Original World of Warcraft team lead takes helm of Red 5 Studios

An MMO nerd logs into a bar and tells his online buddies, "Hey, did you hear Mark Kern was just appointed as the chairman and chief creative officer at Red 5 Studios?" To which they replied, "Who?" Mouth agape, the MMO nerd shoots his arms into the air and explodes with, "The dude who totally helped create World of Warcraft!" The friends look between each other, searching for a response to their fellows' immense piece of news. "Well, if he's so great, why isn't he still in charge of World of Warcraft?" they replied, satisfied with their obviously unbeatable intellectual retort.

The nerd replied, "Well that's simple, he wanted a creative challenge and working on the world's most successful MMO simply wasn't enough for him." Smug with a sense of victory, the nerd logged out and prepared a post.

But seriously, Mark Kern is taking lead point on development of Red 5 Studio's big secret MMO project. That means whatever game he's helping to create could be considered, in a way, as the spiritual successor to World of Warcraft.