Talking as part of an in-depth new interview published on Gamasutra today, Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce has commented on just how and when a World Of Warcraft sequel might appear, also specifying Warhammer Online and Age Of Conan as the MMO's major competition as its moves towards its third year of operation.

When asked "Do you think there will be a need for a World of Warcraft II? Or will it just be expansions for a long time?", Pearce explained:

"The game's only been out for about 2 1/2 years. So I think for the foreseeable future it’s going to be expansions as it relates to World of Warcraft. We haven’t even thought about the idea of a World of Warcraft II. I mean, we are all really invested in the game ourselves as well, we’re part of the community, we play the game. And we love it and we want to make sure that it has a long lifespan.

However, when asked what circumstances would require a sequel, in the eyes of the team behind the multi-million selling MMO title, Pearce explained:

"What would necessitate a sequel? For us as gamers, we are making the games we want to play. So it would really be about the dev team, and if they said ‘OK, we just can't do what we want to do in regards to the Warcraft intellectual property with the current structure’. It would have to be a situation where we said: 'This is what we want applied to what we want to do, and we can't do it on the current framework’."

In addition, when asked what Blizzard might see as some of its major competition in terms of MMOs, Pearce noted:

"There's a lot of great stuff out there, and a lot of good stuff on the horizon. Certainly the Warhammer Online game has a lot of potential, Age of Conan, that looks like it has potential. There's some good stuff out there inbound so we don't spend a lot of time dwelling on what other people are doing. It’s more important that we feel that we're doing right by our customer base, regardless of what other people are doing."

The full Gamasutra interview also includes Pearce's comments, previously revealed on the site, in which he reveals that the company has a third team hard at work on a new unspecified title, separate from World of Warcraft and StarCraft II, plus a multitude of other views on the firm's MMO and RTS franchises.