Blizzard's 'Titan' gets reset.

[Outlawedprod]

LOL
http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/28/blizzard-delays-unannounced-mmo-until-2016-resets-whole-project-exclusive/

GamesBeat has learned that Blizzard has decided to push the reset button, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Team of 100 developers working on the MMO, codenamed “Titan,” has been reduced by 70 positions, and Blizzard is reassigning those people to other work. Meanwhile, a core of the team will start over on Titan. The title is now not expected to be published until 2016 at the earliest.

[Ingmar]

Blizzard gonna Blizzard.

[Fabricated]

So Blizzard broke the news that "Titan", the next MMO they've been working on literally since WoW first launched sucked bad enough that they have just completely "reset" it.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/28/blizzard-delays-unannounced-mmo-until-2016-resets-whole-project-exclusive/

Blizzard Entertainment makes a mint from its World of Warcraft franchise, and the gaming giant has had an unannounced massively multiplayer online (MMO) role-playing game in the works for some time. But GamesBeat has learned that Blizzard has decided to push the reset button, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The team of 100 developers working on the MMO, codenamed “Titan,” has been reduced by 70 positions, and Blizzard is reassigning those people to other work. Meanwhile, the core of the team will start over on Titan. The title is now not expected to be published until 2016 at the earliest.

Welp. I'd like to see what pile of shit they ended up with.

[Kageru]

I'd assumed it was pretty much mature and they were just waiting for WoW to collapse to the point where cannibalizing the population wasn't an issue. I guess not, how very blizzard.

That said with a game that's been in development so long, and doesn't really have that much pressure to release, I could imagine a lot changing under them.

[Fabricated]

Man I'm blind. I could've sworn I reloaded to see if anyone had posted it.

[Paelos]

This sucks. I was hoping for something in 2014.

[MrHat]

Probably a Diablo MMO.


 

[Trippy]

Man I'm blind. I could've sworn I reloaded to see if anyone had posted it.

It was in Useless news thread.

[Pennilenko]

I think they are scared of Wildstar.

[Paelos]

The question now is can WoW bridge the gap that far to provide meaningful income in a 3 year period instead of a 1 year wait time?

[Fabricated]

I think in one of the most recent Q&A sessions for WoW Ghostcrawler or whatever flak was answering mentioned that major patches might start getting dungeons again because the WoW team "has been growing". So possibly WoW has gotten some of its team back.

I imagine Blizz took a look at the market with the recent craters/F2P conversions and decided that their vision from 5-6 years ago was absolutely out of whack with what the reality is now.

[Sir T]

World of Starcraft anyone?

[Fabricated]

I really hope they're keeping whatever engine/tools they made because lol @ the idea of Blizzard cranking out anything MMO-shaped in a 2 1/2 or so year period.

[Merusk]

I imagine Blizz took a look at the market with the recent craters/F2P conversions and decided that their vision from 5-6 years ago was absolutely out of whack with what the reality is now.

I'd be willing to bet this is at least 70% what it is.  Their vision from 5 years ago would have included subs, to be certain.

However they would have also expected a fantastic SC2 and D3 release and a player base ready to embrace the next Blizzard MMO. Not a landscape where: SC2 sees a spike and a decline, (has it reached the sales of the original, considering how they've strung out the campaigns?); irritation over the Kalganization of the story; a playerbase disgusted with D3 in general, wishing for D2 with new graphics; and while WoW still has millions of subs, the player base is certainly tired of Blizzard's vision of an MMO. (That's turned in to the same vision as EQ before it. Raid or GTFO.)

Yeah, I can see looking back at the last few years and going, "Well, shit.. "

[Paelos]

It might be a good thing. If the move means WoW gets the attention it's needed after being milked by what can only be described as the B Team, maybe getting people back into the system that actually know what the fuck they are doing will help steer things back to stuff players actually want to do. Not daily hubs and faction grinds.

[UnSub]

If Blizzard say 2016, let's say 2017 or even 2018.

It may have just been kinder to outright kill the project, or turn it into some kind of MOBA. Maybe they will.

