A World of Warcraft player used AI to simulate what voice acting would sound like on some of the game’s older quests. The fan posted their creation to the WoW subreddit, showcasing what the game could look (and sound) like in a world where every quest in the game had accompanying narration.
In the video, AI-generated voice acting is generated for two Blood Elf questgivers in the Eversong Woods. The two voices—one male, one female—read off the quest text that normally you’d have to read through yourself to get a deeper view of what a WoW quest is asking of your character.
A majority of WoW quests don’t have any voice acting accompanying them, and even many of the newer quests only dedicate voice acting when a major piece of story progression is happening. Going back and adding this to all of the pre-existing quests in the game would take an immense amount of work on Blizzard’s part.
And although the AI in the post was able to give players a brief glimpse of what that reality could look like, using such tools to get the job done is still fairly unrealistic. Not only would there be expected (and warranted) backlash from players and fans, but it just doesn’t sound as convincing as a real voice actor.
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In the Reddit post, the voice-acting job done by the AI is monotone and flat. Plus, the AI is unable to nail the signature accents and emotions that Blood Elves can convey in WoW’s dialogue. There’s even a moment in the video where the AI version of Magistrix Landra Dawnstrider finishes speaking in a generated human voice and picks up her in-game Blood Elf accent again within seconds.
While the generated voice-acting performance is jarring, for sure, it would be great to see some of WoW’s older zones get a boost of life. Most players likely haven’t read the story or details that go into quests—especially those in low-level zones—so having their narrative brought front and center by actual voice actors would be a significant (albeit unlikely) achievement for the game.
