World of Warcraft to go mobile?

Activision Blizzard, the developer of world’s biggest MMO World of Warcraft (WoW), has announced that it is looking at porting WoW to mobile devices. Senior WOW producer John Lagrave, speaking to Eurogamer at Blizzard HQ last week, outlined the challenges involved, but added that the company has still not given up on delivering its game World of Warcraft to mobile users.

The iOS ecosystem currently offers a WoW Mobile Armory application that lets players view character sheets, use the Auction House and manage guilds.
Lagrave said that developing for mobile is very hard but that the company is always looking into it. He said “Maybe we’ll stumble on the great way to put WOW on the phone – maybe we won’t, but we’re certainly looking into it.”
He said that it would be foolish for any game dev to think handheld but stressed that Blizzard won’t do it until it’s decent. He said that when they get an epiphany, everyone will know “But for now, no epiphany!”
The announcement has come at a time when WoW has been experiencing a continuous decline in subs over the past year.
The World of Warcraft is officially the most played massively multi-player online role-playing game throughout the world with a subscriber base surpassing 10 million+ members. With the high gross margins associated with the MMORPG genre, WoW is very profitable for Activision Blizzard.
However, the reign of WoW has been under constant threat over the past year, with the total number of subs declining from 12 million+ in December 2010 to 10.2 million in December 2011.
The reason behind the decline is the emergence of free-to-play MMOs as well as the successful launch of EA’s Star Wars: The Old Republic, which has given WoW a run for its money.