Next-Gen MMO Canned by Blizzard

Welp, that’s seven years of research and development down the drain. Blizzard has just announced the company has finally admitted defeat and is pulling the plug on development of the next gen MMO it has been working on for the past seven years known only by its codename: Titan.

Blizzard has a few things in development like the next Starcraft expansion and the next expansion for World of Warcraft, but it does look like a new MMO from Blizzard isn’t in the cards right now or in the near future.

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So even Blizz can't topple the monster that is World of Warcraft?

Damned if they do, damned if they don't. If they'd pushed out a heap of garbage they didn't have full confidence in, the gates of internet hell would've opened up on a scale that would make Gearbox's DnF/Aliens debacle seem like a quiet sunday morning.

Cough Activision

Cause they know the MMO market is extremely hard to please. Right now a new MMO would suffer a horrible free to play fate. If only they made MMO's that you paid once, and then pay again when a new expansion comes out. Too bad nothings like that in the market.

Question. Why SHOULD Blizzard try to "topple" Warcraft?

Warcraft is an anomaly in the market. Not the norm. Indeed, there's been so much focus on trying to "out-Warcraft Warcraft", that it has badly distorted the market and expectations.

Pre-Warcraft, an MMO with 75-100K subscribers was a very successful game.

Afterward, if you don't have 10 million players, you're a failure?

Uh. WHAT?

The industry needs to fight the trend towards "Zillion Megabuck" development cycles.

They need to look at gathering a realistic playerbase. If you're banking on tying to repeat Warcraft, you're fucked. Before you even get out the door.

Moreover, they need to look at actual player retention. Not just "Hey! We have new virtual crap for you to buy!" But actually building a real, non-toxic community that helps bolster player loyalty and aids in retention.

That, and as Ashbringer has said, the current crop of "free to play" offerings are a festering boil on the collective ass of the gamespace. The entire implementation of most free to plays creates this nasty, toxic, unavoidable drive to the cash shop. And that is something that helps sour the community MUCH more quickly than just about anything else, INCLUDING broken portions of the game.

Jay Wilson strikes again. He was removed from the Diablo 3 team and went to work on Titan, we are now seeing the end result.

titan fell.... ic maybe it sank?

Chas said:

Question. Why SHOULD Blizzard try to "topple" Warcraft?

Warcraft is an anomaly in the market. Not the norm. Indeed, there's been so much focus on trying to "out-Warcraft Warcraft", that it has badly distorted the market and expectations.

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Yep, exactly. In recent years I've come to realize that forcing WoW into the MMO mold is the real problem, I now feel it belongs more with the MOBAs (keeping in mind the common origin of WoW and DOTA). I'd say it is to Blizzard's credit that they finally knew when to quit rather than try to force something out that was doomed to under-perform on some level.

Chas said:

Question. Why SHOULD Blizzard try to "topple" Warcraft?

Warcraft is an anomaly in the market. Not the norm. Indeed, there's been so much focus on trying to "out-Warcraft Warcraft", that it has badly distorted the market and expectations.

Pre-Warcraft, an MMO with 75-100K subscribers was a very successful game.

Afterward, if you don't have 10 million players, you're a failure?

Uh. WHAT?

The industry needs to fight the trend towards "Zillion Megabuck" development cycles.

They need to look at gathering a realistic playerbase. If you're banking on tying to repeat Warcraft, you're fucked. Before you even get out the door.

Moreover, they need to look at actual player retention. Not just "Hey! We have new virtual crap for you to buy!" But actually building a real, non-toxic community that helps bolster player loyalty and aids in retention.

That, and as Ashbringer has said, the current crop of "free to play" offerings are a festering boil on the collective ass of the gamespace. The entire implementation of most free to plays creates this nasty, toxic, unavoidable drive to the cash shop. And that is something that helps sour the community MUCH more quickly than just about anything else, INCLUDING broken portions of the game.

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The bolded is 99.9999999999% true..So far though Archeage is actually shaping up to be that 1 F2P game that actually isn't P2W and horribly broken for anyone not dumping money into it. Verdict isn't completely in for me as I'm still getting a feel for it, but so far it's the first f2p game I can honestly say I didn't instantly hate.

Blizzard has been going downhill since Blizzard North left. It's absurd to even refer to Activision's money-grubbing whore as "Blizzard" anymore, given that nearly all of the great people who worked on Starcraft, Diablo, Diablo 2, Warcraft, and Warcraft 2 are gone.

D3 was a disaster and, more than that, a tasteless insult to the franchise. They managed not to f-up SC2 too badly by staying true to the original's frenetic gameplay, making sure things were well balanced, and mostly focusing on the graphics.

But hey, profits are up and that's all that matters, right? Fuck them and fuck what they've become. You bet I'm bitter, given I was the staunchest Blizzard fan around right up until roughly 2002. The corporate greed and rot drove away the people that made the company great. Some wonderful artists and talented people remain, managed by scum who are exactly what is wrong with the gaming industry.

wabbitseason said:

Blizzard has been going downhill since Blizzard North left. It's absurd to even refer to Activision's money-grubbing whore as "Blizzard" anymore, given that nearly all of the great people who worked on Starcraft, Diablo, Diablo 2, Warcraft, and Warcraft 2 are gone.

D3 was a disaster and, more than that, a tasteless insult to the franchise. They managed not to f-up SC2 too badly by staying true to the original's frenetic gameplay, making sure things were well balanced, and mostly focusing on the graphics.

But hey, profits are up and that's all that matters, right? Fuck them and fuck what they've become. You bet I'm bitter, given I was the staunchest Blizzard fan around right up until roughly 2002. The corporate greed and rot drove away the people that made the company great. Some wonderful artists and talented people remain, managed by scum who are exactly what is wrong with the gaming industry.

