During the keynote speech at the Game Developer's Conference in Austin, Blizzard Entertainment's J. Allen Brack and Frank Pearce briefly discussed Nomad, a squad based sci-fi title that never saw release. After becoming unsatisfied with the project the team involved decided instead to start work on World of Warcraft.

From Joystiq:

However, the most interesting part of the keynote was when they briefly spoke about Nomad, the canceled squad-based sci-fi game. Ten years ago, Blizzard put a lot of work in on the game, but eventually looked at it and said "Is this really the game we want to be working on right now? The answer ended up being "no," and the team went on to start work on World of Warcraft. Here we are ten years later with WoW going strong, and no Nomad in sight.

They'd mentioned this canceled game, along with a slew of others, at last year's DICE summit, but without any other information. Sadly, the only thing they had to show were pieces of concept art, including some by "The Bourbon Cowboy," Chris Metzen. The art itself isn't that exciting, but the words "squad-based sci-fi RPG" are exciting. Could this be Blizzard's next game? Possibly mutated into MMO form? Who knows when we'll find out, since one of the stats they flashed onscreen this morning was "Number of Unannounced MMOs: 1."

Joystiq: A Look At Blizzard's Nomad

Gamasutra: GDC Austin Blizzard Keynote

Blizzard Entertainment (add to watch list)

Search for other Mac games news stories or browse our Mac Games News Archive.