Blizzard's Next MMO: "New, and different."

VG247 got a chance to talk to Blizzard COO Paul Sams ahead of last night's Lich King launch. All standard product-waxing was there, and Sams even made a few mutterings in the direction of their new MMO, which has been in the first stages of production for quite some time now. “We want to create a great game,” he said. “Something that’s cool, and new, and different, and kind of next generation in terms of look and feel and gameplay. That’s a challenging endeavour.”

No word on schedule yet, as the Blizzard team still aren't 100% sure of this "new" direction: "We want to have a level of confidence that the direction we’re going in the right one, and that it’s polished enough to be able to show something, also. And we’re not in either of those places yet.”

It's worth remembering that WoW was seen as a huge risk when it was originally in development. Any number of pundits predicted that it would break the company, that it was even - gasp! - too radical to really be a major success. Now of course we see it as a pillar of establishment commercial gaming, but it's worth remembering that Blizzard took a big risk before, and now have more than enough money to do it again. So, speculation hat on folks: What will a second Blizzard MMO be like? And if you can bare to drop your Robes of Cynicism +5 for a moment, what should it be like in an ideal world? I think I've talked too much about this in the past, so let's open up the floor, and some brains...