Blizzard owns and runs the world’s most profitable PC game, World of Warcraft. With reports of around 11.5 million paying subscribers per month, it is no mystery how the world’s biggest publisher, Activision Blizzard, made more money off World of Warcraft than it did off all of its PS3 games, all of its Wii games and all of its Xbox 360 games in its most recent financial quarter.
Although the game is massively successful, one gets the feeling that it may have past its peak. With player complaints becoming more common and reports of long time players quitting the MMO, the WoW ‘grind’ may be looking a little tired. This is something that Blizzard appears to be looking to change in its next MMO, a project which is currently in development.
Ex WoW director Jeffery Kaplan has already moved on to Blizzard’s new MMO. Kaplan was one of the original masterminds behind WoW, but in March 2009 Kaplan famously pronounced his take on WoW’s nine biggest shortcomings.
The problems included quest text being too long, quests being to ambiguous, ‘gimmick quests’ and various collection quest problems which need to be reexamined.
Kaplan criticized the current collection quest mechanic joking, “What the eff, the guy down at the hill asked me to kill bandits and I didn’t need to bring anything back to him,” mocked Kaplan. “So ‘A’ I’m asking why I need to bring the paws back. But then I get into this philosophical thing where I say, ‘Shouldn’t the gnoll have a paw every time I kill him?’ Or am I so brutally massacring the gnoll every time that…and then I’m like, ‘Shouldn’t he have two paws?’?”
Blizzard has yet to release any concrete information on its new MMO. They did announce last year however that the MMO would not take place in any existing Blizzard universe, a declaration which squashed rumors that the MMO would be ‘World of Starcraft’.
Blizzard COO Paul Sams has confirmed our suspicions that the new MMO will break from the WoW mold, telling Wired that it will be “significantly different to WoW”.
Sams has admitted that positioning the new MMO within the Blizzard franchise will be challenging. Blizzard was initially concerned about the new MMO cannibalizing its WoW player base but that they have come to terms with the fact that they may lose some WoW players.
“If the bad thing that happens to us is that they leave WoW and go to this other thing of Blizzard’s, then we’ll work through that pain,” said Sams, going on to say “I think the (new MMO) is going to be significantly differentiated enough, such that, you’re not going to feel like they’re one and the same resulting in that you have to pick or choose.”
Blizzard has given no hint as to when gamers can expect its next MMO, but recent estimates put the game on course for a 2012 release. In the meantime, the company will continue to support WoW as indicated by the recent announcement of a new expansion for the MMO; Cataclysm.
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