Short answer: Azeroth Survivors is a free, fan-made survivors roguelike set in vanilla World of Warcraft, made by a developer who goes by Aethus. You play it at wow.aethus.pl in a WebGPU browser or through a Windows download, with no account and no Battle.net login. You pick one of the nine original classes and eight races, your spells cast themselves, and you survive roughly 16-minute runs against waves of Azeroth's most familiar mobs, with a boss on a timer every few minutes. There are twelve zones, from the Defias in Elwynn Forest to Kel'Thuzad in Naxxramas. It is in alpha, it is not made or endorsed by Blizzard, and despite what a lot of people call it, it is not an MMO.
We loaded the browser build on October 27, version v0.120.5, and went through the character screen, the armory, the difficulty options and the co-op lobby browser. Where this piece describes how a full run plays, it leans on the creators who have put hours into it, and says so.
What it actually is
If you have played Vampire Survivors, you already know the loop. You only move. Your attacks fire on their own. Enemies come at you in growing waves, they drop experience, and every level up deals you three cards to pick from. Ten minutes in, the screen is a mess of mobs and damage numbers and you are either a god or dead.
Azeroth Survivors puts that loop inside World of Warcraft as it looked in 2006. The models, spell effects, sounds and interface art are the vanilla ones, because the game runs on benilla, a World of Warcraft 1.12.1 client written from scratch in Rust with the Bevy engine, which showed up on GitHub in July. A second project, wenilla, compiles that client to WebAssembly so it can run in a browser. There is no private server here and no modded copy of the real client. The engine reads the vanilla game data and draws everything itself, including the hero picker and the level-up cards, which is why the menus look like a 2006 character select screen.
On the "roguelike WoW MMO" label: there are no realms, no persistent world and no other players running around. It is a single-player game with optional co-op for up to five people, and your progress lives with your account in the game. Calling it a WoW roguelite is accurate. Calling it an MMO will confuse people looking for a private server.
Whiter's ten-minute overview from October 14 is the best quick look at a full run if you want to see it before you load it.
How it blew up
The developer posted it to r/wowservers, and within days it had spread well past that subreddit. The German WoW channel Chromie put up a first look on October 13 that has passed 31,000 views. Whiter's video followed on October 14 and sits above 43,000. By October 25 there was a 100-minute Warlock session from Gaming With Jeff and a clip of Asmongold loading into Elwynn on stream and picking Warrior, because of course he did.
The popularity has a cost. The browser version is served from a free host with a daily request limit, and when it is hit the page swaps the game for a message that reads "Too many people are playing!!!" with links to the Discord and the Windows download. If you see that message, the game has not been shut down. Try the download, or come back the next day.
How to play it
In the browser. Go to wow.aethus.pl. You need a browser with WebGPU, and the page names current Chrome, Edge or Safari. On Linux, Chrome needs the chrome://flags/#enable-unsafe-webgpu flag turned on. The first visit downloads the game data, which for us was 517 files and took about a minute on a fast connection, then it drops you on the character screen. Play it on a desktop or laptop; it is built for keyboard and mouse.
On Windows. The same page has a "Download game" button for a RAR archive. Whiter put it at about 1.4 GB. Unpack it and run the executable. It is unsigned, so Windows SmartScreen will warn you about an unknown publisher. Whiter ran it through VirusTotal and got a single engine flag that looked like a false positive, which is common for small unsigned games, but that is your call to make. He also reported that the Windows build updates itself, and that it plays very well with a controller: left stick to move, right stick to turn, A to jump, shoulder buttons to zoom.
Controls. WASD or both mouse buttons to run. 1, 2 and 3 pick a level-up card, R rerolls the hand, Enter starts the run.
Back up your save. The Options menu has a Saves page that downloads your whole account as a .sav file and can load one back in. Do it every now and then. Browser storage gets cleared, and losing a full legendary collection to a cache wipe would sting.
Skip the lookalike sites
Search "Azeroth Survivors" and you will find a pile of sites that are not the developer's: azerothsurvivors.org, azerothsurvivors.io, azerothsurvivorsgame.com and a wiki among them. The .org site calls itself an unofficial fan page, runs ads, and the game embedded on its homepage was a different survivors game entirely. The developer's own links are wow.aethus.pl and the Discord at discord.gg/azerothsurvivors. Get the Windows build from wow.aethus.pl and nowhere else.
Two other things share the name. A GitHub repository called azeroth-survivors-re is a separate developer's local rebuild of the game, and its README says plainly that it is not the original project. It also downloads a 5.5 GB copy of the 1.12.1 client from archive.org to build, which is Blizzard's data, and its zone list does not match the live game. There is also an in-game addon on CurseForge called Azeroth Survivors, a small minigame for flight paths by a different author. Neither is what everyone is talking about.
