OutThisLife/azeroth-survivors-re

Azeroth Survivors is best treated as a playable fan project and an engine experiment, not as a plug-and-play download. You can get a complete WASD survivors run with WoW classes, zones and spell cards, but only after assembling a client and its data yourself.

The problem

You want a short, self-contained survivors run using WoW's classes and zones without a server, account or login. The original game is hosted in the browser, while this repository is a from-source local build for personal use. The change is in how the game is produced: instead of a hosted page, you build a WebAssembly client locally, point it at a WoW 1.12.1 client's Data folder, and then open a local URL. The result is an offline build with a character-select screen of eight races and sixteen zones, level-up cards and a class movement spell on F.

What's different

The distinguishing part is the engine under the game. The survivors mode sits in crates/benilla-app/src/survivors/ and runs on two upstream projects: benilla, a from-scratch WoW 1.12.1 client, and wenilla, which compiles benilla to WebAssembly with a local host and realm service. That means the game is not a standalone toy reimplementation of WoW's look; it reads a real 1.12.1 client's data at runtime and renders it through the engine. Readers who care about client emulation get a Rust/Bevy codebase with a packaged mode, not just a game binary.

The practical trade-off is that the repository ships no Blizzard content. No art, models, sounds, maps, MPQ contents or FrameXML are included, so the game cannot start from the repository alone. The build scripts fetch the English 1.12.1 (build 5875) client from archive.org and extract its MPQs into an ignored wow-data/Data/ folder, or you point the build at a client you already own. This keeps the repo legally clean, but it turns "try the game" into a data-acquisition and build step. The zone and boss content is drawn from the zone's real spawns, which is what makes the fan-game framing coherent.

Who should try it

Good fit: someone with a WoW 1.12.1 client already on disk, a Rust toolchain and some patience for a local wasm build, who wants to see a survivors mode run on a from-scratch client engine. The existing-client path via --data or WOW_DATA makes this much less painful than starting from zero.

Poor fit: anyone who just wants to play now. The README's make build path pulls roughly 5.5 GB of client data, and Windows users must run everything from Git Bash because PowerShell and cmd cannot run the scripts. If you are not interested in the engine or the build, play the hosted original instead.

Requirements and limitations

You need Rust, make, curl, unzip and a bash shell; Windows support in the documented path is Git Bash only. You also need a WoW 1.12.1 client's Data folder, either the archive.org download or your own copy. The build is split into fetching data, installing the wasm toolchain (wasi-sdk, wasm-bindgen, binaryen) and building into web/dist/; each script is re-runnable and skips completed steps, which matters if a large download or toolchain install is interrupted.

The ongoing cost is less about the game and more about the pipeline: if the archive.org item moves, you override WOW_DATA_URL or edit the marked line in the fetch script. The game data stays out of the repository, so a fresh clone always needs that step repeated. Controls are documented separately, and the README does not promise anything about future compatibility with other client versions.

HotRepo's take

HotRepo only has one dated observation: 377 total stars and #20 on the NEW-REPOSITORY board (新项目榜, not the overall board) for Rust on 2026-10-27, 14 days after creation. There is no comparable daily-board history, so whether interest persists cannot be judged from these signals. Before investing time, check that you are comfortable with the build's data dependency and the Git Bash requirement on Windows; the repo's own build instructions are the reference, and the hosted original is the faster way to decide whether the game itself interests you.