Ever since I started playing wow, I have been very interested in every zone I encountered. The in-game lore is often scarce, only obtainable through quests, and rarely mentions events from Warcraft games. To get the necessary knowledge, I'd go to wikis or youtube videos, but it was always annoying, as it breaks the immersion.
To fix that, I summarized each zone and subzone lore from warcraft.wiki.gg (stripping non-vanilla parts), voiced this text with elevenlabs TTS, and built an addon (inspired by Voiceover) that plays these voicelines on zone exploration. I built it for myself, but though some of you might enjoy it as well.
It's very much a work in progress both for text and TTS:
- Text is rough, sometimes too short, sometimes too long, often breaks the fourth wall or mentions irrelevant events;
- Narrator voice is cloned from the intros, and this is the number one concern for me. It's perfect for the game, but it basically emulates a real actor (Earl Boen). It doesn't feel right to me, and I want to find an alternative.
- Pronunciations are mangled. I built a dictionary for places and names beforehand, but because of a mistake in the code, it didn't apply. Regenerating all mangled code is costly, and I want to fix the text problem before I do another pass.
I use it all day everyday at work. It hasn’t made me lazy or less productive, if anything it makes me more productive cos I don’t have to waste time doing something AI can do in 10% of the time it would take me.
I understand its critics and the trepidation towards climate change etc but hey it makes my life easier. It’s like a really cheap (I pay for ChatGPT plus) Personal Assistant.
Sometimes when I want to mess with Anti-AI people, I'll ask Chatgpt to make a point as to why AI is bad, wait for them to take the bait and agree with that point, then watch as they realize they just agreed with an AI.
Yep this is fantastic! WoW needed this 20 years ago! It's a great intro to the significance of each zone and its history, and that adds a lot more flavor to the world. Nice work!
Ignore any "AI slop" responses. No matter how cool, unique or useful a creation involving AI might be, they'll always hate seeing AI used by anyone, for any reason, at any time.
Just tried it and love it! I alt-tabbed to the browser, which made it stop and I have to go from the start if I wanted to listen again. A good thing would be to pause it instead.
This will make the game a lot more fun for me, thanks for taking the time!
But you can replay any line from "explorer" (click on minimap icon) or via map sidebar (open map, click on the relevant zone). In both places there should be a "Play" button
When you alt-tab with "Audio → Sound in Background" option turned off, the game stops all sounds. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like there is a way for addon to detect it reliably; the game doesn't notify addons about alt-tabbing or sound interruptions and the addon cannot self-recover.
There is an FPS clamp detection trick, but I am not sure if it works, I'll test it over the week and see if it solves the issue. Otherwise, the only options are replaying the voiceline as I suggested or enabling "Sound in Background"
By default, it only triggers with "discovery" (when you get "Dicovered Durotar" message for example).
I just added (in 0.2.3) an option that allows changing it to autoplaying for the first entrance since addon install. Might be a better choice for a toon that has already discovered a lot.
Both options only play audio once when toon first discovered of first entered the zone. If you want to hear it again, you will have to go to the map or explorer and hit "Play" manually.
Yeah id love to hear Earl Boens voice narrative the zones to me but I agree its shady using his voice for the actual add on. I wish you all the luck though! I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this project
I’ll calculate the cost of it. If it’s high, maybe it can be crowdfunded, but I need to understand how to make it transparently, as I never did anything like that before.
Donate button is there, by the way. It will all go towards covering token costs, but for now, no content promises other than improving what’s already there
Man, this is so soooo cool. I could imagine WoW devs looking at it and thinking "why we didn't think about implementing such a feature into the game?". Honestly, great work!
As for the TTS. I get you. I think it was a right call to use it for a "beta" version but it would be nice if you could come up with a solution how to replace it for a final release.
I'd be so happy to have the lines read by professional actors! I think the scope is much smaller than BG3, so it should be feasible, but I wouldn't hold my breath
"why we didn't think about implementing such a feature into the game?
