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

[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

[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: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: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: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.

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.

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.