As the Paris Games Developer Conference (GDC) wraps up today, everyone is excited to move towards the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational.  So when Gamasutra had a chance to sit down with the Blizzard VP of Design, Rob Pardo, it was intereting to hear what he had to say about the future of MMO design.

But how about the movement into multiple franchises at Blizzard, from Warcraft to Starcraft? Pardo explained: “With Blizzard, we found the ability to put an IP on hold. We wanted to do another RTS, but we were tired of green-skinned orcs, so we moved into that Starcraft world.”

Indeed, pausing successful franchises for some time is a tactic that not many other companies take, but Pardo says it comes with some benefits:

“What was interesting is that when we were away from [Warcraft] for a while, when we came back to it four or so years later, we had all these ideas for it. There was Warcraft III, and then halfway through that the idea for World of Warcraft came up.”

He has a great look at why MMOs aren't going to consoles just yet, and what community in MMOs are made out of!