Just use Gamh's Mirror Machine for that. Works just fine.

Really? I've tried using it for porting over Old Ironforge, Orgrimmar and Sunken Temple, but now matter what options I try they end up crashing in-game (be it 1.12, 2.4 or 3.3.5). I'm using the 0.5.3 version of WoW, is that wrong?

Ooh, awesome! I love how you lit things up.

If I may chip in another suggestion; I think you should consider narrowing the scope and breaking the content into modules that can be added later and exist independently of each other, with a small size you won't have to compromise as much. For example, judging from your first post I get the impression that your early focus has been on Durotar/Barrens, if you could focus on realizing that area and use it a playground for new ideas I think you've got yourself something solid along with a path to grow from there.

I'd also urge you to strongly consider what is essential and what isn't, my impression is that the focus is scattered from the core concept to the most trivial details, e.g. NPC details or world topology. While having an eye for detail is a great quality to have it could help to break the work down into a hierarchy from most important to least and go from the top to bottom and develop the less important features/ideas later. Starting with polish early on can give high quality, but from what we're dealing with here I think it's important to get something essential to go on, an elevator pitch, a prototype, something concise and tangible.

If someone told you to get started with this yourself all on your own, even if just a prototype, I don't think you will make it, there's much to be done and learnt before even being able to take on the actual project. However, if you distill the very essence and your passion for it(feed us your koolaid) then you might be able to form a circle of people with an aligned interest who'd be interested in helping you create the prototype for it, and if people like what they see in the prototype you can go on from there.

Please understand that I say this with your best interest in mind, I don't write this with any hostile connotations or try to undermine your effort.

Lovely, very unique atmosphere and it fits the WoW look really well.

But some strange changes are not gameplay mechanics related : the depiction of Night elves (less "Force of Nature" and more "Standard Wood Elves"), the plots in quests, the mobs/NPCs that makes no sense, the lack of buildings in some towns (Goldshire lol, they could have at least added houses with closed doors)...

Speaking of which, I'd love to remake the alpha version of Goldshire, but at a higher fidelity (more polys higher, res textures) and less 1999 graphics

Modding WoW is a huge pain in the ass if you want to work with art assets, since having to mess with the binary formats in a hex editor and all those  trivial yet time consuming, tasks ruins the workflow if you've got to create a bunch of assets like items models, game objects, creatures, etc, so I think you, with your tools have a very important role in this.  

This thread makes me realize that I would probably love to see classic WoW in a Warcraft 3 setting, some added RPG elements doesn't hurt, I also remember the RPG part of the game being much stronger back in early vanilla, that requires a certain immersion from the players part as well.

So... Does anyone have an BLP Converter that can handle Alpha Channel?

If you want a GUI with fine control over the transparency I'd recommend BLPlab.

Well, what can I say, it's hard not to be a fan of this when you're being so kind.    I think many of us share some fondness for the "old world" in the Warcraft universe. You've put some interesting ideas on the table and I think it would be intriguing to see them implemented.

Generally speaking, I think the challenge with the proposed systems will be in design and not technical. I'm skeptical of the hunger system, from a gameplay perspective I think it's a nuisance distracting you from getting to your business, especially in a goal-oriented game like WoW. I can see it from a realism perspective, but I think that type of realism is something WoW inherently can't provide,  instead it would probably be better to distill the features into what is considered essentially for the experience you wish to offer people.

I'm curious what your vision is from a macro perspective, will this be a singleplayer experience? If not, do you wish to emphasize any MMORPG elements? What do you have in mind for endgame?

Personally, I think it's a cool project to pursue, even for the sentiment alone. I've been doing quite some extensive modding myself, such as creating dungeon environments, only as personal project for myself though, but I'd be happy to share my thoughts and experiences, if you won't mind.

For example, if you'd ever want to spice things up a bit I've got an idea for you; differentiate the world during night and day, if you've ever played a game like the Ocarina of Time then think of how Hyrule changes during night, with skeletons rising from the ground and roaming around from dusk till dawn. This way you could make day and night feel very different, you could even take it as far as making some places only available during certain times of day (e.g. the doors covering the Quillboar burial grounds, Razorfen Downs, only opening at midnight and closing at sunrise). To pull it off it could help to make days shorter, like 8-10 hours day/night cycles instead of 24. Else some players would never get to experience certain times of the day.

It's a blp problem, you need to generate more mipmaps(around 9) for the texture. The game renders a smaller version of the texture from a distance, but since you haven't generated it, it just turns black.

You can control mipmaps in a program like BLP Lab, just take a look at an official game texture file and mimic all its properties.