraft Tales is a mod that would’ve improved that with voice acting and more elaborate stories. I say “would’ve,” because well...




Blizzard recently shut down the still-early project, as it would’ve changed a few too many things for their liking. See, Warcraft Tales was ambitious to a fault, skirting the lines of what’s acceptable according to Blizzard’s add-on policy. In a nutshell, the mod, headed up by YouTuber BellularGaming, would’ve remixed WoW’s level 1-60 quests, altering the way they were presented but—and this is crucial—not changing how they’d play or what you’d earn from them.

So, for instance, there’s an early quest that sends you into a mine to see the sights and wonder why video games are so obsessed with mines. With Warcraft Tales installed, you’d still do that, but instead of getting the whole story as a wall of text, you’d receive a voice-acted intro to the quest and then, once you entered the mine, overhear a conversation involving the entire zone’s villain that’d fill in some blanks. “Our goal is to create a more narratively compelling and immersive experience for you to play through,” Bellular explained in an announcement video. The overhaul would’ve been released episodically, zone-by-zone, and funded out of pocket for the first three, then by Patreon.

Speaking to PC Gamer, Blizzard explained why they put the kibosh on the project.

“As we told Bellular directly, we really appreciate his passion for the game,” a Blizzard rep said. “But what it comes down to is that we need to protect the integrity and experience of the game for all of our players. WoW is very much a living world—anything that can change actual in-game content has the possibility of affecting the experience for all players on a technical side, even if they choose not to use the addon, besides materially changing the lore that binds the universe together. Fan fiction is awesome (and it takes place out of game), addons that modify the way quests are displayed are fine since they don’t modify the in-game content, but addons that alter [or] replace the actual in-game content and story are not since this has far-reaching implications on the player experience.”


So basically, WoW is a massive, complicated series of intertwining systems, and if you yank on one thread, no matter how small or innocuous, you risk unraveling the whole darn thing. While it’s unlikely that a mod like Warcraft Tales would’ve wrecked WoW or even done a notable amount of damage, I can understand Blizzard’s caution. As is, Blizzard allows certain kinds of interface mods in WoW. Anything beyond that is where they draw the line.

Warcraft Tales is likely gone for good, but Bellular says he’s working “behind the scenes” to negotiate with Blizzard. I don’t love his chances, but you can’t fault him for trying. As is, sure, I know the game tells me I’m searching for goblin ears, but what I’m really searching for is a purpose.