After months of speculation over Blizzard’s upcoming mobile game, Warcraft Arclight Rumble has finally been revealed to the world. Blizzard is marketing the fast-paced, action-oriented game as a “tower offense,” and it is its first entry in the strategy genre since Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2. With a team of Warcraft and Blizzard veterans helming the project, Warcraft Arclight Rumble is promising an authentic Warcraft experience that is both unique and nostalgic.
Game Rant sat down with Vik Saraf, Warcraft Arclight Rumble’s executive producer and vice president, as well as technical director Monte Krol to get some insight on the game. The developers spoke on the nature of Warcraft Arclight Rumble as a Warcraft title and mobile game, and how they were ensuring the game stayed true to the legacy of the franchise. They also shared some logistics on how Warcraft Arclight Rumble will work, from platform availability and unit collection and progression to crossovers and competition with similar games.
Keeping Warcraft in Warcraft Arclight Rumble
With almost 30 years of history behind it, Warcraft is a recognizable and nostalgic gaming franchise. Though it began as a real-time strategy game series, it later branched off into the genre-defining World of Warcraft MMO and Hearthstone, Blizzard's light-hearted collectible card game. Across the decades and genres, the essence of Warcraft has been distilled into recognizable features: a unique art style, recognizable characters and locations, and recurring themes.
Warcraft Arclight Rumble seeks to capture that essence first and foremost. The game features many strategic elements reminiscent of old school Warcraft games, but through the lens of a care-free, chaotic tour of Azeroth, full of recognizable characters and settings. “You’ll see a lot of familiar locations on over 70 maps that take us through a familiar journey if you’ve played World of Warcraft,” Krol explained, “if you haven’t, there’s lots of fun stuff to see and explore.” Long-time fans of the franchise shouldn’t expect to see new characters or locations, but will instead revisit the classics in an all new manner.
“You’re going to be visiting most of the zones of Classic WoW across the two original continents of Azeroth in largely the same order you visited them in Classic WoW, so I think that is going to make it a familiar romp.“
Of course, one of the greatest challenges Warcraft Arclight Rumble must face is its own existence as a mobile game. Mobile gaming has a negative reputation associated with it because of the inundation of poor-quality and predatory games on the market. Mobile games are lucrative because of their microtransaction-dependent business models, which has led to many gamers to dismiss mobile games outright as shallow cash grabs.
Warcraft Arclight Rumble is well-aware of this stigma, and according to Saraf, it is working to establish itself as a serious game – ironic, given its zany nature. He is confident the Arclight Rumble team – with deep roots in gaming, Blizzard, and Warcraft itself – is creating an authentic Warcraft game on mobile devices, rather than just a mobile game with Warcraft characters. “We have an extensive PvE campaign,” he explained, “but also various game modes like PvP and co-op. We’re making something you can choose to sit down and immerse yourself in for multiple hours should you choose to, but also something you can play on the go as well.” In many ways, it seems Warcraft Arclight Rumble is being designed to allow fans to experience Warcraft in a way that is both new and familiar at the same time.
“Even though Warcraft Arclight Rumble is a mobile game, it’s not just a mobile game. We set forth to make a Blizzard mobile experience…. There’s no escaping this is a mobile game, but I don’t think that necessarily should be looked at as a bad thing. This is just another platform you can experience Blizzard games on.”
Mobile Game Mechanics in Warcraft Arclight Rumble
As a mobile game, Warcraft Arclight Rumble follows a familiar template of being free to play, but with microtransactions. Saraf explained how the game’s business model would look like. Gold, the game’s currency, is collected through two ways: natural gameplay and microtransactions. Whether collected via quests, missions, or completing content in game or through the in-game shop with real money, all gold is the same in Warcraft Arclight Rumble. This means real money can’t get players anything unavailable to free-to-play accounts, but it can speed up the collection and upgrade of units.
“[The team] sought to create a balanced game you can play for free, without having to spend a dime. We talk about collecting minis–you can earn all of those through in-game achievements... There are purchase options, but this is a game we designed so you can play for free.”
The shop itself uses a rotating stock that rotates periodically, offering boosts, XP tomes, and specific units, be they Troops, Leaders, or Spells. Though there is a random element as to when certain units are available in the store, units are not acquired through random chance, meaning players won't have Gacha pulls or loot boxes for collecting their favorite Warcraft characters. “When you decide to buy a unit with your earned coins or through a purchase, you can make the conscientious choice to get a specific unit,” Saraf said, “So it’s not like you’re putting something down and randomly getting a unit based on that.” Low pull rates of highly-desired units are one of the biggest money sinkholes in mobile gaming, so it seems promising Warcraft Arclight Rumble is avoiding that particular pitfall.
An interesting predicament Warcraft Arclight Rumble must contend with is competition with Hearthstone, Warcraft’s collectible mobile card game. As one of the few Blizzard mobile titles, and a game in the Warcraft franchise to boot, concern of over-saturation of products in the ecosystem is real. However, Saraf seems confident both games thrive together, without competing with each other for attention, as the games occupy different strategic niches.
“Hearthstone is the only Warcraft-based mobile product out there on the market, but I also think our games are very different, and that they can appeal to different audiences… I’m not too worried about cannibalization because I think there’s enough room for both games to coexist and succeed.”
Of course, no Blizzard game would be complete without franchise crossovers. Almost every title, from Diablo to Overwatch to Starcraft, has held events where players can unlock cosmetics, items, and other goodies in one game by completing events in another. While Warcraft Arclight Rumble has no current plans for running these events, Saraf said those sorts of things will come when the game is closer to release. Krol agreed with him. “We enjoy those crossovers in other games too,” he said. “Too early to talk about it for us, but we love how that works too.” It seems inevitable Warcraft Arclight Rumble will have similar incentives with Hearthstone, World of Warcraft, and other Blizzard games.
Warcraft Arclight Rumble is gearing up to be a nostalgic, fast-paced homage to the Warcraft franchise. The game has no solid release date at present, but Warcraft Arclight Rumble is already in closed alpha and seems to be far along in development. Blizzard has already begun pre-registering for beta and early access, which is likely to come soon after.
Warcraft Arclight Rumble is currently in development.