I have to disagree with that line of thinking. It is just a matter of time before a MMO comes along and replaces Wow at the top and it won't be 10 years. There are more and more tools out there that almost anyone with a little time on their hands can pick up and write a game with.
Eventually someone will get it, what the majority of players are looking for and they will hit a home run. You don't need huge sums of money anymore to write a MMO. Who knows it could be one that exists now. Eve certainly evolved from it's initial release.
Originally posted by SteamRanger It might mean that Blizzard is basically a lazy development company who have never really had an original idea. They have always relied on improving other people's ideas to produce content. That's why then never really come up with anything completely new.
Yeah, like they were never really any part of spearheading the entire RTS genre with massive classics in Warcraft and one of the first RTS's ever to introduce 3 completely different factions with StarCraft.
Blizzard has always been extremely good at simply making a fun game. They've even managed to do this with a frekking card game recently.
Yes, it ain't the company it used to be since the Activision merger, but they're damn good at what they do.
Titan would likely have been an instant buy, it's too bad that they're not pulling through with it. I think the current trend toward online DLC and cash shops for otherwise single player games has something to do with it.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
There is so much room here for speculation, but one thing has been clear over the past 10 years; World of Warcraft was an anomaly that became a HUGE commercial success with staying power, and the allure of grabbing a percentage of that potential revenue has been the dangling carrot-on-a-stick for the online game industry ever since. Blizzard got in at just the right time, and they kept their noses to the grindstone until their foray into the MMORPG genre became an unstoppable juggernaut, but we didn't have the same amount of choices in 2004 as we do today.
The fact that so many other companies have tried and failed to garner that same amount of success, with investors and publishers throwing exorbitant amounts of money at what they believed would be "The Next Big Thing", the market is now saturated with a multitude of options. Not all of them are great, not all of them are terrible, but compared to the amount of choices we had in 2004, is it any wonder that more and more customers have adopted a sort of "tourist" mentality?
That same "tourist" mentality has affected the subscription model as well. Thanks to the early experimentations of NCSoft, and the inundation of other "free-to-play" publishing houses, The perception that some in the industry would LIKE to project is that you, as a player, are better off trying their game for "free", then buying items from their cash shops to enhance your experience.
Which is going to appear more profitable to the publisher; a moderate monthly subscription fee to ALL players, which the game may or may not attract a large amount of - OR - garnering a few "whales" willing to sink hundreds of dollars a month into cash shop items?
Then it just becomes a matter of finding a handful of developers that will whore themselves for a profit, churning out quantity over quality. Sadly, this is also the case for many MMORPGs that started out with a monthly subscription fee as well, which left a bad taste in the mouths of many consumers.
With so many choices at their disposal; the ushering in of game mechanics that so many players have come to rely on in ALL of their MMORPGs (e.g. instanced dungeons, group/party finder tools, intuitive interfaces that are easy-to-use), and some of the less-than-savory business practices that the industry has adopted to grab consumer revenue before a product is even finished (e.g. pre-order for "Beta" access, "Founder's Packs", Kickstarter, etc.), it's not surprising that consumers have become a fickle lot.
So many elements have contributed to a major shift in the MMORPG industry landscape since the earliest days of Everquest, Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Final Fantasy XI, Lineage, Ragnarok Online, and the introduction of vanilla World of Warcraft (which really paved the way for all these major shifts). I don't find it hard to believe that Blizzard is probably sitting back wondering, "How in the Hell do we top ourselves now?!"
The mmo genre needs a new king of mmos. I thought Blizzard would do that with Titan but apparently not the case anymore. Unless a company gets lucky and makes a mmo that most people want be a part of like WoW then I think the mmo genre is pretty much lost. We have so many mmos on the market right now but NONE of them are that good. The mmo genre needs a hero.
I think this is great. Developers are realizing that building a game that is big in so many aspects is a money pit that is not worth the risk. By the time the thing is built, it will no longer be as appealing as the concept was initially. It will be a throw-away mmorpg.
