In the gaming world, companies have often desired to expand their most successful properties into other media or other types of games. Whether that be through cartoons, movies, comic books, spinoffs in different genres, and so on, developers want to grow their series when possible. World Of Warcraft is a title that has endeavored to go beyond its genre more than once. The game was the evolution of the RTS games from the 1990s and became the most important MMORPG of all time. So much so that they tried to make a live-action movie franchise from it. Unfortunately, that particular venture didn’t work out, but another might if rumors are to be believed.
There’s a rumor that a World Of Warcraft mobile game is in the works and has been in the works for years. We know that this project exists in some form, as earlier this year, Bloomberg reported that Blizzard and NetEase had been working on a mobile project for the MMORPG but canceled it after three years of development. That being said, ResetEra posted a job listing that said a mobile project within the universe was in the works right now:
“Another one of the job listings on the Blizzard Entertainment website is for the Senior/ Principal Character Concept Artist position at the company’s Irvine headquarters in California, United States, the description for which reads, “Blizzard is looking for a highly motivated and talented Character Concept Artist to join a new Warcraft mobile project.”
If you notice the wording, they cite the RTS and not the MMORPG, but that could be because of brevity or to throw people off. It’s hard to say. The point is that despite a cancelation, Blizzard might still be trying to bring their spinoff mobile game to life.
Blizzard would hardly be the first person to try and develop mobile games for their franchises. Nintendo has been trying to do that for years with their legendary IP, but with mixed results. Not that Blizzard has done much better. When Diablo Immortal was announced as the next game in the action-RPG series, many people thought it was a joke. Then, when it came out, it was a literal joke due to its quality and how it siphoned people’s money just to advance.
If that’s how they handled one of their franchises that had a smaller fanbase, what will they do with their long-running MMO? Unfortunately, Blizzard hasn’t been on a roll with their other franchises, as the Overwatch 2 launch proved.
Plus, there’s no indication about what kind of game this mobile spinoff would be. Would it try to be an MMORPG like its namesake? Would it have microtransactions out of the wazoo? It’s hard to say, but perhaps we’ll get more info soon.
Source: Reddit
