I'm speculating that they're going to port WoW to next gen consoles. But interesting nonetheless.

Err, WoW is no longer a "next gen MMO". I think its pretty clear they have been developing a new MMO to make billions of dollars off of. You can speculate wildly on exactly what it will be, but either Diablo or Starcraft would be your best bets. With the recent strongly substantiated rumors that Blizzard is announcing their next product May 19th at the 2007 Korean Invitationals, something related to Starcraft fits into place nicely. Or maybe they're announcing Starcraft 2. *shrug*

If memory serves... the d00ds on Final Fantasy and the normal folk didn't mix too well.

Maybe it's for Starcraft MMO.

The May 19th rumors are strongly indicating that Starcraft 2 will be announced. Whether or not it'll be an MMO is highly up in the air but I'm betting it'll be an RTS. Blizzard would be wise to release a new game to support their e-sports line-up.

"a new MMO to make billions of dollars off of" seems highly unrealistic. They're not making billions of dollars off WoW, that's for sure. And I don't think WoW was ever considered a "next gen MMO", but I do believe the reference is in respect to next gen consoles. Which alludes back to my previous assumption, WoW on the Xbox 360.

After all, they're obviously interested in consoles (ie: Starcraft: Ghost).

Is having Starcraft 2 on next gen consoles all that far fetched? Not really.

The job listing is for lead programmer for designing a game engine for their next-gen mmo. Not sure how this would tie into console porting WOW or making a new RTS game. Seems pretty obvious that they already have plans to come out with a new MMO however many years down the line, doubt we'll know more than this anytime soon.

Porting WoW to consoles could still require substantial changes to the engine. But I suspect you're right.

There's also the possibility of (gasp) a new franchise.

I highly doubt they'd release a different MMO with their first still active and their expansion-a-year policy, and I highly doubt SC2 is going to be an MMO. I'd suspect that they're initiating a team to architect the engine for WoW 2 (which should take quite a number of years to develop).

Ugh I hope the next game isn't an MMO, I'm looking forward to a nice casual RTS game I don't have to log into on a nightly basis to enjoy.

You don't have to log on WoW on a nightly basis either. But that's another subject.

I too would love to see a new RTS, I'm tempted to go back and reinstall Starcraft for a couple rounds online.

Well, to enjoy, which I interpret similar to how I felt about Counterstrike (and also WoW) - every day that you're not playing is a day that other players are, and are getting better as a result. Gets too stressful sometimes if you have that kind of competitive mindset. Anyway.

Absolutely. I hope to see SC2 live up to the legacy of SC and Brood War. Fantastic games deserve fantastic sequels. I can't really see SC becoming an MMO unless they go all Eve Online and throw it in space or something, and I'd rather not see that. SC is the best RTS series, in my eyes. I expect nothing but.

With any luck it will be a Lost Vikings MMO.

Heh let someone invent a side scrolling MMO game. There's a side-scrolling RTS game already called Steam Brigade: http://www.pedestrianentertainment.com/

It is confirmed they will announce a game on May 19th. What game they announce is a different story.

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/46732

Edit: Following rumors from Korean website ThisIsGame that Blizzard would be unveiling the long-awaited StarCraft II at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational on May 19, company representatives have confirmed that Blizzard plans to reveal a new game at the event and that the company plans to revisit the StarCraft universe someday--but stopped just short of saying if that to be announced game is StarCraft II.

Oh well if Blizz has confirmed the rumors then I'm guessing the rest of the rumor is true, too.

EDIT: I should really read that entire article before responding to it.

People said the same thing about Warcraft.

I would bet money on something in the Starcraft franchise, simply because they are announcing it in Korea. Starcraft is a colossal phenomenon over there and it would be a big deal to the loyal players there if they were their country was the one that played host to such an announcement.

"Next generation" is buzz and nothing more, don't pay it too much attention. You think the company with the most successful MMO in history might want to try and do it twice? Maybe?

"Next generation MMORPG" has absolutely nothing to do with consoles. It simply means MMORPGs in the future. I haven't tracked down a good definition for it and it's arguably just marketing. Here's a blog post about it - http://virginworlds.com/pg.php?n=5321

What does this mean, exactly?

And I sure hope to god that when they say next-gen MMO, they don't mean MMO on a "next-gen" console. The customizability of WoW is one of the biggest parts of its appeal to me (not to say the gameplay is lacking... well, not always anyway =P), and you just can't have it at that level on consoles. And if they limit it to only PC/Mac having that level of customization (assuming it's cross-platform), then the console players are at a severe disadvantage, and vast majority will just buy it for PC/Mac anyway.

Is a Starcraft RTS/MMORPG out of the question? Then again could this work? Starcraft has a pretty wicked storyline.

A Starcraft MMO would just split the WoW playerbase in half. I'm sure this new project isn't a Starcraft MMO.

The likelihood of it being Starcraft II is fairly high though. Considering the original rumors of SCII being announced on May 19th have been confirmed (or at least the part about an announcement on May 19th). Add that with the fact that Blizzard was hiring RTS game designers about a year ago and the fact that they're announcing this in Korea, the home of RTS E-sports and the largest Starcraft fanbase.

Maybe that or some sort of massive retrofit for WoW that might straddle the line between expansion and sequel.

Alternatively, I wonder if they're just really ramping up battle.net for their future games. Maybe they want it to be more of a persistent service with buddy-matching over multiple games, kinda like Steam.

I would guess WoW2 as the MMO, and SC2 as their next RTS.

Wouldn't that be what most of you would do for max profits?

Remember, its 2-5 years for development. Just cause they're working on WoW2, don't expect anything before Christmas of 2010.

Again though, these are all guesses.

FFXI is playable on both the PS2 and PC, and as with most multi-platform releases, the UI is fairly bad for both as a result.