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[Updated] We've covered everything you need to know about World of Warcraft for mobile

Worldly wise

[Updated] We've covered everything you need to know about World of Warcraft for mobile
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Updated November 28th, 10:26 AM - A new article just went live noting that we might well be getting a Pokemon GO-like World of Warcraft game on mobile.


Original story continues below:

When Blizzard announced the awesome-looking Diablo Immortal for mobile, it also revealed that it's working on versions of its other IP for mobile. It was a bit of a throwaway statement amidst the madness of Blizzcon, but we heard it, we took it to heart, and now we really want to play World of Warcraft for mobile.

So we thought we'd get in early on this one, and make sure you're as up to date as we are about all the comings and goings in Blizzard's new thrust towards mobile. By which we mean we've written a bunch of stuff about World of Warcraft for mobile, and we'd love it if you read it.

Let's check out what we know about the world's most famous MMO coming to mobile.

What sort of game will World of Warcraft for mobile be?

We reckon we're not going to be too far from the mark when we say that WoW is going to be an MMO when it comes to mobile. Blizzard has shown with Hearthstone that it's not afraid to play around with genres within the Warcraft setting, but we can't imagine that anything bearing the World of Warcraft brand is going to be anything other than a massively multiplayer RPG.

You can sort of see why Blizzard is thinking along those lines as well, if those lines are indeed where it's thinking. Old School Runsecape Mobile shows that a game with a decent playerbase can easily make the switch to mobile, and there aren't that many games out there with a better playerbase than WoW.

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Plus, one of the biggest markets in mobile gaming at the moment is around South Korea, Japan, and China, places where the MMO has traditionally done well. Add to that the brand recognition that comes from slapping that famous logo on a game, and we can't imagine World of Warcraft for mobile being anything else.

How much will World of Warcraft for mobile cost?

See, this is the tricky one. There are a whole bunch of factors that could come into play here, and a lot of it depends on what exactly Blizzard wants to achieve from letting people play WoW on the go. For our money though we reckon the game will be free to download, but you'll need a subscription to get the most out of it.

There are other avenues the game could take - it might come out as a different entity to WoW for PC, without cross-platform play, but we don't think that that's all that likely. Or, and this is definitely a possibility, the release of WoW for mobile is going to see the entire experience becoming free to play. No more subscriptions, just IAP and microtransactions for those who want them.

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Again, this is all very up in the air at the moment, and you could even go as far as to say we're making all of this up. Which we are. But we're making it up based on the educated guesses of people who've spent years in the mobile sector, so it's not like it's a lie - more of a well-schooled presumption.

When will World of Warcraft for mobile come out?

That depends on an awful lot of things, not least how long Blizzard has been working on the game. We first pondered this question almost 11 years ago when some job-listings suggested that Blizzard was working on a mobile version of WoW. Which means it could have been working on it for almost as long as iPhones have existed.

We wouldn't put any money on the game mentioned a decade ago bearing that much of a resemblance to the one that eventually comes out for mobile, but it shows that Blizzard has been considering mobile gaming for a good long while. And one thing we've discovered is that decent mobile gaming experiences require a lot of consideration.

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All that said, World of Warcraft is definitely the most complex of Blizzard's IP, so we wouldn't be surprised if this one didn't actually see the light of day until well into 2020. It's going to take time to get things right, and if we know anything about Blizzard, it's that it's a dev that doesn't mind waiting until something's perfect.

Is there anything else I should know about World of Warcraft for mobile?

Yeah, probably, but unfortunately we don't know it yet either. There's a possibility that the game might never come out, which would be pretty crushing, but unfortunately that's just the way the cookie crumbles with this sort of thing.

That said if you've got questions, hurl them into the comments section and we'll do our best to answer them. And if we can't answer them we'll definitely engage you in conversation, which is like getting an answer but way more fun.

Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.