The Rumor...

[TheDivineBoss]

...Has it that Blizzard is going to make a new MMO.

Got it from Gamer.nl, a Dutch gamersite

De harten van menig MMO-speler zullen vandaag sneller gaan kloppen, want Blizzard heeft erkend dat het werkt aan een nieuwe MMO-game. Er waren de afgelopen maanden al vaker geruchten omtrent de nieuwe game van Blizzard. Naast de aankondiging van Starcraft II werden er op de site van de ontwikkelaar immers ook vacatures geplaatst, die vroeg naar een hoofd programmeur voor het maken van een "next-gen MMO".

Er werd nog meer hout op het vuur gegooid toen onlangs wederom vacatures verschenen en ook de recente fusie van Activision en Vivendi stookte de discussie op. Zo ook op het officiële Blizzard forum.

Toen een fan op dit forum aangaf dat hij dacht dat de vacatures voor het maken van een uitbreiding van World of Warcraft zouden zijn, gaf een van de community managers van Blizzard te kennen dat deze wel degelijk een nieuwe game betroffen. Hieronder vallen eventuele uitbreidingen op World of Warcraft overigens niet, aldus de medewerker.

Dus zien we binnenkort de eerste screenshots van World of Starcraft of Diablo Online? De tijd zal het leren, maar het is in ieder geval duidelijk dat Blizzard in de tussentijd niet stil zit.

Actual translation: The harts of many MMO-players shall beat faster today, because Blizzard has announced that it's working on a new MMO-game. There were these months lately several rumors about the new game from Blizzard. Besides the announcement of Sc2 there were on the site of the developer some jobs posted, who were looking for a head-programmer for making the ''next-gen MMO''.

There was more wood on the fire been thrown when suddenly jobseekers showed up and also the recent fusion of Activision and Vivendi. Also on the Blizz Forum.

When a fan on this forum announced that he thought those jobseekers were for the new expansion of WoW, saidone of the community managars of Blizzard to being working on a certain new game With this are WoW-expansions not included, said a employee.

So shall we see the first new screenshots of World of Starcraft or Diablo Online? Time will tell, but that does tell Blizzard isn't doing nothing at the moment.

Not a perfect translation but hey. It's a cool announcement.

Edit: Hmm, some things are explained at the A & N's forum...

 

[Dr Super Good]

Well this is obvious.

As blizzard listend to fans and decided to go ahead with SC2, its highly likly it will be Diablo III as that is the logical next game for them to revive and modernise. It will hopefully be like diablo II + LOD, free to play online but it is undoughtable that a D3 game will be released eventually.

Its eithor that or WoW2 or even just a total overhaul of WoW for another expansion making it look next gen like. With the release of SC2 schedualed sometime next year I dought they would bother making a starcraft RPG, as the market will be quenched by SC2 for years to come, especially if its as good as they say it will be.

Only time can tell, but logically it will be Diablo III.

 

[Elenai]

I hope to GOD that its free...It would be a horrendous mistake if it was pay to play like that blasphemous WoW.

 

[Gilles]

I hope it's Diablo, and I hope it's free as well!

 

[DaedraEater]

I hope its a free:

A) Diablo III (with free online)
B) WoW2 (No need 2 play and you can choose single player or multi-player (you stay there until you finish, whole map/game, I dunno... )
C)That either of the above are compressed well and don't take too much space (my poor external hard-drive, have had to delete a few nostalgia games: Age of Empires 2, Age of Mythology, etc)

 

[Dr Super Good]

A Diablo III will probably need 20 GB of HD space as most games of that time will, as well as needing DX10 and a dual core to run. If they are planning it, expect it around 2010-2012 atleast.

 

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

I'd like to see a new franchise... but starting new MMOs on compeltly new IP's has it's drawbacks. MMO's are basically the Las Vegas of IP's: Old dying franchises wind up getting turned into an MMO.

 

[Gilles]

A Diablo III will probably need 20 GB of HD space as most games of that time will, as well as needing DX10 and a dual core to run. If they are planning it, expect it around 2010-2012 atleast.

You think in two - four years we will need 20gigs to hold a single program/game? I doubt it. 10 seems more reasonable.

Do Macs run DX?

 

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

WoW already uses more than 12 Gigs.

MMOs have huge amounts of content and now that graphic quality is needed to stand out, MMOs can onyl get more filesize heavy.

 

[busterkomo]

I think dx10 is vista only.

 

[TheDivineBoss]

WoW costed more then 80 million dollars, I'm sure they going to pass it.

 

[Cheeder]

DX10 MAY be Vista only, i don't know, but some of the new macs can use a potential of 16 MB ram. DX10 simply allows more RAM to be used, though i don't know if there is a cut-off limit for Windows' DX.

As for the pay-to-play, how do you think Blizzard pays it's employees? Government grants?! hah!
Although i don't like WoW, and the pay-to-play is a good system, it eventually gets abused like all money-making schemes, and WoW may never be free to play online because of the constant money flow they recieve, even if they triple or quadruple their output for the game. It's just like tolls; In Florida they installed tolls to pay for public works, etc, and said they'd take them down at a certain time in the future.. It's been like 10 years after that date had been set.
And why eactly is it abused? Well, do you suppose all that money is divided equally among all the employees? Hardly. You are left with a few men at the top holding it in their pockets while the real grunts get paid probably 300k a year at the most pertaining to the importance of each job. Just my guesstimate.

 

[Kuhneghetz]

I'd like to see a new franchise...

World of Porncraft. =D

 

[TheDivineBoss]

Zomg, lol Dude, I don't want to disturb you but you are on the brink of reporting. xD Oh and WoP was already made years ago, I saw that on a WoW site. I swear I didn't clicked it. :O

 

[Eleandor]

World of Starcraft sounds unlikelly to me, seeing as how they're making SC2.

Diablo online would be a strange choice if you ask me, because what would diablo have that WoW doesn't have yet? Sure, the games won't be completelly the same, but I think the world of warcraft had more potential of being made into a mmo than diablo. A diablo mmo would, at this point, be too much in the way of WoW. It would almost be considered a competitor of WoW. From a commercial point of view not a smart decision. If Diablo 3 would be made, it would best be free. A MMO is unlikelly to be free though.

Conclusion: I think that if there's going to be another MMO, it'll be something new. Perhaps that would be the best for Blizzard right now. Something else than SC, WC or Diablo.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Cheeder, DX10 has nothing to do with ram, and anyway PCs use over 16 MB ram anyway (mine runs games that need 1GB+ easialy). Your thinking of 64 bit OS that enable over 4 GB ram to be used.

DX10 totally reworks the way graphics are generated in your graphics accelerator card. It is vista only and any mac emulation will run insanly slow as openGL (what mac uses) has no DX10 counterpart and for now I think is unsupported. Considering PS3 games are hitting nearly 40 GB (1 blu-ray disc), there is no dought that PC games will also need vast HDD space to install them.

Now back on topic.