The future plan?

[Mumia]

This is just my own thoughts, but could it be that blizzard is going the warcraft path with the Diablo series now.
So that we get Diablo3 now, ( out in stores in a year or so? ) an expansion 1 -1½ year after that, and then perhaps world of diablo a year or so after that one?
It seemed to work fine with the warcraft series, so why not go for the already proven plan of success?
I know the : "Diablo is NOT an mmorpg!!!" argument.
But warcraft wasnt either, its was an rts, Diablo is even more an rpg than warcraft ever was, so I am kind of hoping on one day seeing WOD.

Just my 1 euro, let the guessing begin :)

[Felix]

If they make a new MMO when WoW is outdated, my take is it will be based on another of their games. Simply because they are bleeding the lore of their story dry with continuing expansions. And to be re emerged themselves, and not bound in constraint of what they have already done.

So a fresh start for all, developers first, then us :).

[Kiroptus]

Nah I hope that World of Diablo never happens. Unless they have server strengh to support 1000 players on screen and 100.000 monsters as well, so the scale and the crowd feeling isnt affected.

[mince pies]

To be honest, I wouldn't mind a World of Diablo after DIII and maybe an expansion comes out. I'd like to see an MMORPG version of Diablo, but, like I say, after DIII and a possible expansion is released because I don't want to be disappointed if they released a WoD before a DIII/expansion

Edit: Has an official date been announced for DIII?

[jamesisbest]

Blizzard in their faqs page say: It's too early to estimate Diablo III's release date. As with all Blizzard Entertainment games, our goal is to create a game that is as fun, balanced, and polished as possible. We intend to take as much time developing Diablo III as is necessary to ensure the game meets our own high expectations and those of our players.

Knowing how long the wait for Diablo 2 was (and sure was worth it) I'm guessing 2 to 3 years from now. However, like they stated it will be hard to know and there is always a possibility of delays even if they do announce a time.

[Mumia]

If they make a new MMO when WoW is outdated, my take is it will be based on another of their games. Simply because they are bleeding the lore of their story dry with continuing expansions. And to be re emerged themselves, and not bound in constraint of what they have already done.

So a fresh start for all, developers first, then us :).

Hmm, yes, that could be. But if I remember correct, everyone said Blizzard couldnt make an mmo, even the interview with roper I read, he said if they had known what they where going into they wouldnt have tried it. But after rounding 10 million subscriptions, why not go for 1 more?

Its like everyone has the belief that they wont do anything to harm the player base of wow, in like make another game, but hey, there is a lot of firms around blizzard that is trying very hard to get a piece of the pie too.
Lineage 2 is counting 14 million players now, so is wow that big after all, it isnt growing that much anymore after all.
Age of conan rounded 1 mill in a few weeks, a lot faster than wow did.
As a company the worst thing you can do, is do nothing. Never ever lean back and think everything is okay.
Always look for new ways of making money.
So starcraft is already an option too, I wont be that surpriced if we in 5-6 years have both World of "warcraft + Diablo + Starcraft" running.
After all, it is different playergroups they cater too.
And the market, there is no set limit of players, there is no "magical number" of maximum players you can have as a company, there is 6 billion people in the world, 3 billion online in some way now, and surprice, we can play more than one mmo and still have fun.
So my guess is still, blizzard is going for more mmo's. :)

[Mumia]

Nah I hope that World of Diablo never happens. Unless they have server strengh to support 1000 players on screen and 100.000 monsters as well, so the scale and the crowd feeling isnt affected.

Yes, that has been a big problem with wow also, if you round up enough people and go trash another factions maintown(s) the server goes unstable and gives up.
I do hope thats one of the things the "next gen mmo" team is working hard to fix.
But i dont see why they couldnt find some sort of solution to it, after all when I first saw the playvideo from the first wowtests ( I played diablo2lod then ) I was like : naaah they never gonna make that run......

But I too would hope that they would keep working on expansions to all the games they have out already, that would be very cool, but still, they need to make money, and games and software gets old, computers get faster, bigger and can do more, so I still think the future will bring us more great games from Blizzard, and with the quality we have become used to expect. :)