Having been released nearly 2 decades ago, it’s a bit irksome that the MMORPG juggernaut World of Warcraft has, up to the writing of this article, made no official release of a mobile version of the game. Which is insane. Most phones today are as powerful or significantly more so than the machines WoW ran on in 2004. Seriously, why won’t Blizzard just let us play WoW while we’re away from our PCs?
Thankfully, a Reddit user came up with a way to get the game to run on their phone. He even posted a video showcasing how he’d leveled a character up to level 17 while playing exclusively on his phone.
Efficient Farming on Mobile
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If you are serious about playing WoW and making the most of your time, then playing WoW on mobile gives you much more time to grind out levels and gold. But now you might feel you’re spending your breaks at work, just clocking in to work in WoW grinding gold and experience. You want more time to have fun, not do more busy work.
Instead of finding ways to grind more in your free time, by using a professional farm service – like https://despize.com/wow/gold – to handle the tedium for you. So you can enjoy the new free time you have to play WoW on mobile on the best content the game has to offer.
How To Play WoW on Mobile With Steam Link
So now, we’re going to go over the steps you need to take to play WoW on mobile.
1. Install Steam Link and Link It to the Mobile Device
- Create a Steam profile, and install Steam on your PC if you haven’t already
- Log in to your Steam profile on your PC
- Download and install the Steam Link app on your mobile device through the Play Store or the Apple App Store.
After installing Steam Link to your mobile device, open the app and link your mobile device to your Steam profile. To make your mobile device easily detectable, make sure your phone and your PC are on the same internet network. From the Steam Link app, scan the network for computers running Steam.
If the scan is unable to automatically detect your PC follow these steps:
- Go to Steam’s settings on your PC (Click “Steam” in the upper right corner of the main Steam window, then “Settings” from the drop-down menu, then “Remote Play” from the pop-up window, then click “Pair Steam Link”, which will open a dialog box asking for a code.
- To get the code you need for the dialog box, select the “Other Computer” option on Steam Link on your mobile device, which will give you a code to enter in the dialog box.
Since WoW isn’t normally run through Steam, you’re going to need to add WoW as a shortcut in Steam on your PC.
- Click the “Games” drop-down menu at the top of the Steam main window, or click “Add a Game” located at the bottom left of the main Steam window, either way, select “Add a Non-Steam Game” next.
- To add WoW to Steam, you need to add the direct WoW executable and not the executable for Battle.net.
This is found in the installation directory of World of Warcraft on your PC.
To know whether an executable directly launches the game or just the Battle.net client, simply open each executable in your World of Warcraft installation folder until you find the right one.
2. Access the Controls
The next step, to give you access to the different controls you’ll need to play WoW on mobile, is to configure the controls for your mobile device.
- In Steam Link on your mobile device, select “Start Playing”.
- Then open “Settings” in the top right corner of the app.
- Then under under “Controller” tap “Base Configurations” and go to “Desktop Configurations”.
- Tap “Browse Configs”, then go to “Templates”.
- Scroll to the bottom of the Templates list to select “Keyboard (WASD) and Mouse”.
3. Launch WoW
Now you can launch WoW from your Steam Library. Once in-game, open the Options menu on the top left-hand side of the screen of your mobile device and open Layout Options to add the WASD controls you set up in the previous step. Here you can also adjust the positioning of your different controls on the screen of your mobile device for ease of access.
Change the Mouse Control Scheme to whatever you are more comfortable using – the poster recommends the Direct Cursor control scheme so that it behaves like a touchscreen.
Other Important Things to Know About Playing WoW on Mobile
Additionally, there are some settings you can change in WoW itself that may make your experience playing WoW on mobile smoother and more enjoyable.
Configure your keybindings to your preference, or at least take a look at the default keybindings just so you know which key does what. The original poster suggests assigning R and F for switching up and down between hotbars and E for auto-run.
Enable left-click interaction since you won’t have easy access to right-click while playing on a mobile device.
Depending on the bandwidth and speed of your internet connection of both your phone and your pc, lower graphics settings may help the game stream more smoothly through Steam Link.
With everything set up, you should now be able to comfortably play WoW TBC Classic remotely on your mobile device – the caveat being that you’ll still need to leave your computer running and connected to Steam with a reliable internet connection. But hey, it’s still a step up from not being able to play WoW, right?
You can see the original post here.