http://www.polygon.com/2014/9/23/6833953/blizzard-cancels-titan-next-gen-mmo-pc http://www.polygon.com/2014/9/23/6833953/blizzard-cancels-titan-next-gen-mmo-pc

Blizzard has officially canceled development on its mysterious next-generation massively multiplayer game Titan. The company confirmed the news to Polygon in a recent interview.

This revelation comes after at least seven years in development and word last year that the developer was going back to the drawing board to reevaluate the project.

What was it though? Tell us Blizzard! What was Titan?!

Huh. I guess Blizzard won't be the ones to save MMOs then; or at least they won't do it anytime soon.

'Titan' was a codeword for 'two-person desk chair races around the sixth floor'.

Interesting. I hope whatever the various teams of people were working on are restructured/reworked into something (or some things) else.

This really isn't that surprising, they are known to shut any of the games down regardless of what stage in development, remember star craft ghost ? they even had trailers of that game out then bam, shut down

Seems like a blizzard ass blizzard move. Not really shocked considering we've never hear or seen anything about the actual game.

This seems huge. I feel like Blizzard is pretty good at canceling things that probably won't pan out (Like Starcraft Ghost) but seven years is a lot of development time... That said, I'm sure that with the Activision acquisition they have the scratch to back it up. I just find myself wondering what the future of Blizzard even looks like. WoW expansions until we're dead? They've pretty explicitly stated that WoW 2 is not something they've been thinking about. Warcraft 4 would be cool, but it seems unlikely. I haven't heard hide nor hair of another Diablo 3 expansion, and Starcraft is puttering along, seemingly smaller than ever. Titan was their only "new thing" they were talking about, so, what next?

Edit: Totally forgot about Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm. Maybe it's because they're so much smaller scale than a typical Blizzard release. I love Hearthstone, so I definitely don't want them to move away from projects like it, but I also would be sad to lose the large scale, hyper-polished Blizzard game from this industry.

I, for one, am thankful they're doing this. It felt like that project were giving them all kinds of problems. Better to cancel it and free up developers for something else.

And not once did they ever reveal anything substantial about it. We saw more of The Last Guardian, and that's not saying much.

The only sad part about this to me is thinking about how many developers would be bankrupt after sinking so much time and energy and money into a game. Of course, that means they would have shipped what was probably a not-so-revolutionary product. I'm glad Blizzard knows when to fold 'em. Also, please someday ship that last bit of Starcraft 2?

On that note... maybe Titan was secretly a collaboration on Half-Life 3...

Is this that big of news? When is the last time this was really even talked about? 2010?

This is actually kind of reassuring to me, in a weird way. Smarter to cease development on it before it gets out of hand than get saddled with this out of date MMO like Bethesda did with The Elder Scrolls Online.

(note: I only played the beta for ESO so my assessment might be overly harsh but it definitely felt out of date to me during my time with it)

That's a wise decision I think, there's no way in hell any MMO they could put out would achieve anywhere near the same success as WoW, WoW fanatics would probably just keep being WoW fanatics and I don't see any MMORPG coming out today gathering a huge following, I guess they realized they are better off just releasing expansions for WoW given that (for some god forsaken reason) there are still a lot of people playing it and probably focus more on their MOBA because that's synonymous for money these days.

Even though it's cancelled I doubt Blizzard will reveal much details about how it worked. Some of the concepts might be reused later.

Little did we know, Titan was just them trying to remake Warcraft Adventures.

So...what are they working on then? HotS is coming along nicely, but from what I've played of the alpha it's pretty close to finished. Only other thing I can think of is the Starcraft II Protoss expansion, and that can't be taking up that much of their dev team.

@brodehouse: I've played that before, it's a hellofa game

@nightriff: May 2013 was their latest official update on the status.

Titan was set in The Lost Vikings universe, let's be real here. :D

This company is ridiculous.

Can anyone think of another company that has scrapped more years of work accumulated across multiple titles?

I feel like companies like blizzard and bungie and valve who just made fucking buckets on previous titles and services probably get 20 percent of the work done in a day that any other developer does. I mean good on them i guess but jesus it would be nice if they released some full games from time to time.

I just died.

Again-again?

Yeah good move probably. Wait for the new EQ thing to come out an then copy and iterate. The only question is who to steal artwork style from this time?

