Motivation

Why simulate WoW combat and what problems this project aims to solve

February 13, 2026

Why simulate WoW combat at all, what value does it provide to players, the gap between theorycrafting spreadsheets and full discrete simulation, history of WoW simulation tools (SimulationCraft, Raidbots), what WoW Lab aims to do differently (open source, community-driven, sustainable).

Problem Statement

The core challenges: extracting and maintaining game data from undocumented DBC files across patches, accurately modeling combat mechanics with thousands of interacting spells/auras/procs, achieving statistical significance in reasonable time (performance), making simulation accessible to non-technical players, distributing computation across community-contributed nodes.

Solution Approach

High-level overview of the solution: a Rust-based discrete event simulation engine compiled to both native (for distributed nodes) and WASM (for browser), a data pipeline from DBC files through transformation to Postgres, a Next.js portal for configuration and visualization, distributed computing via volunteer nodes, real-time coordination through Centrifugo.

flowchart TB
    subgraph data [Game Data]
        DBC[WoW DBC Files] --> Parse[Rust Parser]
        Parse --> Transform[Transform Layer]
        Transform --> DB[(Supabase Postgres)]
    end
 
    subgraph engine [Simulation Engine]
        Engine[Rust Engine] --> WASM[WASM Build]
        Engine --> Native[Native Build]
    end
 
    subgraph portal [Portal]
        DB --> App[Next.js App]
        WASM --> App
        App --> Config[Simulation Config]
    end
 
    subgraph compute [Distributed Computing]
        Config --> Sentinel[Sentinel Scheduler]
        Sentinel --> Nodes[Worker Nodes]
        Nodes --> Native
        Nodes --> Results[Results]
        Results --> App
    end

Next steps

Architecture

Problem Statement

Solution Approach

flowchart TB
    subgraph data [Game Data]
        DBC[WoW DBC Files] --> Parse[Rust Parser]
        Parse --> Transform[Transform Layer]
        Transform --> DB[(Supabase Postgres)]
    end
 
    subgraph engine [Simulation Engine]
        Engine[Rust Engine] --> WASM[WASM Build]
        Engine --> Native[Native Build]
    end
 
    subgraph portal [Portal]
        DB --> App[Next.js App]
        WASM --> App
        App --> Config[Simulation Config]
    end
 
    subgraph compute [Distributed Computing]
        Config --> Sentinel[Sentinel Scheduler]
        Sentinel --> Nodes[Worker Nodes]
        Nodes --> Native
        Nodes --> Results[Results]
        Results --> App
    end