Arena Junkies picked up an interesting tidbit by comparing two different interviews. Rob Pardo, Blizzard's EVP of Game Design, gave an interview to Onlinewelten in which he talks about the next-gen MMO. That interview isn't exactly news on its own. We knew since Diablo III was announced at the WWI that it probably isn't the new MMO, and Pardo confirms that in the interview. "..Diablo 3 isn't an MMO," Pardo says, "So we have another development team."

But what is that new MMO being developed? Some speculate it could be an entirely new property. Well, Paul Sams, Blizzard's Chief Operating Officer, has an interview with Gamasutra that indicates no new IPs are coming soon. "Are we ever going to release a new [franchise]?" Sams says, "I would absolutely say we will at some point. I just don't know when that day will be quite yet."

Okay, so Blizzard's still working on a MMO, but there's no new IP on the horizon. So, what's the next-gen MMO going to be? World of Warcraft 2? World of Starcraft? And if Diablo 3 isn't considered an MMO, then is there a possibility of a World of Diablo? For me, this just means that my hopes of Tauren Marines aren't yet dead.

Unless something crazy happens, it seems that the Activision-Blizzard merger (which is really the Activision-Vivendi merger, actually) will go down without a problem -- shareholders are voting on it this week, so by next week we should see confirmation that Guitar Hero and World of Warcraft are under the same umbrella.

Gamasutra has posted a nice long feature about what exactly that means, for both companies and for the rest of the industry. As we predicted, there probably won't be huge repercussions for either of the biggest companies involved -- both Activision and Blizzard will continue to go their own separate ways for now, sharing only a name among investors (Gamasutra even says the names on the game boxes won't change at all). The biggest impact will be on the little guys in between -- Activision's previous shareholders now have to answer to Vivendi (who will hold a majority stock in the company), and Viviendi's smaller division, the former glory of Sierra Games, will have to answer to Activision before publishing any of their titles.

And of course the other big consequence we've seen so far is that Bobby Kotick apparently feels he knows everything there is to know about the MMO game. Sure. For now, though, it's business as usual for both Activision and Blizzard -- if there will be any change in either company because of the merger, we likely won't see it for a while.

[via Blizzplanet]

Game Developer magazine has done a study naming the top 50 videogame developers in the world, based on "sales and reputation data," and our favorite folks at Blizzard have been named number three on the list, just under Nintendo Kyoto (responsible for Brain Age and Wii Play) and Infinity Ward (most notable lately for Call of Duty 4), and ahead of EA, Valve, Harmonix, and Square Enix.

I tend to think this chart is weighed a little bit towards recent sales more than reputation -- as far as I know, Infinity Ward doesn't have a big enough following to actually hold a convention based on their games, and while there's no question that Nintendo has a huge fan following, I'm not sure that it's quite right to include a first party console maker on a list of developers (yes, I know Nintendo Kyoto is a studio, not the company itself, but would the average Nintendo fan on the street know the difference?). Still, lists are lists, and there's no question that all of these developers, Blizzard included, are held in the highest regard by fans of their games.

[Via Massively]

Senior VP Frank Pearce and Starcraft II producer Chris Sigaty sat down with Gamasutra to chat about "The State of Blizzard's Union" recently, and while there's not a lot of new stuff ("Team 3" is mentioned, but no hints are given), it's always cool to have an inside look at what it's like running the biggest MMO in the world.

Pearce does talk about a possible WoW 2 (not gonna happen, he says, until Blizzard needs a whole new framework, and that's not going to happen for a long time), and WoW's competitors-- he namechecks Warhammer and Age of Conan, but as I've said before, we won't know how those games will actually do until they see release.

There are a few interesting numbers thrown around in the interview as well-- while Blizzard has said they've got 9 million before, Pearce specifically says 8.5 million subscribers, so it does seem like they're dropping a bit (updated-- see note below). Still, especially with the release of Wrath of the Lich King in the next year or two, they remain optimistic that they'll hit 10 million before it's all said and done. It's also amazing to see Blizzard's growth-- Pearce co-founded the company, and they started out with around 50 employees. Before WoW, they had about 500, and nowadays, they've got 2700 people working for them. And the teams are really interesting, too-- WoW has 135 developers, Starcraft II has 40, and Team 3 has 50, plus Blizzard has 85 people (also devs, however) that work on their famous cinematics, and extra teams for sound and quality assurance.

