Early this month, an austere document appeared online purporting to be Blizzard Entertainment's road map for the next five years. Dated April 2, 2010, the document listed quarterly release windows for all of the Irvine, California-based studio's projects, including Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm (Q4 2011), Diablo 3 (Q4 2011), and World of Warcraft's fourth expansion (Q2 2012). Also appearing in that chart was a mystery project, bearing the title Titan and a Q4 2013 release window.
Blizzard insists Titan won't be one of World of Warcraft's competitors.
Though the validity of the chart is apocryphal at best, it has been lent some measure of credence this week, courtesy of none other than Blizzard cofounder and executive vice president Frank Pearce. As part of the 2010 VGA ceremony, Pearce spoke with gaming blog Destructoid, confirming Titan as at the very least a working title for the studio's much-speculated upon new massively multiplayer online role-playing game.
"Titan is… the media is not meant to know anything about that," Pearce said. "It's our next-gen MMO, and we've only started talking about it in a limited fashion because we want to leverage the fact that we're working on something like that for the purpose of recruiting--getting some of the best talent in the industry on that."
Blizzard has been teasing out pieces of its next big project since 2007, when it confirmed that a non-World of Warcraft MMOG was in development. The game, which Blizzard does not see as a competitor to WOW, will be an all-new property with, according to Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, "a little more broad appeal."
Ok, Blizzard launches WoW, gets millions of users on their servers, plus billions of dollars on their buckets. They launched three expansions. It's still a great success thanks to fan-boyism. But Enough is ENOUGH!
If Blizz loves so much to launch MMOs now, why don't they release a Diablo one, just to variate. Why to simply keep it as a mere RPG?
Really, money changes people...
How I became a troll in a single post (And you can too!!! ): link
wibod wrote:WoW is pretty much Diablo, also Blizzard is a company, they've always been about money.
WRONG! Not always. Before Warcraft III and Starcraft became that huge success, Blizzard didn't even have a spare dime. They had to make sure games were actually good before launching them. Otherwise, Diablo 1 wouldn't be that much of a success.
How I became a troll in a single post (And you can too!!! ): link
So Titan is their next MMORPG. After awhile, an original MMORPG starts to become stale and you have to move onto the next genre. My guess is Titan will become a StarCraft or space variant MMORPG.
I don't think Diablo would make a good MMORPG. The RPG elements of the game that already exist would be cannibalized by an MMORPG title of the same game. I think Blizzard's Battle.net plans for the RPG character development of your hero classes will already make D3 a sort of pseudo-MMORPG. WarCraft and StarCraft make better MMORPGs because they were originally RTS games.
I know some in this community have hostile opinions of World of WarCraft, but you need to accept the reality that World of WarCraft is the most successful and evolving MMORPG ever made. I have played WoW since beta, and I have to admit the gameplay, evolution of story, and accommodations for players of all types has only become better over the years. Blizzard has refined the MMORPG genre for years to come, and competitors will STILL be catching up halfway through the next decade. You can say what you want, but the reality is Blizzard runs a business of entertaining very well. They aren't perfect, but they've done a damn good job with World of WarCraft.
will be an all-new property with, according to Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, "a little more broad appeal."
I think this line is a mark against the possibility of a sci-fi MMO. For example, the Sci-Fi channel changed its name to SyFy for a "little more broad appeal."
Bobby here is talking about something with broader appeal than WoW, the most successful MMO of all time. What could be more broad than that? Well, given how Starcraft II incorporated Facebook, I think I see where Blizzard is looking...
wibod wrote:WoW is pretty much Diablo, also Blizzard is a company, they've always been about money.
WRONG! Not always. Before Warcraft III and Starcraft became that huge success, Blizzard didn't even have a spare dime. They had to make sure games were actually good before launching them. Otherwise, Diablo 1 wouldn't be that much of a success.
What is the function of a company? I was under the impression that companies are created to offer a product or service and to be given money in return for those products or services. Blizzard offered good products because they realized that good products would be more beneficial to them in the long term.
Lavarinth wrote:You know what else is broad appeal?
Farmville.
Farmville the MMORPG? You're a farmer and adventurer. At the same time. Defend your farm from monsters, travel the world and delve into dungeons to find rare seeds and animals for your farm! But spend too much time away an your farm could be overrun by monsters! You can use your harvest to trade for epic gear! Pumpkin Pauldrons of the Boar! Breed different animals to serve as pets (combat and non-combat) and mounts!
): 
