I was wondering if Wow would ever be released for the Consoles? Playstations, Xboxs, etc.
The problem that immediately popped-up was the controls. Wow classes have bunches of skills and abilities. I mean like lots! Thinking about my playthroughs on several characters
I discovered that out of a plethora of ways to fight I only really used maybe 3,4,or 5 buttons/keys to actually fight.
So I figured maybe the idea of playing Wow with a contolpad wasn’t such a farfetched idea. So what do you think can Wow be ported to Consoles and played with a gamepad?
I hope not. They’d need to slow gameplay down, like FFXIV, and I’m not into that. If they do add console support, and don’t slow the game down, I’d need a console icon next to players names so I don’t accidentally invite a console healer.
People have been playing with controllers for years now with WoW on pc. I even remember back in Cata, when a small tech group made it so you could play the game with hand and body movements using a camera and tracking software like what was used in the Xbox Connect.
The only thing that would need to be done is writing the code for it all to patch over to a console.
I’ve been on and off playing lately. The last time I played, I experimented with my Xbox PC controller. I think it would depend on the class. I know DH is almost perfect for it.
Not exclusively, though. They still have to have a K&M for a good portion of the controls, even if it’s to set-up the controller. A K&M isn’t something any console game has ever required, so you can’t expect people to go out and get one.
If they do it’ll be like diablow4 the pc client will be skimpy to accommodate its console version. That won’t stop them as player satisfaction is not an Activision core value.
With a gamepad? Probably. There’s ways to adapt the gamepad to the needs of MMO button quantities. FF actually does it pretty well, so maybe something like the way they do it (unless SQEX have a patent on it I suppose - not sure if they do but it wouldn’t be the first time they patented a mechanic).
With KB&M, of course, no question about it. Only problem would be the fact that console games don’t usually allow for player created add-ons, which might pose an issue given how heavily WoW relies on them.
Right. So why would I intentionally run with someone who is potentially not great that is using even worse tools at their disposal? If they’re bad with keyboard and mouse, how much worse are they gonna be on XBox with slower reaction times and no addons?
If I’m a slow runner, cutting one of my feet off isn’t gonna improve my quarter mile, ya know?
Look at how many /slash commands, macros, add-ons would have to be abandoned to work on a Console. Every class rotation reduced to 4 buttons. Dumbed-down beyond enjoyability.
WoW is an MMORPG not an “Action” RPG with very limited controls which is really what consoles support. PCs are much more versatile.
Some tried it.
It’s not impossible if that is what you are asking but I think it was built with PC in mind so porting it to console may be a niche appeal for the time they’d spend porting it.
I think people underestimate the number of keybinds you can assign to a controller in wow even currently. On an XBox controller, leaving the left analog stick for movement and right analog stick for the camera, you have 14 total buttons you can re-assign: 4 directions on d-pad, “select” (“back”/“view”) and “start” (“menu”), ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘X’, ‘Y’, left trigger, right trigger, “L3” (left-analog click), and “R3” (right-analog click). Combined with left shoulder button and right shoulder button as button key modifiers (individually and with both left shoulder and right shoulder in combined presses), you have access to 56 keybinds on one XBox controller (and other controllers may have more available buttons, don’t know). Now…you most likely want some of those for menus, targeting, etc., but it’s still not a huge cut down from the 5 action bars (60 total slots) I’ve always used though it is admittedly quite a bit less than the 8 action bars (96 slots) we can use in DF. Fifty-six is mostly enough for casual play though.
If WoW came to console, I would hope they would allow the trigger-as-modifiers to be double-tapped like FF14’s double-tap W-cross hot bars. That would expand the number of possible button+trigger combinations by 14x3=42 for a total of 98 bindable button/button-combinations.
Because of a shoulder problem, I used a controller, much of the time with just my left hand over the past few months. I’ve gone back to using keyboard+mouse more fairly recently, but I’m still using the controller sometimes. Although I just defended the number of buttons available on a controller, I really don’t enjoy using one in this game much (even some casual content is annoying with one just with how the game works…good luck doing any of the climbing world quests without throwing the controller through your screen), especially if you want to heal even in very casual situations. Ally targeting in WoW is not a very good fit for a controller though DPS or tanking in a casual setting is a bit better. I think the game would need changes to targeting and maybe other areas to be good enough for even all casual content let alone more challenge content. However, I’m not a game designer and have no opinion on how to get to the state it needs to be for controller-based play to get to the spot where it would need to be to minimize complaints. Also, a lot of the good with using a controller in WoW/Wow-Classic is because of the improved setup with using the Console Port add-on even…and not Blizz’s own bare-bones implementation.
Here’s a post a bit over a month ago where I talked a little bit about how I felt after about 4 weeks of using a controller and trying to do some random battleground healing:
