Blizzard's Unannounced 'Titan' MMO Rebooted, Development Team Reduced

An anonymous reader writes "VentureBeat reports that the next-gen MMO Blizzard Entertainment has been hinting at since 2007, codenamed 'Titan,' is getting restarted with a drastically reduced development team. It was originally being built by a 100-person 'dream team' of developers that had their roots in other popular Blizzard games. Many people were expecting an announcement about Titan at this year's Blizzcon, but now that looks unlikely. 'Blizzard's development teams aren't known for their speed. The publisher often cancels projects that have been in the works for years if it believes that those games don't meet its standard of quality.' VentureBeat's sources say the game is now looking at a 2016 release at the earliest."

Comments

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

They tested the hell out of that real money auction house, thank you very much. Then they wrapped a game around it.

If I learned anything from Asheron's Call 2

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

Asheron's Call 1 was a great game and had an update every month. Players were very happy playing it. The developers(Turbine) wanted better graphics, so they decided to make an entirely new game: Asheron's Call 2. It was being developed at about the same time as World of Warcraft. The developers decided to rush it out because they were worried WOW would compete with AC2's numbers and whoever got the players first would retain them. The problem is that Asheron's Call2 was a failure in terms of game mechanics:Armor didn't work and there were ways to make sure you never got hit at all. Asheron's Call2 was rushed and as such, it took away most of the Asheron's Call 1 players :( People quit Asheron's Call 1 to play AC2.

So Blizzard should be careful not to make the same mistake. As long as you have the leading MMO on the block, keep updating that. Keep making content for WOW and expansions. All the while, make a great project on the side in case WOW gets dethroned. I almost got a game design interview for World of Warcraft, and my big suggestion was for them was that they make enough money to create a lot more content than they do now. Aside from content, what they could do is explore end game content such as player housing and kingdom simulation. If they're worried this will screw up their subscribers in case something unpopular happens, they should run WOW experimental beta servers with different rule changes they're working on.

I see no big problem with Titan being delayed. The longer a game takes to develop is generally a good thing. And the last thing Blizzard wants is a chunk of its WOW players to come to a sub par game, then leave for something else that is new.

Re:If I learned anything from Asheron's Call 2

[autocannon]

I see no big problem with Titan being delayed. The longer a game takes to develop is generally a good thing. And the last thing Blizzard wants is a chunk of its WOW players to come to a sub par game, then leave for something else that is new.

I whole heartedly disagree with this statement. There is a sweet spot of time spent for game development. My guess on that is 18-36 months. Once game development hits 3 years, the graphics engine on which it is built is old enough to be noticeable compared to the newer content. Now, not everybody cares about that, but why does it matter so much? Because the original timeline was already within that time frame. That means the game is getting grossly overdue. Grossly overdue games are in that state because the devs cannot get it to a releasable state.

Most recent example in my head. TOR. You may have heard of that incredibly expensive, overdue boondoggle that EA put out. I bought it. Was excited to play it. Until I played it. There are many problems with that game. I won't even blame the devs for them, because IMO it's fundamental flaws in the game's design.

Duke Nukem is another. Or the recent Blizzard offering, Diablo 3. Look, once a computer program (any program really) goes too far over schedule there is something wrong with it. Titan being delayed and large scale developer changes means that game is fatally flawed and they're probably looking to push it to any functional state possible so they can sell a crappy ass game to as many unsuspecting fools as possible.

Re:If I learned anything from Asheron's Call 2

[flayzernax]

Sort of but not really. They should have focused on making AC2 as much like AC1 as possible. But updating the game engine and playability with better UI design. Like doing things they would have in hindsight if they weren't locked into the feature set that AC1 had only.

So the point I disagree on is having to have the same engine and client. If they can release content semi-annually. They can upgrade the engine and code semi-annually too. Beyond patches, or widget like features.

No MMO has done that though.

Though WoW could maybe use a core rewrite. The assets are not bad looking still. For the audience in question.

But the people who liked MMO's are done with them. The new generation is not inspired by last generations toy. I think we should give MMO's a rest for awhile as a species.

The next big thing will be a SIMULATION. That is multiuser. And user generated.

Re: If I learned anything from Asheron's Call 2

[O('_')O_Bush]

Runeescap is actually one a more aggressive development cycle than the one you describe, which is why it still has millions of players (the vast majority fairly new) despite being over 12 years old.

Re:If I learned anything from Asheron's Call 2

[fast turtle]

Guildwars did that. Released new content and slight changes on a semi-regular basis until the GW2 release. Now it's in automatic maintenance mode and only critical issues (game stoppers will be fixed) but hey, at least they didn't shut the servers down so I have a chance to complete the damn thing.

