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World of Warcraft Game Director Dismisses Rumors of Eventual Console Port

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman

In an interview about the game's newly announced expansion, Dragonflight, I asked Hazzikostas if a console port was on the horizon specifically because of the planned UI overhaul announced as a part of the expansion.

With the MMO getting improved controller support recently and now a fully customizable HUD that players can move around however they like, the time seems ripe to make the jump to consoles.

But Hazzikostas doesn't seem keen.

"Nah, I think World of Warcraft is a game designed from the ground up for the PC," he says. "I think we've just been looking at the ways in which add-ons have at times felt increasingly required, or like the first thing you do when someone comes to the game for the first time is tell them, 'Hey, go download this add-on pack and move this stuff around' and we want to do better for our players."
 

CamHostage

Member
Bold of them to stick to PC. Seems like it'd work okay on consoles with these refinements, but they're not chasing another kind of community.

It could be great if they ported it around (and it's long past due for it to happen if it ever would,) but then again, they know what they have know and they know it works; adding in console (or mobile, for that matter) could upset what they have, and what they have is, and has been for two decades now, WoW.
 
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STARSBarry

Gold Member
I honestly question why they can't do this...

Are they afraid they can't make a control scheme that allows console players to effectively raid?
 
Ah, they're taking the Guild Wars 1 and 2 route, another set of games that could have been easily ported to consoles with an easy growth in player numbers, but the developers have too much pride in PC only. It's fine, that just means ESO, FFXIV, and PoE will keep those player numbers instead and keep growing.
 
I doubt It’d be all that fun to play WoW like that anyway. It works in FF14 because that game has a 2+ second global cooldown (probably largely because they didn’t want controller users to break their fingers), but they’d never be able to implement something like that in WoW. PC players would riot.
 

Rykan

Member
I think people in this thread are seriously underestimating how difficult it is to port a PC MMORPG to console. Every MMORPG that has been released on consoles has been designed from the ground up with consoles in mind.

You can transfer some aspects of WoW to console rather easily, sure. Basic combat and simple go kill xx quests are not an issue. But WoW has plenty of quests or tasks that require interaction with objects in different ways or even take control of a vehicle. All of those quests would have to be reprogrammed to work on consoles. Then the entire UI would have to be completely overhauled and reprogrammed to work with controllers.

It's a daunting task and it's probably not worth it. How many people are seriously going to start playing WoW, a game that runs on any potato, if its released on consoles?
 
It very well might not come to console, but honestly I don't take anything as a solid "no" anymore. I'm sure they were pretty dead set against having something like a classic server or playable Pandas, yet here we are.
 

treemk

Banned
Tell me you dont play wow without telling me you dont play wow

You actually think a +15 key is doable on controller? A heroic raid? Both are just mid/low difficulty for wow. The only thing that would work well in controller is open world questing and low level dungeons. They would have to completely retune the entire game, which might not be out of the question eventually but it would be completely detrimental for pc players.
 

Mr1999

Member
It would need its own console only servers, then they would have to cripple the game to great lengths to accommodate it. Cross servers would never work, 'PC side would never allow you into their raids without mods installed. It's easier to just play the game on PC.
 
It very well might not come to console, but honestly I don't take anything as a solid "no" anymore. I'm sure they were pretty dead set against having something like a classic server or playable Pandas, yet here we are.
This would require the PC fanbase to complain enough on the behalf of console players. It's difficult for me to see that happening.

I think the alternative here is that these changes are a test run for their next MMO to be console compatible, like all of their recent games.
 

Moses85

Member
Wow, anyone still playing this old ham?
We're lucky that this old tale remains exclusive to the PC. Ridiculous, as if that would still lure someone out from behind the stove.

Throw Away Dirty Work GIF by MOODMAN
 

Mr1999

Member
Wow, anyone still playing this old ham?
We're lucky that this old tale remains exclusive to the PC. Ridiculous, as if that would still lure someone out from behind the stove.

Throw Away Dirty Work GIF by MOODMAN

It's the only game I still play. I don't know about anyone else, but WoW is very special to me. I started playing WoW with fileplanets beta, Ive got an original vanilla collectors account and have been playing it since then.