Very interesting to get a look inside such an amazing videogame developer. Now if only we could find out what Team 3 was...

[ via WorldofWar ]

Update: Blizzard contacted us to say that this interview happened way back at E3, which was before this press release dropped. Subscriber numbers are not dropping-- when Pearce did the interview they had 8.5 million, and after that, they rose to 9 million. And Blizzard tells us that since then, they are above the 9 million mark.

Gamasutra has an in-depth interview with several academics asking "Is there life after World of Warcraft?" Neils Clark suggests that the majority of of MMO players don't spread themselves out over multiple MMO games, but instead migrate like a flock of birds or a "gamer tribe".

I do think that the same chunk of players went from EQ to Galaxies to WoW with some dabbling in games like AO, DAOC and CoH inbetween. Obviously, Blizzard attracted about 8 million extra people to our "tribe", however, so I wonder if our tribe just got a lot bigger or if we are now just one tribe of many.

Clark interviews 5 academics about how gamers will move from WoW to other games and what what has made WoW the powerhouse that it is. The discussions of social networks, lures of new fantasies and the ramifications of a WoW collapse are very interesting.

Clark also says that he thinks WoW is the "king of the mountain" not because it is the best game out there but because it attracted the "right people". I say the "right people" are playing because it's currently the best game out there. What do you think?

Gamasutra has published a soapbox piece examining what WoW is teaching us about gameplay, and asking whether it's teaching us the right things.

The main points include the much debated "Time over Skill" mindset imbued in the endgame, the push away from self-reliance to group play, and the "You're either with us or against us" guild mentality. Finally, the extensive Terms of Use Agreement and its use in disciplining players is also brought up.

Not all of the lessons learned here are bad--there are real-life echoes of all of these points, and learning to invest substantial amounts of time in a task as well as how to effectively work in a group could be considered positive aspects of WoW. However, these four points are all fairly offputting to casual players, especially when those casual players reach the endgame.

Having played solo for most of 60 levels, suddenly a player learns that they're not going to be able to take part in much of the remaining content without a guild or group. They're competing for places in guilds or raids with those who have invested much more time, and thus have better gear. Bored, they turn to exploring the game world, and suddenly get banned for being in a place they shouldn't have found. Harsh lessons indeed.

Obviously, the "hardcore vs casual" debate has more to it than this; but in terms of the lessons taught by WoW, it seems there are two sides--one for those with lots of time and a popular guild, another for everyone else.

The sheer number of players in WoW means that you'll run into a variety of people while levelling and otherwise passing the time in-game. Currently, the in-game feedback mechanism is one-sided, and limited: if a player is unbearable, then they can be welcomed to your /ignore list, but if they're worth remembering then they get a place on your friends list.

Depending on how you play, these lists may be sparse or full, but if you're anything like me then you wish there was something more to it: the ability to see what others think of a player, and the ability to help others stay away from bad players or gravitate towards good players.

This soapbox piece over at Gamasutra goes into the ins and outs of character rating systems as applied to MMOs. It brings up some important points; people will try to game the system, by creating characters solely to leave ratings, and there should be further requirements such as having to group for X minutes. Also, there would have to be a RP explanation for ratings, and a decision would have to be made over whether to use user-specific or character-specific feedback. The former means that everyone can be forewarned you're a jackass; the latter means you can RP a jackass without harming your other characters.

Personally, I'm not sure I want a disgruntled group member harming my reputation for life just because we disagreed on the best way to heal -- nor do I want the person who called me a n00b because I wasn't specced the way he wanted to have much of an impact on my ability to find instance parties. On the other hand, I'd definitely like to be able to avoid people like that.

It's unlikely a system like this could be shoehorned into WoW by Blizzard, but it's certainly fair game for an addon, if enough players would install it.

[Image credit: Fan art by George Tutumi]