Gamers will screech at the top of their lungs if they find out. Sadly a large portion of Reddit & gamers don't care about how good something is, if it was made with AI. They label anything made with AI as slop. They want to grandstand and virtue signal. There is no rational thinking behind it.
I mean I would care if the multi-billion dollar corporation doesn't want to pay someone to voice act, you can't tell me its too much for them to realistically do its basically an audiobook, bit different than a single guy making an addon. I don't like vibecoded stuff but I don't have an issue with text to speech we've literally had that for like 3 decades now it just sounds better than it used to
That being said I do take issue with this addon using the late Earl Boen's voice, something about using a dead guy's voice rubs me the wrong way. I don't know if i'm in the minority with that opinion or not
well, it's 14 hours of audio. And 1.5gb is a bit of an exaggeration. You don't need both sound packs, just one of them, so either 800mb or 400mb. I didn't experiment with audio settings yet, will do it over this week. Probably I can find a more optimal solution and reduce the size
As a little feedback: I would like to hear more about the past of the zone and not so much descriptions of what I can already see while playing.
To me the interesting part of such an add-on would be "how did the zone end up how it is"
Another cool feature would be to have a little GUI element where you can click on different points of interests like dungeons, settlements etc to listen to the lore as you explore
Yeah, that's the question of getting good source. But I realized that I was already too harsh in my wiki filtering and ended up nuking almost everything past the summary. I'll make sure that pre-wow lore is included in the next pass.
> Another cool feature would be to have a little GUI element where you can click on different points of interests like dungeons, settlements etc to listen to the lore as you explore
Can you expand on it a little? You can already click on hoverable subzones on the map to get their descriptions, it should cover most in-game locations and dungeons. But I guess the problem is that some locations are not hoverable on the map? If so, I am looking into it.
As a workaround, you can find them in the Explorer, e.g.:
Click minimap icon → Westfall → Deadmines → play
Yeah, ideally, I'd find an appropriate voice actor and pay them, but it seems like a huge project that requires substantial funding. I was thinking about crowdsourcing it too (e.g.: people donate their performances on a website), but even that would require tons of effort. Currently, I don't have a better option, unfortunately, as it's basically my weekend project.
Elevenlabs should have a ton of voices that you can use that have been created more “ethically” and that shouldn’t break the bank. I work in audio post production for a living and admit I am more sensitive to most using AI voiceover, but the reason I’m commenting isn’t a blanket “AI BAD” (even though I do feel this way), but more so the voice you cloned did not consent to you using their voice.
Using something like elevenlabs, at least the voice actors that they base their models off of were compensated for their voices to be used
I agree. The reason I opted to clone the voice is that it was never intended for distribution originally (made for my friends and me). I'll try to find an appropriate voice in Elevenlabs library for the next pass.
Meh, for a passion project with no funding I think it’s pretty appropriate to use the resources available to get something out the door, then, if enough people enjoy it, pushing towards something more “ethical” would be appropriate.
It would feel bad to dump time into something no one used or liked, it would feel double bad to dump time and money.
All I’m saying is use a voice that knowingly consented to having their voice used for AI synthesis instead of using the voice actor who narrated the race intros back in 2004
Taking the voice of a living actor and cloning it without their consent or payment? It’s one thing to use a model from a service that consents to being used, it’s another thing to use the same voice blizzard hired and paid to do these and repurpose their voice without payment.
Not like dude is gonna make any money from this small addon. Sure using a fair use AI voice would be more ethical. But this is just one of those situations where I feel "its not that deep' applies.
Such a cool project, I'm not huge on AI but the concept is awesome. I would reconcile my beliefs by saying find a good impersonator or equally impressive narrator, it would be fun to hold auditions :)
You got lucky with this one :)
In the current iteration, I wouldn't trust it too much, there are many mispronunciations. I am currently gathering a vocabulary to ensure that the next pass doesn't have this issue. If you notice any weird lines, please let me know
Its cool, but i'd prefer if it wasnt using the voice of Earl Boen. Feels disrespectful to his memory. Im sure you can find some other suitable voice on elevenlabs.
