Blizzard excited for fourth WOW expansion

Cataclysm isn't out till December, but gaming behemoth Blizzard is already excited about the idea it has for World of Warcraft's next expansion.

"It's pretty freakin' awesome," World of Warcraft senior producer John Lagrave told Game Informer at BlizzCon over the weekend.

"We've now got a central idea [for the next expansion] that makes me happy and gets me excited, and it makes everyone else happy and excited.

"When everybody gets happy and excited, we know we're on to something. We don't know if it's going to be the final thing, but we know something good is coming. Will it top Cataclysm? I think it's pretty freakin' awesome. I'm really hopeful."

Blizzard's produced a WOW expansion roughly every two years, so don't go holding your breath on this one.

Meanwhile, it looks like we're also in for a long wait before we see Blizzard's next-gen MMO.

Blizzard executive Rob Pardo told Gametrailers' Geoff Keighley that fans shouldn't expect to hear anything on the game – at all – until at least 2012.

We do know, however, that around 50 people are actively working on the MMO project.

Back in 2008 Blizzard boss Mike Morhaime confirmed, "It's not going to be a World of Warcraft sequel."

"We're not trying to replace World of Warcraft with this new MMO," he said. "We're trying to create a different massively multiplayer experience, and hopefully World of Warcraft will still be going strong when that one is released."