Blizzard COO Paul Sams was interviewed by VentureBeat’s blog: GameBeat to talk about World of Warcraft: Cataclysm and the Unannounced MMO.
Paul Sams describes in a heartbeat the 20 years worth of experiences that have led Blizzard Entertainment to be successful as a studios.
Something to note is that GameBeat focuses religiously on social games: PC, cellphones, iPad, iPhone, PSP, etc.
I bring it up because the main topic of this interview is the upcoming MMO by Blizzard Entertainment. Paul Sams refrained from dubbing this MMO as Titan, after the interviewer mentioned that name.
“VB: What is your thinking about when to do a new game instead of continuously refining your older game? When do you do the next MMO?
PS: We have another MMO that I don’t think we’ve been talking about.
VB: Project Titan, right? Based on the leaked schedule.
PS: We will just talk about “the project”.
VB: Yeah, so how do you decide that?
PS: We intend to do more expansions too. There is no change in our thinking. We intend absolutely positively to continue to support the existing World of Warcraft product. There are over 12 million global paying subscribers that are active in our game. We are not going to turn our back on them and we intend to continue to support that franchise for many many years to come. As to our new unannounced game, we believe that it will be more complementary than competitive. And while people do have a limited amount of free time that they can devote to these types of games, we do think that people will want to check out the new and the old. We think the new one is very compelling and is going to capture a lot of hearts and minds and will be very successful for us. But we also believe that many people will continue playing World of Warcraft because they have such a huge collection of friends and community. We have taken some of our most experienced developers and put them on this project. We believe we have a dream team. These are the people who made WoW a success. We are going to blow people’s minds.”
At last, solved. I still remember our years’ ago’s debates of a new IP not an MMO, a new IP and MMO and whatever.
So it’s confirmed both are new IP, and surprisingly, both are MMO. I expected the 2 new IP thing since long ago, but 2 MMOs? that surprised me, I didn’t expect that in any way.
Guess they prefer money-making titles these days :(.
Wait a minute, I’m reading the interview and I don’t see anything about a second MMO. What’s your source for this? I’ve been following the topic for a long time, and I don’t recall anything like that.
My information is: next-gen MMO and new IP, but there’s no confirmation at all that those 2 aren’t the same, or that the second is another MMO :S.
Its just MD trying to protect his pet theory that the Next Gen MMO is actually SC: Ghost. We do know that Blizzard has two announced projects, but we had confirmation that the Next Gen MMO was a new IP before Blizz started hiring for the other project. We don’t know anything at all about that game.
Whoa? ok let me address a few things here.
1. The Next-Gen MMO can be anything. My opinion? It “might” be StarCraft: Ghost — Rob Pardo has mentioned this game will be developed at some point in the future at least in two interviews a few months apart back in 2007. It’s been 3 years since that. StarCraft: Ghost Spectres hits bookstores on Sept 27, 2011. StarCraft: Ghost Academy Vol. 3 hit bookstores today March 8th. For a game that is postponed that universe keeps expanding quite a lot year after year. Next-Gen MMO can also be Diablo related — with Diablo III doing the same function as WarCraft III (expanded the lore as an intro to the WoW MMO). Or it can be a new IP. I’m not saying it is THIS or THAT. I am just sharing my opinion, and offering a sort of “backing up” reasoning. You the fan choose what to believe — but ultimately you and I are both theorycrafting, speculating because there hasn’t been any official announcements revealing what the Next-Gen MMO is.
2. A couple years ago or less, I directly contacted someone at Blizzard Entertainment. It was the first time I ever contacted that person. I remind you I have been at their Irvine Studios around three times in the past 3 years. Got a few business cards, and emails.
The person isn’t part of Public Relations, nor a Community Manager. It’s a developers.
Actually, I will simply copy/paste part of the email itself — and hopefully this clears up any confusion.
Thus the Next-Gen MMO and the Unannounced Game are both MMOs. They are two separate MMOs. The Unannounced Game is a brand new IP.
I posted this in Blizzplanet and in the IncGamers main site. Actually, I think Rush posted it after chatting with me. I got posting privileges in there afterwards.
Here are some links you may wish to read:
http://pc.incgamers.com/News/22963/blizz-new-ip—outside-scope-of-existing-franchises
Found the link to the news Paul (Rush) posted after we chat about the quote I posted above from a developer.
http://pc.incgamers.com/News/15620/blizzard-working-on-new-ip
Still, I read your comments and whatnot, but I don’t see anything implying anything of that.
We know there’s a new-gen MMO, and a new IP. No idea if they’re the same game, and no idea if the new IP is a MMO.
As I interpret it, the contact says they’re using the WoW engine, okay, but he doesn’t say for what of those 1/2/3/1337 games, and, mind what, using WoW engine doesn’t imply it’s going to be a MMO, the “engine” is the physical part of the game, everything else like connection, cameras and gameplay is built over the engine.
Also, we know they have a MMO with a “cantina” system, which points, imo, to a widely instance game, that with their approach of WoW, dismisses RPG, unless it’s a pretty weird RPG, and points to a MMOFPS, a new unexplored market.
No idea if next-gen MMO is the one using the cantina (guess yes), and no idea if the new IP and that same MMO are the same game (some sources say they’re different, but I don’t see anything clearing that up properly).
As for StarCraft: Ghost, Ghost Academy series don’t mean anything. Yes, nothing. So don’t hope to have any opportunity because that manga series means nothing at all.
HOWEVER, Spectres recovers the “StarCraft: Ghost” trademark, only used once with “Nova” novel years ago. This one COULD mean something.
Finally, and off-topic, I would like you to check this out, Med: http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/03/03/are-blizzard-and-tokyopop-going-their-separate-ways/ and try to add more to it. I wouldn’t like it to be true.
Wow, this is incredibly wrong. Paul Sams mentions they haven’t been talking about the new MMO because they haven’t been. They’ve acknowledged it exists and they are making one… but they’re not talking ABOUT it. This doesn’t mean there are 2 MMOs.
Come on now.
Continue the discussion here: http://www.blizzplanet.com/blog/comments/blizzard-coo-paul-sams-on-next-gen-mmo-were-playing-it-already :).