Does new Diablo3 will steal players from WOW?

Blizzard co-founder and EVP of product development, Frank Pearce has told Gamasutra he thinks the PC RPG is similar enough to attract players away from WoW – but Blizzard might as well cannibalize its own audience rather than a competitor.

What is the point of loosing players from its own game to add to other?

Asked if Titan might pull players away from WoW, Pearce replied, “It’s hard to say. I think even a shorter-term concern is whether or not we might see cannibalization of WoW players from Diablo III when we launch it, because it’s a similar type of experience. Not exactly similar, but it’s that RPG feel.

“For us, I think it’s really important that we recognize that somewhere, sometime it’s likely that someone is going to cannibalize World of Warcraft players,” he added.

“So it’s better we cannibalize them ourselves than let someone else do that, because if we cannibalize them ourselves, they’re still a Blizzard customer.”

The Blizzard co-founder told Gama the studio’s now transferred most veteran WoW developers over to the new MMO project – and that’s been “a very deliberate process”.

“World of Warcraft has been in development in some shape or form dating back to 1999, 2000, somewhere around there,” he explained. “That’s more than 10 years, and as cool as it is to be working on World of Warcraft, and as great as I think that would be for anyone to have an opportunity to contribute to something as successful as that, to do it for 10 years is potentially asking too much of someone.”