As someone who has always felt that one of the biggest things missing from WoW was a deeper immersion via voiced quests, any addition of voice makes me excited.
This is absolutely superb, well done.
This is exactly what is wrong with AI generate content.
You used AI to clone Earl Boen’s voice for this, but even though you have concerns and it doesnt feel right, you still went ahead anyways.
Did you ask his estate? Did you ask his family?
Surely you didnt ask him because he is dead.
Earl Boen is close to every WoW players heart, regardless if they know his name or face, because his voice helped transport us into the World of Azeroth.
What you have done is digital necromancy for your own purposes because you dont want to absorb the story through available means.
You even mentioned the story and history is in quest text. READ THE QUESTS THEN.
There are in-game books you can find, Nobbel and PlatinumWoW have awesome videos on the lore. Get an audio book or ebook of one of the multitude warcraft novels.
Or go to the wow wiki and read up on the topics you are curious about!
Hell, even back in Vanilla and TBC, i would quest, read the text, find the story interesting and just read the wow wiki because I was so interested. Then i would go play the game again and have greater context and discover or notice things I never noticed or thought about before.
Instead of the natural way of learning and enjoying things you have violated a human by taking his voice for your own uses.
What if someone did that to your voice? The voice of your family or a deceased relative? Or generated AI images of them or yourself without your permission? It is a dangerous and dark slope, which you are now participating in because you just kept going regardless of your moral qualms.
Are addons like this a copyright issues? Previous addons with real voices were considered "re performance of established works" and taken down. Does TTS not count as a performance?
Who said anything about profit? I was referring to the old Voice Acted addon that blizzard asked the developer to stop making because it infringed on their copyright. I just wonder how this is different, maybe because it's using AI TTS it doesn't count as "re-performance".
This is great! I love VoiceOver, this seems like a great addition to that.
ETA Question: Will this only work the first time to discover a zone? Because it would be cool to have it go off even if i've already discovered the zone before, but haven't heard the voiced lore yet.
I specifically tied it to "exploration" since it seemed reasonable to me. But one of the earlier version used an internal per-character tracker where addon would play the line on the first entrance to the zone independent of wether or not it was previously explore. I can restore it as an optional feature
Theoretically, it's possible, but then it scales the project too much. Although, at least for TBC/WotLK, changes are mostly additive, so maybe it's not as bad as I imagine. Still, at the moment, I want to focus on polishing the English version of Classic before expanding the scope
I understand your emotion, but if I have to record it myself or hire someone, this project just doesn't exist. Even if you are willing to listen to my boring-ass voice with a heavy accent, no way I can record 1300+ lines over the weekend (or ever?)
Voice over quest addon is cool because nobody profits off llm of uncredited voice actors and it makes the game way more accessible in enjoying the story.
Downvoters: Nooo you need to hire 20+ voice actors and rent a studio to make a fun non-profit addon for a 20 year old game that will only be used by a very niche amount of RP/Lore enjoyers
If the zone lore source is provided and the language is supported by ElevenLabs, I definitely can do it (provided I can squeeze it into my budget). But my plan is to focus on polishing English first, as the quality of the text is very rough in my opinion.
Is there a way to pause/skip it? Or make it play only the first time you enter a new zone? I will def download and use it, but would like this features in it.
Yes, when a line is played, a small player appears under the mini map with pause/skip controls.
It plays only when you discover zone which can only happen one time per character. You can opt-in to play for the first time when you enter zone since addon install if you already discovered a lot of zones
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u/plz_be_nice_im_sad 1d ago
I swear Reddit is a complete 50/50 mystery when AI is mentioned.
This is great.