World of Warcraft at Ten Ton Hammer

MTV interviews two of Blizzard's top dogs on Diablo III, competiton, and new MMOs.

MTV interviewed Paul Sams (COO, Blizzard) and Frank Pearce (EVP, Product Development, Blizzard), and asked whether or not another Blizzard MMO would cannibalize (compete with) WoW, and whether that is a serious concern. The execs spun this in a different direction and found through research that the three Blizzard franchises really aren't competitors. At first this may sound off base because Diablo and WoW both fall under the fantasy setting. In reality though the Diablo clones of years past (i.e. Titan Quest) would certainly not be included in a discussion of WoW competitors. As a matter of fact, Sams reiterated that while Diablo III can be played cooperatively, it is definitely not an MMO and not a competitor of WoW. Regardless of IP or genre, Blizzard wants one big happy community family, or at least big:

"I’m not sure exactly how much overlap there would between the “Diablo” player base and the “World of Warcraft” player base. We’ve found that there’s not a large overlap between the “Starcraft” player base and the “World of Warcraft” player base. But it’s really hard to say. Our hope is that we can build a big online community, like the Battle.net online service, that would give us the opportunity to introduce all our fans to all of our different franchises across all the different genres."

The interview touches all of the usual bases of why it takes so long for Blizzard to release anything, and creating mobile applications. You can read the rest on MTV Multiplayer Blog.

Of course Ten Ton Hammer's extensive coverage of Blizzard's WWI is also just a click away.