Moving World of Warcraft to console would be a 'huge challenge'

With Blizzard finally getting back into the console space with Diablo 3, it is only logical that questions would shift to a possible move outside...

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With Blizzard finally getting back into the console space with Diablo 3, it is only logical that the company would consider shifting its other franchises outside the PC realm. But don't expect World of Warcraft on consoles any time soon.

"I would personally be very excited to see that," said World of Warcraft's lead system designer Greg Street told NowGamer. "It would be a huge challenge to take something like World Of Warcraft with its massive hard drive footprint and its reliance on mouse and keyboard, I think if we were going to make a MMO for consoles then we might take it in a different direction."

Street said Diablo 3's move forced the design team to modify much of the game's fundamentals to get it to work for consoles, something that Blizzard has been tinkering with for years. Porting World of Warcraft would be an even more massive undertaking, but that doesn't mean Street is totally adverse to the idea. "It would be something fun to work on just because of the design challenges would be kind of interesting to try to solve."

Of course, it is possible that Blizzard may be exploring next-gen with its unannounced Titan MMO project, but I guess we'll have to wait until they officially tell us something to find out.

Contributing Editor
From The Chatty
  • reply
    March 13, 2013 9:30 AM

    John Keefer posted a new article, Moving World of Warcraft to console would be a 'huge challenge'.

    With Blizzard finally getting back into the console space with Diablo 3, it is only logical that questions would shift to a possible move outside...

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      March 13, 2013 9:49 AM

      I could never transition to a controller from my Razer MMO mouse and keyboard. Having 30+ buttons plus modifiers at my immediate disposal is a necessity for me to play at maximum capacity. You might as well hook up your computer to your TV and play it that way. Diablo III has like, what, 15 different keys/buttons you can press for various actions? It's perfectly suited for consoles.

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      March 13, 2013 10:12 AM

      People still play this? I thought this was one of those games that folks refer to because it was great in its day or something like that. I remember I played when it first came out then I stopped after like level 2. Guess, it has legs.

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        March 13, 2013 10:13 AM

        Didn't it make more money than all the other MMOs ever combined?

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          March 13, 2013 10:32 AM

          It probably does this every few months from subscription fees alone.

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        March 13, 2013 10:18 AM

        so you played the game for 3 minutes?

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        March 13, 2013 10:19 AM

        did u seriously just ask if people still play wow? cool troll question, bro!

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        March 13, 2013 10:21 AM

        [deleted]

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        March 13, 2013 10:23 AM

        hahahaha awesome

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        March 13, 2013 10:25 AM

        [deleted]

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        March 13, 2013 11:50 AM

        Nope, no one. Other companies made a huge influx of MMO's after it came out just to try and show Blizzard how it was done.

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        March 13, 2013 11:53 AM

        Yes people still play it. Look at this chart:

        http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-1.png

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          March 13, 2013 11:55 AM

          (that's 10 MILLION subscribers - four times as many as the next highest MMO)

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            March 13, 2013 1:16 PM

            Subscribers AND active accounts. Some countries don't have subscribers.

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          March 13, 2013 4:24 PM

          I think its actually dropped to 9.5 million but its still more than the subscribers of all other MMOs combined.

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        March 13, 2013 11:57 AM

        I don't get this post. You might as well have said "Hey everyone, I'm a big fucking idiot and I don't know shit about anything! Guess, it has legs."

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        March 13, 2013 12:07 PM

        Every time an expansion is released people whine about how WoW used to be good and "back in my day we had to walk 6 miles just to kill a raid boss". The reality is most of them are still paying the $15 subscription fee and playing just as often.

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        March 13, 2013 5:13 PM

        there's always one of you

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      March 13, 2013 10:29 AM

      never happen

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      March 13, 2013 10:42 AM

      Out of curiousity, how much hard drive space does this game take up, including all patches and expansions?

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        March 13, 2013 10:45 AM

        23gigs for me

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          March 13, 2013 10:46 AM

          I was way off!

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          March 13, 2013 10:46 AM

          That's fucking ridiculous. I know PS3 games can use up to 50gb but for a game of it's age and the few expansions it has. That's still huge

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            March 13, 2013 10:52 AM

            I have probably 4-5 gigs of data there that isn't needed (old update files, cache, that type of thing) but in reality there is an awful lot of content in that install.

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              March 13, 2013 11:39 AM

              Yeah I don't think people realize just how much content WoW actually has. It's huge.

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            March 14, 2013 6:06 AM

            That's only about a single-layer DVD (4.7 GB) per title (core game + expansions). I don't think that's really "ridiculous" in size!

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        March 13, 2013 10:46 AM

        I believe its over 12GB at this point.

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        March 13, 2013 11:34 AM

        [deleted]

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      March 13, 2013 4:13 PM

      I believe the new Titan MMO is being design from scratch with consoles in mind.
      So no, they wont port Wow to consoles anytime soon.

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