How a run plays
You start in Elwynn Forest with one spell. The Warrior, for example, starts with Cleave and 230 health. Every enemy you kill drops experience and gold, and each level deals three spell cards coloured by WoW item quality: an uncommon Consecration card is a small upgrade, a purple one is a big one, and every card spells out exactly what changes. You can carry up to six spells in a run, and picking a spell you already own ranks it up.
The run throws small decisions at you on the way. Battleground Caches cost gold and give you a pick of gear, often named after iconic vanilla drops like Hand of Justice or Carrot on a Stick but with effects rewritten for the mode. Guardians sit at the edges of the map, and killing one gives you a free extra pick but makes every other guardian stronger, so you are always weighing whether to go now or later. Bosses arrive on a fixed clock. In Elwynn it goes Hogger at 3:00, Mother Fang at 6:00, Rhahk'Zor at 9:00, Mr. Smite at 12:00 and Edwin VanCleef at 16:00. Kill VanCleef and the zone is cleared. You can bank the result or keep fighting in endless mode.
Die and you lose the run's spells and pickups. What you earned for your account stays, which is where the real hook is.
What carries over between runs
- Gear. Bosses drop real gear for your class, and once it drops it is yours for good, up to legendaries. The Warrior's collection on our screen showed 54 pieces to find. The armory shows each zone's drop tables and which boss drops what, and it lets you set the look of each slot separately from what you wear, so there is a small transmog game in here too. Tabards are cosmetic unlocks, from the Warsong and Stormpike battle tabards to the Scarlet Crusade.
- Talents. Every run feeds class talent experience. Each class has 51 points to spend across its three vanilla trees, retuned for the mode. Whiter's Paladin build stacked Holy Shield and damage reduction until whole packs were killing themselves on him.
- Perks. Account-wide upgrades bought with what you earn, such as a companion that picks up loot for you or a first level-up that deals four cards instead of three.
- Zones. Each class is its own character, so clearing Elwynn on your Mage does not open Duskwood for your Rogue.
There is also a Codex and an Achievements page, and the zones' final bosses gate the next zone.
Classes
All nine vanilla classes are in. These are the game's own one-line pitches, trimmed.
| Class | What it does in this mode |
|---|---|
| Warrior | Huge health, cleaving swings, every kill feeds the fury. Starts with Cleave. |
| Paladin | Holy ground and hammers, heals himself, shrugs off death once in a while. |
| Hunter | Arrows, traps and volleys, as long as you keep your distance. |
| Rogue | The fastest hero, fragile, with crits that delete elites. |
| Priest | Shields and heals keep you up while shadow damage spreads. |
| Shaman | Lightning that jumps between enemies and totems that fight beside you. |
| Mage | The glass cannon. The biggest area damage in the game and nothing to hide behind. |
| Warlock | Curses and fire, damage over time stacking on everything chasing you. |
| Druid | Roots, hurricanes and the steadiest self-healing. |
Races and their racials
The eight original races are in, and each one's racials were rewritten to work in a horde mode. They are small numbers that matter more than they look.
| Race | Racials in Azeroth Survivors |
|---|---|
| Human | Perception: +15% damage for 10 sec every 30 sec. +10% experience. +20% gold. |
| Dwarf | Stoneform: a shield worth 30% of max health every 45 sec. +6% damage. +30% pickup range. |
| Night Elf | Shadowmeld: 3 sec of immunity near death (75 sec cooldown). +8% movement speed. +5% damage reduction. |
| Gnome | Escape Artist: roots nearby enemies for 2 sec every 20 sec. 8% shorter cooldowns. +20% luck. |
| Orc | Blood Fury: +35% damage for 12 sec every 40 sec. +10% max health. |
| Undead | Will of the Forsaken: 4 sec of immunity near death (60 sec cooldown). Cannibalize: every kill heals 1 health. +4% damage reduction. |
| Tauren | War Stomp: stuns nearby enemies for 2 sec every 15 sec. +15% max health. |
| Troll | Berserking: cooldowns recover 30% faster for 10 sec every 35 sec. +1.5 health per second. +3% crit. |
Undead's one health per kill reads like a joke until you remember a run is a few thousand kills. Tauren's War Stomp is the quiet standout on paper: a two-second stun on everything around you every 15 seconds is a lot of breathing room for a slow melee class.
