Warcraft: Total War conversion mod enters public beta following eight years of work

Eight years ago, modder TheHappyCrusader set out to bring the Warcraft universe, specifically the Warcraft 3 era, to turn-based strategy game Medieval 2: Total War via a conversion mod. Lots of hard work and an entire change in personnel later, the team behind the project have released a public beta featuring 22 factions and a bespoke campaign.

Warcraft: Total War focuses on the universe's Third War, depicted in both Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos and its expansion, Frozen Throne. The mod has 20 playable factions—including the Scourge, the Horde, and the Burning Legion—plus two factions that are "emergent" on the campaign map.

Everything is designed to look like part of the Warcraft universe, with fresh music, animations, building skins, and unique unit types, including casters, beasts and dragons. It has also tweaked the building tree, UI and menus to fit the theme.

Installation is a little complicated, but the team lays out a step-by-step guide on its ModDB page. If you're having problems, dig around the comments at the bottom of the page, because other people might have asked the same questions.

For the Steam version, you can also find instructions on how to install the mod in the video below. For a huge gallery of images from the mod, click here.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.