[Column] General: Blizzard’s Titan is Dead

SBFord

Luckily, the MMO is not as dead as Blizzard’s Project Titan. It seems like it can’t be true, right? After seven years of development, reassessing, and waiting… Blizzard is officially canceling Project Titan. As they did with Warcraft Adventures and Starcraft: Ghost, it seems the legendary studio just didn’t see the merit in making Titan a reality… at least right now.  Polygon broke the story today, and I think I can speak for many when I say it made me really sad.

Read more of Bill Murphy's Blizzard's Titan is Dead.

Arawulf

Too bad we probably won't get to ever see details about what they actually were working on for those 7 years.

laserit

Originally posted by Arawulf
Too bad we probably won't get to ever see details about what they actually were working on for those 7 years.

A shame really

SteamRanger

And so they diverted the lion's share of their best talent from World of Warcraft and Diablo and turned their best franchises over to be Activisioned. Pitiful. 

orbitxo

greeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaat 7 more years of wow....

<.<

 

good thing for D3.

Battlerock

Hope you're all happy now.

Kabulozo

For me it makes no difference, I don't play Activision-Blizzrd games. The only exception still is Diablo. CoD, WoW and Destiny are just terrible.

C.L.O.U.D

Too bad that they spent $100+ million dollars on the game and then scrapped it. -From the mouth of a someone who worked on the game.

danwest58

Originally posted by C.L.O.U.D
Too bad that they spent $100+ million dollars on the game and then scrapped it. -From the mouth of a someone who worked on the game.

Any chance Blizzard will buy the Star Wars Galaxies name, partner with Disney.  Modernize SWG put their spin on the game, add content to it and bring SWG 2 with a Pre CU into the MMO world?  That would be a cheap easy win for Blizzard and it wouldnt be hard to get people to play.  And it would be profitable.  

Loke666

I guess they think that MOs like D3 earns more money for what they cost but I think they made a mistake here just like CCP did when they canceled WoDO.

Wow wont bring in those huge monthly fees forever and not having a game even close to replace it while they still spent 5 years and used a lot of their best people (Kaplan comes to mind) for creating nothing does seems like a weird tactic to me.

A MO is cheaper to develop than a MMO but I am willing to bet my hat (and I love that hat) on that D3 won't be a big game 10 years after release but rather something a few people still play, like the first 2 games were after that time.

A good MMO outlasts any other type of game and while they do cost more to develop they also earn in that money pretty fast during it's long lifetime.

Of course in Titans case the game just could be bad and that be the reason of them canceling it (even talented people can make crap now and then) or Blizzard might have put in as much work on Wow 2 already and choose to put their money on it instead but from what we know the whole thing sounds rather stupid.

CrazKanuk

Meh, I've seen enough horror movies to know that if nobody sees it, it didn't happen. IE, you don't take someone's word for it that they killed the killer, like ever! I've seen no evidence to suggest otherwise, so until they start laying people off, I'd tend to think that something's still going on, whether it's Titan or whether it's Demigod. 

dreadlordnaf

Originally posted by C.L.O.U.D
Too bad that they spent $100+ million dollars on the game and then scrapped it. -From the mouth of a someone who worked on the game.

 

They probably got so into making it they forgot to look around and then realized they basically made another WoW-clone type game that wasnt that great, heh.

 

 

Loke666

Originally posted by danwest58

Any chance Blizzard will buy the Star Wars Galaxies name, partner with Disney.  Modernize SWG put their spin on the game, add content to it and bring SWG 2 with a Pre CU into the MMO world?  That would be a cheap easy win for Blizzard and it wouldnt be hard to get people to play.  And it would be profitable.  

No. Just wont happen. Why share the profits with Disney and LA when they own IPs themselves that would earn just as much money.

World of Starcraft is a possibility though, that would get tons more players than SWG 2.

Azaron_Nightblade

They're probably trying to judge what's the next hot thing that they can jump on.

They're getting on board with the MOBAs with HotS. They got into the online TCG business with Hearthstone.

