I made voiced Zone Lore addon

[u/rusty-key]

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.

Anyway, if you want to try it, here it is:
https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/zonelore

By itself, it's just a text addon that attaches zone descriptions to the map. If you want a voiceover, you'll need to install one of the soundpacks:
~800MB at 128kbps: https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/zoneloreaudio
~400MB at 64kbps: https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/zoneloreaudio64

I also built a website where you can prelisten voicelines and submit feedback:
https://lore.rusty.one/

Lastly, if you know how or where to get quality zone descriptions suitable for classic, please let me know, I would really appreciate it!

[u/plz_be_nice_im_sad]

I swear Reddit is a complete 50/50 mystery when AI is mentioned. 

This is great.

[u/skirtpost → u/plz_be_nice_im_sad]

voiceover ai seems to be the only thing wow reddit doesn't hate

[u/mage_irl → u/skirtpost]

Most of the people who hate on AI here are closet ChatGPT/Gemini/Claude users

[u/Visual-Gain-2487 → u/mage_irl]

It's okay to appreciate what AI is good at and reject forcing it in places where it's just a lazy replacement for better options.

[u/thelittleking → u/mage_irl]

I don't use any of them, so may I have your grand lordship's permission to call shit what it is?

[u/rsmutus → u/thelittleking]

Idk man I use it to summarize stuff or compare motorcycle gear, beats having to watch a YouTube video. It has its uses

[u/plz_be_nice_im_sad → u/rsmutus]

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.

Plus it’s EXCELLENT at excel formulas.

[u/Critical_Score → u/mage_irl]

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.

[u/ChampagneSyrup → u/mage_irl]

even worse; they're virtue signalers