Blizzard’s Paul Sams has said their new secretive MMO is ”significantly differentiated” from World of Warcraft that it likely won’t ”cannibalize” subscribers, at least they hope.
The differences won’t have fans feeling they need to ”pick or choose” between them. Sams jokes Blizz will ”work through” the pain of having subscribers ditch WoW for the new MMO.
”…what I could tell you is that we’re intending to create a game experience that is unlike anything that has ever been done before. Something that I think takes things far beyond what anyone has imagined and certainly anything anyone has executed,” COO Sams tells Wired.
”Is it going to cannibalize or not? And the good news is, I think the game is going to be significantly differentiated enough. Such that, you’re not going to feel like they’re one in the same resulting in that you have to pick or choose.”
”And so maybe they’ll split a little over time, or maybe they’ll decide they don’t want to play WoW anymore, and they’ll go and play this other thing,” he continues. ”That’s a high-class problem to have. As long as those folks are hanging out with us, which I believe they will be because we’re going to keep providing the best experience you can have.”
”So, while there could be other games out there, if the bad thing that happens to us is that they leave WoW and go to this other thing of Blizzard’s, then we’ll work through that pain,” added Sams, smiling. ”The fact of the matter is, there’s a big audience for Blizzard gamers. There’s only so much time in a day, and so there’s some amount of time per week for how much gaming you do.”
The Blizz businessman also touched on World of Warcraft going free-to-play, and said it was unlikely to happen anytime soon and pointed to the huge cost of running the MMO. It’s ”exceptionally expensive” with the ”thousands of customer service people” and ”hundreds of technical folks”.
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