I think the future of mmorpg's will come from those developer's, who nail mechanics and fun gameplay on a small scale, and then evolve into something better through feed back and gaming enthusiasm. This is what happened with the world of Azeroth after all.
Originally posted by ThomasN7 The mmo genre needs a new king of mmos. I thought Blizzard would do that with Titan but apparently not the case anymore. Unless a company gets lucky and makes a mmo that most people want be a part of like WoW then I think the mmo genre is pretty much lost. We have so many mmos on the market right now but NONE of them are that good. The mmo genre needs a hero.
The only thing that could dethrone WoW now, would be an LoL MMO.
Originally posted by SteamRanger It might mean that Blizzard is basically a lazy development company who have never really had an original idea. They have always relied on improving other people's ideas to produce content. That's why then never really come up with anything completely new.
amen,i got a free month of wow,and it is the same as ever.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it
I've heard that the main reason Titan never went anywhere was because Blizzard never expected WoW to still be doing well.
The problem is WoW wasn't broke and they kept fixing it until it has become so watered down that it a pale reflection of what it once was . If you really believe that is the reason that Titan was closed down you must be one of the most gullible people on this planet .
I think Titan was closed down because it was probably just not that good and I will give Blizzard credit where credits due if that was the case at least they didn't push ahead and release something that was sub standard .
The problem is Blizzard for all their money are a company that are very slow in developing new games I'm sure fans will bring up hearthstone and heroes of the storm but remember this is a company that has made billions in recent years and for the most part they still rely on Warcraft , Starcraft and Diablo .WoW has been its main source of income and that is dropping at an alarming rate . What is it now half of what it was 4 years ago . If I were a share holder I would be wonder why more money hasn't been spent on developing new games in the last 10 years .
Blizzard needs to invest more in its own future . Its a company that hit the jackpot with one game and it is where it is now because of that one game but it can't rely on that forever.
In fact the only WoW Killer was WoW itself. Blizzard could come up with the WoW-that-was all over again, but the phenomenon would not occur a second time; not in this age, with this market.
By now, there won't be any "WoW killer". Why would there be? They had 10 years, and no one managed to land a decisive strike. WoW will die, at some point, like all games do. But it will not be due to a single other game - with the possible exception of Blizzard shutting it off to avoid competition with WoW 2 or the likes, but why would they even develop something as long as WoW is a cash cow? - and instead simply slowly lose subs.
Both Everquest and Ultima Online are still around. And they are not the only ones. Lineage (1998), Meridian 59 (1996) and some more are still around. Actually, Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds (from 1996, too) gets more updates judging from a quick look at the website than most so called AAA MMOs.
WoW really blew everything out of the window. Nothing was the same as it was before, and there have been dozens, hundreds of games, even "AAA" games since then. And yet, those games are still around and somehow profitable.
It seems weird to assume there will be any game that completely makes WoW obsolete within a few weeks or months, a game you can point at and say "this game killed WoW. 5 Months ago, Wow still had 6+ million subscribers, but then WoW_KILLER was released. Incidentally, WoW_KILLER now sports 7+ million subscribers, with RANDOM_AAA_MMO coming in second with 1.3 million."
It didn't happen like this when WoW was released, it didn't happen in the 10 years since, why would it happen in the next 10 years - or at any time until Blizzard really pulls the plug in the late 2030 to make way for "Lost Vikings Universe". Or maybe they simply stop updating it - they would save costs and players would slowly decline at a slightly faster rate.
It might also turn out completely different, with Activision Blizzard having several critical misses in the near future and being bought cheap by another company who prefers churning out a sequel at least once a year - unless it's an MMO, where every two years is fine.
But a WoW-Killer? More likely Blizzard loses it's servers in an actual Blizzard.
