Breakfast Topic: Cross-platform?
by Jennie Lees 
Feb 3rd 2006 at 8:30AM
Given the imminent launch of Final Fantasy XI for the Xbox 360, surely Blizzard have their thinking caps on at the moment. Many people have postulated that WoW for the 360 is a question of "when", not "if", but with a 5.5 million player-base, do Blizzard really need to move to a new platform? It would doubtless help sales of the 360 along, especially for those who can't afford a high-spec gaming PC, but going cross-platform (especially given the different networking and input methods) is a lot of hassle.
Blizzard's Mac compatibility has been highly praised, and the Windows client works fairly well under Linux (using Cedega) -- I've put many happy hours in on all three platforms. If it were to move to a console, the 360 is an obvious choice, especially as you can plug in USB peripherals. However, a network-enabled Nintendo DS or Sony PSP -- or even a mobile phone -- version of WoW would be interesting, perhaps allowing you to check auctions and craft items on the move.
Would you play WoW on a console? Do you think you would get more friends addicted if it were available? Or would balancing and porting be a bad thing, forcing Blizzard to divide their attention?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
hardwood2001 Feb 8th 2006 11:07AM
wow for the xbox 360? hell yeah i'm in.
Homer 918 Feb 8th 2006 11:50AM
I would definitely buy WOW for the Xbox 360, most of the posts so far seem rather ignorant. THe Xbox 360 supports using the keyboard and a mouse driver could easily be added. I want WOW on the Xbox 360 and so do a whole lot of other people!
jojo Feb 8th 2006 12:27PM
I personally would never forgive Blizzard if it put WoW on the 360. Yes i dont like that system but also because of the fact how would do the patches? the expansion? with the hardrive? well heres one key fact: NOT every person has the hardrive for the 360. well how did the ps2 ff11 do? it did pretty well but its also the ONLY game that supports the hd drive. i doubt blizz would release WoW on a system with only a 'small' percentage of people have the hd
Hugh Jass Feb 8th 2006 12:32PM
This is a wonderful example of a "self-selecting sample." The majority of everyone who has responded is already playing this game on the PC -- and you like it that way. Keyboards, complexity, modfifications, text chat, and so on.
I'm much more of a console person. I've tried a few MMORPGs (Everquest and Star Wars Galaxies) only to find them to be difficult-to-learn time sinks. I'm curious about WoW because everyone says how newbie-friendly it can be, and that it's actually fun to play. Add in voice comms and simple joystick controls and I'm in, at least for a little while.
How to work chats between PC and console players? It would seem fairly trivial to allow voice streams to go to PC players (if they chose to play this way) and put the text streams on the screen for the console players. More likely would probably be console-only servers, putting all the voice-enabled people on their own little island.
As for "there are already too many people on," that seems more like an infrastructure problem, not a game design issue.
I'd love to see more online multiplayer games that don't involve shooting people in the head.
Abhinav Feb 14th 2006 9:20PM
I want this on the consols damnit. Splitting the team be damned, i realy realy want to play this on my big screen TV on my xbox 360.
xlevus Feb 3rd 2006 8:55AM
Well, It'd stink pretty bad.
Imagine trying to play WoW with the default UI 12 UI buttons but only 4/8/however many buttons on a Console controller?
I play with 40 UI buttons and a pet bar, each accessed by keybindings. I can't see that being crammed onto a Console controller without adding some sort of keyboard like device. Which in turn is a pain in the behind when using on the couch.
Jimmy Feb 3rd 2006 9:22AM
The 360 does have USB ports, so plugging in a mouse and keyboard shouldn't be an issue. Jennie does mention that. The big problem that hardcore WoW players are going to have is modding there installs. It seems difficult even impossible to mod the IU on a console, but since the 360 also has a hard drive, anything is possible. It's just a matter of how much time and money Blizzard wants to expend in making a console version of WoW just as good as the PC version.
PodMonkeys Feb 3rd 2006 9:33AM
Assuming I could afford a 360, I'd play WoW on it with a Keyboard and mouse, but probably only for casual going out and farming. I have a nice sized Sony Wega but it doesn't even do 480 :(.
As it is, in my house, I'd probably lean more towards playing on my PowerMac. I could definately see WoW on the 360 for those with slower computers.
On the DS, graphics might look kind of bad, although the input would be a lot easier than on the PSP. For MMORPG type of games, I'd actually lean towards the DS because of the touchscreen allowing for keyboard chat, and spell/action hot keys.
srammij Feb 3rd 2006 9:36AM
My biggest concern is the flood of new traffic. Blizzard really needs to figure out how to handle the high volume before considering this. As it is... most of the servers have queue lines up the wahzooo. Just imagine a whole new round of noobs loggin on.
