It seems that Diablo III may not be the only diabolical project over at Blizzard after all.
Diablo III is a very long way away. Why is it so far away? Well, there are a few options – the team could be constantly revising all of their plans, for one. They could be too addicted to StarCraft II and WoW, for another. Or, they could be working on more than one game.
The recent SEC filing by Activision (where it was revealed that things were going to be shaken up at Infinity Ward) contained a bit of information about what the company’s Blizzard arm was up to in its secret fortress buried beneath Irvine.
“Blizzard is currently developing new games, including a new expansion pack to the World of Warcraft franchise, Cataclysm, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, which will be released with the new and improved Battle.net, and sequels to the Diablo franchise.”
Nothing new there, right? We knew Blizzard was working on Cataclysm and StarCraft as well as sequels to Diablo – wait, what’s that? Sequels? As in, plural? Waitaminnit.
While it’s tempting to assume that this could just be referring to concurrent development of both Diablo III and its inevitable expansion pack, it’s worth noting that the SEC filing specifically indicates that Cataclysm is an expansion, not a sequel. MTV Multiplayer points back to an interview they had with D3 lead Jay Wilson at last year’s BlizzCon:
“We’re not saying this is the end of the Diablo universe,” said Wilson, “but we are trying to bring this storyline to a close. It’s not just Diablo 3 – we’ve got plans beyond.”
Very, very interesting. There’s no doubt that Diablo III is the main focus right now, but there may well be stuff in the works for the popular series beyond that title.
Maybe we won’t have to wait twelve years for Diablo IV.