All twelve zones
Mid-October videos showed nine zones. The build we loaded on October 27 lists twelve, and each one is a vanilla location reworked as an invasion, with its own mobs and a final boss that unlocks the next zone.
| # | Zone | Event | Final boss |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Elwynn Forest | The Defias Uprising | Edwin VanCleef |
| 2 | Duskwood | Night of the Nightbane | Morbent Fel |
| 3 | Warsong Gulch | The Burning Legion | Lord Kazzak |
| 4 | Un'Goro Crater | The Primal Hunt | King Mosh |
| 5 | Arathi Basin | The Highlands Rise | Lord Aliden Perenolde |
| 6 | Feralas | The Gates of Dire Maul | King Gordok |
| 7 | Gurubashi Arena | The Blood God Wakes | Hakkar the Soulflayer |
| 8 | Scarlet Monastery | The Crusade's Last Stand | High Inquisitor Whitemane |
| 9 | Alterac Valley | The Frozen Wilds | Lokholar the Ice Lord |
| 10 | Blackrock Mountain | The Lord of Blackrock | Nefarian |
| 11 | Gates of Ahn'Qiraj | The Old God Stirs | C'Thun |
| 12 | Naxxramas | The Scourge Invasion | Kel'Thuzad |
The writing on the zone cards is good fan service. Duskwood has the graves of Raven Hill standing open with Naraxis, Mor'Ladim, Stitches and Lupos on the clock before Morbent Fel. Warsong Gulch is a Burning Legion portal with imps, felhounds and satyrs pouring through. Arathi Basin is the Boulderfist and Witherbark coming down out of the hills with the Syndicate behind them. Anyone who levelled through these zones will recognise every name on the spawn lists.
Difficulty and co-op
Run Options is the difficulty system, and it is a set of four sliders rather than a single difficulty setting. Enemy density goes from 100% to 500%, enemy health from 100% to 500%, enemy damage from 100% to 300% and enemy speed from 100% to 150%. Turning them up raises your talent experience and your odds of boss loot, up to double. Past that point the game says plainly that "the run only gets harder", so there is no reason to max everything except bragging rights.
Co-op has three tabs: a public lobby browser, Host, and Join by code. Lobbies hold five players, you can password them, and you can filter for zones you have unlocked. To join a run you need to have that zone unlocked on the class you are bringing. The lobby list on the morning we checked had parties tagged CN, DK and PT, which says a lot about how far a free WoW fan game can travel in a couple of weeks. Gaming With Jeff mentioned during his stream that co-op had only just been added, so expect rough edges.
Will Blizzard shut it down?
Nobody knows, and Blizzard had said nothing public about it as of October 27. The game is free, says clearly that it is a fan project, and the only money involved is a "Buy me a coffee" button on the menu. It still runs entirely on Blizzard's art and data, and Blizzard has taken down fan projects built on its assets before, the Nostalrius private server in 2016 being the one most of us remember. If it looks like your kind of thing, play it now rather than bookmarking it for later, and back up your save.
Is it worth your time?
If you have ever enjoyed a survivors game and you have any nostalgia for vanilla, yes. A run is about 16 minutes, the account progression gives you a reason to start another one, and hearing the old Elwynn ambience while a hundred kobolds chase you through Elwynn is a strange kind of fun. Whiter called it "so simple but so addictive", which matches everything we have seen.
Set expectations, though. It is an alpha by one developer, the balance is loose, and the browser version falls over when too many people are on it. Treat it as a free toy you might lose to an update or a takedown, not a game to sink a hundred hours into.
If you want more WoW-flavoured games in the same spirit, Northrend Onslaught is our own horde-wave arena against the Lich King, and Ashen Oath is a 3D Warcraft-inspired action roguelike. Both run in the browser. And if Azeroth Survivors has you missing the real thing, the WoW Forever hub has everything you need for the actual vanilla relaunch.
Sources: the game itself at wow.aethus.pl, v0.120.5, loaded and checked on October 27, 2026, including the in-game class, race and zone text; Whiter, World of Warcraft Meets Vampire Survivors: This Game is addictive! (October 14); Chromie, Fans haben DAS aus WoW gemacht! Azeroth Survivors angespielt (October 13); Gaming With Jeff, World of Warcraft Meets Vampire Survivors.....is GOOD!? (October 25); WoWForeverReplays, Don't Miss This WoW Browser Game Asmongold Just Found (October 25); GitHub, samwhosung/benilla, Arnesen/wenilla and OutThisLife/azeroth-survivors-re, checked October 27; azerothsurvivors.org, checked October 27; CurseForge, Azeroth Survivors addon, checked October 27.