Re:If I learned anything from Asheron's Call 2

[CodeBuster]

Perhaps this a dumb question by why not simply develop the parts of the game that aren't likely to change much during development, like data storage / retrieval, mechanics, and the like while saving things like graphics and sound until the game is in the final 6-12 months? In theory it should be possible to have the skeleton of the game pretty much templated out and ready to go for building out the mechanics and then working in the graphics and sound. Why do the window dressings take so much time in a game relative to the frame of the building and the wiring? Are they just doing it wrong?

Re:If I learned anything from Asheron's Call 2

[windwalkr]

Major problems can be found after the ramping-up stage that you mention. The team decides that they can fix the problem, but only by changing some fundamental assumption upon which the whole game is based. This causes a lot of rework and can blow budgeting and scheduling out of the water. Worse, gp is fairly correct about a practical life cycle for a game engine- so if you bump the schedule like this a few times, you may need to start making "upgrades" to your underlying tech before you've even released the product. That can be a vicious cycle (see DNF.)

"Data storage / retrieval, mechanics" are often the smallest part of a game. What's really expensive is often the art assets, sound, levels, and polish. And a change to any of these can mean updating everything else to suit (oh, we're going with an egyptian theme now?)

Re: If I learned anything from Asheron's Call 2

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

In my mind, the jump the shark moment for EverQuest was when they changed the ogre and troll models from their cool designs and turned them into tall, mildly misshapen humans. And then turned that on as the default model.

Re:If I learned anything from Asheron's Call 2

[ravenshrike]

Or that the dev team couldn't even apply the updates directly to the servers. They had to send patches to the guys at HeroEngine, who would then look over them and 'correct' them before applying. Then there's also the fact that EA forced it out before they had gotten around to properly testing and designing large scale high-level PVP, which turned a shitload of people off.

Re:If I learned anything from Asheron's Call 2

[higuita]

ok, a good graphics engine is good to start selling, everyone likes eye candy BUT.... ... after some weeks, all what matters is the game, the history, how everything works... eye candy only last a few weeks (look at crysis games) , a good game last years (WoW have weak graphics for today standard but still a good game) or even never die (look at nethack, plain ASCII interface and its still one of the best game ever, with thousand of players)

Re:If I learned anything from Asheron's Call 2

[mellyra]

Perhaps this a dumb question by why not simply develop the parts of the game that aren't likely to change much during development, like data storage / retrieval, mechanics, and the like while saving things like graphics and sound until the game is in the final 6-12 months? In theory it should be possible to have the skeleton of the game pretty much templated out and ready to go for building out the mechanics and then working in the graphics and sound. Why do the window dressings take so much time in a game relative to the frame of the building and the wiring? Are they just doing it wrong?

that's exactly what they are doing - first they put a very small team on the project to develop the engine, backend technology, dev tools, ... while the game designers do their magic. then they ramp up the team size massively and start to develop actual art assets, start to write content, design levels, ... (which takes much longer than 6-12 months).

My understanding is that in this case Blizzard had already started production when they decided that they need to go back to phase 1 and rework the game design and the technical underpinnings. So they scaled the team back down (no point wasting money on creating e.g. art assets which later have to be laboriously ported to the rewritten engine, or creating dungeons that will have to be trashed because core game mechanics were rethought in the meantime, ...).

Re:If I learned anything from Asheron's Call 2

[Thruen]

There is a sweet spot of time spent for game development. My guess on that is 18-36 months. Once game development hits 3 years, the graphics engine on which it is built is old enough to be noticeable compared to the newer content.

Starcraft 2's release timeline is longer than that, and I don't feel the graphics are noticeably worse than newer MMOs, although to be honest I'm such a Starcraft fan it wouldn't matter and I'd keep playing SC2 anyway. Development on that started in 2003, so it was still 7 years before the first third of it was released, and some would argue the whole game hasn't even been released yet.

WoW took 4-5 years initially, and was buggy at release just like every other MMORPG ever has been but it might be the most successful game in history. Not the most loved, but quite possibly the most successful single title ever.

D3 took 11 years, and while it takes a lot of flak (rightfully so) over the AH and the DRM, the actual game is a fun hack n' slash, true to the titles that came before it. Those two big flaws would've been there regardless of development time.

DNF is a bad example, the game was terrible regardless of graphics, people were willing to give it a go knowing full well the graphics would be outdated but the game itself was just awful. Development time had nothing to do with that failure, either, it was just a bad game that people were really excited for.

