Who’s Ready to Raid? (sent from my Blackberry)

Who out there is thinking that playing WoW on your smartphone is a good idea?  Sure, maybe I could see adding the casual items, but in my time playing (I never raided heavily, but I was a pretty decent tank at heroics), the end-game content is what matters, and in that stuff you play in a group, and the other people in that group generally CARE about succeeding in the game with the time they have invested.  They are not going to be particularly interested while you handicap yourself with unresponsive and inadequate controls.

The point of a smartphone/tablet is to provide a simple interface (touch) that is intuitive.  If you look at the latest games (Batman is a good example, but this applies to WoW as well), there are lots and lots of controls that need to be coordinated, something I don’t think is remotely possible on a touchscreen.  And nor should it need to do that!  It’s actually ok to have different controls excel at different things.  It’s easy to look at the success of the iPad/iPhone and think “that’s the way everything is going” without really thinking about the fact that what we have now for the controls for games actually works and is like it is for a reason regardless of the next new thing.

I think it’s all too easy for people who don’t really game or know what it is like to assume that you can do anything with a touch interface because you can use Facebook with it.  But when it comes to actual gaming (no, Angry Birds is not what I am talking about), it actually can require some skill even with all the best controls.  If you choose to play on a device with poor controls, you are effectively limiting your effectiveness as a player, and especially in multiplayer environments, that just isn’t going to fly.