Rumours circulate about Blizzard's next MMO

The rumour mill has sprung into action again following Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime's replies to questions at DICE in Vegas yesterday, fed by the executive's careful circumlocution of any concrete details about Blizzard's next MMO.

What Morhaime was adamant about, as he has been previously, was that the new game would be an entirely new property, and that some of Blizzard's top MMO developers are working on it.

"Without giving away any details, we have some of our most experienced MMO developers, people who spent years working on the World of Warcraft team, working on this project," Morhaime told his audience (via Ars Technica).

"We're really trying to leverage all the lessons we learned through the years. Some of which we were able to address in World of Warcraft and others that maybe because of the design decisions we've made, you just can't address. So we're kind of taking a step back with all that knowledge to make something that's completely new and fresh. We're not trying to make a WoW sequel."

Morhaime also hinted at strong social elements to the title, mentioning that the game he was spending most of his time on recently was iPhone title Words With Friends. That game, he felt, was much more enjoyable when played with people you knew, rather than strangers.

French site NoFrag also reports that a source close to Blizzard has told it the game will be split into two distinct sections: one for combat and one dedicated to social interaction, and will be heavily predicated on first-person shooter combat.