In an MMORPG market where World of Warcraft is the undisputed leader new developers can benefit by exploiting opportunities the bigger players haven’t, according to Mythic GM and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (pictured) lead designer Mark Jacobs.

Jacobs said in an Edge keynote published Sunday that “…if I was a new developer or a publisher looking at a genre that might give me a better chance of succeeding in this market, it would be in science fiction.”

“This is because if you do fantasy you’re competing against Blizzard, and you’re competing against us as well as some of the other major fantasy titles that are already are in development.”

He continued, “In sci-fi, you really only have Eve, what’s left of Star Wars, Tabula Rasa, and Star Trek Online, if and when that comes out (That’s not to be mean to Cryptic, but rather any time you go into development of a game there’s a good chance it won’t come out, just like our sci-fi MMORPG Imperator).”

Jacobs also cited open spaces in the horror MMORPG and kid-oriented free to play markets as viable opportunities for new developers.

Fantasy games currently dominate the MMORPG market. It was reported in late July that World of Warcraft currently boasts 10.9 million users, and Funcom reported two weeks ago that Age of Conan subscriptions were already up to 415K. Age of Conan released on May 20th of this year.

Eve Online, one of the larger extant science fiction MMORPGs, boasted 220K players at the end of 2007, according to a quarterly economic report released by publisher CCP in February. In that same report it was stated the company expected 250,000 players by Q2 2008.

More about where the next big thing in MMORPGs could come from is available in Jacob’s keynote.