TOR was an MMO made by people who put out great single player RPGs, the result was a great single-player RPG that had some MMO "features" added in which ruined it, and that was another mistake dev time had nothing to do with. Less time would only have resulted in a buggier release with fewer features and the same frustrations.

Nothing you say actually suggests a link between development time and the quality of the resulting product. If I were to go on listing games with 18-36 months of development time that came out bad, I could go on for days, any long-time gamer with Google's help certainly could. That doesn't mean that's a bad timeline either. The fact is, Blizzard rebooting the project will have no real effect we'll ever see on the outcome.

Look, once a computer program (any program really) goes too far over schedule there is something wrong with it. Titan being delayed and large scale developer changes means that game is fatally flawed and they're probably looking to push it to any functional state possible so they can sell a crappy ass game to as many unsuspecting fools as possible.

There was no schedule, the project was not announced yet. They said they're rebooting it, which suggests they're starting over, and they're going to take much longer than they expected to develop it. Nothing that's happened suggests they're actually trying to "push it to any functional state possible" to rush out crap, it's the exact opposite. They're going to take longer with it because they think it's not good enough. If Blizzard thought it was fatally flawed, they would cancel it, as they have in the past.

It seems like you've developed a bias against longer development times for no real reason. You're complaints don't even match up, longer development time would never suggest an attempt to sell a crappy game, it'd be easier to duct tape it together and release it if they think it'd be bad anyway. You, sir, are little more than a troll.

Cause and effect

[girlintraining]

"VentureBeat reports that the next-gen MMO Blizzard Entertainment has been hinting at since 2007, codenamed 'Titan,' is getting restarted with a drastically reduced development team.

This wouldn't happen to be because World of Warcraft started hemmoraging cash and players recently, would it?

The cash cow is sick -- quick, buy more cows!

Re:Cause and effect

[osu-neko]

If by "sick" you mean still the healthiest, fattest cow in the field, several times stronger than the next biggest cow, then yeah, you're right.

Re:Cause and effect

[Anonymous Coward]

This wouldn't happen to be because World of Warcraft started hemmoraging cash and players recently, would it?

Has it? No, seriously, has WoW really been hemorrhaging cash and players?

I'm aware of the recent loss of a million subscribers, but as I understand it, that was a one-time event that can be almost entirely blamed on a Diablo III cross-promotion and a change in Chinese laws.

Even so, that leaves WoW something like five times larger than its largest competitor.

Now that doesn't mean that WoW isn't shrinking or anything like that, I just question the choice of the word "hemorrhaging." WoW may be shrinking, but it's not in any immediate danger, and Blizzard doesn't have to worry about only being four times larger than their nearest competitor any time soon.

Re:Cause and effect

[AlphaWolf_HK]

WoW is indeed losing subscribers. Not a little but a lot. It's still very profitable though, so I'm not sure where the "hemorrhaging cash" comes from, but indeed it IS hemorrhaging players, to the tune of about 1.1 to 1.3 million every quarter for the last 3 consecutive quarters (prior to that they were losing in the low to mid six digits per quarter.)

Eventually it will reach the point where it starts to become unprofitable until they scale down their servers, which they are still running as if their subscriber base was about 50% larger than it is now (presently at 8.3 million whereas it peaked at 12.7 million.) 8.3 million is a lot of revenue (I can't say how much exactly given that the monthly subscription cost isn't the same in every region, which is what this 8.3 million figure includes, and they don't provide that information in their quarterly SEC filings.)

http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Activision-Blizzard-Q1-2013-World-Warcraft-Loses-1-3-Million-Subscribers-55474.html

Their SEC filings (which detail their financial status according to GAAP, as required by law) for both annual 10K and quarterly 10Q can be found here:

http://investor.activision.com/sec.cfm

I'm sure that if they could keep their subscription numbers secret from the players, they probably would (and I don't blame them, because if I were a games developer I would want to keep real-life issues out of the game itself for the sake of avoiding effects on the actual gameplay given that it is a social game) however that information is very pertinent to investors so it needs to be disclosed there. But if/when they start downscaling their servers, you can expect player drama, so I'm betting that they'll avoid that as long as they can.

Re:Cause and effect

[Pricetx]

Whilst I'm not a very active WoW player, I can tell you that there is an increasingly large number of servers, or "Realms" as they're called, that are very empty (200 players online at peak time). This doesn't just have a negative effect on the social side of the game, it also causes a whole host of issues for the in-game economy, and the ability to party up for dungeons and raids.

