World of Warcraft Mobile Game Reportedly Cancelled by Blizzard After Finance Dispute

A World of Warcraft mobile game has reportedly been quietly canceled due to financing disputes. From a report: According to Bloomberg, the upcoming smartphone game had been in development for three years but has now been canceled due to a dispute between Activision Blizzard and NetEase. "The two companies disagreed over terms and ultimately called a halt to the project, which had been kept under wraps," said a source close to the deal. The project, referred to as "Neptune" by those working on it, was said to be a Warcraft spin-off, set during a different period to World of Warcraft. It's unknown whether it would have directly tied into either Warcraft, Warcraft II, or Warcraft III. The good news is that it's not Warcraft Arclight Rumble -- the upcoming mobile "tower offense" game due to release later this year. As far back as February this year, Activision Blizzard revealed that it was working on multiple mobile Warcraft titles, and this was thought to be one of the big reasons behind Microsoft's acquisition of the company for a reported $69 million earlier this year. Now, it looks as though those mobile games may be up in the air -- after all, the extent of Activision Blizzard's working relationship with NetEase following this high-profile cancellation is uncertain. Another of Activision Blizzard's mobile games, a Pokemon Go-style AR game, was also canceled.

Microtransactions.

[splutty]

I'm theorizing here, but I'm also pretty sure I'm correct..

Netease wanted a higher percentage of the microtransaction profits in the new game after the "success" of Diablo Immortal.

And ActiBlizz said no.

Re:

[Brain-Fu]

I didn't expect that a pay-to-win game with such repetitious in-your-face ads during gameplay would do as well as it did.

I am disappointed by this, as I hate the model and wish it would always do poorly, so companies stop using it. Though, apparently, plenty of people like the model. I guess I have been outvoted.

Re:

[Neuroelectronic]

I wonder how many people are actually playing and how many people who are trying to get in early in the microeconomy and just buying up "real estate" to resell.

Good

[twocows]

I've played WoW on and off since 2007. I don't know anyone that wanted this, especially after Diablo Immortal, which did a fairly good job at pretending to be an actual game until you had several dozen hours invested at which point it sprung the typical mobile gaming trap. As low as Blizzard has sunk these past few years, there are still people who care about WoW.

South Park did an extremely good episode on how mobile gaming works ("Freemium Isn't Free"), if you aren't familiar with the various methods of psychological manipulation mobile game developers use to take advantage of people with addiction issues, or even if you're only somewhat familiar, it's worth a watch. Not only is it all true, it's actually out of date -- they've gotten even worse since then.

A return to form?

[Petersko]

Blizzard, in the old incarnation that people actually trusted, was known for two things:

"It'll be ready when it's ready." - No significant predictions.

"We'll kill it if we like, sunk costs be damned." - StarCraft Ghost, Warcraft Adventures, Titan...

It's not the same company any more, so it's possible this isn't a return to form as gatekeepers of their own quality, and it's strictly a bean counting decision...

Re:

[blahplusplus]

Blizzard, in the old incarnation that people actually trusted, was known for two things:

"It'll be ready when it's ready." - No significant predictions.

"We'll kill it if we like, sunk costs be damned." - StarCraft Ghost, Warcraft Adventures, Titan...

It's not the same company any more, so it's possible this isn't a return to form as gatekeepers of their own quality, and it's strictly a bean counting decision...

Blizzard died with the advent of the game industry realizing they could steal the multiplayer networking code out of AAA PC games and slap mmo sticker on the box, everyone was expecting games to continue to be local applications you owned and controlled with level editors, dedicated servers, the works. That died in 1997 when the first really successful AAA PC game that was back ended started to print money. Overnight the war on PC games began and we got everquest in 1999, WoW in 2004.

You can literally wat

This is still a thing?

[narcc]

I'm not a big game player. The closest I come to having played an MMO is a MUD sometime in the 90's. I think I had a copy of Ultima Online a buddy gave me but I never installed it.

I do remember this World of Warcraft game, however, but only by reputation. I even knew someone that neglected his family to play it. (My wife was a childhood friend of his wife.) I figured this fad would have been long over, given the problems it caused.

Re:

[Hodr]

I wasted a LOT of time playing MUDs in the early 90s, so I made a conscious decision to never play an MMO.

(WoTMUD)

Re: This is still a thing?

[LindleyF]

I got World of Warcraft as a gift once, because I liked Warcraft 3. I knew better than to install it. Though, I do appreciate the meta-commentary known as Years Of Yarncraft: https://archives.sluggy.com/bo... [sluggy.com]

That's Billion with a B not an M

[neoRUR]

Microsoft's acquisition of blizzard was $68.7 Billion not Million.