Blizzard is developing a new MMO

[Giller]

proof here:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=3168513730&pageNo=2&sid=1#38

But if it's anything like WoW, it probably won't be released for 4 or 5 years from now.  I am not exaggerating.

[Nyphetamine]

 
 
Drysc
Blizzard Poster  38. Re: New MMO from Blizzard in the works  |  12/02/2007 07:55:51 PM UTC   

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Q u o t e:
Could just be additional manpower for Wrath.
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No, it is an unannounced Next-Gen MMO.

And that doesn't mean an expansion for World of Warcraft either. 
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Possibly D3, and if so i bet a LOT of people will be spending their time on it instead of WoW.

[Giller]

It would be hard to justify (to myself) paying for 2 subscription games at the same time.  And whatever they make will probably be even better than WoW.

[Deliverence (SilentPlague)]

I heard about this  a few months ago when they put up NOw hiring adds on there web sight. 

Universe of Starcraft ?!?!?!

[Donnie (S3 / Jagor)]

This is a horrible decision on their part.  I've watched game makers do this sort of thing for years, where they basically try to milk their current community for more, and it always fails.

Basically, their target audience is WoW players and as a business they already have our business.  There's not a huge market out there waiting to be tapped that would care about their new MMO.

All they will end up doing is fragmenting their community while doubling their support and development costs.

I don't think Blizzard is strong enough to have lightning strike twice.

They should have hired more people and worked to expand their current community.

[Giller]

Well I for one won't be playing WoW forever.  Eventually I'll get bored of it, so I'll need a good game to switch to.  Like I said, this game is still years away, so WoW population might decline a lot by then.

[Andrew (I2ed3ye)]

I'd just like to talk about what EverQuest went through to EverQuest II.  EverQuest was pretty much *the* MMORPG at the time.  Sure you had Ultima.. and.. other crap.  But it was the WoW of its time (that's pretty funny, saying that).  You had all kinds of activity on it.  Anything you could dream of in an MMO was there (we weren't heavy dreamers back then).  And it was gorgeous.  A couple years go by.. it's pretty much the same except for a ton of expansions.  A graphics improvements to keep up with the new games coming out.  Then all these different MMOs start coming out of the woodwork.  They've got such nice graphics and new gameplay!  EverQuest sure does show its age.  People leave for these other games.  Some of them come back.  Now you're left with just hardcore players.  People who just don't want to let it go.  SOE keeps releasing expansions and some people try them and leave again.  They release the new EverQuest II!  Ooh man, you remember how awesome EverQuest was?  It's going to be awesome!  Major turd.  It sucks the donkey.  Some people hang on to it.. because it's EverQuest.  And they love buying new expansion every month.  But most people leave to other games due to the failure.  SOE announces an EverQuest revisit or whatever, where you progress the story and play through each expansion.  All the hardcore players rip through it within an extremely short time.  EverQuest is pretty much dead now.  EverQuest II somehow isn't.. but in my opinion, it's Suck Suckerson from Suckerton, Suckerippi.

But, SOE is a money-grubbing-hungry whorebag whose only thought is to get the quick bucks.  I may have not liked all of Blizzard's games; but for the most part, they've all been quality gems.  WoW is slowly but surely losing steam.  Everyone has their eye on the next best MMORPG.  And its definitely showing its age in the graphics department.  Not that it looked too good to start with compared to other games.  But one thing's for certain, they definitely take their time when putting out a product.  They don't rush it and throw it in a box for the Christmas push.  WoW did have a lot of problems, but it was their first forray in to the MMO world.  But you can't argue its success.  It definitely won't be out for awhile.  And with all the new games coming out in the next year, there's a chance that WoW won't be the head dog anymore.   I think I'd much rather see WoW be spit on and lost to new gamers and remembered by the ones in the time than to see it turn in to a silly old man who nobody takes seriously anymore.  Worthy of a viking funeral, I say!  I don't want to see it gather up on a chunk of ice and be launched out to sea with its sad face of mortalism.

