Yes, you read that right. Blizzard Entertainment are currently hard at work on a new MMO. And it’s not related to World of Warcraft in any fashion. Crazy fellas.

Speaking to VG247 this evening at the Wrath of the Lich King London launch event, Blizzard COO Paul Sams explained that its second major MMO – already in development – is going to be a “next generation” title will be a substantial departure from World of Warcraft.

“We want to create a great game,” he said. “Something that’s cool, and new, and different, and kind of next generation in terms of look and feel and gameplay. That’s a challenging endeavour.”

“We’re definitely at the beginning, in the first half of development,” said the exec, explaining that Blizzard tends to work to a two-half process when creating new games.

“When we’re building a new game from the ground up, what happens is that it’s slow going for the first bit, while the team goes round and round and round figuring out how it’s going to look and feel, what the player experience is and what the differentiators are, and then the speed at which we then bring in the contet and polish and actually get to the finish line… I think the second half of the process is always substantially faster than the first half of product development,” he said.

Sams say when we’re going to see first mention of the game.

“I don’t know yet,” he said asked for an official announcement date.

This should get interesting…