Play in the browser (official, fastest)
- Open wow.aethus.pl in a modern browser — the announcer notes it works best on Chrome.
- Pick a class and a battleground on the pick screen.
- Survive. No server, no login, no account.
That is the whole setup. The announcement also reports the game working in mobile browsers (Firefox and Chrome) — unconfirmed beyond the announcer's own testing, but worth trying if you are on a phone.
During the launch demand spike, Cloudflare temporarily blocked downloads via the website. The announced workaround: get the latest version from the community Discord, or just play the browser build, which is unaffected as a play option.
How to play: your first run
The core loop, as documented in the announcement and the repository:
- Pick a class and a battleground. Your pick is remembered across reloads.
- Move with WASD. Your abilities cast themselves — positioning is your job.
- Survive the waves and level up. On each level, cards deal in; pick one with 1 / 2 / 3. The WoW item-quality colour signals strength, and each card prints its exact changes.
- Use your movement spell from level 5. It sits on F and aims at the cursor.
- Kill the bosses. One shows up every couple of minutes; bosses drop the permanent items you keep across runs.
- Spend talent XP between runs to advance your class.
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| WASD | Move |
| Space | Jump |
| F | Class movement spell (from level 5, aimed at cursor) |
| 1 / 2 / 3 | Pick a level-up card |
| C | Unlock the camera (swing and tilt) |
| Mouse wheel | Zoom, over-the-shoulder out to 70 yards |
| G | Toggle the sharpen-and-colour pass |
| Esc | Pause |
Steam and Steam Deck
- Steam: there is no Steam listing. No source references one; distribution happens through the game's own site. Unconfirmed whether one is planned — this page will link a listing the day a real one exists.
- Steam Deck: no official statement. The browser build should in principle run in desktop mode; the open-source build uses standard Linux tooling (Rust, make). Neither is verified on Deck hardware — unconfirmed.
The offline open-source build
A community contributor reverse-engineered the game into a from-scratch WoW 1.12.1 client engine (Rust + Bevy), released as open source. It runs fully offline — no server, no login — and adds a rebuilt pick screen (eight races, every class, sixteen zones from the starting areas to Naxxramas and the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj).
git clone https://github.com/OutThisLife/azeroth-survivors-re
cd azeroth-survivors-re
make build # fetch game data + install toolchain + build the wasm (~5.5 GB download)
make start # then open http://127.0.0.1:8090/
| Requirement | Notes |
|---|---|
| Rust | via rustup |
| make, curl, unzip | standard build tools |
| ~5.5 GB download | WoW 1.12.1 client data, fetched from archive.org at build time |
The repository ships no Blizzard content — it reads a WoW 1.12.1 client's data folder, which the script downloads or you supply yourself.
Only three download channels are official: the game site, the community Discord linked from the announcement, and the GitHub repository above. Anything else — mirrors, re-uploads, "launcher" bundles — is unverified and should be avoided.