Blizzard's as-yet unannounced MMO, codenamed "Titan," is getting a reboot and a staff reduction, according to VentureBeat.
News of the "Titan" MMO first surfaced in 2011, when Blizzard COO Paul Sams stated the company had assigned a "dream team" to the project. "These are the people who made World of Warcraft a success. We are going to blow people's minds."
At one point the game's "dream team" consisted of a reported 100 developers. That number has now been reduced to 30, with production getting a reset. As a result, "Titan"'s expected publishing date has been pushed back from late 2014 to 2016 at the earliest. Blizzard head Mike Morhaime described this to employees as part of the company's "iterative" development process.
A source inside Blizzard was able to independently confirm this story for Gamasutra.
UPDATE (5/29/2013):Polygon has a further comment from Blizzard on the company's "iterative" design process with the "Titan" project.
We've always had a highly iterative development process, and the unannounced MMO is no exception. We've come to a point where we need to make some large design and technology changes to the game. We're using this opportunity to shift some of our resources to assist with other projects while the core team adapts our technology and tools to accommodate these new changes.
Blizzard also notes it has not set any dates for the project.
Nope. Two different products. The adventure game was simply cancelled, the only thing that ever came from it was one of the WarCraft novels, and the character then showed up in WarCraft III. Similarly, when StarCraft: Ghost was cancelled, no game came out of that, even though the characters were recycled into both a novel and StarCraft II.
In general, from what we know, when Blizzard cancels a product, they really do cancel it.
They do, however, have a history of 'resetting' projects that aren't going well. StarCraft was initially shown at E3 1996 using a modified version of the WarCraft II engine, and the response was so underwhelming that the game was subsequently changed in a drastic way. Similarly, WarCraft III went through that whole silly RPS (Role-Playing Strategy!) phase before the company finally came to understand that maybe that's not quite what the fans were interested in - so they dismissed Bill Roper and significantly reworked the gameplay.
I wouldn't worry as much about Kotick as I would about their shareholders. Morhaime is an officer as well as Kotick. And with the way ATVI is structured, its actually more Morhaime that controls Blizzard than Kotick. But in any event, the board and shareholders are likely getting a bit impatient. If I were Morhaime, I'd definitely be wary. If other parts of ATVI were doing less well, it would be a disaster. And that can happen at any time. I don't necessarily see the board canning Morhaime now, but another 2-3 quarters like the last one, I would start to see it.
Hopefully they have moved away from the unlimited subscription model, if they have not already. How they go about this could radically change the game design, and if they keep changing the monetization design they will have to keep changing the core game design.
This image is not a concept piece for Project Titan and websites have been using it because Blizzard has leaked little to no art/screenshots. Please contact the artist of this piece, Sparth (nicolas bouvier) or find an actual concept piece that is representational of the game.
If they have indeed reduced the number of people working on the project from 100 to 30, to me this signal a serious change of vision and/or leadership on the project. Either that, or they have a much more interesting project in the works that has a better potential return on investment. considering that the market in games has changed a lot over the past few years, it makes a lot of sense to update your vision for a game that has been in the making for a long time.
Doesn't sound like anyone got laid off, so that's pretty cool.
Successful companies review their works-in-progress regularly, and if they're not working (for whatever reason), they cancel or reboot them without hesitation. This certainly isn't the only "thing that isn't WoW" that Blizzard has in development, so as long as a bunch of people aren't losing their jobs (i.e., the company trying to cut costs) this is probably a *positive* and appropriate action, IMO.
Didn't ATVI just have a big layoff a couple months ago? I seem to remember Treyarch getting hit pretty hard, but I'm having trouble finding exact data.
Radical had layoffs after Prototype, Trey after Blops2, and High Moon last month. Beachhead has had several people leave as well. Katy is correct.
The sad truth is the game market blows right now and casual/mobile has made a huge impact on big companies, many of whom were late adopters and are now playing catch up.
MMOs have hit a point in which repeating the sales of WoW is virtually impossible. Also the technology, as much as it's advanced isn't enough to make a real next gen MMO. Blizzard is probably aware of this. They listen to their community.
The mentality of, "We're going to make the best game ever!" needs to be abandoned in favor of fun, and affordable.
I'm convinced that the hardware and software technology to make a better WoW, or in general the next generation of MMOs, has been around for several years. What has been lacking is the design skills or freedom, which imo have been deteriorating of late. I attribute this to business model trends that are favoring simpler products. This is not a consumer trend however, we are creating this.
Actually i think that Blizzard has a big duty in respecting "expectations" from his users. They got the best MMORPG in the market (I'm just talking about numbers and sales, so no discussion about quality), wich dictated "standards" for almost every MMORPG that came out right now.
Users expects a real "next-gen" MMO from Blizzard, an MMO wich will dictate new standards. Basically i think that they can repeat good sales, because they have already a big user base, but if they fail in respecting the big expectations, they'll fall really hard
In general, from what we know, when Blizzard cancels a product, they really do cancel it.
They do, however, have a history of 'resetting' projects that aren't going well. StarCraft was initially shown at E3 1996 using a modified version of the WarCraft II engine, and the response was so underwhelming that the game was subsequently changed in a drastic way. Similarly, WarCraft III went through that whole silly RPS (Role-Playing Strategy!) phase before the company finally came to understand that maybe that's not quite what the fans were interested in - so they dismissed Bill Roper and significantly reworked the gameplay.
/How/ much longer do we have to keep milking this? And now we're back under the Eye of Sauron (Bobby)?
Successful companies review their works-in-progress regularly, and if they're not working (for whatever reason), they cancel or reboot them without hesitation. This certainly isn't the only "thing that isn't WoW" that Blizzard has in development, so as long as a bunch of people aren't losing their jobs (i.e., the company trying to cut costs) this is probably a *positive* and appropriate action, IMO.
The sad truth is the game market blows right now and casual/mobile has made a huge impact on big companies, many of whom were late adopters and are now playing catch up.
The mentality of, "We're going to make the best game ever!" needs to be abandoned in favor of fun, and affordable.
Users expects a real "next-gen" MMO from Blizzard, an MMO wich will dictate new standards. Basically i think that they can repeat good sales, because they have already a big user base, but if they fail in respecting the big expectations, they'll fall really hard