I think from a player point a view, downscaling their number of actual game servers would be a welcome move (albeit tricky to carry out due to potential player name / guild name conflicts when multiple realms are merged).

They need something to replace WOW

[Billly Gates]

I was really hoping SWTOR would be that next gen game as I actually liked the huge improvements over wow with companions, voice driven quests, choices, and companions doing the dirty profession work for you.

Wow seemed so primitive in comparison yet was bashed on slashdot for some unkown reason by Wow loyalists and other gaming sites. Sigh.

Of course I grew up but I want to see more than just wow but the fact of the matter is it is very very expensive to make a MMO. In time you run out of ideas like Kung Fu Panda in Wow. Man it rocked when Arathas was still around and Wow for me died when he was finally defeated.

Re:They need something to replace WOW

[halivar]

It was a perfectly serviceable KOTOR 3 single-player game. Then you got to level 50 and you were done. Not quite a replacement for WOW though.

Re:They need something to replace WOW

[flimflammer]

It always amuses me when someone comments on the latest expansion being "King Fu Panda in WoW," as if Blizzard actually didn't already have these creatures and their style many years before that movie was even a script being pitched to a studio.

Re:They need something to replace WOW

[ShakaUVM]

Yep, a lot of people don't give SWTOR enough credit. The level 40s drag for a bit, but it's a really fun single player game that just happens to be an MMO.

I don't think I bought more than one or two items on the auction house on my way up to 50, as opposed to Diablo 3, where spending even a small amount made your character six billion times more powerful and had a much worse storyline.

Re:Really?

[smash]

I know its cool to hate on D3, but it wasn't actually a *bad* game. I got about 50 hours out of it, which works out to be about $1.20 AU per hour. Cheap entertainment. Sure, nothing like as much as I spent on D2, but I don't have the free time these days either.

Re:R.I.P. Blizzard

[flayzernax]

You mean Vivendi-Activision. Blizzard died a decade ago. It just took awhile to shake loose the last good employees they had.

hurray for World Of Starcraft!

[slashmydots]

Well, I can hope at least

Re:hurray for World Of Starcraft!

[flimflammer]

I was really hoping that was what Titan was going to be, before they announced it would be an entirely new bit of IP.

Re:Really?

[ganjadude]

agredd. I played it and enjoyed it for a good amount of time, but I also can still put in D 2 and enjoy it, the same just isnt true with 3 thats where my issue is.

Re:Where have I heard this before?

[Anubis IV]

There's a bit of a difference between what happened with DNF, where the developer publicly announced the game and presented images and video for gamers to salivate over, along with promising an imminent release, before they sat on it for 10+ years as they twice (I think) scrapped the game engine in favor of something newer, and what Blizzard is doing here, where they're rebooting a game that's only been confirmed publicly to state that it is indeed an actual project in development and that it's an MMO based on a new IP with no release date ready to be announced. You can't have vaporware until something is first promised, but Blizzard hasn't promised anything at all here, unless you want to take things like that game release schedule that leaked a few years back as an implicit promise that they would carry through on their plans.

I'm not nearly the fan of Blizzard that I once was, but I've always respected their willingness to cancel projects, rather than push them out the door for a quick buck if they don't think that the games are fun or that they meet their standard of quality.

Re:Really?

[spire3661]

Overall, DIII is a badly engineered game. It focuses way too much on a long tail of revenue. If they had not insisted on always online and a Real Money Auction House, the game would have been a better playable game.

Re:Really?

[sjwt]

And still they botched it with 2BEEZ

They've ruined their own market.

[Seumas]

WoW is still the biggest MMO several times over, even a decade later. Because of every game's attempt to mimic WoW in every aspect possible, the genre has made almost no progress in the last decade. They're all just re-skins of WoW and because of that, few are successful. However, because developers feel only a WoW type MMO can be successful, they're not willing to take steps to make bold new MMO games that are not just re-skins of WoW.

So, a decade later, the MMO genre is gasping. Clones of clones of clones. People aren't tired of MMOs as a concept, but are tired of their execution. Unless Blizzard has something amazing up their sleeve, they're just going to wind up releasing yet another WoW (though in space or whatever). They'll just be appealing to the existing WoW addicts they already have who are somehow so brain-numbed that they'll sit and play the same thing for a decade, even after they've gone through all the content a dozen times.

Though perhaps not directly, Blizzard has spoiled the genre and the audience. Their game sucked the air out of the room, making it difficult for others in the business who can only be bothered to poorly mimic them. And now everything is drying up.

