Operating officers have a different slant on the world, they approach ideas with costs in mind first and revenue second. In an interesting nuts and bolts type interview, Chief Operating Officer Paul Sams answered some questions (and didn't answer some others) about many facets of World of Warcraft that most people don't think about, such as what are the costs per user for games from an operations standpoint? In addition to discussing monetizing Mods, PC platform-centricity, he shares his thoughts on Blizzard developing a new MMO to add to their stable:
There would be some level of enthusiasm and desire from our teams to try and differentiate – they wouldn't try to walk in the shadow of wow, they'd want to do something that would be different. I think we've proved we're not a one-trick pony.
It's nice that all of the departments echo the ideals we hear from all of the top brass at Blizzard, or maybe they all drink the same bear?
If Blizzard is seeing any corporate pressures by the higher-ups at the forthcoming new company that bears its name, the studio isn't showing it.
Both of its current upcoming major projects, StarCraft II and Diablo III are exclusive to PC and Mac, and both are ambiguously releasing whenever Blizzard feels they should release - both traits fairly at odds with console-oriented, shareholder-driven Activision.
During the company's Worldwide Invitational in Paris, Sams sat down with Gamasutra for a one-on-one chat, in which he explained why Blizzard will never make a kids' game, why it "absolutely would" make another MMO but doesn't feel much pressure to move over to consoles, and how the idea of a new franchise is "very intriguing" - so much so that Sams states, "I would absolutely say we will at some point."
It's going to be a co-operative game much like Diablo II in the way of the networking game play experience, but as it relates to what the business model is and those types of things, what you find with Blizzard is we don't really get into those types of things until quite late in the development process.
Right now, we're really focusing on game play, and trying to figure out exactly what the overall experience is going to be, and the whole game play progression and everything. And how the game's going to work on Battle.net, and what the feature system will be there.

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