You must have heard that Blizzard is working on a "next-gen MMO" through the job listings on the website of Blizzard. But that was no more than a conjecture until "World of Warcraft" game director Jeffrey Kaplan confirmed to MTV Multiplayer that he#DY#s "definitely involved" in the project at BlizzCon last weekend.Here are the detials:
"I think the great part about a new MMO from Blizzard is that it doesn#DY#t have to be #DY#WoW#DY#," he said. "There are a lot of lessons we learned in making #DY#World of Warcraft,#DY# and some of those you can take and do things better than you ever did before."
I asked if he was concerned about the new MMO potentially cannibalizing "WoW" subscribers. Kaplan said he wasn#DY#t worried at all, and that the company was going to great lengths to make sure that the new game doesn#DY#t directly cannibalize "WoW."
But with the huge success of "WoW," and now "Warhammer Online," I wondered if there was any room for MMOs that weren#DY#t inspired by high fantasy. "Oh yeah," Kaplan said. "I only think [non-high fantasy MMOs] have a harder time because of the past games that have tried and the game design decisions that they made, not because of the [intellectual property] or the setting that they chose."
| "I#DY#m shocked we haven#DY#t seen more MMOs... beyond the traditional high fantasy ones." |
He thought the secret to success was making a game that was both tailored to hardcore players and accessible to a broad audience. "Once people figure that out, your game world is going to attract a lot of people," he explained. "But a lot of it has to do with art style, too. Are you going for realism or an inviting world? And once you learn those lessons, I think any type of [intellectual property] can survive. I#DY#m shocked we haven#DY#t seen more sci-fi, near-future, post-apocalyptic, historical MMOs; there#DY#s all these completely different fantasy settings beyond the traditional high fantasy ones."
So is Blizzard#DY#s new MMO going to be sci-fi, near-future, post-apocalyptic or historical? "All of those combined!" he said, laughing.