I won't be surprised if it is completely canceled. Or, at least, postponed long beyond 2016, ultimately.

Re:They've ruined their own market.

[mark_wilkins]

There's always EVE Online, which is about as far from a WoW clone as one can get. It's not an alternative to WoW, but a successful, different MMO model, and I think there's a lot to learn from the differences between the two of them. For the record, I've played both extensively.

What the hell?

[gstoddart]

This summary and article read like someone issuing a denial about actually making a video game.

Blizzard would like to announce it is delaying the release of a product it has not yet announced.

We at Blizzard are actively pondering creating the Next Big Thing, but we might cancel it, or we might not, but we're doing it with fewer people, starting from scratch, and won't have anything for several years. But don't panic, we have agile programming.

Re:Genre-Specific Development

[myowntrueself]

The thing is, theres barely any RP element in WoW. Nor any MMO.

Theres a bare handful of players who empathise with their character in any way at all, or have any kind of backstory for their character. Its just not part of the mindset; its more like "pew pew pew I get to blow stuffs up with ma lazors/lightning bolts/2 handed sword of buttkicking". Thats about how shallow it is compared to the RPG genre.

Notice how we refer to them as MMO now, not MMORPG?

But hey if you know an actual MMORPG please tell me about it.

Re:Really?

[MachineShedFred]

I stopped playing when the money-for-bits scheme was patched in. It was obvious that all the good items were going to cost me real money that I'd much rather spend elsewhere, and all the sub-standard garbage items were going to end up on the in-game currency auction.

Between that, and the ridiculous balance issues that had one class easily wiping up the maps on the highest difficulty levels, and another class getting completely tooled in about 2 seconds by the exact same creatures, both equipped equally, I stopped playing and forgot D3 existed until just now.

Re:Where have I heard this before?

[IllogicalStudent]

StarCraft 2 took 12 years and was great.

Diablo 3 also took 12 years to release, and it most certainly wasn't great.

Smaller team, less bickering

[fufufang]

This might get the job done faster, you never know.

Re:Where have I heard this before?

[Ironhandx]

Yes, but blizzard excels at RTS's, not RPGs... this is why they hired half the everquest staff for the warcraft launch, whom then all left once the planning and most of the design was done for the burning crusade and its been downhill ever since. Diablo and Diablo II were more god-mode RTS's with one all powerful character and instead of 10+ different units, each with their own abilities, this one character had everything required.

Diablo 3 was built by current crop console dev and tester idiots. They have no idea who their market actually was for that game.

Re:Where have I heard this before?

[smartr]

StarCraft 2 took 12 years and was great.

Diablo 3 also took 12 years to release, and it most certainly wasn't great.

It was still a well polished game that probably brought you over 20 hours of entertainment compared to the shovelware feeling you get everytime an EA game crashes your console.

Re:Where have I heard this before?

[znanue]

Bullshit,

Diablo 3 was a fantastic game taken in a very narrow scope. What it failed at was to deliver longevity, but the actual act of leveling up the first time was wonderful. The core gameplay was very addictive the first week. I got my money's worth when compared to the average money in, enjoyment out ratio of other games purchased. What I didn't get was the same ratio I got with Diablo 2.

D3 is, in so many ways, a very polished experience with absolutely wonderful mechanics. It got some major things wrong in a meta design sense that will be talked about amongst game designers for quite awhile. Still, the actual gameplay is an unparalleled experience. The engine is so much smoother than D2 and less buggy, and its way more enjoyable than Torchlight 2. Yet, Torchlight 2 is a better game because it's meta design (how you acquire upgrades, the ability to play offline, the lack of a universal AH, and on and on) is better.

I still think D3 is quite an achievement and Blizzard still has an opportunity to fix what is wrong so that it can enjoy the ongoing success of D2. I am not confident that they will do this, but they are intending to release an expansion. D2: LOD also dramatically raised the bar on D2, so lets see if Blizzard's typical iteration will show improvement. I have some hope.

I often think the reason people "hate" on Blizzard so much is simply because of how successful they are and how much hype they have to live up to with each release. Yet, they still are putting out amazing games (with flaws) and that is what they released originally, too. This move by Blizzard causes me to believe they're still maintaining the Blizzard philosophy, not the activision philosophy. I hope that Titan is every bit the awesome MMO. Even if it fails to capture the magic of the design elements that make WoW so good, I have faith that I will take enough value from it to justify its initial purchase price and first few months of play because it is Blizzard and every game Blizzard has released was worth the money.