14 DAY TRIAL // Surreal? Yes, but this video is also too believable not to share. According to several reports yesterday, someone posted a video of a World of Warcraft client running pretty well on the iPhone. Using the VolleeX engine, WoW can (seemingly) be controlled very well via the iPhone's touchscreen interface.
Kotaku picked up on the video before it got pulled, noting that, “One would reasonably expect that a company working on this kind of an application, 'in negotiations with Activision' would have a functioning Web site that touts at least the app, if the Warcraft aspect is too early to announce.” Indeed, it is a bit strange to see that Vollee's website is down, while all YouTube videos of the WoW port have been pulled as well. Luckily, Kotaku's Owen Good got hold of the video demonstration just in time. You can view it below, by the way.
So, “how is this possible?” you may wonder. Well, there's an explanation for this, thanks to the folks at TouchArcade. According to the gaming-focused site, what we are looking at is a game port allegedly running in the Vollee client. Vollee is an application developed by a company making mobile software, whose goal is to allow mobile 3G phones to play CPU-intensive PC applications over the network. The site also posts an excerpt from an interview with Vollee's Head of Business Development, Julian Corbett, and Linden Lab's VP of Platform Development, Joe Miller.
In the interview, Julian Corbett reveals that, “Through the VolleeX engine, we can take full PC games, MMOs or even virtual worlds and stream them to any 3G-enabled handsets. This means that you can now access games or full persistent online worlds right from your mobile handset. It's a real step forward for mobile games, as you can now have meaningful connected experiences on your handset.”
Vollee first demoed the app using Linden Lab's Second Life on a mobile phone. Interestingly (yet adding more credibility to the video in question), Vollee has announced a partnership with Activision Blizzard to port World of Warcraft to mobile devices. Moreover, the company actually promised last year to start supporting the iPhone.