The latest scuttlebutt surrounding Blizzard's upcoming "next-generation" MMO is that it will take place in the future and feature first-person-shooter gameplay, according to NoFrag.com, a French gaming website. The news story (which plays the old "a source familiar with the matter" card) attributes its source anonymously, so Blizzard fans shouldn't put too much stock into the following info (pardon the grammar; we used a Google-translated conversion to glean these quotes in English):

"[...] the next MMO from Blizzard is in part an FPS. It will take place in a futuristic universe. [...] In this new MMO, each player has two "lives" his first "life" is a kind of Sims Online, a giant hub with social interaction and the ability to connect to its second life. Which will consist of fighting for subjective."

Despite the shadiness of the article and alleged source, we do know with moderate certainty that Blizzard's next-gen MMO will not be based on one if its existing IPs (which would include StarCraft), according to a post by community manager Zarhym last summer in the official forums. Many fans have predicted that Blizzard's next MMO would feature hybrid gameplay, possibly bridging the gap between the MMORPG and MMOFPS genres. We have to admit, the premise of the MMO described in this article does seem like the brand of innovative game design the community expects from Blizzard; a sort of "two MMOs in one" theme, with one aspect geared toward social interaction (and perhaps all the things that never made it into WoW, like player housing, guild halls, Web 2.0 integration), and another gameplay front devoted to action-oriented, FPS-styled combat. On the other hand, it could all be complete BS, intended to spike reader traffic. Still, it's fun to speculate. What do you think?