Over the last console generation, MMOs began becoming increasingly popular on consoles, with games like The Elder Scrolls Online and Final Fantasy 14 showing that these types of games can play well with a gamepad rather than a mouse and keyboard. With that in mind, the idea of World of Warcraft coming to consoles has come up numerous times, and it seems like Blizzard might finally be working on exactly that.
Since its launch, World of Warcraft has only been available on PC. Last year at Blizzcon, WoW Executive Producer, Holly Longdale, revealed that bringing WoW to consoles has been frequently discussed behind the scenes at Blizzard. However, the current priority for the team is crafting the Worldsoul Saga, a new trilogy of expansions for WoW, which will kick off with The War Within expansion later this year.
Now speaking with Eurogamer at a recent War Within preview event, Longdale touched on the subject again, saying “nothing’s impossible”, before laughing the questions off and refusing to go any further. It isn’t a confirmation that WoW is coming to Xbox or PlayStation, but it is an indication that Blizzard is still exploring the idea.
World of Warcraft has been a PC game since its inception. While the MMO dominated the gaming landscape during the early 2000s and remains popular today, the player base hasn’t necessarily ‘grown’ in a long time. Bringing such a historic MMO to consoles would open it up to tens of millions of new players, many of whom may have never experienced World of Warcraft. However, it is also worth noting that a project as long running as this also has a lot of legacy code to sort through when bringing it to a new platform, so it will be no easy feat by any means.
KitGuru Says: Microsoft would obviously be happy to see WoW on Xbox, but whether or not Blizzard can get the job done, at a reasonable cost and in a reasonable timeframe, still remains to be seen.
