According to a new report, Blizzard and the Chinese game company NetEase have canceled an MMORPG of World of Warcraft not announced for mobile devices.
The news, arrived by Bloomberg, states that Blizzard and NetEase could not agree to the financial terms and therefore decided to disband a team of 100 NetEase developers tasked with creating content for the game.
Although it was said that the project, codenamed Neptune, were it an MMORPG, this would not have been a direct translation of Blizzard's long-running PC MMO, but rather a spin-off set in a different time period. The game is said to have been in development for a good three years.
NetEase is a longtime partner of Blizzard. The company has been the publisher of WoW and other Blizzard franchises in China for years and recently co-developed the free-to-play mobile game. Diablo Immortal , which was heavily criticized for its microtransactions.
Despite these criticisms, Diablo Immortal is on track to be a financial success, having reportedly earned $ 100 million so far and recently launched in China, which is expected to be the game's main market.
It's not the first Warcraft mobile game to have been canceled in recent years. Last year, news broke that Blizzard had canceled a Warcraft-style spin-off Pokemon GO which had been in development for more than four years.
A Warcraft mobile game is still coming, even if it's not an MMO. Warcraft: Arclight Rumble, a strategic title reminiscent of Clash Royale, was officially revealed in May.
WoW's next true expansion, Dragonflight, will arrive later this year and will introduce a new race and class of dragons along with system revamps.
A re-release of the game's most popular expansion, Wrath of the Lich King Classic, will launch on September 26.
Fonte: Bloomberg
