Another year, another batch of ‘World of Warcraft could be coming to console’ speculation. The instigator this time: the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion Midnight, which seems to be providing Blizzard with a time-and-place to snip away game add-ons and simplify the combat experience. Speculation says this is being done to prepare the game for a long-awaited console release.
Weight has been added to this argument by a couple of things. One, that Blizzard is owned by Microsoft, which of course makes Xbox and is now actively engaged in spreading its games to as many other platforms as it can, including PlayStation 5. And two, that Microsoft came out recently and suggested the next Xbox will work a lot like a PC. Given that, WoW on console seems to make sense.
But Blizzard has poured cold water on the speculation. WoW game director Ion Hazzikostas told the Unshackled Fury podcast that, “There’s no reason for us to hide anything about this. If we were actively working towards bringing WoW to consoles, or a bunch of other platforms, we’d be saying, ‘We’re actively working towards it; we know we have a lot of work to do but it’s a place where we want to land.’
“Our focus remains right now on the PC-based experience,” Hazzikostas said.
It’s a strong reply but WoW on console remains a perennial debate surrounding the 20-year-old game. I recall asking WoW executive producer Holly Langdale a year ago whether a console release could finally be happening, following the Microsoft acquisition, and her answer was intriguingly cagey.
“I will say nothing’s impossible,” Langdale told me at the time, smiling. “I can’t say anything more than that.” Then, she laughed and started to say something but stopped herself and instead said: “No, that’s all I’ll say.” Then she laughed again.
Consoles are in a completely different place to where they were in 2004/5 when World of Warcraft launched. Not only are they technically more capable but their internet infrastructure and network services have improved dramatically. Plus, Blizzard already runs services like Overwatch across multiple platforms. However, in terms of size, World of Warcraft is many orders of magnitude bigger.
But putting MMOs on consoles is not impossible. Final Fantasy 14 managed it, to great success, and The Elder Scrolls Online has long been playable there too. What will it take, I wonder, for Blizzard and Microsoft to make the move? Or rather: what’s the hold-up?
World of Warcraft: Midnight, the second expansion in the Worldsoul Saga trilogy, is due sometime next year. More excitingly, player housing is being added to the game after all these years, in December, in an ambitious system Blizzard is describing as “a sociological experiment”.
