Blizzard announced at some point that their new upcoming MMO would be a new IP and not a WoW 2 or World of Starcraft. My friend told me that they also said they wanted it to be more of a mix of a fantasy and futuristic games (although I can't find a source for this anywhere). He's convinced it's going to be a steam-punk final fantasy style IP which would appear to the western market AND eastern market a little bit better. Personally I love the idea, what about everyone else? Also, does anyone know the source for my friend's suggestion?
 

All I was able to find.... (about blizzard and a possible new mmo)
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16626
 

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I think the new MMO will involve tons of team work (just like in wow with groups) but this time instead of two factions fighting each other, there might be three :) (zerg, terran, protoss).
 

Reposted without the typos!

I'd love to see a steam-punk MMO, but I wonder if it will have the breadth of appeal to big in the big numbers Blizzard are presumably looking for. The only thing I can see pulling in those kind of numbers would be some kind of Star Wars style space opera. Now that would mean going up against Bioware, but Blizzard have shown with WOW that they're not afraid of taking on their main rivals head-to-head, so I'd look in that direction.
 

There really isn't anything to go on. I've read the same information that you guys have, about the new MMO not being based on a current property. If that is true and Blizzard is not trying to keep us disoriented with false information, then you have to consider properties that Blizzard has NOT done before:

Modern Warfare

Pirates

Shooters (I'm aware of Ghost, but technically they have yet to do a shooter)

Espionage

Super Heroes

I think an interesting question is what Blizzard considers a previous property. Technically, World of Warcraft is a separate property from Warcraft. Considering how many people would love to see an immersive starcraft MMO it is not beyond the realm of possibility that an online version would be considered a new property.
 

Tobold, I play on 2 different realms, Alliance PVE and Horde PVP and I find that I play my Horde characters differently to my Alliance characters. I regard Horde as the evil faction and Alliance as the good faction even though I know there is actually very little between the 2 factions in game (nearly all the quests are the same lol). On my Horde characters I often kill steal, gank, generally look after number one and to hell with anyone else. On my Alliance characters I am much friendly, more forgiving and generally a much nicer guy. I know that you play both factions, does your play style vary between them? By the way neither of the realms I play on are RP so I'm not playing up for RP purposes.
 

That's not actually how the factions are supposed to be in backstory terms either. The alliance is supposed to generally be a good faction, while the horde is generally a good faction with some evil elements. (Other groups take up the "evil" roles.)
 

I disagree, I think if you pay attention to WC3 more carefully ... the Alliance comes off as the crueler faction (internment camps for the Horde, Thrall used as a slave, racism directed towards Kael'thas, etc.). Whereas the Horde's behavior is ret-conned via the introduction of the Burning Legion who basically mind-controlled the Orcs and stuff into doing their bidding, and introduced "good guy" factions like the Tauren. People who presume the Horde are the bad guys either are basing it off old lore or their preconceived Tolkien-derived notions.
 

Neither faction is purely good or evil in any meaningful sense. In the Alliance, the Draenei, Gnomes, Dwarves and Elves are relatively nice, whereas the humans have very dirty hands. In the Horde, the Thrall's Orcs and Tauren are fairly good, trolls are on their best behaviour (but have a savage past), Blood Elves were pretty nasty under Kael'thas but seem to be improving since he's left and the Forsaken have some decidedly nasty elements. That's one of the reasons I like WOW lore - they steer away from simplistic "goodies" and "baddies" in terms of player factions.