Looks like it went bad in the realm of Azeroth, at least in the mobile version of it. According to a very strong rumor from the finance website Bloomberg, World of Warcraft Mobile has been canceled.
According to the site, more than 100 developers who were in charge of creating content and maintaining development of the game after it was released were removed from their roles and reassigned to other projects.
The now-canceled title, codenamed Neptune, was conceived as a massively multiplayer online role-playing game set in the same universe as World of Warcraft. It would not be a direct translation of the popular online game, but a spin-off, set in a different time period. A spokesperson for NetEase declined to comment. An Activision Blizzard spokesperson had no comment.
The company also canceled another project based on Warcraft, an augmented reality game similar to Pokémon GO, Bloomberg News reported. That game, codenamed Orbis, had been in development for over four years.
The game was in development in partnership with NetEase. That's right, the same as Diablo Immortal. Despite the commercial success of the new Diablo game, Blizzard doesn't seem to want to get involved in new controversies and doesn't want to tarnish (even more) the legacy of the Warcraft franchise.
Also according to Bloomberg, it seems that the companies were not able to reach an agreement in financial terms in the main market for them, the Chinese. NetEase is a Chinese company and it would be in charge not only of development, but also of marketing the game in that country.
If this cancellation is confirmed, the partnership between Blizzard and NetEase wouldn't be so good.
It is worth remembering that we are talking about World of Warcraft Mobile and not about Warcraft Arclight Rumble, which is another game that is in the final stages of release and that will arrive in 2022 for Android and iOS.
Rumors of a World of Warcraft Mobile have been floating around the internet since 2018 and it was even thought that it would be something in the style of "Pokémon GO" that according to the source, it was also canceled.
Source: Bloomberg