[Fabricated]

Blizzard already has a MOBA in production IIRC.

[Ashamanchill]

That thing is due out after Titan. Christ, by the time their Blizzard All stars gets released, MOBAs are going to be a quaint niche played only by nostalgic hipsters.

[luckton]

I think they are scared of Wildstar.

My thoughts as well.  Considering that Wildstar has some of WoW Vanilla's devs on the team vs. WoW's current "B Team", they probably didn't want to risk clashing and splitting their wins of subscribers.  They'll let NCSoft win this round, while they start planning for the future.

Also, Lum's FB status said it best: If this was any other dev house, such a "reset" would have crushed any hope of producing anything.  Such is the power of Bliz.

[Goreschach]

It might be a good thing. If the move means WoW gets the attention it's needed after being milked by what can only be described as the B Team, maybe getting people back into the system that actually know what the fuck they are doing will help steer things back to stuff players actually want to do. Not daily hubs and faction grinds.

It's definitely a good thing. The game industry would be in a much better position if more houses were willing to take an objective look at what they're working on and say 'this thing irrevocably sucks, lets stop wasting our time'.

Blizzard is, after all, known primarily for polishing things. Remember what Romero taught us about polish?

[01101010]

It might be a good thing. If the move means WoW gets the attention it's needed after being milked by what can only be described as the B Team, maybe getting people back into the system that actually know what the fuck they are doing will help steer things back to stuff players actually want to do. Not daily hubs and faction grinds.

It's definitely a good thing. The game industry would be in a much better position if more houses were willing to take an objective look at what they're working on and say 'this thing irrevocably sucks, lets stop wasting our time'.

Blizzard is, after all, known primarily for polishing things. Remember what Romero taught us about polish?

I doubt more dev houses have the financial ability and reputation to completely reset a project so long in construction without completely dissolving the company.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I think it's Wildstar too but not in the way you've stated.  I very much believe Titan was going to be a wow in space type deal, new ip maybe but space for sure and most likely that cartoony look so with wildstar coming out and likely to be popular, they'd look like they were simply copying it.

[Goreschach]

It might be a good thing. If the move means WoW gets the attention it's needed after being milked by what can only be described as the B Team, maybe getting people back into the system that actually know what the fuck they are doing will help steer things back to stuff players actually want to do. Not daily hubs and faction grinds.

It's definitely a good thing. The game industry would be in a much better position if more houses were willing to take an objective look at what they're working on and say 'this thing irrevocably sucks, lets stop wasting our time'.

Blizzard is, after all, known primarily for polishing things. Remember what Romero taught us about polish?

I doubt more dev houses have the financial ability and reputation to completely reset a project so long in construction without completely dissolving the company.

Most dev houses don't have the financial ability to keep a project this long in construction to begin with. But just look at the mmo churn we're seeing. Shit like SWTOR, TESO, and Autowhatever keep getting shoved through production with hundred million budgets that they can't actually afford, only to bomb and cause various problems for the developers.

I think it's Wildstar too but not in the way you've stated.  I very much believe Titan was going to be a wow in space type deal, new ip maybe but space for sure and most likely that cartoony look so with wildstar coming out and likely to be popular, they'd look like they were simply copying it.

When has Blizzard ever tended to shy away from copying something?

[Ruvaldt]

I don't think they're worried about it looking too much like other products.  Blizzard isn't known for their innovation anyway.  They've built their business off of taking ideas that are already in circulation and refining the hell out of them.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I don't think they're worried about it looking too much like other products.  Blizzard isn't known for their innovation anyway.  They've built their business off of taking ideas that are already in circulation and refining the hell out of them.

Ideas, not the entire look and feel of a game. Wildstar looks to be everything a next gen blizzard mmo would contain, only they got there first cause blizzard didn't want to kill their cash cow.

[Paelos]

Blizzard's never given a damn about what other people do in relation to their products getting made. They will steal from their ideas if they pan out, but it's not going to stop them from competing. They care about making their products functional, polished, and profitable.