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Wasn't the pre-Activision Blizzard the same one that tried to pretty much sue anyone for even sneezing in a way that sounded like Warcraft? I don't think they're any worse. Besides, who even plays MMOs anymore when there's social networks and junk?

What are the original members of Blizzard North even doing now. I just read the Wiki and the companies they left Blizzard for are dead.

Takes a lot of balls to can a project this size. If nothing else it shows there are some people behind the scenes now to make a big call like that. I dont see this as a negative at all.

I bet it was going to be an MMO like Destiny or Planetside.

Ashbringer said:

Cause they know the MMO market is extremely hard to please. Right now a new MMO would suffer a horrible free to play fate. If only they made MMO's that you paid once, and then pay again when a new expansion comes out. Too bad nothings like that in the market.

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Um, the devs that run GW2 actively manipulate the loot tables in order to alter the market and get people to buy crystals, or whatever it was. It's been a year or so since I played. I just remember the huge stink over questionable hiring practices and the fact that Abyss Dyes (and others) suddenly got a nerf on drops and it drop the price up from 4g to 20g in a couple weeks.

So maybe GW2 isn't the best example. None of them are.

wabbitseason said:

But hey, profits are up and that's all that matters, right? Fuck them and fuck what they've become. You bet I'm bitter, given I was the staunchest Blizzard fan around right up until roughly 2002. The corporate greed and rot drove away the people that made the company great. Some wonderful artists and talented people remain, managed by scum who are exactly what is wrong with the gaming industry.

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So...you stopped being a fan because of Warcraft 3? That makes absolutely no sense at all.

CreepyUncleGoogle said:

Besides, who even plays MMOs anymore when there's social networks and junk?

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Me...

Ashbringer said:

Cause they know the MMO market is extremely hard to please. Right now a new MMO would suffer a horrible free to play fate. If only they made MMO's that you paid once, and then pay again when a new expansion comes out. Too bad nothings like that in the market.

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beautiful. compliments the hardforum colors well too.

We talked about how we put it through a re-evaluation period, and actually what we re-evaluated is weather that’s the game we really wanted to be making. The answer is no.

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/facepalm

Blizzard = Diablo, Warcraft, Starcraft.

Diablo 3 was a huge piece of shit. Maybe the expansion is good, don't know, haven't played it. The hype and subsequent hate when D3 was released was all well deserved. Hype because of how legendary Diablo 2 was mainly.

Warcraft was consumed by World of Warcraft. Blizzard realized it quite likes monthly million dollar figures, so out comes expansion after expansion at the expense of everything else. The lore is probably completely decimated. After Wrath Of The Lich king, as far as Warcraft 3 was concerned, there was nothing left.

Starcraft 2 is OK, but never captured the feeling Starcraft 1 gave me. I think because its just expanding on the predecessor rather than creating something new. Back in the 90s, playing a RTS with completely different races, a cool story, music etc was a new thing.

Their "new" MMO has no lore behind it, no history. It's a stranger coming to a table that's being occupied by Diablo, Starcraft, and Warcraft. Blizzard is lost, and the fan base probably would be too.

Also, Battle.net 2.0 is a piece of shit and doesn't feel nearly as integrated into the core game as the original battle.net did. It's a poorly coded external "lobby" that does nothing good. The original battle.net was much better.

WOW is still make about a billion dollars per year from it, there is still so many expansion they can add to the game, and each expansion they improve on graphic, not by much but something.

WOW is still totally killing it, why change it? when its almost dead they make something new. Ever at 1 million subs they would make 180m per year. I believe they would not start to worry until they saw their sub numbers drop under 3 million. Ever at 3 million they would make its about 500m per year.

Freebo said:

WOW is still make about a billion dollars per year from it, there is still so many expansion they can add to the game, and each expansion they improve on graphic, not by much but something.

WOW is still totally killing it, why change it? when its almost dead they make something new. Ever at 1 million subs they would make 180m per year. I believe they would not start to worry until they saw their sub numbers drop under 3 million. Ever at 3 million they would make its about 500m per year.

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And FWIW, BlizzCon apparently sells out every year even faster than the year prior.

So, much as I don't "get" WoW personally, there still seem to be a lot of fans of these games.

Wrench said:

So even Blizz can't topple the monster that is World of Warcraft?

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I think their problem was headed to be precisely the opposite!

Titan was developed independently from the WoW source using a fresh engine that could most likely take better advantage of more recent hardware and processing.

My guess is that Blizz didn't want to see its dwindling WoW user base, that's about to dip severely late Q4 or mid-Q1 '15, split time or leave all together to go to the new hotter looking kid on the block.

Back to that Dip I mentioned- WoW will see a boost to active players shortly before, during and for several months following, the release of WoD....just like every other release. It ends up being trivial as it's never self-sustaining.

Once the hardcore players level their main(s) and slog through all the new instances a dozen times they will return to their beloved consoles being totally played out on WoW until the next xpac. Dip #1

Many of the details already released about what amounts to the next normalization of the classes through stat manipulation and the re-making of many classes via removal or placement changes of their powers already has a large number of players ready to jump ship. Dip #2

Even if the class changes are overcome, Blizz still has the problem of WoD being just another major grind pac. Having to put up with relearning your toons every time an xpac is released is problem enough. But, to have to work like a machine to force level and gear your toons to be accepted in LFR/FLEX/RAIDS because the "community" is being overrun by hot headed, inconsiderate and foul mouthed, punks is not enjoyable in the least. Trade chat has been full of people saying there's no way they are going to continue to pay Blizz for yet another overly painful grind pac that caters to the console/PvP crowd. Dip #3