There's been speculation for years that World of Warcraft was going mobile, usually fuelled by rumours that Blizzard was hiring Java developers, or reports that Vivendi was cooking up a WoW mobile strategy, or simply wishful thinking on the part of us journalists.

Well, the jungle drums are beating again, and this time not only do they focus on iPhone, but there's some authentic-looking video footage behind them:



The video seems to show WoW running on an iPhone app powered by US firm Vollee, which has talked publicly several times about its technology that runs PC-based MMOs and virtual worlds on its servers, then streams them over 3G to mobile handsets.

Strangely, though, Vollee's website has been down since the above video emerged on YouTube, which bloggers have jumped on as a sign that Something Is Up. With that Something possibly being an official deal with Activision Blizzard to bring WoW to iPhone.

My big question is this: why?

Why would anyone want to play World of Warcraft on their iPhone? Proper WoW, I mean - the full game, rather than a spin-off game or connected app (more of which in bit).

Why would you want to play a game designed for keyboard'n'mouse controls over a stable home broadband connection on a 3G phone with no buttons?

The only possible answer is 'because you can' - the sheer technical ingenuity of getting an immersive PC-based MMO to run on a pocketable device that goes everywhere you.

While such curiosity is understandable in the short-term, surely no WoW player would want to spend any amount of time playing the game once that initial novelty had worn off.

Would you play it on the train because you can't bear to be logged out when leaving the house?

If you're that addicted, chances are you're at the stage in the game where tapping on virtual touchscreen buttons to control your character will be a huge disadvantage.

Play it on the sofa because closeting yourself in a study or spare room to play WoW is anti-social? Isn't that what laptops are for? And sorry, it's not much less anti-social, given the concentration required.

And news like this is frustrating because it sells iPhone and mobile short on how they could really have an impact on PC-based MMO games, in a positive way.

Forget streaming an MMO over the air: why not, if you're a Blizzard, create dedicated offline quests into which you could import your character for fun (and possibly experience-gaining) on the go?

Or even create an amazing Bejeweled-style puzzler for an MMO to handle some of the more boring elements of the average MMO - think Aurora Feint style symbol-matching to make or discover spells.

Or, perhaps most relevantly, forget gaming altogether and create a really sophisticated iPhone community app, which brings in guild chat, auctions, avatar customisation and any other elements that could be handled when a player is away from his PC.

iPhone and mobile have huge potential to be integrated into big MMOs, but as a complementary platform, rather than one that's trying to do the job of a PC.

One problem with this approach, possibly, is that it the mobile side needs to be planned in from the earliest development of the main MMO - tacking it on at a later date, as Blizzard would have to do now for WoW, may be tougher.

Kudos to Vollee for its impressive technology, and good luck to the company in striking deals with the big MMOs and virtual worlds.

But the most obvious approach to taking MMOs mobile seems unlikely to be the most useful or appealing to the people who play them.