Types of Mods

WoW Modding is a very broad practice, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed with the amount of options, tutorials, tools and possibilities that they present.

The aim of this article is to briefly describe the traditional “mod categories” that modders often choose to specialize in. Some modders learn how to do most or even all of these, while others specialize in only a few of them. These include:

• Texture Editing
  • Drawing or editing textures for the game.
• Retroporting
  • Porting content from the modern game to older versions.
• Model Editing
  • Creating and editing 3D models
• Map Editing
  • Creating and editing the game world and terrain.
• Server Programming
  • Reprogramming and scripting open source private server software.
• AddOns
  • Writing the same kind of AddOns used in the normal game to create client interfaces for custom projects.
• Data Editing
  • Editing the “data tables” that makes up much of the entities in the game, like spells and creatures.
• Reverse Engineering
  • Editing the client exe itself, or documenting the games binary file formats.
• Tool Development
  • Developing tools to interact with the data in the game, anything from map editors like _Noggit, client database editors like WDBX or blender plugins like WoW Blender Studio._
• Emulation
  • Making the game server behave as closely to the blizzard servers as possible.