Blizzard’s follow-up to World of Warcraft, a project known only by its codename Titan, has been in development since 2006. And it’s going to be in development a lot longer, after the company announced today it was making some significant changes to both the game and the people working on it.
Responding to a report on VentureBeat from earlier in the day, which claimed that the entire project had been “reset” and delayed to 2016, Blizzard’s Shon Damron issued the following statement:
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. Note that we haven’t announced any dates for the MMO.
While stopping short of confirming the report — something they were never going to do, since the game itself hasn’t been officially been announced yet — it sounds like those are some sweeping and fundamental changes. Certainly enough to keep the project secret for a while longer yet.
To get an idea of just how long this game has been in development, and how long it’s taken Blizzard to show/tell absolutely nothing about it, check out this timeline.
Blizzard delays unannounced MMO until 2016, resets whole project [VentureBeat]
Comments
15 responses to “Blizzard’s Next Big MMO Goes Back To The Drawing Board”
No surprises. We’ve had a lot of changes in technology since 2006.
I wasn’t a fan of WoW but if this a new MMORPG again then hopefully they can be the ones to bring some innovation to the genre beyond the now stale, sidequests being a matter of go here, kill this tougher enemy, collect loot, rinse and repeat
is this Blizzard’s whiteboard or is this Respawn Entertainment’s white board because i see project titan
Looks like they want to make it console playable then.
Sounds about right.
Im guessing if its going on xbox it will be a sport or tv show however.
On a more serious note they also did this with wow, I remember in its early development it didn’t have 2 factions.
Possibly. You are probably right considering things like this usually are done out of new ways to raise revenue and so are done for a business rather than games design. Didn’t think about it like that before I typed up my comment. Starcraft was done over and over again I think I do not know.
Good. Means they found something they didn’t like in the design, or something that could be done better.
I’m guessing most likely the core mechanic. The wow one was simple yet fun and got old quickly but the content added into it made it feel a but fresh before it got old again.
I am curious of this titan thing now and won’t mind waiting if it ends up being engaging and fun.
Diablo 3 and with PS4 and Xbone, it seems too coincidental.
– Console versions as someone else mentioned.
– RMAH, Item Shop and Subscription.
– Monster randomized attributes, similar to D3 (if WoW doesn’t do this already)
What else could they be planning? I don’t see them in a position to experiment with the genre seeing as they build something that worked before, why change, why risk.
World of Lost Vikings please
I would hate to be the guy in charge of coming up with an mmo that will replicate the success of WoW. Other companies can sort of claim they are doing there own thing and are not worried about WoW but with this one the comparisons are going to be there regardless. They have to come up with an mmo style game that is completely different yet also the same as WoW so they can attract the 10 million people playing it to swap over.
I would like to be the cleaner in the office though, then you can get all the info on the direction there heading yet avoid any of the stress of actually having to make a decision.
Also I would play world of lost Vikings
Fine by me. WoW, GTA5 and Dragon Age 3 (assuming its not shit) will be taking the lions share of my gaming time for the next year or so anyway. Im looking forward to Titan, but i dont mind the wait.
It’s a trap!
Duke Nukem MMO. Bring it!
Fail to the king.
I’d say they’re getting more concerned about ESO. It’s getting some dam good reviews from E3, and the Elder Scrolls following has existed for almost as long as the Warcraft following.
Bethesda is going to need to do a lot of things very wrong for ESO not to be a big success.
That said, I’m not going to sit here and claim ESO to be the new ‘WoW Killer’ – to many players with to much time invested in WoW for anything to be able to ‘kill’ WoW in one hit. I think the death of WoW is going to be a gradual one, as it slowly withers and dies…
Hell, if project Titan offers incentives to veteran WoW players to come across and gain something respectable for their time spent & loyalty to WoW, I suspect it’ll be Titan itself that kills WoW.
I think Blizzard needs to just lay down and die, they had a good run – their number is up I’m afraid.