LAS VEGAS – At the DICE conference Wednesday evening, Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime was asked about a certain unannounced MMO project that the Warcraft maker has been working on for a number of years. He answered by talking about the game in broad terms, but there is enough new information to get the wheels of speculation turning.
"Without giving away any details, we have some of our most experienced MMO developers, people who spent years working on the World of Warcraft team, working on this project," Morhaime said.
"We're really trying to leverage all the lessons we learned through the years," Morhaime said as part of a panel discussion at the annual gaming conference. "Some of which we were able to address in World of Warcraft and others that maybe because of the design decisions we've made, you just can't address. So we're kind of taking a step back with all that knowledge to make something that's completely new and fresh.
"We're not trying to make a WoW sequel," he said, adding that the two titles will co-exist in the future.
He talked about playing with friends, the ability to make new friends in the game, and the experience of playing in guilds. Morhaime had previously said during the panel that the game he was playing the most outside of Blizzard's properties was Words with Friends on his iPhone. "For me, playing with people that you know always deepens the engagement and connection," he said.
"To break the mold, sometimes you have to start over," Morhaime said.
Chris Kohler at Wired.com contributed to this report.