This was all said assuming that it is, infact, a new MMORPG.  But it's not like a Blue has never posted misinformation before.  He didn't state that it was an RPG either, it's just assumed.  Maybe Blizz wants to be the first to do MMORTS right?  Or maybe they're finally going to finish production on StarCraft: Ghost and somehow turn it in to an MMO.  MMOTPS?  Who knows.  Most people seem to think it's going to be "Diablo 3: Heaven and Hell".. but it's from the same source that told you the new Alliance race was going to be Pandaren.

[Donnie (Arne)]

After of a week without wow I am not missing it much at all.  Started reading about other games.  I am not sure If wow is gonna be much of a long term game for me anymore.

[pepe]

They've been developing this game for about as long as they've been working on WoW.  It was Blizzard North's unannounced project before the merge.  When Roper and all them left to form Flagship this game was World of Diablo.  After they left it simply became Diablo 3, maybe they've gone back to WoD now...

[Giller]

In at least 2 cases (Ghost, lame Warcraft Adventures), Blizzard has taken so long to develop a game that when it was a few months away from release, it was already outdated and had to be cancelled.  They might have had failures like this with other never announced games and this current "next-gen MMO" could go the same path if it turns out to really be "past-gen MMSuck".

[Brian (Antonios)]

Its got to be diablo3

[Alex (Riptearkill)]

This is a horrible decision on their part.  I've watched game makers do this sort of thing for years, where they basically try to milk their current community for more, and it always fails.

Basically, their target audience is WoW players and as a business they already have our business.  There's not a huge market out there waiting to be tapped that would care about their new MMO.

All they will end up doing is fragmenting their community while doubling their support and development costs.

I don't think Blizzard is strong enough to have lightning strike twice.

They should have hired more people and worked to expand their current community.

By the time this game comes out there will be a new generation of gamers and people who have aged to the point they want to play games. While it may split apart existing gamers that participate in a current game it is an attempt to rope in new people in the hopes that a next generation game can do it. Or am I missing something?

[Donnie (S3 / Jagor)]

By the time this game comes out there will be a new generation of gamers and people who have aged to the point they want to play games. While it may split apart existing gamers that participate in a current game it is an attempt to rope in new people in the hopes that a next generation game can do it. Or am I missing something?

Oh I don't doubt people will play what they release, no matter what it is.  Even if it's an awful game (which it probably won't be) there's a built in fanbase that will play it regardless.

As numbers go, there's never been a game bigger than WoW.  As such, WoW came closer to actually defining how much of a market there is of people willing to pay a monthly fee for a game.  The market turned out to be a lot larger than anyone thought and to date no one else has been able to steal a significant portion of WoW's business.  Instead of focusing on developing that existing business further (it's easy to keep an existing customer than it is to attract a new one) they are announcing that they are planning to design and release their own competition.

Having worked in development shops for some time, I would wager that just the announcement that Blizzard was focusing on a new game in the same genre caused some of the more senior people responsible for WoW to begin looking for employment elsewhere.

It would be like Dodge announcing they were making a car to compete with the Viper.  The reason the Viper is special is because all of the brightest minds and all of the R&D resources dedicated to Dodge's sports car segment are focused on a single goal.  Fragmenting that focus would damage both the Viper project as well as whatever other project you dedicated resources to.  Now, using the Viper as a watershed for technology (using what you learned on the Viper to bolster performance in other segments, such as the Charger) is what makes success.

Just my opinion of course. 

And don't get me wrong, WoW isn't a permanent thing.  But there's easily a million people who would play the game regardless of anything else right up to the point where Blizzard shuts it down.  That's $15 million / month.  Smart money would have Blizzard capitalizing on more storyline building products in different genres.

[Andrew (I2ed3ye)]

Don't forget paying for the initial investment of the game, server transfers, name changes, expansion packs, merchandising, etc.  There's all kinds of money running around.   

