Highlights

  • World of Warcraft's new arachnophobia mode in The War Within turns spiders into crabs, providing a hilarious solution for players with a fear of spiders.
  • The War Within expansion features underground zones and brings back Nerubians, but players can use Crab Mode to swap spiders with crustaceans.
  • The development of the arachnophobia toggle was driven by both player feedback and developer struggles with the abundance of spiders in the game.

World of Warcraft is adding a new arachnophobia mode in The War Within that transforms every spider in the game into a crustacean. This hilarious new accessibility tool literally changes the game, turning pets, mounts, and enemies in World of Warcraft into crabs and lobsters.

The War Within, World of Warcraft’s 10th expansion, takes place on Khaz’Algar, an island featuring four new zones, three of which are located underground. All across the areas, players will encounter Nerubians, an iconic race of spider-like monsters World of Warcraft fans have battled for over 20 years. While many are excited to fight the Nerubians once more, players with arachnophobia have been dreading The War Within and its abundance of spiders.

a group of earthen, the new allied race from wow tww
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Luckily, World of Warcraft thought of that, and is implementing an arachnophobia toggle with a hilarious twist. Affectionately referred to as “Crab Mode,” fans can use the new Arachnophobia Mode setting to replace almost every spider or spider-like monster with a crab, lobster, or similar creature. This applies to old areas as well as new ones, including iconic World of Warcraft raid bosses like Maexxna and Hadronox, though some drider-like humanoid spiders, such as the Fal’dorei from Suramar or Yazma from Atal’dazar, are not currently affected.

WoW’s Arachnophobia Mode Turns Spiders Into Crabs

Hilariously, this new accessibility option even changes some World of Warcraft mounts and battle pets, too. Spider and crab mounts are both pretty rare, but players who have been unable to collect one of the latter can technically do so using the former with the click of a button.

According to the developers in World of Warcraft’s recent alpha WoWCast episode, this setting was as much for them as it was for the fans, considering many arachnophobic devs were struggling while working on the expansion due to the abundance of spiders. The arachnophobia mode was primarily developed by WoW quest designer Prettyokaydev, who invited players to give feedback if the team missed any monsters in the mode.

Understandably, World of Warcraft players got a kick out of this new accessibility setting in The War Within. While arachnophobic fans were genuinely relieved to see it added, the spectacle of seeing dozens of crabs swarming on the screen instead was quite comical – so much so that some players might use it even if they aren’t arachnophobic. That said, Crab Mode would likely be a nightmare for kabourphobic fans. Luckily, the fear of crustaceans is significantly rarer than arachnophobia, so hopefully, few suffer from both phobias, so this toggle can make the game more comfortable for them to play once WoW releases The War Within.