An incubation team at Blizzard are currently working on a World of Warcraft spin-off for mobile that’s inspired by Niantic’s location-based augmented reality game Pokemon Go.

As reported by Kotaku, "quite a few" developers at Blizzard are avid Pokemon Go players, with the iconic orc statue in the centre of Blizzard’s campus a pokemon gym.

One such fan is said to be lead designer, Cory Stockton, who formerly worked on World of Warcraft.

People who have gotten their hands on the spin-off reportedly claim it has a lot more to it than Pokemon Go and involves single-player mechanics.

Pet project

Details beyond that are sparse, with the focus of the report on the developer culture around Blizzard and the Diablo IP.

While Blizzard’s recently announced mobile MMO Diablo Immortal was met with fan backlash, one developer, who wished to remain anonymous, revealed that many developers at Blizzard are fans of mobile games themselves.

“There are lots of mobile game players at Blizzard,” said a current developer.

“There are lots of people actually excited about mobile games. The reaction inside the company to Immortal is very different than the reaction outside the company.

“Part of the thinking on a lot of these is, people want to work on smaller projects. Smaller projects in mobile tend to make sense.”