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Blizzard talks Battlegrounds, Diablo 3

Posted 13:54 - 14.06.2005 - by Wil Harris

The chaps over at Eurogamer have got a great interview with Paul Sams, VP of Business Operations at Blizzard. Paul goes into some great detail about the future of World of Warcraft, which will surely be of interest to the thousands of addicts that I know will be reading this!

WoW has "Far surpassed our expectations," he unsurprisingly comments. With 1.5m+ paying players right now, WoW has had an unbelievable start to its life. However, Paul does admit that "Our first weekend numbers were so gigantic... I don't want to say that it took us by surprise, but in some respects it really did... We were able to respond and provide additional hardware very quickly." I think some of the first American players might dispute that!

Sams states that Blizzard will "Most certainly" be working on paid expansion content in the near-term future.

As for next-gen, Blizzard is "Exploring any variety of possibilities," and says it has been approached by Microsoft to put WoW on the Xbox 360 - but is hesitant because it would require a keyboard and mouse to be sold or attached separately.

Of course, every one is dying to know about Diablo 3 - is it in the works? "I think that there are definitely some new project announcements coming in the future..." With all the speculation that music for the title has already been recorded, we certainly hope that the beloved RPG makes a comeback.

You can read the full text of the interview here.

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