World of Warcraft director says it's not getting easier in Midnight because it's coming to consoles: 'There's no reason for us to hide anything about this'
World of Warcraft's next expansion has sweeping changes that make all of its classes easier to pick up and play. Blizzard has repeatedly said it wants to make the game more approachable, but some players have speculated that it's all being done so the MMO can be played on a console with a controller.
The theories grew even stronger with the recent trend of Xbox games coming to PlayStation 5 and the Windows Central report that Microsoft's next console will let you launch Windows at any time, sort of like Linux on the Steam Deck. Rumors of WoW coming to consoles have happened before, but they've never really lined up this well with what's happening elsewhere in the industry.
According to WoW game director Ion Hazzikostas on a recent episode of the Unshackled Fury podcast (at 21:40), you can stop speculating: The MMO isn't on its way to consoles. "To be fully transparent, there's no reason for us to hide anything about this," he said. "If we were actively working towards bringing WoW to consoles, or a bunch of other platforms, we'd be saying, 'We're actively working towards it, we know we have a lot of work to do but it's a place where we want to land.'"
"Our focus remains, right now, on the PC-based experience," he added before reiterating that the changes in Midnight are about "approachability broadly."
Technically, that doesn't rule out gamepad support in the future. Mods are the only way you can currently play WoW with a controller, but I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard brings that functionality into the game officially. It's already putting tons of work into replacing popular combat mods so players don't have to use third-party tools to play the game.
If that were to happen, I could see Microsoft advertising that WoW is finally playable on Xbox, but with an asterisk that says it requires you to launch it on Windows. Not having to have a keyboard and mouse could lift some barriers for people who haven't tried it yet. I think that's about as close to a console version of WoW as you're going to get, at least for now.
Hazzikostas' comments probably won't appease all the WoW players who aren't very happy with Midnight's big changes. Many high-level players are concerned over certain classes becoming too simple and dull to play. Blizzard says it's listening to feedback as people test things out on the alpha, but with the beta on its way in December players are starting to worry there won't be enough time to fix their issues.
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