Don't expect to see this on consoles
A Blizzard developer has suggested massively popular MMO World of Warcraft would not translate well to the Nintendo Wii.
Speaking to Pro-G at the launch of the game's first expansion, The Burning Crusade, Blizzard game designer Jonathan LeCraft said using the Wii Remote wouldn't work with the PC hit.
A number of user generated videos have appeared on the internet showing gamers playing World of Warcraft with a Wii remote, but LeCraft poured scorn on the possibility.
"You really do need a keyboard to play WoW," he said. "I've seen some mods where people have hooked up WoW to their Wii. When I saw that I was like, well, that's got to be pretty easy to PVP against, honestly. It's not something we're looking at right now."
The aptly named LeCraft also revealed Blizzard currently has no plans to port the game to the Xbox 360 or PS3, despite the success of Xbox Live and the development of the PS3's online service.
"We don't have any plans for it specifically," noted LeCraft. "We always keep all our options on the radar, but there are no plans for the immediate future."
Adding fuel to the fire of speculation about where Blizzard will take their other popular franchises, Starcraft and Diablo, LeCraft didn't rule out the possibility of the studio hosting another huge MMO alongside World of Warcraft.
He said: "I think we have the capacity for another one [MMO]. It [World of Warcraft] means that there's going to be some other cool games coming from the studio because we're very successful. And I think they're even going to be a step above what people expect.
"We're always considering our licenses when we think about our next product. They are really strong, well known licenses. We own them completely so we can do whatever we want. We can take the fiction in whatever direction or apply whatever gameplay we want."
However, LeCraft wouldn't budge when pressed on whether work on other titles had already begun, with a "Maybe" being all he'd say on the subject.
For more World of Warcraft info, head over to the full Burning Crusade interview.
User Comments
Peggy
dan
Exemus
And the keyboard is definitely just an excuse. The Wii has USB ports!!!
Crump
esay
Also ps3 and xbox360 have a removable HDD so when the 20gb hard drives get full you can get a new one.
This is just an excuse because they don't want WOW on these consoles that are fully capable of delivering the game on both consoles.
Who know's pc gamers might get jealous because where paying less for our hardware that buying a top of the line $2000 computer.
Finnegan
Cython
Blue Fish
But Nintendo will need to prove itself first. If they can develop a decently running internet service and prove that there's enough players actually using the Wii for on-line activity, some steps should be taken to bring WoW to the Wii. Not to mention if the Wii can maintain this insane level of popularity and hype that it currently has running behind it, porting World of Warcraft to the Wii makes total business sense. It would reach a broader market than the PC market currently hits and would be readily accessible in living rooms and bedrooms everywhere, not to mention the price of $250 for a smooth-running WoW machine would be highly attractive for the casual WoWers.
As great and wonderful as WoW for the Xbox-360 and the PS3 would be, the Wii feels to me more like the audience Blizzard has been aiming for with WoW all along, the casual gamers.
Only time will tell.
Monkey
Highen
Killer Dr3w
I see this as an opportunity for Blizzard to make more money on both the console game sales and by selling a WoW USB Keyboard for consoles such as the XBOX 360 and PS3. Keyboard and mice can be bought for less than $10, so for $50 Blizzard could easily make a WoW Console bundle and still make money.
I wonder if there are some rules from Microsoft on publishing games that require mice which is stopping the release on the console....
I expect to see WoW on consoles at some point. Vivendi will want to make as much money as possible, and at some point WoW sales will start to drop, the obvious way of breathing new life in to the game would be by releasing it on consoles. This will be a shareholder decision, rather than a games developer decision...
Sniper