It¡¯s no secret that Blizzard is working on a ¡°next-gen MMO,¡± as evidenced by job listings on their website.

But during BlizzCon this past weekend, ¡°World of Warcraft¡± game director Jeffrey Kaplan confirmed to MTV Multiplayer that he¡¯s ¡°definitely involved¡± in the project.

¡°I think the great part about a new MMO from Blizzard is that it doesn¡¯t have to be ¡®WoW¡¯,¡± he said. ¡°There are a lot of lessons we learned in making ¡®World of Warcraft,¡¯ wow gold and some of those you can take and do things better than you ever did before.¡±

I asked if he was concerned about the new MMO potentially cannibalizing ¡°WoW¡± subscribers.  WoW oro Kaplan said he wasn¡¯t worried at all, and that the company was going to great lengths to make sure that the new game doesn¡¯t directly cannibalize ¡°WoW.¡±

But with the huge success of ¡°WoW,¡± and now ¡°Warhammer Online,¡± I wondered if there was any room for MMOs that weren¡¯t inspired by high fantasy. ¡°Oh yeah,¡± Kaplan said. ¡°I only think [non-high fantasy MMOs] have a harder time because of the past games that have tried and the game design decisions that they made, not because of the [intellectual property] or the setting that they chose.¡±

He thought the secret to success was making a game that was both tailored to hardcore players and accessible to a broad audience. ¡°Once people figure that out, your game world is going to attract a lot of people,¡± he explained. ¡°But a lot of it has to do with art style, too. Are you going for realism or an inviting world? And once you learn those lessons, I think any type of [intellectual property] can survive. I¡¯m shocked we haven¡¯t seen more sci-fi, near-future, post-apocalyptic, historical MMOs; there¡¯s all these completely different fantasy settings beyond the traditional high fantasy ones.¡±

So is Blizzard¡¯s new MMO going to be sci-fi, near-future, post-apocalyptic or historical? ¡°All of those combined!¡± he said, laughing.