Blizzard plans huge office expansion

By Fred Dutton Published 15 November, 2010

Ramping up new MMO development?

World of Warcraft developer Blizzard has just bought up a huge 100,000 square feet of new office space.

According to the Orange County Business Journal, the studio has signed a lease on two new buildings adjacent to its current site in Irvine, California.

Its current set-up houses 235,000 square feet of space, so the new real estate represents a 40 per cent expansion.

Apparently Blizzard will move into the office space before the end of the year.

Nobody's saying what the new space is for but it could well signal an escalation in development for the developer's long-rumoured new MMO.

Last month Blizzard boss Mike Morhaime revealed, "We are working on a second MMO. We're thinking of it as sort of a next-generation MMO. It's not a sequel to World of Warcraft - we want to do something a bit different."

Or it could just be a place for the developer to house its piles of cash, Duck Tales-style. World of Warcraft is up to 12 million subscribers and Starcraft II has been selling by the truckload since its launch earlier this year.

Next out the door is the Cataclysm expansion for World of Warcraft. You'll be able to get hold of that from 7th December.

Action RPG sequel Diablo III and the Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm expansion are also in development, although neither have been blessed with a release window as of yet.

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About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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