Blizzard Restarts "Titan" Project, Won't See Release Until 2016

[Gregg Johnson]

Blizz does it again. And it's a good thing; It shows that the merger hasn't hit their sense of quality. Whether you like their games or not, it is fairly indisputable that their products work and work well.

Were you THERE for ANY game launch they've done in the last decade? At all? Even a little?

 

[Whitbane]

Eh, I can wait. If it's just WoW with a coat of paint and a lot more pew pew lasers, then I really couldn't care about it. Would be nice seeing a MMO about planet exploration and Players versus Environment, instead of the usual.

 

[Ukomba]

Oh No!!! Not that thing I know nothing about, I was so invested! -_-

 

[CosmoJoe]

You have a source for that? I'm fairly confident that blizzard has said absolutely nothing about what the project is. I fail to see how repeating snarky forum snipes at blizzard as fact has any value. Dunno when Blizzard became the new cool dev to hate, last i checked Squareenix hadn't done anything redeeming to be kicked from that throne.

They published Tomb Raider. Yeah, they stumbled a bit when they revealed that it was a flop (and all the question marks immediately sprouted from everyone's heads), but still.

Blizzard has been cool to hate ever since Diablo 3, and had the germinating seeds of public hatred ever since they cancelled Starcraft: Ghost.

In all fairness, Diablo3 was a mess. Launch issues aside, the game itself had glaring issues. Crafting was a joke, the loot drops were boring and they couldn't seem to decide what to do with pieces of the game such as PvP. I was really excited for the release of the game and found the first few areas pretty solid but I honestly found Torchlight II to be a vastly superior game; just overall a lot more fun and to top it off, Runic was not having to bandage their game to make it fun.

I hear Blizzard has done stuff to make D3 a better game but frankly I am sort of past it now and haven't found the desire to reinstall the game to find out.

 

[JayRPG]

It seems like they came to the conclusion most of us would have come to without ever seeing the game.

A game in development 6 years is most likely going to be shit in one way or another by 'modern standards'.

WoW was in development so long (I believe only 4 years though) that it launched with dated graphics, this didn't take much away from the game but it still shows the problem with having such long development times.

Actually I think Blizzard was very smart about the art/graphics for WoW. The cartoon-ish look they went with has a very distinct style and I find it rather endearing. That sort of style also ages a lot better than if they had gone with a more realistic look for the models; just IMHO.

I really think people put too much stock in tech specs and graphics engines. The feel of the game is also really critical. One thing I will say about WoW is the feel of the game is extremely smooth and responsive. Almost every MMO I have played since, while looking better, has felt a bit off. Either the animations are sloppy, or the jumping, etc is just not that responsive and makes for a clunky play experience.

I didn't mean the graphics or the art style were/are bad, even for the art style the graphics were 'dated' on launch, but like I said in the original post, it didn't take much (if anything) away from the game and more importantly made the game more widely available - it's just one thing that can suffer due to long development times.

I was only using graphics and engines as examples, because they are easy to exemplify

I wonder if you'll have the same thoughts if Half Life 3 ever gets released.

I have my doubts HL3 has actually seen much development at all and valve is quite 'mums the word' on even if it's in development which is a far shot from basically saying "Hey, we've had a team of 100 working on this for 6 years"

They might as well be saying "Well we've had a team of 100 on this project for 6 years but we are canning it and restarting because we've spent the last 4 years trying to perfect a game that was probably almost complete in 2 and what was perfect 4 years ago is no longer up to standard"

Honestly.. Just get on with it, damn it.

Surely the majority of the later stages of development on titan (before this) were mainly tests, passes and small tweaks - if you are still adding key game mechanics or implementations after 6 years than what exactly have you been doing for the last 6 years?

 

[Callate]

Well, on one hand, it's actually sort of nice to hear that something from Blizzard isn't on what has often seemed like an Activision-mandated "Every year, on the clock" release schedule.

On the other hand, there's something a little sketchy about the combined message "this needs a massive overhaul, and it's going to get one" and "we're cutting the team working on it to less than a third its prior size", n'est pas?

 

[tautologico]

Hm. So, basically, midway through production they decided it was going to be utter shit, and had to start over from scratch?

For the Blizzard of today, this does not surprise me.

It was also true of the Blizzard of yesterday. Starcraft: Ghost, for instance, was cancelled long before they merged with Activision.

When you're making an MMO, you really don't want to screw it up.

Edit: Oh, awks, someone's mentioned this before me. Well, uh... let this be a lesson to you!

Oh, I forgot about Ghost! Holy crap, that takes me back...

They also have thrown away an almost finished game because it didn't live up to their standards. The warcraft adventure game had recorded dialogue and it seemed to be mostly, if not completely, done when Blizzard decided they wouldn't release it. There are some scenes on youtube if you care to look for them. So no, Blizzard throwing games away is not a new thing.