I'll wait to the day's end when the moon is high And then I'll rise with the tide with a lust for life, I'll Amass an army, and we'll harness a horde And then we'll limp across the land until we stand at the shore
Titan was being developed before the action combat craze of the last couple years. Not just from that though, but other features such as shared mob tagging, events, etc. It was basically being developed with a traditional state of mind. It's good that they scrapped it.
There's no doubt that a new MMO from blizzard would make enough money to pay back the monetary costs, but the real cost of finishing Project Titan was Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm, and given the success of Hearthstone and the bound to be successful Heroes of the Storm it was the right thing to kill Project Titan.
You can't keep your lead designers working on projects that's going nowhere, that's a waste of manpower and it costs you far more than just their salary. Better to cut your losses and kill the project and put your resources on a new project instead.
Iselin: And the next person who says "but it's a business, they need to make money" can just go fuck yourself.
Originally posted by jesteralways what i think has really happened is different than what author of this article thinks. what i think happened here is that Blizzard stopped working on a next-gen mmo simply because it will kill their cash cow WoW. they thought there is no reason to continue working on a next gen mmo which will continue to cost hundreds of million $ more as time goes on when they have wow which requires measly amount of investment each year yet makes revenue in billions. they just simply stopped from taking the genre forward to sustain their cash cow.
This. I said the same thing yesterday in another topic.
WoW still has 6 million subscribers and this number seems to have stabilized somewhat.
And with the positive feedback coming out of the Beta, it seems the new expansion is going to be one of the better expacs since a long time.
So it´s easier for Blizzard to try and keep the current 6 million and perhaps get a few more players to Return, who burned out on the new games.
The MMO market is completely saturared and most MMO gamers are starting to get burned out on the genre!
So why release a new MMO, that will kill off WoW and then risk losing everyone within 1-2 months in your new MMO due to player burnout?!
Leaving you with two dead MMO´s and huge financial losses! Crippling the Company.
The future of MMORPGs wil be in sandbox mmorpgs.. be it PVP sandbox games or PVE based ones..
Things are changing and people over the last year or so have been showing that by supporting many Sandbox mmopgs via kickstarter and other crowdfunding so much so that even SOE has picked up on this and are moving towards sandbox based MMORPGs..
The future of MMORPGs wil be in sandbox mmorpgs.. be it PVP sandbox games or PVE based ones..
Things are changing and people over the last year or so have been showing that by supporting many Sandbox mmopgs via kickstarter and other crowdfunding so much so that even SOE has picked up on this and are moving towards sandbox based MMORPGs..
I wouldn't say it's the future yet. Almost all of those on kickstarter are terrible, with awful character models, animations, etc. Some of them look so bad, you can tell they are being made with a low budget, and that's usually expected from indie devs, except that some of those on kickstarter are being made by veteran MMO devs. They don't even match the quality of recent MMOs such as ESO, WS, or AA. The only exception would probably be Star Citizen.
The future of MMORPGs wil be in sandbox mmorpgs.. be it PVP sandbox games or PVE based ones..
Things are changing and people over the last year or so have been showing that by supporting many Sandbox mmopgs via kickstarter and other crowdfunding so much so that even SOE has picked up on this and are moving towards sandbox based MMORPGs..
Because Developers start realising that Themepark MMO´s are unsustainable for the longterm. It used to work by putting insane gear grinds at the endgame, to keep people hooked and addicted.
But even that is starting to wear off and people starting to burn out on it.
The only way to sustain an MMO on the longterm is to add sandbox elements into the mix, to have players create their own content.
It doesn´t have to be pure sandbox. It can be a mix of the two. As questing can still be fun to do, when there is good lore and story behind it, with a little creativity.
Originally posted by SteamRanger It might mean that Blizzard is basically a lazy development company who have never really had an original idea. They have always relied on improving other people's ideas to produce content. That's why then never really come up with anything completely new.
amen,i got a free month of wow,and it is the same as ever.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it
I've heard that the main reason Titan never went anywhere was because Blizzard never expected WoW to still be doing well.
