Report: World Of Warcraft Mobile MMO Canceled – Creo Gaming

Blizzard and Chinese game company NetEase have canceled the World of Warcraft MMORPG for mobile, according to a new report.

The news comes via Bloomberg, which reported that Blizzard and NetEase could not agree on financial terms, and NetEase has since split off 100 teams of developers charged with creating the game’s content.

While the project, called Neptune, was an MMORPG, it was supposed to be a spin-off from a different time period, not a direct translation of Blizzard’s long-running PC MMO. The game would have been in development for three years.

NetEase is a longtime Blizzard partner. The company was for many years the publisher of WoW and other Blizzard franchises in China, and recently developed the free-to-play mobile game Diablo Immortal, which has been heavily criticized for its microtransactions. Despite these criticisms, Diablo Immortal is well on its way to financial success, grossing $100 million and recently released in China, which is probably the game’s main market.

This isn’t the first Warcraft mobile game to be canceled in recent years. Last year, it was reported that Blizzard had canceled the Pokémon GO-esque Warcraft spin-off it had been working on for over four years.

While not an MMO, a Warcraft mobile game is still coming. Warcraft: Arclight Rumble, a strategy game reminiscent of Clash Royale, was officially announced in May.

WoW’s next viable expansion, Dragonflight, will be released before the end of the year and will introduce a new dragon race and class, along with updates to permanent systems such as professions and abilities. Wrath of the Lich King Classic, the game’s most popular expansion, will be re-released on September 26.