Blizzard Aims to Bring World of Warcraft to iOS, Still Working Out The Details

Blizzards popular MMORPG World of Warcraft may be coming to an iOS device near you! Blizzard senior World of Warcraft producer John Lagrave revealed that the company is looking into an iOS version of the game in an interview with Eurogamer (via Pocket Gamer).

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. 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.

[…]

We won’t do it until we think it’s decent. 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!

While the possibility for WoW on iOS exists, however, Lagrave also revealed that the company won’t be releasing any sort of port until they get the details exactly right – they don’t want to provide a sub-par experience for their loyal base of fans.

…we just haven’t solved it. What we’ve done with WOW on mobile devices is very simplistic: view the armoury, you check your auctions – not just on mobile but also on web.

Turning a desktop game into a great mobile experience can indeed be a challenge, especially for a game like World of Warcraft which relies so heavily on both a keyboard and a mouse for its most basic features. Still, it should be good news for fans of the game that Blizzard is working on this, and that they’re committed to doing it right.

J. Glenn Künzler

Glenn is Managing Editor at MacTrast, and has been using a Mac since he bought his first MacBook Pro in 2006. He lives in a small town in Utah, enjoys bacon more than you can possibly imagine, and is severely addicted to pie.