Where they've fallen over lately is letting profitable get in the way of fun. This move seems to be traditional Blizzard noting that their product was not going anywhere, and they won't shovel something out the door after the D3 missteps with AH and Itemization, WoW shedding subs due to neglect, and the LolLore storylines in all their games but most notably SC2 and D3 lately.

At some point, they were going to have to reign this stuff back in. I think they dumped entirely too much into Titan at the cost of their other products, and they are now thinking that the eggs in one basket philosophy was a bad idea.

[tazelbain]

Remember that last report were they say F2P is eating them. My guess is Titan wasn't built f2p.  Instead of just bolting f2p on, they are doing major redesign to include f2p at its core.

[Miasma]

This sucks.  I was really hoping Titan would be unveiled at blizzcon and maybe even start beta late this year.  I am so very tired of Azeroth, I only stll play because I like my raid team.  Going to go sign up for that wildstar beta I guess.

Blizzard could still get away with charging a monthly fee for whatever they do so long as it is at least as good as WoW.  They might have to include both WoW and the new mmo for $15 though, at which point they would probably make more money by haveing the new one be f2p.  I spend way too much money on f2p games I like, I would rather have a sub.

[Mrbloodworth]

I don't think they care about Wildstar. More likely they care titan was not differentiated enough from WoW, or it was possibly too different.

[Paelos]

Remember that last report were they say they say F2P is eating them. My guess is Titan wasn't built f2p.  Instead of just bolting f2p on, they are doing major redesign to include f2p at its core.

Makes sense, but I don't think it's just that issue. My guess is they were trying to make a full-blown twitch FPS MMO and it just wasn't working.

[Speedy Cerviche]

From what I hear (from a clanmate who is fairly well dialed in to this Texas scene stuff, but still 3rd hand... ) the current playtesters have just been giving it terrible reviews. It has stinker written all over it and looking at a high chance of a SWTOR style bellyflop if it hit the market. I think the main problem is just that it's a bad game, fee models can be sliced and diced but if the actual gameplay is non-compelling you won't gain any traction. WoW's gameplay blew away all other DIKU style MMORPGs, and this game needs to do similar things in the FPS genre competing with well polished major franchises CS/TF2, CoD, BF and even lesser franchises but with followings and great gameplay like Mount & Blade. Mediocrity probably will not cut it (looking at recent D3/SC2), let alone a crummy game. Playtesters/devs can tell right away how it stacks up to their FPS competition, they must know it would get blown out.

The word is they are also taking a bit of a market risk cuz want it deeply interconnected with twitter/facebook. You  can send a tweet for a microtransaction or something and whenever you ding up it spams your facebook I guess. I mean this kind of stuff makes sense in theory, you have tons of vertical marketing opportunities, and in the long term this sort of thing might become more acceptable, but when myself and some guys in my m&b warband clan were discussing it last night the big initial reaction was basically  "I don't want my nerdy gaming secrets splashed all over my Facebook".

If you're going to pull this social integration crap, you REALLY need your core game to be superb, so I'm guessing it was not even close and warranted this complete overhaul.

[schild]

It took Blizzard nearly a decade to finish both Starcraft and Diablo.

They work slowly and iteratively.

Speculation is sort of a waste of time on their projects.

[Paelos]

Speculation is sort of a waste of time on their projects.

Agreed, but then again we're all wasting time until September and some games get released.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I wish people would realize facebook has already hit it's peak and it's downhill from here.

[Draegan]

I would hope that Blizzard's focus group/playtesters were decent gamers and not idiots who don't know what good games are.

For example, I've heard that when Rift was "Heroes of Telara" before they went dark in 2009?10? the game was essentially a single faction game, with no class structures (you could access any soul in the game) and souls were dropped like loot. The Rift system was more widespread and created more of an ecosystem that created different game play elements every time you logged in.

They focus tested the game and that led them to make a game that was quest-hub driven, with four classes and two factions. The focus group wanted another WOW and in the end that made the game worse off.

I have to imagine that Blizzard is better than that, hopefully.

edit:
Rift already did the social media thing, and it was stupid and no one cared then.