Jeff Kaplan leaving World of Warcraft for next-gen Blizzard MMO

by Kyle Horner Feb 12th 2009 at 2:45PM

Filed under: World of Warcraft, MMO industry, News items

Big news is coming out of Blizzard today as Jeffrey Kaplan, lead designer on World of Warcraft, is moving onto the company's next-gen MMO full-time. His announcement was made via a personal post on the official forums, and included a promise to both play and stay involved with WoW while leaving the day-to-day responsibilities to Tom Chilton and J. Allen Brack.

Kaplan has definitely been involved with the project before now, but we can't stop from wondering whether this is a sign of development ramping up in a big way for Blizzard's sophomore MMO effort, because you don't move over the main dude working on your biggest property unless it's time to kick it up several notches.

And what does this mean for the next expansion in terms of direction and overall design philosophy? Well, knowing Blizzard we won't see a drop in quality, but with a changing of the guard there's always a chance for new directions to be taken.

One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!

Tags: activision-blizzard, blizzard, breaking, jeff-kaplan, next-gen-mmo, world-of-warcraft, wotlk, wow, wrath-of-the-lich-king

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

So sorry said on 3:39PM 2-12-2009

Great, so it will basically another everquest clone? Because that's what Kaplan basically did to wow after he came along.

Stan said on 3:55PM 2-12-2009

I'm hoping for a planetside clone, called world of starcraft...

UltimateQ said on 4:40PM 2-12-2009

Stan said it!

moo said on 3:54PM 2-12-2009

Well the people in Charge of WoW set out to make a better version of EQ as they were big EQ fans back in the day. The guys making their new mmorpg have a new goal in mind and it is one to be different and create as they said "not another WoW". So I think it is safe to guess that it'll probably be easy like WoW but it will be different.

Blizzard is the only company now that will never deliver a product that isn't good and it is 100% certain that their new mmorpg will be the next big mmorpg. Everything that isn't made by Blizzard wont be popular and that is just helped by the nature of the genre. People want to invest lots of time into developing their character in an mmorpg they know will always be popular and that will always be a Blizzard mmo.

Hardy said on 4:07PM 2-12-2009

Sorry to burst your bubble fanboy (you sound like on, but may not be one), but not even Blizzard will beat WoW.

WoW is a beast that, in my opinion, is a fluke success.

It was the right time when it came out.

Not saying it isn't a good game, it's amazing, but I think it'll be next to impossible to beat WoW, even by Blizzard themselves.

Course it doesn't matter. A successful MMO makes up for development and turns a profit monthly, and LotRO and War do that and they don't even have a million people...Well maybe LotRO does, I don't know.

Either way, I'm sure their MMO will be good regardless, but I doubt it'll be WoW.

moo said on 4:12PM 2-12-2009

I'm not a Blizzard fanboi and I didn't like WoW and just wish'd they made SC4 instead. However everything Blizzard makes is so successful.

Starcraft and Diablo have so many fans and them games keep selling and have sold over 10 million each that if they made mmorpgs based on them IP's then they'd be just as big as WoW.

Starcraft mmo would be even bigger than WoW.

It isn't a Fluke.

WoW is so popular because all the fans made it have a population into the millions. Then all the hardcore mmorpg came and tried it because they all love mmorpgs and then because the everyday guy has lots of friends that play WoW then he goes and plays that. You then have all the people that hear about how popular it is on the news and in South Park who also pick the game up.

I played WoW myself just because my friends did and it is no fun playing any other mmorpg by yourself.

The next mmorpg Blizzard make will mark my words be Bigger than WoW if it is Starcraft.

Hardy said on 4:04PM 2-12-2009

Ah crap... There goes WoWs PvE. lol

Brent said on 4:40PM 2-12-2009

"greener pastures"?

That might be a little strong.

droid said on 4:49PM 2-12-2009

Well there went my hope of this game being mainly pvp driven.

moo said on 4:58PM 2-12-2009

I want a Planetside Clone aswel but only if it is seamless like Planetside with the giant battles it had because if it is small battles then I might aswel play CS. Like I want battles of 1000 people between 3 factions because 3 ways in Planetside are so much fun.

Also no PVE because that would just take people away from the PVP.

Jack said on 7:16PM 2-12-2009

Ok people the next mmo from blizzard will not be base on Starcraft or anything else they release it will be a complete new IP! They release that only bit of info a long time ago!

moo said on 7:40PM 2-12-2009

I think they'll release a Starcraft mmorpg off the hype of Starcraft 2.

Craig said on 4:02AM 2-13-2009

I agree the the secret project is probably a StarCraft MMO. When they unveiled the fact that they were releasing StarCraft 2 over three separate SKUs, in order to more fully develop the 'stories' of the three races, my first thought was "Aha! That's a lot of story for a RTS!"

D3 will be a great game, but the Diablo world has had very little character driven story in it. StarCraft was always about the people in it, and had a much more realized plot. Much like WarCraft 3. When I played the orc part of WC3:TFT, knowing that WoW was coming, it just screamed "WoW is going to be built upon this story!"

And much like WarCraft 3 and it's expansion, I think that the three parts of StarCraft 2 will fill in a lot of the little details that will make a great world for a MMO.

Jack said on 2:52PM 2-13-2009

That StarCraft 2 over three separate SKUs is just a marketing thing to get more money out of the games. I hope I am wrong but I not think so..... There goes a lot of story on 2x dvd9! If they use compression. World of warcraft was like 1 dvd9! So that too much content for 1 game is lame! Also look like they did not have problem at all to fix all the game data for pvp on every release....

Jargo said on 7:45PM 2-12-2009

Ah, so he's going to ruin Blizzard's next mmo too. Thanks for the warning!

Tateru Nino said on 9:08PM 2-12-2009

Well, they've already said previously that this new MMO was going to be neither the Warcraft or Starcraft IP from memory. So we can cross those two off the list right away.

Rollins said on 9:32PM 2-12-2009

Makes sense.

A Diablo MMO would be awesome, but I don't think they would go that route, given that Diablo 3 isn't too far off.

But the idea of Blizzard introducing a completely new IP doesn't seem all that likely either.

I think it's safe to say that I have no clue what they're going to do.

Tateru Nino said on 11:39PM 2-12-2009

Blizzard has the capacity to surprise us all from time to time.

sc2071 said on 3:02AM 2-13-2009

I definitely agree with the above comment about Jeff trying to make WoW an EverQuest clone. We've seen the slow and painful recognition of the flaw in this attempt by the expansions slowly making raid content more accessible, from 40 man > 25 man > 10 man.

Hopefully, he gets it now and Blizzard builds a game where the content and live content expansions are just raid dungeons available to only 5% of the player base.