Although I'm not as deep with the end game content as I was before, but that's because Ive got a 2 year old now, but I still play every other day for a few hours and on the weekends.

WoW quenches my fantasy thirst and it's why I really can't enjoy any other fantasy rpg, I just end up going back to WoW again. I love WoW, id be lying if I said I didn't. Plus throughout the years Ive really built my character as far as achievements, titles, pets, and mounts go.
 
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Pretty silly excuse. Consoles support M&K and addons alone aren't a good enough justification to not port the game.

A console port of Classic WoW would get me interested, since it's pretty much the only version of WoW that I care about.
 
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Fuz

Banned
I think people in this thread are seriously underestimating how difficult it is to port a PC MMORPG to console. Every MMORPG that has been released on consoles has been designed from the ground up with consoles in mind.

You can transfer some aspects of WoW to console rather easily, sure. Basic combat and simple go kill xx quests are not an issue. But WoW has plenty of quests or tasks that require interaction with objects in different ways or even take control of a vehicle. All of those quests would have to be reprogrammed to work on consoles. Then the entire UI would have to be completely overhauled and reprogrammed to work with controllers.

It's a daunting task and it's probably not worth it. How many people are seriously going to start playing WoW, a game that runs on any potato, if its released on consoles?
This.

Never believe PR speak, especially when they try to paint themselves as friends of the players.
 

Orbital2060

Member
If they do go console it should really be on both Xbox and PlayStation, and crossplay with PC. Which could be a problem in terms of how well people on controllers work for high level guild raiders. Many guilds require their players to use certain raid mods. It would probably be possible to have mods on console too but they would have to be curated somehow, and the mod scene is already pretty fragmented and poorly curated (at least it used to be with dodgy third party sites). Not sure it would work. Maybe have console players marked in the game as such, but it could still be a messy situation and be annoying for longtime players on PC.

But only on Xbox would be a poor decision I think, if they do.
 

Holammer

Member
Just require M+KB for the console versions. COD allows it nowadays right? Use the best tool for the job.
If you don't want to give console users straight up mod support, have presets with the most popular UI configurations and a few curated mods.
 

Hari Seldon

Member
It would absolutely have to be a separate game not tied to PC servers. There is no way in fuck you could possibly do any end game content without the necessary add-ons. I mean you could do it, if you were with all PC players carrying your ass.
 
No reason it can't be made for console. Controller players dont have to be 100% on par with kb/m. You don't even really use the mouse normally if you're decent, also most classes are pretty faceroll. Just make the game so its good enough to not require addons like it was originally intended to be.
 
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It's been forever and a day since I played WoW, but I rememver having a gazillion icons on screen to play the game. They would have to enable mouse and keyboard on console if it ever comes to console.
 

The_Mike

I cry about SonyGaf from my chair in Redmond, WA
I honestly question why they can't do this...

Are they afraid they can't make a control scheme that allows console players to effectively raid?
I believe they fear dumbing the game even more down than they've done the last couple of years to reach a wider audience.
 

nikolino840

Member
It would need its own console only servers, then they would have to cripple the game to great lengths to accommodate it. Cross servers would never work, 'PC side would never allow you into their raids without mods installed. It's easier to just play the game on PC.
Work good for ff14
 
This would require the PC fanbase to complain enough on the behalf of console players. It's difficult for me to see that happening.

I think the alternative here is that these changes are a test run for their next MMO to be console compatible, like all of their recent games.
It's less about PC players and more about FF 14's continued growing success on consoles maybe being a consideration for changing their stance on it if feasible. I just can't believe there hasn't at least been a cost vs gains discussion on the merits of it. Who knows, maybe the money they're pulling in is enough to just not give a shit about putting it on anything else.
 
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IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman

In a recent interview on the end of Shadowlands and the start of Dragonflight, conducted by Twitch streamer Annie Fuchsia, Game Director Ion Hazzikostas dispelled the rumors about World of Warcraft getting a console version by stating that the game would remain PC-only, with no plans to port it over to Xbox or PlayStation in the near future. That being said, accessibility is still on Blizzard's agenda, and Hazzikostas was forthright enough to mention that official controller support was something worth exploring, which would line up with the PlayStation and Xbox icons datamined during Dragonflight's beta.
 
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