How much would you engage with World of Warcraft on a controller?

We learned a lot about the future direction of World of Warcraft from the recent fireside chat with Executive Producer and Vice President Holly Longdale, and some of the conversation focused on accessibility and UI improvements. Longdale acknowledged that there was work to do on this front in all areas, but also turned the Q&A session around on the audience to gauge interest in one particular long-asked-for feature.

She asked how many listeners logged into the event would experiment with WoW on a controller, whether for accessibility or other reasons. The response seemed to be overwhelmingly in the positive, although there were plenty of hesitant “maybe” answers and a not-insignificant number of declines.

Longdale admitted that full native controller support would be a “big job,” but looking at the big picture status of Blizzard here in the mid-2020s points towards that job being worth undertaking. Blizzard has been part of Microsoft for several years, and bringing WoW to Xbox would certainly seem like something that would make Microsoft happy. The recent Midnight UI and addon changes combined with a straight-up ask if the community would use a controller point towards the team taking this initiative more seriously than ever.

Personally, I have been adventuring around Azeroth for so long that switching fully to a controller wouldn’t feel right. I have two decades of muscle memory telling my brain how to move my fingers to remove a curse or activate a trinket, so I could not see myself re-learning all of that for the most intense parts of WoW. And yet, I could absolutely see myself sitting back and using a controller for the far more chill aspects of my play time: transmog runs, farming old reputation while watching a movie, fishing.

Of course, the most important reason that players would use a controller is for accessibility. Plenty of community members have already found ways to play World of Warcraft on a controller, but having it as an easily-accessible feature built into the game would certainly be a step forward for anyone who would truly benefit from it.

So how would you approach using a controller for your Midnight activities? Would you experiment to see how you liked it? Would it allow you to jump back into Azeroth in ways you have previously been shut out?