Over the course of more than a decade, World of Warcraft has become an institution in and of itself, which means that even though there have been no new mainline Warcraft releases in a long time (especially that new RTS series fans keep dreaming about), the IP itself is stronger than ever. And Activision has plans to continue expanding it further still.
It’s no secret that the mobile market has become integral to Activision’s business strategy, and they have every intention of leveraging the Warcraft IP to see greater growth in that area as well. Speaking during Activision-Blizzard’s recent quarterly investors call, CEO Bobby Kotick said that on top of continuing to deliver more content for the World of Warcraft playerbase, Bizzard is also working on “multiple” free-to-play mobile games in the series.
“In our Warcraft franchise, we intend to deliver more frequent premium content to sustain and expand the World of Warcraft community,” Kotick said. “And we have made multiple mobile free-to-play Warcraft experiences, and they’re now in advanced development based on our franchises beloved IP. This will create opportunities for both existing players and new fans to experience the Warcraft universe in entirely new ways.”
Activision have been seeing massive success with Call of Duty: Mobile, and Diablo Immortal has received strong early praise as well, so it’s no surprise that they’re continuing to eye more opportunities in the mobile space. What form that takes with Warcraft (unless you count Heroes of the Storm) remains to be seen.