Blizzard ponders World of Warcraft for iPad

Blizzard has hinted it may bring World of Warcraft to smartphones and tablets, saying it believes a developer would be "foolish" not to be planning such a move. "We're certainly looking into it," said senior WoW producer John Lagrave in an interview with Eurogamer. "We won't do it until we think it's decent. But it's …

[Thomas 18]

Class selection

I can see this working but I think currently the only class suitable for the hand-held version would be hunters. Limiting the UI to 2 buttons will free up the screen real estate for the immersive world (of warcraft). I just don't see Blizzard being able to implement any other classes with only 2 buttons.

[Ian Stephenson]

Re: Class selection

On screen buttons are so last decade, why not guestures (spelling deliberate).

Mines the one with the unopened manual in the pocket.

[Jedit]

Two buttons?

The Reg article never mentioned two buttons; is it in the Eurogamer article that I can't access from work?

The default WoW UI is capable of displaying upwards of 60 buttons, and while you'd need to scale that back a bit to work on the iPad and further still for the iPhone, it should be possible to have a dozen buttons on the touchscreen.

[Dana W]

Re: Two buttons?

Its a WOW joke. Hunters often referred to as "huntards" are not considered hard to play and are often played by less than competent players.

Then again, I play an Arcane Mage, I need at least THREE buttons!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Two buttons?

This "hunter joke" is only common amongst players who never left Karazhan because raiding was "hard".

Easiest classes to play:

Mage

DK

Paladin

[Kevin 6]

Re: Two buttons?

As someone who has every class geared to high hell I won't argue with the Mage, and DK part but I'd say rogues a tad easier(well at least assassination rogue) than any paladin build.

As for huntard joke it wasn't due to hunters being easy to play. Actually being good as a hunter is not easy, and never was. It all originated in the fact 90% of hunters back in the older expansions would need roll on ANYTHING they could equip, and claim it had necessary stats for their class. Strength 2 handed sword they needed it, and would argue they needed it cause strength improved their physical DPS (even though they should NEVER have to do it), +healing cloth gear they needed it to improve their mend pet skill, cloth hell they could equip it so it must be for hunters.

I've seen the same thing done in other classes, and till DK's were added it was extremely heavy concentration of retardation in the hunter gene pool. After DK's came it seems they attracted a large pool of the retarded hunters which I'm guessing cause DK's can equip almost any item in game, which old school huntards loved to do.

[Matt Bryant]

Re: Re: Two buttons?

"....Easiest classes to play:

Mage

DK

Paladin"

Shirley, the old, unkillable Druid should be in there? Absolute doddle to level, can play tank, DPS or healer with ease, and gets by default all the leather with INT on as nobody else wants it (mind you, they do have to ninja all the good Hunter and Rogue AGI leather too!).

[Jediben]

Re: Class selection

Two buttons? What will mages do with the spare?

[Diginerd]

Re: Class selection

+1

(The post is required, and must contain letters.)

[Tharglet]

Re: Class selection

That one's for portals. Obviously.

[Tegne]

May explain why Blizzard have been dumbing down the game over the past few years.

I'm the one wiping in a raid because the main tank is playing on his iPad tonight.

[DZ-Jay]

This is about 3 years too late.

[Muckminded]

Prediction

Many more tablet sales will come from needing to replace the ones chucked at the wall during pvp.

[Ian Stephenson]

Re: Prediction

Don't you just love emoragequit?

[Tharglet]

FoTM class

So for whichever class is FoTM, do they get a special iPad gesture of rolling their face against the screen to win all fights?

[ratfox]

Processing power??

I remember WoW being rather performance-hungry. Do fondleslabs have that much processing power nowadays? I must be behind the times...

[Matt Bryant]

Re: Processing power??

A valid question. You can paly WoW on an old P4, but you better have lots of RAM and a very good graphics card to make up for the lack of processing power. Looking at the iPad3, with a 1GHz CPU, it simply won't have the grunt, and that's before we consider graphics.

Then there's the storage issue - a full install of WoW, including right up to the current Cataclysm patch, is 40GB+ of diskspace. Expect the Mists of Pandaria to add at least another 5GB+. So unless you have the top-end 64GB iPad3 I'd say you'd be stuck with a continuous background download, which will kill gameplay.

Sorry, but the iPad2 is simply not going to cut the mustard unless they release a stickman version. Just stick with a PC or a proper laptop.

[cloudgazer]

This is clearly just a setup

For a really good April fool - they can't port WoW to console, I can't see how they could hope to port it to iPad.

Diablo on the other hand ....