So maybe next in line is something voxel bases, like Minecraft and the gazillion others it spawned in its wake (seven days to die, life is feudal, etc...)

noluk

They may have cancelled the title but a lot of that development can be reused somewhere down the line.  I suspect the probably figured out that their "success" with Titan would only come at the expense of WoW's current subscriber base.  People generally play one MMO at a time and 3 million people moving from WoW to Titan would be a net wash.  I suspect the reason they created Titan and the reason they canceled it was the threat from ESO and Wildstar that has not lived up to hype.  If ESO and Wildstar had garnered millions of subscriptions, all the news out of Blizzard now would be about what is coming with Titan.  As it exists currently WoW is fine and Warlords will only improve that situation.  They do not need to release a new game when their next expansion will pull back a few million subscriptions for a few months anyway. 

FelixMajor

Lame, at least tell us what it was xD

Azaron_Nightblade

Originally posted by noluk
They may have cancelled the title but a lot of that development can be reused somewhere down the line.  I suspect the probably figured out that their "success" with Titan would only come at the expense of WoW's current subscriber base.  People generally play one MMO at a time and 3 million people moving from WoW to Titan would be a net wash.  I suspect the reason they created Titan and the reason they canceled it was the threat from ESO and Wildstar that has not lived up to hype.  If ESO and Wildstar had garnered millions of subscriptions, all the news out of Blizzard now would be about what is coming with Titan.  As it exists currently WoW is fine and Warlords will only improve that situation.  They do not need to release a new game when their next expansion will pull back a few million subscriptions for a few months anyway. 

I honestly doubt they ever got far beyond the concept phase. And even that sounded like it went back to the drawing board several times.

Kinda like Tabula Rasa before it eventually came out. FireFall had similar problems I think. And of course there was World of Darkness...

Probably better to cancel it if they are stuck with a concept that's going nowhere.

bcbully

You guys are so slow. For the past year I've been saying Titan is/was Hearthstone!


It's no coincidence that on the leaked project slate Titan was scheduled for release in 2014 and Blizzard always said that Titan (hearthstone) would not compete with WoW. That it was casual game made for different audience.

nbtscan

They're probably doing just fine between HotS and Hearthstone.  They'll just keep milking WoW for as long as they can.  Only time will tell if they're shooting themselves in the foot by not working on a more traditional MMORPG though.  I was really hoping to see something based in the Starcraft universe.

nyxium

Whatttt?

7 years work down the drain? I knew something was  up when Blizz restructured the dev team a while back.

This has got to be the biggest MMO project disaster story of all time! ALL TIME!

Arclan

Must've been in terrible shape.  Why else wouldn't they just release it for free and let gamers do what they want with it.    Id software created a multiplayer game called Wolfenstein: EnemY Teritory and then for some reason decided to give the game away for free.   Blizzard could have done that.

bcbully

Originally posted by bcbully
You guys are so slow. For the past year I've been saying Titan is/was Hearthstone!


It's no coincidence that on the leaked project slate Titan was scheduled for release in 2014 and Blizzard always said that Titan (hearthstone) would not compete with WoW. That it was casual game made for different audience.

 

+1 to me.

MMOExposed

I am going to say what many people here are thinking.

 

FUCK!!!!!!! QQ I WANT NEW BLIZZARD QUALITY MMO!!!! FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!! QQ

 

There. I hope that release of stress soothed others here mourning the lost...

MMOExposed

Originally posted by bcbully
You guys are so slow. For the past year I've been saying Titan is/was Hearthstone!


It's no coincidence that on the leaked project slate Titan was scheduled for release in 2014 and Blizzard always said that Titan (hearthstone) would not compete with WoW. That it was casual game made for different audience.

 

So what the hell was Project hydra than?

sketocafe

Well, the decision to pull talent from wow and send it to Titan certainly paid off.

MMOExposed

Originally posted by danwest58

Originally posted by C.L.O.U.D
Too bad that they spent $100+ million dollars on the game and then scrapped it. -From the mouth of a someone who worked on the game.

Any chance Blizzard will buy the Star Wars Galaxies name, partner with Disney.  Modernize SWG put their spin on the game, add content to it and bring SWG 2 with a Pre CU into the MMO world?  That would be a cheap easy win for Blizzard and it wouldnt be hard to get people to play.  And it would be profitable.  

 

Blizzard doesnt do licensing