I think they cancelled it because they rebooted it as a new project which is called code named "Overwatch"
Originally posted by hardicon The basic concept of a mmo is completely dead. All mmo style games now are just online single player games with multiplayer co-op. I do like Warcraft but quite frankly it killed the mmo genre that started with EQ, AC, and Ultima, but instead of having open worlds that we can live in we got single player games that you could party up inside a instance and do some raids or pvp. Such high hopes for this genre but nobody ever had the vision or balls to try to make a real mmo since swg. All future games will be mobas, or some form of that pretty much. Wildstar, WoW, Elder Scrolls and Guild Wars 2 are the last mmo type games and none of those are truly mmos anymore.
Im actually happy that Blizz decided to not do MMOs for now. They just went overboard with the themepark direction. We all know their mantras a-la "gameplay first" and so on. But Blizz forgot that MMOs are supposed to be "virtual worlds close second".
I personally would not play a traditional themepark anymore for the simple reason that they become single player games in a crowd (or at the best small scale multiplayer combat games).
MMOs were supposed to be this huge open virtual worlds. But instead themeparks became shallow-gameplay quest-chain tunnels - in other words 100% guided hand-holding experience and 0% freedom. And we all rush to reach the light at the end of that tunnel (called end-game) just to be met with as I said simple instanced combat game. And outside of the combat there is nothing, nada - the gameplay just ends with combat. I agree that combat should be the most important thing but its far from the only thing there should be.
And understandably a lot other companies followed Blizz in that direction chasing big millions. Back then it was probably hard to see that WoW is still relevant simply because of the unimaginably big intertia that it accumulated during vanilla and BC.
The good news is that now MMO devs must come up with new ideas instead of copying the wrong one.
BTW...
Originally posted by observer
Originally posted by Caldrin
The future of MMORPGs wil be in sandbox mmorpgs.. be it PVP sandbox games or PVE based ones..
Things are changing and people over the last year or so have been showing that by supporting many Sandbox mmopgs via kickstarter and other crowdfunding so much so that even SOE has picked up on this and are moving towards sandbox based MMORPGs..
I wouldn't say it's the future yet. Almost all of those on kickstarter are terrible, with awful character models, animations, etc. Some of them look so bad, you can tell they are being made with a low budget, and that's usually expected from indie devs, except that some of those on kickstarter are being made by veteran MMO devs. They don't even match the quality of recent MMOs such as ESO, WS, or AA. The only exception would probably be Star Citizen.
Minecraft looks awful too. For sandbox players graphics are 101% irrelevant.
Originally posted by SteamRanger It might mean that Blizzard is basically a lazy development company who have never really had an original idea. They have always relied on improving other people's ideas to produce content. That's why then never really come up with anything completely new.
Really? are people this tard? "Blizzard is lazy and NEVER had an original idea"?
I do not think that times are changing for Blizzard. They where preparing the handout of their subscrivers to a newer game called Titan the only thing they did not expect is that WOW would still be this strong when they would be ready to release TITAN.
So instead of releasing the game and watch it fail like so may other "Wow killers" have failed they decided to can the game and save their company from the embaressment of launching a modern day Titan(ic) of a 100 million dollars.
Besides what is 100 million dollars for blizzard 1 month of wow subscriptions? is not like its going to hurt them (for now) ..
Also it is being proven by every "wow killer" that is released that interests have somewhat changed on the last 10 years since the release of Wow the chances of an MMO being released and to be able to sustain million of players ( which would be the goal of Titan) are more then likely slim to none.
the only change i see here, is activision already having a sub-par scifi MMO running, and if they'd release a BLIZZARD game after that console "master piece"... seriously, we all know what would happen
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
Comments
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
I have to disagree with that line of thinking. It is just a matter of time before a MMO comes along and replaces Wow at the top and it won't be 10 years. There are more and more tools out there that almost anyone with a little time on their hands can pick up and write a game with.
Eventually someone will get it, what the majority of players are looking for and they will hit a home run. You don't need huge sums of money anymore to write a MMO. Who knows it could be one that exists now. Eve certainly evolved from it's initial release.
Yeah, like they were never really any part of spearheading the entire RTS genre with massive classics in Warcraft and one of the first RTS's ever to introduce 3 completely different factions with StarCraft.
Blizzard has always been extremely good at simply making a fun game. They've even managed to do this with a frekking card game recently.
Yes, it ain't the company it used to be since the Activision merger, but they're damn good at what they do.
Titan would likely have been an instant buy, it's too bad that they're not pulling through with it. I think the current trend toward online DLC and cash shops for otherwise single player games has something to do with it.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
There is so much room here for speculation, but one thing has been clear over the past 10 years; World of Warcraft was an anomaly that became a HUGE commercial success with staying power, and the allure of grabbing a percentage of that potential revenue has been the dangling carrot-on-a-stick for the online game industry ever since. Blizzard got in at just the right time, and they kept their noses to the grindstone until their foray into the MMORPG genre became an unstoppable juggernaut, but we didn't have the same amount of choices in 2004 as we do today.
The fact that so many other companies have tried and failed to garner that same amount of success, with investors and publishers throwing exorbitant amounts of money at what they believed would be "The Next Big Thing", the market is now saturated with a multitude of options. Not all of them are great, not all of them are terrible, but compared to the amount of choices we had in 2004, is it any wonder that more and more customers have adopted a sort of "tourist" mentality?
That same "tourist" mentality has affected the subscription model as well. Thanks to the early experimentations of NCSoft, and the inundation of other "free-to-play" publishing houses, The perception that some in the industry would LIKE to project is that you, as a player, are better off trying their game for "free", then buying items from their cash shops to enhance your experience.
Which is going to appear more profitable to the publisher; a moderate monthly subscription fee to ALL players, which the game may or may not attract a large amount of - OR - garnering a few "whales" willing to sink hundreds of dollars a month into cash shop items?
Then it just becomes a matter of finding a handful of developers that will whore themselves for a profit, churning out quantity over quality. Sadly, this is also the case for many MMORPGs that started out with a monthly subscription fee as well, which left a bad taste in the mouths of many consumers.
With so many choices at their disposal; the ushering in of game mechanics that so many players have come to rely on in ALL of their MMORPGs (e.g. instanced dungeons, group/party finder tools, intuitive interfaces that are easy-to-use), and some of the less-than-savory business practices that the industry has adopted to grab consumer revenue before a product is even finished (e.g. pre-order for "Beta" access, "Founder's Packs", Kickstarter, etc.), it's not surprising that consumers have become a fickle lot.
So many elements have contributed to a major shift in the MMORPG industry landscape since the earliest days of Everquest, Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Final Fantasy XI, Lineage, Ragnarok Online, and the introduction of vanilla World of Warcraft (which really paved the way for all these major shifts). I don't find it hard to believe that Blizzard is probably sitting back wondering, "How in the Hell do we top ourselves now?!"
I think this is great. Developers are realizing that building a game that is big in so many aspects is a money pit that is not worth the risk. By the time the thing is built, it will no longer be as appealing as the concept was initially. It will be a throw-away mmorpg.
I think the future of mmorpg's will come from those developer's, who nail mechanics and fun gameplay on a small scale, and then evolve into something better through feed back and gaming enthusiasm. This is what happened with the world of Azeroth after all.
Gaming since 1985; Online gaming since 1995; No End in Sight! My YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8POVoJ8fdOseuJ4U1ZX-oA
Considering D3 RoS blows D2 out of the water, you should prob give it a shot.
The only thing that could dethrone WoW now, would be an LoL MMO.
The problem is WoW wasn't broke and they kept fixing it until it has become so watered down that it a pale reflection of what it once was . If you really believe that is the reason that Titan was closed down you must be one of the most gullible people on this planet .
I think Titan was closed down because it was probably just not that good and I will give Blizzard credit where credits due if that was the case at least they didn't push ahead and release something that was sub standard .
The problem is Blizzard for all their money are a company that are very slow in developing new games I'm sure fans will bring up hearthstone and heroes of the storm but remember this is a company that has made billions in recent years and for the most part they still rely on Warcraft , Starcraft and Diablo .WoW has been its main source of income and that is dropping at an alarming rate . What is it now half of what it was 4 years ago . If I were a share holder I would be wonder why more money hasn't been spent on developing new games in the last 10 years .
Blizzard needs to invest more in its own future . Its a company that hit the jackpot with one game and it is where it is now because of that one game but it can't rely on that forever.
By now, there won't be any "WoW killer". Why would there be? They had 10 years, and no one managed to land a decisive strike. WoW will die, at some point, like all games do. But it will not be due to a single other game - with the possible exception of Blizzard shutting it off to avoid competition with WoW 2 or the likes, but why would they even develop something as long as WoW is a cash cow? - and instead simply slowly lose subs.
Both Everquest and Ultima Online are still around. And they are not the only ones. Lineage (1998), Meridian 59 (1996) and some more are still around. Actually, Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds (from 1996, too) gets more updates judging from a quick look at the website than most so called AAA MMOs.
WoW really blew everything out of the window. Nothing was the same as it was before, and there have been dozens, hundreds of games, even "AAA" games since then. And yet, those games are still around and somehow profitable.
It seems weird to assume there will be any game that completely makes WoW obsolete within a few weeks or months, a game you can point at and say "this game killed WoW. 5 Months ago, Wow still had 6+ million subscribers, but then WoW_KILLER was released. Incidentally, WoW_KILLER now sports 7+ million subscribers, with RANDOM_AAA_MMO coming in second with 1.3 million."
It didn't happen like this when WoW was released, it didn't happen in the 10 years since, why would it happen in the next 10 years - or at any time until Blizzard really pulls the plug in the late 2030 to make way for "Lost Vikings Universe". Or maybe they simply stop updating it - they would save costs and players would slowly decline at a slightly faster rate.
It might also turn out completely different, with Activision Blizzard having several critical misses in the near future and being bought cheap by another company who prefers churning out a sequel at least once a year - unless it's an MMO, where every two years is fine.
But a WoW-Killer? More likely Blizzard loses it's servers in an actual Blizzard.
I'll wait to the day's end when the moon is high
And then I'll rise with the tide with a lust for life, I'll
Amass an army, and we'll harness a horde
And then we'll limp across the land until we stand at the shore
There is no need to create a good MMORPG, if people pay a lot for a bad one.
- Have people pay for testing your game. There, it's not even half finished, and you already got a good amount of money back.
- Whenever people have something to complain, tell them that the game is still in early access, and everything will be better, to fuel toe hype.
- Just promise lots of things in general to fuel the hype and have people pay more for a game they never played.
- Advertise it as free to play, while designing the game in a way that makes it near impossible for someone who pays nothing at all to have fun.
- Claim it's free to play while selling insanely overcosted packs with stuff in them.
And so on and so on. No need to create a good game, people will pay enough for a bad one.
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
There's no doubt that a new MMO from blizzard would make enough money to pay back the monetary costs, but the real cost of finishing Project Titan was Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm, and given the success of Hearthstone and the bound to be successful Heroes of the Storm it was the right thing to kill Project Titan.
You can't keep your lead designers working on projects that's going nowhere, that's a waste of manpower and it costs you far more than just their salary. Better to cut your losses and kill the project and put your resources on a new project instead.
This. I said the same thing yesterday in another topic.
WoW still has 6 million subscribers and this number seems to have stabilized somewhat.
And with the positive feedback coming out of the Beta, it seems the new expansion is going to be one of the better expacs since a long time.
So it´s easier for Blizzard to try and keep the current 6 million and perhaps get a few more players to Return, who burned out on the new games.
The MMO market is completely saturared and most MMO gamers are starting to get burned out on the genre!
So why release a new MMO, that will kill off WoW and then risk losing everyone within 1-2 months in your new MMO due to player burnout?!
Leaving you with two dead MMO´s and huge financial losses! Crippling the Company.
The future of MMORPGs wil be in sandbox mmorpgs.. be it PVP sandbox games or PVE based ones..
Things are changing and people over the last year or so have been showing that by supporting many Sandbox mmopgs via kickstarter and other crowdfunding so much so that even SOE has picked up on this and are moving towards sandbox based MMORPGs..
I wouldn't say it's the future yet. Almost all of those on kickstarter are terrible, with awful character models, animations, etc. Some of them look so bad, you can tell they are being made with a low budget, and that's usually expected from indie devs, except that some of those on kickstarter are being made by veteran MMO devs. They don't even match the quality of recent MMOs such as ESO, WS, or AA. The only exception would probably be Star Citizen.
Because Developers start realising that Themepark MMO´s are unsustainable for the longterm. It used to work by putting insane gear grinds at the endgame, to keep people hooked and addicted.
But even that is starting to wear off and people starting to burn out on it.
The only way to sustain an MMO on the longterm is to add sandbox elements into the mix, to have players create their own content.
It doesn´t have to be pure sandbox. It can be a mix of the two. As questing can still be fun to do, when there is good lore and story behind it, with a little creativity.
I think they cancelled it because they rebooted it as a new project which is called code named "Overwatch"
Blizzard cancelling Titan ..... this is news? Didnt they do something like downsizing the team working on it prior to Blizzcon 2013?
All this hype over something that was just a concept....With Star Citizen and Citadel of Sorcery in the works did Titan really have a chance anyway?
Played: UO, LotR, WoW, SWG, DDO, AoC, EVE, Warhammer, TF2, EQ2, SWTOR, TSW, CSS, KF, L4D, AoW, WoT
Playing: The Secret World until Citadel of Sorcery goes into Alpha testing.
Tired of: Linear quest games, dailies, and dumbed down games
Anticipating:Citadel of Sorcery
Im actually happy that Blizz decided to not do MMOs for now. They just went overboard with the themepark direction. We all know their mantras a-la "gameplay first" and so on. But Blizz forgot that MMOs are supposed to be "virtual worlds close second".
I personally would not play a traditional themepark anymore for the simple reason that they become single player games in a crowd (or at the best small scale multiplayer combat games).
MMOs were supposed to be this huge open virtual worlds. But instead themeparks became shallow-gameplay quest-chain tunnels - in other words 100% guided hand-holding experience and 0% freedom. And we all rush to reach the light at the end of that tunnel (called end-game) just to be met with as I said simple instanced combat game. And outside of the combat there is nothing, nada - the gameplay just ends with combat. I agree that combat should be the most important thing but its far from the only thing there should be.
And understandably a lot other companies followed Blizz in that direction chasing big millions. Back then it was probably hard to see that WoW is still relevant simply because of the unimaginably big intertia that it accumulated during vanilla and BC.
The good news is that now MMO devs must come up with new ideas instead of copying the wrong one.
Minecraft looks awful too. For sandbox players graphics are 101% irrelevant.
Really? are people this tard? "Blizzard is lazy and NEVER had an original idea"?
FFS... Kids nowadays are so stupid....
I do not think that times are changing for Blizzard. They where preparing the handout of their subscrivers to a newer game called Titan the only thing they did not expect is that WOW would still be this strong when they would be ready to release TITAN.
So instead of releasing the game and watch it fail like so may other "Wow killers" have failed they decided to can the game and save their company from the embaressment of launching a modern day Titan(ic) of a 100 million dollars.
Besides what is 100 million dollars for blizzard 1 month of wow subscriptions? is not like its going to hurt them (for now) ..
Also it is being proven by every "wow killer" that is released that interests have somewhat changed on the last 10 years since the release of Wow the chances of an MMO being released and to be able to sustain million of players ( which would be the goal of Titan) are more then likely slim to none.
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"