Blizzard's Unannounced 'Titan' MMO Rebooted, Development Team Reduced 193
An anonymous reader writes "VentureBeat reports that the next-gen MMO Blizzard Entertainment has been hinting at since 2007, codenamed 'Titan,' is getting restarted with a drastically reduced development team. It was originally being built by a 100-person 'dream team' of developers that had their roots in other popular Blizzard games. Many people were expecting an announcement about Titan at this year's Blizzcon, but now that looks unlikely. 'Blizzard's development teams aren't known for their speed. The publisher often cancels projects that have been in the works for years if it believes that those games don't meet its standard of quality.' VentureBeat's sources say the game is now looking at a 2016 release at the earliest."
Re:Cause and effect (Score:3, Informative)
Re:If I learned anything from Asheron's Call 2 (Score:4, Informative)
Guildwars did that. Released new content and slight changes on a semi-regular basis until the GW2 release. Now it's in automatic maintenance mode and only critical issues (game stoppers will be fixed) but hey, at least they didn't shut the servers down so I have a chance to complete the damn thing.
Re:Cause and effect (Score:2, Informative)
This wouldn't happen to be because World of Warcraft started hemmoraging cash and players recently, would it?
Has it? No, seriously, has WoW really been hemorrhaging cash and players?
I'm aware of the recent loss of a million subscribers, but as I understand it, that was a one-time event that can be almost entirely blamed on a Diablo III cross-promotion and a change in Chinese laws.
Even so, that leaves WoW something like five times larger than its largest competitor.
Now that doesn't mean that WoW isn't shrinking or anything like that, I just question the choice of the word "hemorrhaging." WoW may be shrinking, but it's not in any immediate danger, and Blizzard doesn't have to worry about only being four times larger than their nearest competitor any time soon.
Re:If I learned anything from Asheron's Call 2 (Score:5, Informative)
There is a sweet spot of time spent for game development. My guess on that is 18-36 months. Once game development hits 3 years, the graphics engine on which it is built is old enough to be noticeable compared to the newer content.
Starcraft 2's release timeline is longer than that, and I don't feel the graphics are noticeably worse than newer MMOs, although to be honest I'm such a Starcraft fan it wouldn't matter and I'd keep playing SC2 anyway. Development on that started in 2003, so it was still 7 years before the first third of it was released, and some would argue the whole game hasn't even been released yet.
WoW took 4-5 years initially, and was buggy at release just like every other MMORPG ever has been but it might be the most successful game in history. Not the most loved, but quite possibly the most successful single title ever.
D3 took 11 years, and while it takes a lot of flak (rightfully so) over the AH and the DRM, the actual game is a fun hack n' slash, true to the titles that came before it. Those two big flaws would've been there regardless of development time.
DNF is a bad example, the game was terrible regardless of graphics, people were willing to give it a go knowing full well the graphics would be outdated but the game itself was just awful. Development time had nothing to do with that failure, either, it was just a bad game that people were really excited for.
TOR was an MMO made by people who put out great single player RPGs, the result was a great single-player RPG that had some MMO "features" added in which ruined it, and that was another mistake dev time had nothing to do with. Less time would only have resulted in a buggier release with fewer features and the same frustrations.
Nothing you say actually suggests a link between development time and the quality of the resulting product. If I were to go on listing games with 18-36 months of development time that came out bad, I could go on for days, any long-time gamer with Google's help certainly could. That doesn't mean that's a bad timeline either. The fact is, Blizzard rebooting the project will have no real effect we'll ever see on the outcome.
Look, once a computer program (any program really) goes too far over schedule there is something wrong with it. Titan being delayed and large scale developer changes means that game is fatally flawed and they're probably looking to push it to any functional state possible so they can sell a crappy ass game to as many unsuspecting fools as possible.
There was no schedule, the project was not announced yet. They said they're rebooting it, which suggests they're starting over, and they're going to take much longer than they expected to develop it. Nothing that's happened suggests they're actually trying to "push it to any functional state possible" to rush out crap, it's the exact opposite. They're going to take longer with it because they think it's not good enough. If Blizzard thought it was fatally flawed, they would cancel it, as they have in the past.
It seems like you've developed a bias against longer development times for no real reason. You're complaints don't even match up, longer development time would never suggest an attempt to sell a crappy game, it'd be easier to duct tape it together and release it if they think it'd be bad anyway. You, sir, are little more than a troll.