A mobile spinoff of World of Warcraft had apparently been in development for three years. According to a report by Bloomberg, the project has now come to an abrupt halt.
What was that project? As Bloomberg reports, the game, codenamed “Neptune,” was supposed to be an MMORPG. That would have been set in the same world as World of Warcraft, but would have been set in a different timeline.
According to information from the portal, Activision Blizzard worked with the Chinese company NetEase on the project. NetEase is the second largest gaming company in China, behind giant Tencent.
Blizzard and NetEase have worked together in the past, for example on Diablo Immortal. But while the latter brings in a lot of money despite a lot of criticism, the mobile WoW offshoot is already over before the game has even been published.
Suddenly after three years
Why is the project ending? According to the report, NetEase has disbanded a team of 100 people who worked on the game. The two companies would have disagreed on various terms, which is why the project has now been put on hold.
Bloomberg refers to anonymous sources that did not want to be named. Both NetEase and Activision Blizzard apparently did not initially comment on the situation at the request of the portal.
WoW Mobile isn’t coming at all? With the release of the MMORPG project you don’t have to count, at least for the time being. It was originally supposed to play in the same setting as WoW, but in a different timeline, which would have made many Lore fans happy. However, there are other projects from the Warcraft cosmos that are to be played on smartphones.
Warcraft Arclight Rumble: All information about Blizzard’s new strategy game in 2 minutes
This includes Warcraft: Arclight Rumble. This is a kind of strategic fighting game reminiscent of mobile games like Clash Royale. You can find a more detailed insight into this in the play report by MeinMMO editor Alexander Leitsch.
In addition, Activision Blizzard had already announced in early 2021 that they would be working on several Warcraft games for mobile phones.
More precise titles or content were not mentioned, but some of the games should already be in the “advanced state of development”. It is possible that “Codename Neptune” was also one of these games.
Otherwise, World of Warcraft is mainly due to have the big expansion for the main game this year: As Blizzard announced in June, “WoW Dragonflight” will be released in 2022. All information about the expansion can be found here.