I think Blizzard would be better off having Starcraft: Ghost be cross platform. I mean really, does Blizzard need to make any more money. I think they should take the money they're making now and improve on how there servers handle their load. How many of us have fallen into the lava pit in IronForge when stepping out of the inn!?
Dalton Marks Feb 3rd 2006 10:00AM
I absolutely would not play WoW on my 360. The experiance would be too different, not to mention the vastly odd control scheme that would be needed to play on the system, unless of course one was to use a keyboard. But if you find yourself at that point, you might as well just be playing on your computer.
thies Feb 3rd 2006 10:05AM
Since when does WoW require "High spec gaming PCs"? I'd understand it if we were talking about a mmorpg with graphics similar to the upcoming Oblivion, but not something with such low polygon and little effects as WoW.
Alexander Feb 3rd 2006 10:18AM
No way. There's already too many people playing right now, with the server queues and the problems that arise from the large populations. Blizzard needs to figure out how they are going to cope with the large flocks of newbs coming in already; they can't deal with another console.
Fabian Feb 3rd 2006 10:46AM
On the high-spec gaming PC thing:
I've started playing WoW on my mobile computer - the trouble is I have to have it fixed so I'll probably be without it for a few weeks or month. So I experimentally installed WoW on my old desktop PC:
1 Ghz AMD Duron
512 MB SD-RAM
64 MB GeForce 3 Ti200
I had to lower most of the optical settings and I'm playing at 800x600 on the old machine, but it works and it works well. It really is smoothly playable (after 2-5 seconds of caching after starting in a new area).
I've now played a few nights on the old machine and it will definitely be no problem to send in my mobile computer and still play WoW in the meantime :)
Steve Feb 3rd 2006 11:12AM
High-spec gaming computer?
WoW takes a low-end computer at most, which everyone has.
The $400+ Xbox 360 is the high-spec hardware. . .
Sonburn Feb 3rd 2006 11:29AM
In regards to the server/que issues... maybe Blizzard could lock down servers with x number of users. Of course if you have a friend that just discovered WoW and you want them to join you on your server, maybe Blizzard can implement some sort of invite feature. Like Gmail used to be, invite only. Of course there will be normal attrition, and if the attrition is greater than addition, and the number of users drops below x, then the server can be opened again for anyone.
Just a thought.
Tobor Feb 3rd 2006 1:24PM
A MMO for xbox360 would be absolutely wonderful, for one very important reason: Voice chat.
Almost all my frustration with WoW involves trying to chat during a battle. I know Teamspeak is out there, but a lot of players dont have it, or cant figure it out, and Xbox live has voice chat as a mandatory standard. Annoying ten year olds notwithstanding, this would be fantastic.
RighteousDork Feb 3rd 2006 1:31PM
If they could somehow make using a controller with WoW work, then I'm all for it. I honestly don't see how they can make a MMORPG cross-platform though. What about chatting? For those on 360, would it be voice chat? If so, how do you work that into a game that primarily relies on text chat? I guess I should see how FFXI is doing it, but ultimately I don't care. It seems like you would eventually just break down and end up using a keyboard and mouse, which I would rather do in front of my PC. I wouldn't be surpised though if this leads to Infinium Labs selling their lapboards like hotcakes.
anotherplayer Feb 4th 2006 4:58AM
Here's an idea. How about you connect your PSP or
whatever to the PC, and check a character out of the
PSP onto the device, which contains a solo dungeon you
can play in the meantime. You can't play that char on
the PC during that time.
Later on you check character and loot back into the PC, and continue as usual.
Slybri Feb 4th 2006 11:15AM
Yeah, WoW would be impossible with a controller. IN fact, even if you have a gamepad for your PC WoW doesn't support it.
And I'd love some sort of portable PSP or DS way of interacting with WoW, but thats just asking for hackers. Not gonna happen.
As for the voice chat thing, forget it. Sure it would be nice in 5 man groups, but if Blizz implemented it themselves, they'd be responsible for cursing, harassment, and sexual predators. And listening to a hot night elf chick talk with a mans voice, or the hulking warrior with a 8 year olds voice kinda ruins the game. You need Text Chat.
No, WoW is designed for a PC. It's a PC game. They still exist you know...PC games. The Xbox hasn't killed them yet.
Fabian Feb 4th 2006 12:22PM
@anotherplayer:
That's not going to happen. Problem is: As soon as you give the control over the character and loot and whatever into the hands of the players machine you're inviting cheaters and hackers. I'm sure that such a thing would be hacked in no time. You could for example hack the thing to fetch all dungeon data and give your character all of the dungeons Experience Points and all loot without the player playing it. You just modify the character data with the data from the offline dungeon - that way it wouldn't even be possible to detect...
...think about it. It's hard enough to make sure noones tampering with their characters or using bots - such a system would bring down everything in the game.
Although copying your character into an offline game to play (and train playing your char) might be less insecure - but ultimately unrewarding ;-)