The good news is that weve seen a significant number of people

Blizzard CEO and co-founder Mike Morhaime recently confirmed the existence of an upcoming, non-World of Warcraft MMO. "It's not going to be a World of Warcraft sequel," said Morhaime. When asked how different the project would be from WoW, Morhaime paused, and replied "It's gonna be different." After being pressed some more about the differences, he reiterated his stance, "…let's just say it's going to be different and it's not going to be a sequel to World of Warcraft. It will be different."While Blizzard's upcoming "next-gen MMO" isn't a secret, the company has posted various job listings for the project on its official web site, we now have confirmation that the title is not a WoW sequel. Even though project details are still sketchy, here's what Blizzard is looking for from some of its 3D level designers, 3D character artists, 3D environment artist, and more:The ideal candidate has extensive experience modeling and texturing a diverse visual range of characters and creatures at a senior or lead level. The ideal candidate has experience concept drawing and illustrating a diverse visual range of characters, creatures, weapons, architecture, and environments. An exceptional understanding of form, structure, color, and light is essential, as is a creative imagination. An exceptional understanding of human and creature anatomy and a keen eye towards form, shape, structure, and silhouette in regards to illustration and design. Understanding of the distinctive Blizzard Entertainment visual style and a passion to push it to the next level. Have shipped AAA PC or console titles as a concept artist.

Found this interesting. Confirms that half the players who left WoW for WAR came back to WoW (which of course means half didn't), and that WAR is now at 750k subs. While a number of World of Warcraft users dropped the widely popular MMO to play EA's recently released Warhammer Online, more than half of those gamers have already returned to Blizzard's market-leader. That's according to COO Paul Sams, who said the pattern of players leaving and then returning to Warcraft follows that of any major MMO release. "We've certainly had some of that happen, which is the same thing we experienced with Age of Conan and each time an MMO has come out we've seen some amount of reduction of use," he said in an exclusive interview published today. "The good news is that we've seen a significant number of people, well over half, that cited Warhammer as their reason for leaving - they've already returned." Sams said he was surprised that Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning had a rocky start in Europe, but server troubles and registration hiccups are part and parcel of the MMO business. "It surprises me because Mythic is a very good company and it doesn't surprise me at the same time because it's really hard, what they're trying to do and what we've done," commented Sams. "We respect those guys over there a lot and certainly wish them well to succeed but having registration troubles, having server troubles, these are things that come with the territory when you're talking about managing a game as big as World of Warcraft or Warhammer or anything like that. So, it's not a surprise because it is really difficult." It's not just respect for the team that Sams has said he's was keen to point out that if any other game can come close to the success of Warcraft, it's Warhammer Online, a game that has already notched up 750,000 registered users. "I think Warhammer is best positioned to succeed out of the various products that have come out thus far since World of Warcraft has come out," he offered. "It seems to be a good game, certainly a great company, Mythic and Mark [Jacobs] over there and his team, they're very, very talented. "But I think without EA they would have struggled as well, because EA fortunately for them has a lot of money and so they were able to put forward a lot of marketing dollars and were able to support the huge infrastructure that they require for these kinds of games," added Sams.

World of Warcraft developer Blizzard is mostly keeping its mouth shut about its "next-gen MMO," but that hasn't stopped CEO Mike Morhaime from teasing fans. "Let's just say it's going to be different and it's not going to be a sequel to World of Warcraft," Morhaime told Wired. "It will be different." He explained that the studio is "not trying to replace World of Warcraft with this new MMO," but is instead trying to "create a different massively multiplayer experience, and hopefully World of Warcraft will still be going strong when that one is released." Little more is known about the unannounced MMO--during another BlizzCon interview, Morhaime refused to confirm if it is set in a new universe--though the studio has hinted that that the project could end up on consoles in addition to PC. "We definitely don't have a deadline where 'at this point we're not going to support World of Warcraft,'" Morhaime added. "We wanna support it as long as people want us to support it."