Blizzard is really pushing hard to get some form of World of Warcraft running on the iPhone. In speaking with Eurogamer, the Senior WoW producer, John Lagrave, detailed just how difficult the idea really is to put into action.
Fishing is cool. I mean, for the serious WoW player, fishing can actually be a fairly consuming time sink, especially if you're fishing for some rare mount in the game. A full MMO like WoW where utilizing a number of action bars at once is almost a necessity in some cases just doesn't sound like it would work for any serious gameplay.
But mini-games and side abilities wouldn't be too bad!
"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!
"So we certainly look at that, but 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.
"When we have an epiphany, everyone will know," he added. "But for now, no epiphany!"
"You can look at fishing and say, 'Is fishing tailored to being on a table or on a mobile?' That would be awesome, right? You're sitting at the airport and think 'I'll just go fishing'. We certainly look at pet battles too, but right now we're focused on PC - that's our bread-and-butter, PC and Mac."
"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!
"So we certainly look at that, but 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.
"When we have an epiphany, everyone will know," he added. "But for now, no epiphany!"
"You can look at fishing and say, 'Is fishing tailored to being on a table or on a mobile?' That would be awesome, right? You're sitting at the airport and think 'I'll just go fishing'. We certainly look at pet battles too, but right now we're focused on PC - that's our bread-and-butter, PC and Mac."
Fishing is cool. I mean, for the serious WoW player, fishing can actually be a fairly consuming time sink, especially if you're fishing for some rare mount in the game. A full MMO like WoW where utilizing a number of action bars at once is almost a necessity in some cases just doesn't sound like it would work for any serious gameplay.
But mini-games and side abilities wouldn't be too bad!