Warcraft 4

It's "reader suggested topics day" today here at Tobold's blog. :) A reader asked me how I think that the events of World of Warcraft would influence the lore of the Warcraft universe, and how that would impact Warcraft 4. If Kel'Thuzad is killed in Naxxramas in WoW, will that be mentioned in Warcraft 4? Will the lore contain references on how he got killed by a platoon of 40 heroes? Seems unlikely.

My personal take on that is that I doubt that "Warcraft 4" will ever be released. Not because of lore, because lore can always be fudged. But because of the far more mundane concept of "return on investment". Which investment do you believe would give higher returns, "Warcraft 4", "World of Starcraft", or some WoW expansion? In my opinion the WoW expansion is a sure moneymaker, World of Starcraft would be a potential multi-million dollar earner, and Warcraft 4 would just be a reasonably well selling RTS in a huge crowd of other RTS games. Blizzard has simply grown too big and too successful to still waste their time on some RTS game.

Of course I could be totally wrong there, this is just my personal opinion, with no inside knowledge. But seeing how resources are limited, I can't see Blizzard producing anything but MMOs in the next 10 year. It is not the lore that is tainted by WoW, but the Blizzard and Warcraft brand that have completely changed since Warcraft 3.