Friday, July 24, 2026

WoW/D&D Crossover Possibly Going to be Announced?

 According to this post on EN World, there was an accidental leak of an announcement for what appears to be a World of Warcraft sourcebook for D&D. Naturally, I'd be curious about that given that these two games are (I'd assume) the two that I have posted about the most on this blog (I do still play WoW, but I've felt like I have less to say about it in recent times).

Having played WoW for nearly 20 years (about twice the time I've been playing D&D,) I've often thought about how it would make a fantastic D&D setting. Notably, I'm not the first to think that, as there were official WoW products that came out in I believe the 3.5e era, and possible 4e.

Obviously, WoW is built on a similar structure to D&D, where players create characters who are members of certain races and classes and go on adventures, quests, and delve into dungeons. Warcraft's world is a deep and rich one, with lore that has really grown out from its very simple "orcs versus humans" origins.

While Warcraft began as an RTS series, its third entry added some RPG-like elements, paving the way for the MMO that, for the last 22 years, has been dominant or at least profoundly prominent within the medium (I think FFXIV did overtake it as the biggest subscription-based MMORPG, and of course there are tons of Free-to-Play MMOs that have more players. Not actually sure if FFXIV is still ahead of it or not). It's been in those 22 years of WoW that the story and lore of Warcraft has expanded profoundly, and you'd have far, far more than enough material to get you through a 20-level D&D campaign just by taking some of the stories of its now 11 expansions, before you even consider just coming up with your own original stories.

There's no way that a single sourcebook will be able to cover the entire game as it exists now, with its thirteen classes and 26 playable races.

My best friend and I are both D&D obsessives and longtime WoW players (both of us technically started during vanilla, though I only at the tail end of it and he stopped playing for a bit, picking it up again shortly before Wrath came out) and we've often talked about how to handle various things, re-skinning elements of the game.

Naturally, for classes, there are a lot of clear equivalents. Paladins, Rogues, Druids, Monks, and Warlocks are all in both games. Likewise, Priests are basically Clerics, Mages are basically Wizards, Hunters are basically Rangers, and Warriors are basically Fighters (though you could argue that one of their three specs/subclasses is really more Barbarians). However, it's less obvious how to handle things like Shamans, Death Knights, Demon Hunters, and Evokers (maybe the last one is Draconic Sorcerers?)

I'm not going to hold my breath for a sourcebook like this to add a new class.

However, for species/races, there are a fair number of options. From the get-go, Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes, Goblins, and Orcs are there. Night Elves are basically Wood Elves, Blood Elves are basically High Elves. Then, you can get to re-skinning a bit. I think that the Draenei could use the statistics of the Aasimar without too much trouble (oddly, they sometimes look more like Tieflings - I honestly think Jester from Critical Role's 2nd campaign really looks a lot like a Draenei, and even sounds like one with her vaguely-Greek-ish accent). Reborn can stand in pretty easily for the Undead, and Tauren are really just Warcraft's Minotaurs (if Minotaurs were really chill and nice). The new Lupin from Ravenloft basically gives us the Worgen (which are more specifically just Warcraft's version of werewolves). I think the Duergar could give us our Dark Iron Dwarves. Among the original 8 vanilla races, the only one I might struggle with is the Troll, which doesn't have a very obvious D&D equivalent.

In the Battle For Azeroth expansion (from 2018,) WoW added a huge number of "Allied Races" (including the aforementioned Dark Iron Dwarf) that are mechanically their own thing, but clearly meant as a "variant" on existing options. Some have pretty convenient options existing already in 5E (I think you could do Shadar-Kai as the Void Elves). But I doubt that they're going to work all of these in.

More core, though, are the handful of neutral races - Pandaren were the first (neutral meaning that they can belong to either faction,) and have no clear D&D equivalent. Dracthyr were introduced in 2022's Dragonflight expansion, and are clearly the equivalent of the Dragonborn (though less bulky, and with permanent wings).

One thing the book would maybe need to address is factions: In WoW, each character belongs to one of the two big factions, the Alliance and the Horde. Storywise, the two sides were at war with one another (the Alliance was actually formed to counter the Horde,) but there were ebbs and flows of conflict, often pushing the two to set aside their difference to face a greater threat. In recent years, that conflict has mostly died down, to the point that the current expansion, Midnight, has both factions operating out of one of the Horde's main cities (Silvermoon, home of the Blood Elves).

The restrictions have even lifted to the point where you can actually run dungeons and other content in parties that are mixed between members of the different factions (though "outdoor" content doesn't allow cooperation).

Thus, while I think that the Alliance/Horde division is very important to the lore of the world, I don't think there needs to be any built-in restriction in the rules to prevent you from having parties with, say, Goblins and Dwarves fighting alongside one another.

I'll be curious to see, though, if we get some cool legendary stat blocks for big Warcraft villains. While he's been deader-than-dead for a long time now (with a storyline that really emphasized they would never bring him back,) Arthas Menethil is probably the franchise's most iconic villain, a prince and paladin who allowed his obsession with vengeance to transform him into a death knight and ultimately saw him becoming the Lich King overseeing the undead Scourge that he once fought.

Getting stats for Faceless Ones (n'raqi) and C'thraxxi, the aberrant servants of the evil Old Gods, as well as some of the cool high-tech space demons of the Burning Legion would be really fun.

But I also think it'd be fun to just run lower-level adventures in places like Duskwood or Thousand Needles at the slower, more deliberate pace of D&D.

Anyway, we'll see if and when this book is actually announced.

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