WoW Forever's controller support was built with help from the Diablo team
Blizzard says controllers can handle every dungeon role, including healing, without an AddOn.
You may not know this, but WoW Forever has real controller support. Yes, no more AddOns are needed, because it is built into the game directly by Blizzard.
And if you were wondering if it really works for any roles and content, the answer is yes. The developers talked about it during the 5th WoW Forever podcast episode.
It turns out that you can tank, heal, and DPS in any content!
The Diablo Team Helped Out
During the podcast, Ana Resendez (Lead Software Engineer for Forever) explained that they got help from the Diablo developers for this.
Diablo 4 can be played with a gamepad, so in theory, the D4 team knows what they are doing. There are some slight issues in Diablo 4 when you try to pick up items, but overall, it is good controller support.
And apparently, Resendez was really not convinced by the idea at first. MMOs on controller are not really something that you see that often, so it makes sense that devs were not extremely hyped by it. It was definitely a surprise for many when it was announced. But now she admitted that she almost only plays with a gamepad, even during raid testing.
The controller is also not just made for casual levelling. You can definitely still properly play with a controller, and even past level 60 you can tank, heal, and deal damage in dungeons, in the open world, and even in raids.
We Tested It During the Beta
We personally tried the controller during the WoW Forever Beta and stress test, and it felt surprisingly smooth.
At first, we were not that convinced, because it took a while to make the controller work in the first place. It took a little time to get used to it, but after that, smooth sailing! Moving around and fighting felt easy and comfortable.
For a game like Forever, it almost feels perfect. Why? Simply because you should not rush this game, and the controller kind of makes you want to take it easy. And if you want to know why you should not rush this game, we recommend the following video:
WoW Forever is the first version of WoW that has native controller support, so you will not have to use an AddOns.
We could not test it in raids, obviously, so we will have to see how it goes in endgame content, but for leveling and dungeons it is the perfect definition of "taking it easy and relaxing".
You should try it out!
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