EDIT: OT: I think they realized the MMO market has changed a lot and that maybe investing much in Titan shouldn't be such a high priority when it probably would never be as successful as WoW.

 

[Hagi]

Well, on one hand, it's actually sort of nice to hear that something from Blizzard isn't on what has often seemed like an Activision-mandated "Every year, on the clock" release schedule.

On the other hand, there's something a little sketchy about the combined message "this needs a massive overhaul, and it's going to get one" and "we're cutting the team working on it to less than a third its prior size", n'est pas?

Cutting the team makes sense. They're talking about redoing the underlying technology, in other words the engine.

Which means that anyone who isn't either a programmer or a project lead won't be able to do anything until the basics of that are complete. The project leads will determine what the engine needs to be capable of doing and the programmers will implement that. Not much work for anyone else until it's known if what's envisioned can actually be achieved.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

So will a Blizzard MMO beat WOW! (Yes i know they made WOW) Many have tried but none have did it. I wonder if only wow will make a monthly fee ok, but every other game its a big no no. Even the Titan game i think will fail to be a monthly fee game.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

I think they decided this, because in 2016 we will get the last WoW expansion to kill Sargeras and "finish" the storyline? Maybe.

I think they are afraid of unveiling what it is until the time is right. They want the subscribers from WoW to either play in tandem with Titan or switch over which in my case, I don't think it will happen.

The chances of this game of being a "mmorpg" is quite low, because they already have a big mmo in that genre, just switching it to sci fi and a different universe won't be that big of a problem.

Either way, it's going to be most probably a third person shooter or something with some RPG elements(I'm just speculating here).

 

[Covarr]

Obviously the delay is because they were worried about competing with Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, because FFXIV was so good already and an improved version of it would clearly be the best MMORPG ever.

P.S. Thanks

 

[Draconalis]

I think blizzard probably realized their own MMO couldn't compete with Wow, so they are changing the model, and or delaying to milk Wow.

That's my theory.

 

[Elamdri]

I hope they take their time with it. They need to rebuild a lot of their goodwill after the fiasco that was Diablo 3.

 

[Baresark]

Anyone who thought there was even a remote chance of this game seeing the light of day by 2015 is obviously a little slow. You see, Blizzard is fuckin' useless because they announced it when it was only a concept. Sadly, this mentality was also taken up by Bungie.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

Umm... Diablo 3 launch? I don't know about indisputable.

I agree that their sense of quality is very much intact though. Diablo 3 was a hiccup, but still, it happened. World of Warcraft and Starcraft are giants in their arena's due to Blizzard's sense of quality. I think Titan will be something interesting.

It's a good point, but a launch is a launch. I've yet to see any online game work well from launch. I was at a D3 LAN at launch and we were all playing within two hours, some of us from the beginning.
I think it speaks more of a general poor attitude in the industry as a whole of being ready to handle massive amounts of gamers. It might be simply underestimation or it's a deliberate tactic, since most won't be playing as intensely as the first day.

I should be more specific; You don't see broken games or sub-par quality of mechanics or gameplay. Not the subjective stuff, since there's a clear difference between whether you think the gameplay is good and whether it's working as intended or not. I hate Diablo 3, I think it's a bad story, silly character development and an unscrupulous attempt at making money on the player auction house. But I don't think it's a bad game, for what it is.

At least that's how I see it.
My point is that when they scrap development, it's because they believe it's not good enough and have a genuine intention of making something worthwhile instead.

I have to disagree. Diablo III is boring; it's sub-par compared to its predecessor and other action RPGs on the market; it lacks major features promised; it's crippled by a terrible economy system and when I was playing, hacking was rife. Let's not even talk about the launch.

That's not the Blizzard quality I grew up with.

 

[Strazdas]

A perfect troll award goes to Blizzard, for successfully wasting tons of extorted WOW money (seriously, who pays for MMO expansions people?) and still being the "Right" guy.

Eh eh eh! I just wanna know wtf it is! Take all the time you want, just tell me!

Well it's a "causualised" sci-fi mmorpg, so take that for what you will but yes more info would be nice.

So basically eve-online for retards?

So will a Blizzard MMO beat WOW! (Yes i know they made WOW) Many have tried but none have did it. I wonder if only wow will make a monthly fee ok, but every other game its a big no no. Even the Titan game i think will fail to be a monthly fee game.

there are sucesful subscription based MMOs there. what WOW and WOW alone does is sell thier expansion packs while already being paid for it via subscriptions. no other gamer would pay for an expansion pack or even the client if they are paying subscritino fees, yet a WOW gamer churns out this money over and over again.

 

[DelinquentTurtle]

Is it too much to hope that they've come to their senses and are taking out pay2win features such as RMAH after what they learned from D3?

They have recently admit that the AH hurt the game in the end so maybe we're seeing some form of redemption?

Probably not.. But still.. a man can dream..