Exploration Tools
Blizzard clearly wants to keep explorers out of closed and unfinished areas, and there are stories of accounts banned for being in them, so wandering out of bounds is risky if you care about your character.
Fortunately, a few very handy tools let you explore the game world on your own computer, with no risk of a ban from Blizzard.
WoW Forever tools
Planners for World of Warcraft: Forever, which launches on 4 November 2026. They run right here on the page, in English, German, French and Spanish.
- Forever talent calculator: every class and tree, with what changed from Classic marked on each talent.
- Legacy points calculator: plan the account-wide Legacy perks and see the Legacy Progress Track rewards.
- Release date and roadmap: a live launch countdown and every milestone to summer 2027.
- Races and racials: every racial ability, what changed from Classic and which race to pick for each class.
Exploration tools
WoWmapview
"Wowmapview" is a real-time 3D map viewer for WoW that reads the game files already on your hard drive. It lets you wander the world without connecting to a server, and because the camera can fly anywhere, you can inspect every last piece of terrain that makes up Azeroth.
The last release, 0.5, and its source code are on the WoWmapview project page at SourceForge. It only reads files from the original game, not from modern clients.
WOWModelView
"WowModelView" is a real-time 3D model viewer for WoW that reads the game files already on your hard drive. With it you can look at every object in the game, including some that players can not get to yet.
Just start the program, pick the model you want and pan, rotate and zoom to study it. For many models you can also play every animation with a single click.
The screenshot tour that once accompanied this page was not preserved.
Modern tools
WoWmapview and WoWModelView were written for the classic client. For today's game files there are two maintained successors:
- wow.export reads the current client, previews maps and models and exports them for 3D programs.
- WoW Model Viewer continues the original model viewer for newer versions of the game.
Both work offline on your own copy of the game, so there is no risk to your account.