With the next World of Warcraft expansion, Shadowlands, approaching swiftly, there’s been a great amount of information coming out on a constant basis. While the alpha is still highly active, much of the information comes out of datamining, with Wowhead generally leading the charge in that regard.
The latest information that we have today comes from the recent Shadowlands Alpha Build, 34199. This new build comes with a great amount of information for us to dig into, but one of the most interesting things to see is undoubtedly the addition of new controller support.
Gamepad support is enabled in the #Shadowlands alpha! Check out some footage of WoW played with a gamepad and the key binds UI:https://t.co/L9nP0ELSJe pic.twitter.com/BSSyqHScVr
— Wowhead💙 (@Wowhead) May 3, 2020
As the tweet that we’ve placed above shows, players will soon be able to bind their keys to a controller or gamepad. It seems like you’ll be able to customize as many buttons as you have on your controller!
One thing that’s rather important to note about this, seeing as it’s one of the first things that comes to mind when controllers are mentioned, is that this is not a sign of World of Warcraft being ported to any consoles. Blizzard has been quite adamant that they have no intentions of bringing the MMORPG over to consoles.
Instead, this added support is going to be completely focused on accessibility. For many differently-abled people, controllers can be easier to use than wide keyboards with dozens of keys. The only goal here is to make it so that as many people can journey through World of Warcraft as possible without allowing physical barriers to stand in the way.
“For a long time, we’ve seen a small number of players turn to 3rd party addons, such as Console Port, in order to work through certain accessibility issues,” Blizzard writes. “We always want to make WoW more widely accessible, if possible, 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.”
It’s a fantastic addition to a game that really shouldn’t come with any sort of opposition. No player is suffering from this addition – just don’t use them if you don’t want them – but countless players will be benefiting from the addition.
If they do eventually decide to have the game come over to consoles, though, it’s fantastic to already have an outline ready for the controller support! It’s absolutely a win situation for all players, and provides a wonderful addition of accessibility to bring more people into the World of Warcraft.