[Vertice]

I don't normally like to reply to these type of forums for my own reasons, but I think I will go ahead and throw in my own thoughts on this.

The new MMO project, and I intentionally leave out the RPG of MMO, is being called Project: Hydra. When WoW was in the works, it was called project Medusa. Now what this means is that more likely, this new game will be a MMO of its same family as WoW and mostly what people would think about second when hearing Warcraft, and that is Starcraft. The reason why I think this is, One) It has already been announced previously that there will be a Diablo 3, and that they will not be straying too far off from the game mechanics that people have already loved and enjoyed. They may tweak it too match next gen, but not change the game into something else. Two) Blizzard has a huge world wide fan base. Everyone knows this. But as far as their Asian Fan base goes, it is mainly Starcraft and not so much any other game. The big MMORPG's over there is FFXI and RFOnline. FFXI has been out for some time now, longer then WoW and is showing its age as well as WoW is. Blizzard could see this as a opportunity to take in another huge market by transforming what is a popular game over there into a MMO while maybe adding on to its current market by putting out a Universe of Starcraft, or something similar. Hoping that this game will kill WoW on its own so they don't have to go through the pain of shutting down WoW themselves.

Those are my thoughts on it. As far as WoW losing its luster, I have been buying and playing many MMO's (You can ask Nick.) and so far as current market goes, Tabula Rasa is rising in my book as a possible replacement to WoW for me. I will make another thread giving details about it when I advance further in the game. May even include reviews of other MMO's I have played.

[Donnie (S3 / Jagor)]

Have you tried EVE Online Vertice?  If so, what were your thoughts on it?

[Giller]

"EVE Online is host to the largest virtual universe in the world, and is the fastest-growing Massively Multi-Player Online Game (MMPOG) of the genre"  I don't know how they can make that claim but whatev.  8 expansions is insane.  I'm pretty sure I tried EVE (trial version) and really couldn't get into it.  Something about spaceships??

[Vertice]

Have yet to try Eve but I have a friend that plays it. The games I have tried are as followes;

Final Fantasy XI w/ 3 expansions, City of Heros, City of Villans, Linage 2, RFOnline, Everquest 2 w/ all the expansions, Lord of the Rings Online, and Tabula Rasa.

[Giller]

Asheron's Call 2 (died  ) was pretty good.  It had some excellent elements and some not so good.  The way it did skills/talents was better than WoW.  And although I like being able to solo easily with any class and make many different class combinations in WoW, I also liked the niches of some classes in AC2.

[Deliverence (SilentPlague)]

"EVE Online is host to the largest virtual universe in the world, and is the fastest-growing Massively Multi-Player Online Game (MMPOG) of the genre"  I don't know how they can make that claim but whatev.  8 expansions is insane.  I'm pretty sure I tried EVE (trial version) and really couldn't get into it.  Something about spaceships??

I have a few friends who play eve and i tried it myself BUT when i saw two of my friends actually fall asleep while playing this game i knew it wasn't for me.

[Donnie (S3 / Jagor)]

EVE makes the largest universe claim because they don't have a 'server' or 'realm' design.  The technical aspectg of the game is the most impressive part.

Basically, everyone plays in the same environment, all the time (24-7).  So there's no debagte over who is better or which server is the pwn.  Because of this, they have absolutely monster battles (150 vs 150) and 25,000 people playing in the same environment at the same time.

I believe they hold the world record for persistent universe size...

Anyhow, the game is unbelievably complicated but the rules are so open that you can make the game into any experience you want it to be.

I layed for four years and probably still would if my machine wouldn't crash every time I played for more than 10 minutes!

[Allegacy]

Several of the guys I work with play DDO...  Dungeons and Dragons online that is. I have it installed and am playing it on the side currently. The downside is graphics, the upside is scale. By that I mean that you can log in for 20 minutes over lunch, and actually get something of substance done. The quest system and the character dynamics are all top notch.