Welcome to the topic to talk about Blizzards next-gen MMO.
What we know:
- It's going to be a new IP (new setting and new lore).
- Several people left the wow team to work on the new MMO including John Cash, Shane Dabiri, Justin Thavirat and Jeffrey Kaplan.
- Blizzard have stated that it will be targetted towards a "broader audience" than WoW.
Rumors:
- A French website claiming to have an inside source said it is a Sci-Fi MMOFPS.
- Some people think it could be Starcraft: Ghost, which Blizz said they would like to return to one day.
- It could be released on consoles
Known Developers:
Vitaliy Naymushin - Senior Character Artist
Renaud Galand - 3D Artist
Marc Brunet - Concept Artist
Miles Johnson - Web Developer
David Clyde - Senior Software Engineer
Sid Kapur - Senior Software Engineer
Bobby Kotick over "Broader Appeal"
Paul Sams on not taking away from the Wow player baseTalking at at the Deutsche Bank Securities Technology Conference in San Francisco, Activision Blizzards’ CEO Bobby Kotick said that Blizzards’ new MMO would be designed to have broader appeal. Kotick also talked about the companies’ vision for Battle.net, dropping hints of plans to integrate prizes and better systems to recognize achievements through battle.net.
So what would an MMO with broader appeal look like for Blizzard? It is clear that nothing can be said for sure at this point, but there are several things it could mean:
More Accessible, Streamlined Gameplay.
Yes, we know that hardcore gamers consider WoW to be vastly watered down already when it comes to the depth many MMO’s have, but for the average casual gamer there’s still a dizzying amount of information to learn to be able to play your character well. An MMO that appeals to a broader market may streamline gameplay and character mechanics a bit to appeal to more players.
Less of a Time Sink.
The time commitment to get anywhere in your typically MMO is huge, and we suspect it is one of the reasons many people choose not to play. An MMO that appeals to a broader audience may focus on allowing players to make real progress in the game even if they only have an hour or two to play here and there.
No Magic Elves.
We love dragons, orcs and pointy-eared casters as much as the next guy, but let’s face it: there are a lot of gamers who just don’t dig the high-fantasy setting that many MMO’s employ. It is possible that Blizzard may set their next gen MMO in a world that is interesting and appealing but doesn’t limit it’s audience by re-treading the whole “dragons and guys in robes” thing.
Rob Pardo on Console MMORPGsAt Blizzard’s annual fan convention BlizzCon this past weekend, chief operating officer Paul Sams said that although there has been some initial concern in the company about cannibalizing their WoW subscribers, they think they’ll get over it quickly.
“I think the (new MMO) is going to be significantly differentiated enough,” Sams said. “Such that, you’re not going to feel like they’re one and the same resulting in that you have to pick or choose,” he said.
“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,” he added.
Read More http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/0...#ixzz0eESQq2tE
Example work of Marc Brunet - Concept ArtistMicrosoft has shown us some stuff they have in development and they asked us our opinion about it – that's all that was. But as far as MMOs on consoles, there's a lot of challenges. I'd say challenge #1 is the input device. So if you're going to port a game like WoW how does that work? Do you ship a keyboard and a mouse? Do you try to make a game that [adapts] to all the different controls and buttons? That's a porting issue. The bigger issue would be things like hard drives. I think WoW now is about 10 gigs and we're always pushing out more content. That's something cloud computing could eventually solve, but in the current generation of consoles that's a lot to deal with. You'd have to eat almost the entire hard drive, and there are Xbox consoles [sold to consumers] that don't have hard drives. So that's a big issue.
Another big issue is how to actually do patches because the certification process is pretty arduous to do that. I know that's something Microsoft is trying to work out so you can do more updates and the certification process is faster, but it's not going to be nearly as fast as we can do it. We just put it through our QA department and upload to our servers. ... Then, the other big issue is the business model. Right now, Microsoft and Sony charge platform fees for retail, but if you do an MMO there and it's subscription-based, they're going to want a cut of the subscription revenue too, and so that becomes a hurdle. So there's definitely a lot of hurdles right now for doing MMOs on a console, but it all can be overcome and I think in the next generation of consoles it'll be much easier.
Please don't get the wrong idea, this is not artwork from the new game just an example of the style of the concept artist.
Example work of Vitaliy Naymushin - Senior Character Artist
Current Recruitment
Blizzard currently has a number of spots open for recruitment on the next-gen MMO, these are listed below:
- Lead 3D Character Artist
- 3D Character Artist
- 3D Environment Artist
- 3D Character Equipment Artist
- Art Department Manager
- Associate Software Engineer
- FX Animator
- Information Architect
- Senior Graphics Programmer
- Senior Level Designer
Experience of the developers includes working on: