Blizzard making 'large design and technology changes' to Project Titan MMO

Blizzard's mysterious Project Titan MMO has suffered a setback. Apparently, the company must make "large design and technology changes to the...

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Blizzard's mysterious Project Titan MMO has suffered a setback. Apparently, the company must make "large design and technology changes to the game," and has moved people away from the game "to assist with other projects" for the time being. The team was apparently over 100 strong before the shift.

In a statement to Polygon, Blizzard said that "we've always had a highly iterative development process, and the unannounced MMO is no exception."

This follows a report on VentureBeat that suggests that approximately 70 percent of the team has been reassigned. Apparently the project will "start over," and won't be expected to be published "until 2016 at the earliest."

Blizzard's statement seems to suggest that the bulk of VentureBeat's report is true, although they do point out that "we haven't announced any dates for the MMO." With World of Warcraft numbers dwindling, however, such a significant delay for Titan will undoubtedly be worrisome to Activision investors.

Andrew Yoon was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

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  • reply
    May 29, 2013 5:30 AM

    Andrew Yoon posted a new article, Blizzard making 'large design and technology changes' to Project Titan MMO.

    Blizzard's mysterious Project Titan MMO has suffered a setback. Apparently, the company must make "large design and technology changes to the...

    • reply
      May 29, 2013 5:51 AM

      But veras told me that's wrong http://www.shacknews.com/chatty?id=30237195#item_30237195 based on his use of logic.

      So conflicted :(

      • reply
        May 29, 2013 11:27 AM

        That logic is indeed sound! Not so especially sure about Blizzard's logic as of late, however.

      • reply
        May 29, 2013 11:54 AM

        It has been confirmed by another inside source, though it was not clear exactly which parts their source confirmed

        http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/193171/Blizzard_drastically_reduces_development_team_for_Titan.php

      • reply
        May 29, 2013 11:58 AM

        I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but the idea that Blizzard was a year out from releasing an unannounced game is pretty laughable given their history.

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          May 29, 2013 12:00 PM

          the kind of idea about nearly any huge game company releasing a huge game in that time frame reads as beyond suspicious.

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            May 29, 2013 12:11 PM

            Also, look at the support for this article...

            In 2011 VentureBeat took an unsourced "leaked" release schedule and combined it with their own flavor of truthiness (industry predictions based on SWTOR) to predict Blizzard would announce Titan at Blizzconn 2011 and it would be leased in Q4 2013. Titan was not announced in 2011, has not been announced, yet they're using that prediction to cite a delay in the schedule.

            Also, their full Blizzconn 2011 predictions spanned everything Blizzard might do -- announce Titan, announce a WoW expansion pack, announce a Diablo 3 date, and announce a HotS date. The only one Blizzard did was announce MoP. Everyone knew Blizzard was going to do something at that point, and literally predicting every rational *something* (what venturebeat did) does not lend credibility to your claim.

            Furthermore, the leaked release schedule has since been debunked. According to that we would have had HotS over a year ago, Legacy of the Void now, and on the brink of Diablo 3's first expansion pack, and be six months out from another WoW expansion. Instead we're likely looking at either D3 xp1 or WoW xp5 as this year's Blizzconn announcement, with the former probably being 12-18 months out and the later being ~6-12.

            The whole thing is just stupid manufactured stories based on rumors and a hellova lot of conjecture.

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              May 29, 2013 12:45 PM

              Well yeah, but industry insiders and trusted sources.

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            May 29, 2013 2:14 PM

            Weeeeell... Skyrim was announced 11 months before release. Borderlands 2 was 13 months from announcement to release. The Last of Us will be around 18 months from announce to release. Battlefield 4 will be 15 months. The Call of Duty-series has been pretty consistent with spring announcements and fall releases. Most of the Assassin's Creed games have also been announced same year as they released.

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