Warcraft Arclight Rumble is set to bring a very unique form of Warcraft magic to mobile devices. We have seen plenty of gameplay and rank the whole thing.
The fact that mobile gaming is really booming as a market is about as new a realisation as the success of this ominous internet that everyone has been talking about lately – but there is currently a jolt going through the world of mobile gaming.
For quite a while now, various publishers have been trying to bring their traditional console and PC brands to mobile phones. Fortnite, Call of Duty Mobile and PUBG show that millions can be raked in.
So it was only a matter of time before Blizzard saddled up further here. With Hearthstone, they have the prime example of a successful mobile game in their own house – and now comes Warcraft Arclight Rumble! We talked to the developers, had them show us Blizzard’s new game and put all the information together for you here, along with a first assessment.
The developers have already presented Arclight Rumble in a short showcase, which you can watch here:
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What is Warcraft Arclight Rumble?
Now don’t fall off your chair in surprise, but Arclight Rumble is going to be a mobile game – for mobile! Blizzard calls the concept Tower Offense, i.e. a game type of tower defence classics like Kingdom Rush.
You play around 70 single-player missions with one clear goal: defeat the boss. To achieve this, you send your Minions along fixed lanes towards the enemy, just like in a MOBA, while the boss simultaneously tries to destroy your base with his own minions.
On the way to your goal, you will wrestle for control points on the map, for example, your units will capture turrets, gold veins and so on. Your troops are recruited from four factions that every Warcraft fan knows:
- Alliance
- Horde
- Undead
- Wild animals
To improve your chances, you can recruit special leaders in addition to the regular troops, for example Jaina Proudmoore or Grommash Hellscream – also old acquaintances for all WoW fans. These up to 60 hero and villain characters are supposed to be a big attraction of the game, because they can be collected!
A Hero Collector
Anyone who has been on YouTube for the past five years will be familiar with the infamous Raid: Shadow Legends. Collecting cool heroes, sending them into battle – this principle has been booming in Japan for what feels like ages as so-called gacha games and is also gaining more and more traction in the West. On mobile, there are now heaps of Hero Collector spin-offs, for example EA’s money printing machine Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes – still a dangerous game in 2022!
Genshin Impact has also been using the gacha principle very successfully for two years, because people love to unlock new characters. Warcraft Arclight Rumble is in the same vein. You might start the campaign with Jaina, Sylavanas and co., but later you get the chance to unlock Arthas and the like.
So the biggest worry is obvious: as a rule, gacha mechanics in Free2Play games are interlocked with microtransactions. Buy lootboxes, pull new characters, spend real money to shorten the process. But this is where Arclight Rumble is apparently going in a different direction!
How much does Warcraft Arclight Rumble cost?
Arclight Rumble will also be Free2Play, but the developers assure us in conversation: The game only monetises progress, not the characters. There are no loot boxes, instead you can buy premium currency to fill certain progress bars faster. Because pretty much anything can be pimped in Arclight Rumble – your troops, leader figures and so on.
By the way, there will also be no stamina system. For comparison: other mobile games limit how many rounds you can play in a day. Arclight Rumble lets you play until your battery dies. If you pay real money, however, you’ll be able to succeed faster.
When will Arclight Rumble be released? Will there be a beta?
Arclight Rumble is scheduled for release sometime in 2022, Blizzard has not yet given us a more exact release date. There will also be a beta – we’ll update this article with more info as soon as we have it.
Our first impression: For whom will Arclight Rumble be interesting?
Coloured figurines, tower offense, hero collecting – by no means every Warcraft fan will like Arclight Rumble’s peculiarities, because the game speaks its own language despite all the allusions to WoW. We asked the developers about their target group, but only got a rather vague Hey, we want to reach as many people as possible – newcomers as well as veterans as an answer.
If the gameplay is as fun as Blizzard promises, then Arclight Rumble could actually be a pretty nice pastime for all those who like mobile games. Will you get as much of a portionable time-eater here as Hearthstone? Arclight Rumble probably bakes somewhat smaller rolls.
When it comes to multiplayer, for example, the game starts off rather modestly. There is a guild feature and co-op options with friends, but no matchmaking PvP. Nevertheless, weekly dungeons, raids and special missions of this kind should provide variety and long-term motivation.
