What is benilla?

Benilla is a project that rebuilds the original 2006 World of Warcraft game client from scratch, using the Rust programming language and a game-development framework called Bevy. It does not use any original Blizzard code or game files. Instead, it reads data from your own legally obtained copy of the classic game and connects to a private server running vmangos, which is a separate project that emulates the original game server. The project is impressively complete for a solo effort. It handles the full range of game file formats, rendering terrain, buildings, character models, and animations. You get a world with day and night cycles, weather, swimming, and sky boxes. Characters can be customized with different appearances, armor, and weapons. The movement system mimics the original game's feel, including running, jumping, swimming, and riding boats or zeppelins. The networking layer handles authentication, chat, combat, quests, trading, and many other game systems. Several features are still missing. The project does not yet support guilds, the auction house, hunter and warlock pets, player duels, PvP systems, or the loading of third-party interface addons. The built-in user interface engine runs only the default game windows and menus. To run it, you need a copy of the original 1.12.1 game client installed on your computer, a vmangos server to connect to, and the Rust toolchain. You point the program at your game data folder and a server address, then log in through the in-game screen. The project is not accepting code contributions right now, as it is a solo endeavor with development happening in a private repository. Public commits are large, periodic snapshots of work rather than individual changes. The project is fan-made, unaffiliated with Blizzard, and licensed under MIT or Apache 2.0.