Blizzard ‘Looking into’ Bringing WoW to iPhone

Are you a World of Warcraft player? Are you a World of Warcraft player who spontaneously twitches when not in front of the game? If you answered “yes” to either of those, and especially the latter, good news: it seems hopeful that Blizzard will be bringing World of Warcraft to the iPhone. Well, to be more accurate, the company is “looking into” it.

Having a game such as WoW on an iPhone, or any phone for that matter, is bound to cause many “I can’t believe it hasn’t happened already” comments, but think about it for a moment. In any typical MMO, the UI is about as important as being able to see the game world itself. And unlike most other genre of game, MMOs usually have the most complex UIs out there, where many elements are required. How would something like that translate to a small screen?

That’s a question I’d love to know the answer to. I’ve thought about WoW on mobile before, but I just couldn’t fathom how it could be done. Even on a tablet I might be able to understand it, but on a phone? That’s a hard one for me to picture. FPS games are challenging enough on phones – imagine a game where you have a group of people actually relying on you.

What do you guys think? Is it reasonable to believe that an MMO could be ported to such a small screen reliably? There’s no doubt that current phones could handle the game performance-wise, but whether or not people would go out of their minds trying to play it is another thing.