Back in February, Activision Blizzard revealed its long-running Warcraft franchise would be heading to mobile this year – and we now know exactly what form it’ll take thanks to the official reveal of free-to-play “tower offence” game Warcraft Arclight Rumble for iOS and Android.
Arclight Rumble is being pitched as a combination of strategy game and tower defense, that sees players choosing from one of several leaders across five factions – Alliance, Horde, Beast, Blackrock, and Undead – each with their own abilities and specialisations.
Objectives vary depending on the chosen map (of which Blizzard is promising 70+ at launch), and these can range from skirmishes to boss battles. Players will need to deploy their units from their available “minis” – 60 collectible minis are being touted for release – and more powerful units can be deployed by gathering gold as a match plays out.
Arclight Rumble will feature player guilds, PvE, PvP, co-op, raids, and dungeons, with Blizzard promising new dungeons every week.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the developer skipped over the subject of monetisation in its reveal presentation, which you can see above, but we should have a clearer idea of how things will play out come the arrival of Arclight Rumble’s closed beta, which is said to be heading to “limited regions” soon.
Warcraft Arclight Rumble’s unveiling follows a string of recent announcements from Activision Blizzard – including World of Warcraft’s new Dragonflight and Lich King Classic expansions – as the company continues its attempts to put the last ten months of disturbing allegations into its workplace culture behind it.
Following a State of California lawsuit filing last July, which described Activision Blizzard as a “breeding ground for harassment and discrimination against women”, CEO Bobby Kotick became the focus of a damning report claiming he was aware of sexual misconduct within the company “for years”. More recently, the parents of a former Activision Blizzard employee who committed suicide during a company retreat in 2017 launched a lawsuit suing the publisher for wrongful death, alleging the suicide was the result of sexual harassment by work colleagues.
Last month, a US district court judge said they were “prepared to approve” Activision Blizzard’s $18m USD settlement of a separate sexual harassment lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last year, despite objections from other parties, but events took a further dramatic turn earlier this month when the governor of California was accused of interfering to support Activision Blizzard in the state discrimination and harassment lawsuit that kickstarted the publisher’s woes.
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Matt Wales
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Matt Wales is a writer and gambolling summer child who won’t even pretend to live a busily impressive life of dynamic go-getting for the purposes of this bio. He is the sole and founding member of the Birdo for President of Everything Society.
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