Gamespot’s coverage of
Starcraft 2 has been spot on. At the same time,
IGN has got it wrong before when it comes to
Diablo 3, so I take these articles with a grain of salt.
In essence, Rob Pardo talks how Starcraft 2 is one of the smaller projects currently in Blizzard:
Pardo also dropped a hint at the scale of Blizzard’s future plans, saying that the 40 developers working on Starcraft II are “one of the smaller teams.” Job listings on the Blizzard site have indicated it is working on a “next-gen MMO”–which the company said will not be another World of Warcraft. Also, rumors persist that Diablo III is in development.
Now, Paul Sams also said something similar - that Blizzard is working on three projects.
Here’s how I interpret it - Diablo 3 and the next-gen MMO are probably the same thing. After all, what’s better than a MMO in the Diablo universe? You got Heaven and Hell as factions… you got an Epic conflict that’s going to dwarf everything that WoW has. Frankly, who cares about Illidan when the can go after Diablo.