World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is getting controller support

After over 15 years as a mouse and keyboard MMO, it looks like World of Warcraft is finally getting controller support in its next expansion. Word of the controller support comes from the Blizzard forums where community manager Randy “Kaivax” Jordan discussed the issue.

According to Jordan, Blizzard has been thinking about adding controller support to World of Warcraft for a while, particularly because of the popularity of third-party controller solutions. But with the Shadowlands expansion the developer finally decided it was time to make the leap and include first-party controller support, rather than making players download add-ons.

While players might initially be confused at the inclusion of controller support, given that World of Warcraft is a complicated MMO with dozens of abilities per-character, Jordan has an answer for that too.

“We always want to make WoW more widely accessible, if possible,” Jordan explained. “So in Shadowlands, we’re attempting to add some support for keybinds, camera, and turning a character on controllers such as the Xbox Adaptive Controller.”

While we now know that Blizzard is at least working on controller support for Shadowlands, we likely won’t hear much more about it until the feature arrives in the game or on the Public Test Realm.

Xbox Adaptive Controller

• $100

Prices taken at time of publishing.

Designed to make gaming accessible for people with disabilities, the Xbox Adaptive Controller includes large, customizable buttons, and easily connects to other external devices like joysticks.

• $100 at Microsoft

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