In our latest Engineer’s Workshop, we take a closer look at the development of the WoW Companion App and adding support for multiple expansions.
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Approves this !
Legion is pointless, and so would probably be BfA without the gold missions.
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Idk,many people asked for multi-expansion support.
Probably, I’m not sure if there were mission to give rep. Then maybe it’s valuable for paragon chests.
I wouldn’t say that, Legion at least requires you to do some table missions for various quests especially if you’re doing the Class Hall questlines.
It’s a pretty cute little app. I approve of the little optimisations and optional data downloads, and I can’t deny the considerable effort it takes to rewrite an app.
I do wonder why exactly Apple allowed you to put a LUA interpreter into your app - I assume that’s what you mean when you say you’re using game UI code. Are we dealing with LUA on top of a core C# framework here?
It also seems like you’ve discovered some benefits of polymorphism and data-driven design. This is, of course, something that Blizzard famously pioneered for the RTS genre when they created the Warcraft 3 engine, upon which WoW is based, and I think it’s logical to include it in your mobile app as well.
Should basically make the pipeline for adding new expansion content to the app similar to the process for adding new game content to the actual game.
To be perfectly honest, however, I wish this app just straight-up didn’t exist, and I wish the system it supports didn’t exist, either.
It’s not really offline progression so much as it’s a constant reminder to check your phone to make sure you get the maximum rewards for your WoW characters. It feeds from addictive behaviour instead of tapping into the social and sticky behaviour that WoW’s addictiveness came from and which made it famous.
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It’s great that you people are working on and enjoying this app.
I wish the “content” that fuels this app didn’t exist. WoW was never a browsergame. WoD introduced the mission table and ever since, it’s been a major part of the game, even mandatory for several things such as essences, gear or progression regarding stories.
Making the mission table more complicated won’t make it better. Giving the app multi-expansion support won’t change that many people absolutely despise everything revolving around it.
If you know how many of your players tick, that they want to receive the maximum possible, or get as close to the maximum possible, mission tables and everything around it become mentally mandatory for people. Their mindset doesn’t allow them to not utilize these free items, artifact power or similar. But it makes the game gradually worse in their minds.
I’m not sure if there’s any person that would shed a tear if there was nothing similar to the mission table in Shadowlands. I certainly wouldn’t.
It’s good for you guys that you learn to code mobile apps. It seems like that’s the direction Blizzard is heading anyway, so you can utilize the experience.
This is great! Very nice blog post too for our techie people.
I was absolutely sure they used Unity for the Companion app and now I know they in fact do. Cool, I could work on this. 
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