Little bit of a wildly unqualified statement there, friend. The reason all of those devs you mentioned made and continue to make all that money is precisely because they spend years and years perfecting their games before they're released.

You don't maintain the most popular MMO for 10 fucking years by slacking off.

Lost Vikings AND Rock n Roll Racing Universe, do it blizzard, DO IT!

Kind of a bummer. I was really looking forward to what it ended up being. The big thing now is do they just continue the WOW train?

Titan was actually a Rock and Roll Racing MMO

Is it better to release something like Elder Scrolls Online, and do damage to the brand and company image, or to take the financial hit?

Obviously whatever they had planned was likely to be much more of a game changer than ESO, but you have to give them credit for taking the course of action that hurt the bottom line in the short run instead of the long run. Not many are in the position or have the fortitude to do that.

Can't wait for a couple years down the line when we finally get to see what this looked like.

Titan was just Blizzard's attempt to summon Sargeras to Earth as a promotion for WoW.

Congrats everyone, the Earth is saved.

Yup. And focus on smaller games. The Hearthstone hype is real...?

I guess you could say Blizzard's Titan MMO had quite a... fall......................

It is okay and actually encouraged companies to cancel projects instead of trying to hammer out some sort have something to sell. The only bummer is that we may never know what they were working on.

If you think about it, Blizzard's success is built around perfecting the ideas laid out by other games. WoW was no different. Without any promising candidates out there to use as their template for a new MMO save their own, constantly improving product, it just doesn't sound like Blizzard's wheelhouse. Which is basically what they said, aside from not admitting they aren't so good with original thoughts.

If it was the Sci-Fi MMO it was rumored to be I was kinda looking forward to it, well RIP.

@veektarius: are you telling me blizzard is the Apple of game development? Man that is not a happy thought for me. But it seems so true!

@drdust: For that era though that wasn't uncommon. This is the sequel (or the next MMO) out of the developer of the biggest MMO ever. If they're canceling it after almost a decade in development they must have a very good reason. I wonder if the market just isn't there anymore?

That's alright I suppose. At this point I'd rather see them make something other than another mmo anyway. Especially if it isn't up to par with what they'd want. I'm still waiting on Heroes of the Storm and Legacy of the Void, so its not like I'm starved for upcoming Blizzard games.

Not too surprising really. They should just stick with WoW until it doesn't print money anymore, then think about another MMO.

Just turn it into a Diablo expansion...

Good, that just means the 40K MMO has a slightly higher chance of succeeding. Maybe.

Good move. I am glad they don't put shit out unless they think its good.

Now go turn out another Diablo 3 expansion!

Great, now maybe Tigole can work on something else. Guaranteed to be a big announcement at Blizzcon now; wonder what it will be aside from the obvious.

Does this mean the NDA on assets has expired? Or is this "official cancellation" more a trial separation, so the assets will be kept hidden "just in case". I'd be really curious to see the creative quagmire leading up to this cancellation. Is Titan's skeleton going to integrate into WoW in some way or was it just a complete mess with nothing to salvage? Firefall is basically what I would imagine a Blizzard scifi themed MMO would look like, maybe Firefall's existence played a role. Major disasters like this are kind of fascinating.

Wow... working seven years towards ultimately nothing? Sounds like my love life! Hey Blizz, are you still hiring?

Was competition from Titan something people were worried about with Eternal Crusade?

I think it's worth pointing out that in Ghost's case, the game started development by another studio (Nihilistic Software), but they had enough problems to prompt them to hand it off to another third-party (Swingin' Ape Studios) which Blizzard eventually acquired before cancelling the game. Ghost was troubled from the get-go there, and was something of an "outside" problem with the two external studios' involvement.

Pure speculation on my part, but I would guess that Titan's cancellation is a vastly bigger deal inside Blizzard than Ghost's ever was.

All the developers you listed have some of the most popular games running right now: Destiny, Diablo 3, World of Warcraft(still after all these years), Hearthstone, Dota 2, Counter Strike: GO. I excluded StarCraft 2 because I am not sure how well the community sustained post HoTs release.

It doesn't matter how many titles any of the devs you listed scrap. Nearly every game they eventually do put out has a huge following and sells through the roof.