Things might get tight for Warcraft Rumble. The mobile team is shrinking after the game apparently hasn’t generated enough profit.
Many fans still haven’t forgiven Blizzard for wanting to conquer the mobile market. The “Do you guys not have phones” memes are still present years after the announcement of Diablo Immortal. But the second purely mobile game, Warcraft Rumble, hasn’t fared well either. Unlike the extremely profitable Diablo, Rumble seems to be running out of steam.
The development team is shrinking, and the “Pay2Win” mechanics are increasing.
A while ago, Rumble launched the Molten Core as a raid:
What’s going on with Warcraft Rumble? Since Activision Blizzard was acquired by Microsoft, numerous employees from various teams have been laid off. Now, many employees from the mobile teams have also had to leave – nearly 400 positions have been cut. While this is technically not “new layoffs,” as they were announced a few months ago, it’s now clear that many in the mobile teams are affected.
According to Michael Pachter, Managing Director and Gaming Research Analyst at Wedbush Securities in Los Angeles, the Warcraft Rumble team is affected because the game has failed to “boost sales” (via siliconvalley.com).
What ultimately caused Warcraft Rumble to fail?
Identifying a single reason is probably difficult. The gameplay of Rumble is actually quite good and fun. At the time of release we praised the game, as the initial hours were very enjoyable.
However, after a few weeks, this feeling noticeably faded. Real progress in the game was only possible if one invested extreme amounts of time in monotonous grinding – or spent real money. Warcraft Rumble is unfortunately Pay2Win at its core, making it unattractive in the long run.
The second major problem for Rumble is likely that hardly any Warcraft fan asked for this game. Rumble had to develop a largely new community, as for current Warcraft fans, especially those playing World of Warcraft in its modern or Classic form, the game was not appealing. There was no connection to the main game, apart from a small promo event in Dragonflight.
What’s next for Rumble? Even though Rumble is still receiving new content, it’s only a matter of time before this game also enters maintenance mode. It cannot be denied that Blizzard is desperately trying to squeeze money out of Rumble: In Season 8 of Warcraft Rumble, players could no longer earn the new unit (“Dryad”) through the guild war chest. This means: One had to spend real money, be successful in PvP, or participate in an event – of which the simplest option was again the use of real money (via blizzard.com).
In addition, the German information page for the game hasn’t been updated with news for months. This is always a sign that things are rapidly going downhill.
It’s a shame that another Blizzard game is racing toward irrelevance with Warcraft Rumble. However, unlike Heroes of the Storm, the sadness over this might be limited. Because the only thing that made Rumble special were the Warcraft characters – everything else could simply be done better by various mobile games.
But hey – at least World of Warcraft is currently as good for solo players as it has ever been. So, one can do without Rumble.
