World of Warcraft on iPhone Still a Possibility, Says Blizzard
Actually playing World of Warcraft on the iPhone or similar devices is not out of the question, says Blizzard.
Full-blown MMORPGs on mobile devices like the iPhone or Android tablets are becoming more common, the most popular of which is Gameloft's World of Warcraft clone, Order and Chaos Online. But there's no question that fans of the popular PC offerings wouldn't mind a version they could slide into their pocket and play on the go, picking up where they left off without streaming the entire desktop. For subscribers to World of Warcraft, a mobile version is still a possibility.
While visiting Blizzard's HQ last week, Eurogamer spoke with Senior WoW producer John Lagrave about bringing the popular MMORPG over to Apple's coveted smartphone. "Here's your platform, you've got to put an interface, what do you do? So yes we have [looked into mobile] and we always are," he said. "Maybe we'll stumble on the great way to put WoW on the phone - maybe we won't, but we're certainly looking into it."
What's surprising is that the conversation didn't cover the iPad or any other tablet. With a wider canvas, MMORPG developers could seemingly cram more hotbars and windows into the UI, especially on the larger models, allowing for an experience similar to the PC versions. Yet games like Order and Chaos were built from the ground up with smartphones and tablets in mind, so squashing World of Warcraft's UI down into a handheld form factor is undoubtedly no easy feat.
"We won't do it until we think it's decent," he said. "But it's interesting and the world is evolving towards that little handheld device - I'd have fun on it, that's absolutely the case. It would be foolish for any game developer to not be looking at that and we're not - we don't think - we're foolish! So we certainly look at that, but we just haven't solved it. What we've done with WoW on mobile devices is very simplistic: view the armory, you check your auctions - not just on mobile but also on web."
He said that once the team has "an epiphany," everyone will know.
Outside of bringing the full-blown MMORPG to the mobile environment, there's still a possibility that certain playable aspects could include tablets and smartphones like pet battles. "You can look at fishing and say, 'Is fishing tailored to being on a table or on a mobile?' That would be awesome, right? You're sitting at the airport and think 'I'll just go fishing'. We certainly look at pet battles too, but right now we're focused on PC - that's our bread-and-butter, PC and Mac," he said.
Would Blizzard gain more subscribers if World of Warcraft was natively playable on smartphones and tablets?
*wife calls*
FFFFFFUUUUU
Yea, it's done for me... pvp is no good either, you have to be high on meth to keep up with it....
Ritalin works too.. though I suppose that still is "meth"ylphenidate
most classes have a 5-6 key rotation for max dps in thier spec, with other moves or trinkets thrown in for optimisation. provided you gave an auto run key and a side bar for your moves or a bluetooth controler I think it could work. for me it'd make long trips more interesting but basically would be a novelty, but for some it might be useful
What a thrilling game it have become lately - thank you Blizzard for making the subscription so incredible worthwile /end sarcasm
I rather even do my dishes over and over than do thoose booring eight again and again for months, its Blizzards reluctance to add new REAL content even thoo they get about $120.000.000 each MONTH from their subscribers, shame that Activision got their corrupted grasp on Blizzard, the once great company havent been the same since!
actually, activision isn't allowed to touch blizzard, at least from my understanding.
and even looking at the moves they make, i can see the whys.
diablo 3 in game auction house (real money, or fake) people set up trades and pay over ebay anyway, why try to stop it, when you cant stop it?
Probably not. People start playing WoW, then realize that they're bored of it because it's rather dated. Putting dated software on a smartphone isn't going to increase subscribers as it's the same boring software. Just on a harder to use UI.
i got downvoted for that? well here
Vivendi is the group that owns activism, and they also own blizzard, and they keep the two seperate, and Vivendi told activision they are not allowed to touch blizzard, at least that to my understanding of back than, its possible that changed, now that activision has modern warfare and probably pulls more money than blizzard does.
So by dated you mean graphically? Because I haven't seen even WoW's graphical quality in a smartphone yet. The only other thing that you could be refering to is "dated" gameplay, which is also not true since WoW is ahead of most other MMOs on features. WoW only feels dated for people who played it for a long time before.
http://minus.com/mGEGevfoO/1f