It appears that the vision of World of Warcraft running on Unreal Engine 5 is destined to remain an unfulfilled dream.
Only a few months ago, the modding community was abuzz after seeing gameplay footage of Turtle WoW 2.0. This ambitious project aimed to port Blizzard’s iconic MMORPG into the modern era using the high-fidelity capabilities of Unreal Engine 5.
While expectations were high for this UE5-powered private server experience, the project leads delivered a major blow in mid-December by announcing that development had officially been halted:
[…] Following extensive internal discussions regarding the future trajectory of Turtle WoW, we have reached a difficult conclusion. As of today, our collaborative agreement with Unreal Azeroth for the development of the Turtle WoW 2.0 client has been terminated. We wish to express our sincere gratitude to the Unreal Azeroth team for their unwavering passion and dedication to this incredibly complex undertaking, and we offer our apologies to everyone who was looking forward to this new chapter.
The Turtle WoW staff has previously drawn the attention of Blizzard’s legal department, which issued requests for the project to cease operations. At the time, the modders chose to persist despite the looming threat of legal action.
Currently, it remains unclear whether this cancellation applies solely to the UE5 iteration of Turtle WoW or if the entire Unreal Azeroth initiative has been permanently shelved.
Source: iXBT.games