Titan has been cancelled.

So in that quarter they made less money than before, but Hearthstone (among other games) did bolster their revenue; that is really all that article says. I don't deny it's profitable but it's also directly tied to WoWs glory so I will remain sceptical. In the end I don't care I guess since I'm not a stockholder - Blizzard on its way to making phone and tablet games though just fucking sucks.

Surprising no one knew anything about this game. Just confirms though that mmos are on the way out. Don't get me wrong I'm sure plenty will continue to play and that's awesome, but at the same time the company that made the most successful mmo of all time bailing out of the next great mmo is a sobering dose of the reality of the genre.

In other news HotS is moving into the next phase of alpha, which is pretty fun. Maybe WoW will also get some much needed support?

bytes_sl said:

What are they doing instead? WoW will die eventually, there's no way around it. And I don't believe for a second they're making as much money with that shitty cardgame as they're making with WoW, even in its declining state.

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I don't know how you can think Hearthstone is not making hand over fists.

And really, that was out answer. What is the WoW killer?
League of legends, Minecraft, and hearthstone.

Expecting an mmo within the tiny box of what we consider a mmo to be the successor to WoW was a huge mistake. WoW itself was a flash in the pan. Like the Wii, it tapped into a market. It exploded, and while may have expanded the overall marketplace. it did not do so on a way in which represented new users branching out to other games.
WoW's success is much like LoL's. its success fed into more success. Massive multiplayer games like this feed off large playerbases. Think about every MMO you played, and when picking your server. the most populated server is the most popular server. meaning, NEW players will inherently FLOCK to the most populated one. The same applies for the games themselves. And this is why no MMO can break WoW. those players are not leaving WoW and WoW has become a cultural phenomenon, so even new players are still more inclined to go check IT out, over new IPS.
LoL and minecraft's success is explained in the exact same way. And in this point, as new genre/markets they were allowed to be break outs.

Even trying to replace WoW would be a huge mistake on Blizzards part. the people playing it will be totally happy with it just being updated.

Chris_sl said:

If you can't beat a random startup in New Zealand... yes.

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By this (terrible) logic Valve must be terrible as well since they're getting beat by Riot in the MOBA genre

So, what the heck was the IP for this?



Will we ever know what this was?

I think they know that MMO's are taking a new form. LoL, D3, Destiny, H1Z1/DayZ, etc. are proving you can either make money and/or become widely known (popular) without adhering to the industry standard ideas. The playerbased is so fragmented and there are so many different camps of player desires that there is no way to make a game for all of them.

You have the nostalgia crowd, instant gratification crowd, hardcore raiders, PvP'ers, Fantasy vs. Space vs. Military vs. everything else, in-depth lore/quests, and you can go on and on. Blizzard no longer stands among a small company of popular developers. I think they're going back to the drawing board. They'll kick back, make some money, and probably see where everything shifts. I don't think they want to be caught in the middle of the mediocrity we're about to see.

On a side note in regards to WoW. I have to give kudos to Blizzard for keeping WoW recognizable. They can go on and continue to make money while keeping the playerbase happy if they play their cards right. EQ is unrecognizable in my opinion. I hope one day we can see them both in their original form just for the sake of it.

I think the most relevant immediate question is does this give WoW legs? Will development resources be refocused to fix the sub trajectory for at least a few more years?

To some extent in theory there's very little reason to ever make a new MMO if you can put in the resources to revamp it technically every so often and have no qualms about changing core design (which they can and don't, respectively). They will have to step it up story wise and add some rather exotic new expansions if they hope to do that though - Orcs/Trolls will have to die off mighty quick.

The main thing I took from that interview is they want to basically try the "Indie Dev" approach and work on smaller games vs. tentpole titles and see what sticks.

Palum_sl said:

I think the most relevant immediate question is does this give WoW legs? Will development resources be refocused to fix the sub trajectory for at least a few more years?

To some extent in theory there's very little reason to ever make a new MMO if you can put in the resources to revamp it technically every so often and have no qualms about changing core design (which they can and don't, respectively). They will have to step it up story wise and add some rather exotic new expansions if they hope to do that though - Orcs/Trolls will have to die off mighty quick.

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But WoW lore is just so nonsensical and reconned to hell and back already, they can do anything. Literally anything, and no one would really bat an eye.

Well, at least we didn'treallysee anything of it before it being cancelled.

Still, I have to wonder what they would have done with it.

Blizzard just needs to produce a zombie-survival moba space sim fps hybrid on early access. Game over, industry monopoly.

Tarrant_sl said:

I think they are banking on what life WoW has left in it and will sink the rest of their attention into Hearthstone.

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I like Hearthstone, but god damn is it shallow and the content glacial. There isn't even an Android client yet.

Even if Blizz gonna Blizz, if this cancellation wastrulynot an unexpected and immediate decision, I have to guess they have been putting that developer time elsewhere and not in HS. We don't have anything more than the vague announcement of a second card set at this point.

I'm sure anything that can be cannabilized from Titan will make it's way into WoW or other titles so it wont be a total write off.

Ya, one thing Blizzard does do is recycle terminated projects and incorporate elements into other games, be it characters/lore or even certain mechanics.

I'm curious to what degree Activision signing Bungie had to do with this. Blizz started rolling back on Titan almost a couple years ago and that was around the time Activision must've had eyes on Destiny internally. Could be it be that Activision didn't want two sci-fi mmofps's in its stable that were destined to cannibalize each other? Blizz would've had early access to Destiny (which bungie "bet the company" on) and I wonder if having broad similarities with Titan influenced their decision when they realized Destiny was closer to market.