World of Warcraft developer Blizzard Entertainment is eyeing introducing a new accessibility option after 20 years of operation — an arachnophobia mode. This will be part of The War Within expansion, which focuses on Nerubian, which is a spider-like race, but assures people it won’t just be for that specific expansion.
During a roundtable interview attended by Eurogamer, associate design director Maria Hamilton explained players can turn it on and off, with the game replacing the spiders with crabs. The crustaceans were picked largely because they aren’t too different from the spider models, with a similar — but different enough — look and the same hitbox.
The introduction of arachnophobia mode is pretty recent, with Satisfactory billed as among the first — if not the first — game to introduce such a feature. When asked why it wasn’t implemented sooner, the team didn’t realize how much of an issue some people had with the spiders, with even people part of their team not wanting to work with the Nerubian race since they are “really bad with spiders.”
The War Within is supposed to arrive later this year as part of the new Worldsoul Saga, which will consist of two more expansions with a story arc tying the expansions together. Frankly, an arachnophobia mode, while recent, isn’t a bad idea, some people may shy away from some games because it heavily involves spiders.
