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Blizzard's Unannounced 'Titan' MMO Rebooted, Development Team Reduced 193

Posted by Soulskill from the back-to-the-drawing-board dept.
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."
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Blizzard's Unannounced 'Titan' MMO Rebooted, Development Team Reduced More

Blizzard's Unannounced 'Titan' MMO Rebooted, Development Team Reduced

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  • If I learned anything from Asheron's Call 2 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GoodNewsJimDotCom ( 2244874 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @09:21PM (#43846615)
    Asheron's Call 1 was a great game and had an update every month. Players were very happy playing it. The developers(Turbine) wanted better graphics, so they decided to make an entirely new game: Asheron's Call 2. It was being developed at about the same time as World of Warcraft. The developers decided to rush it out because they were worried WOW would compete with AC2's numbers and whoever got the players first would retain them. The problem is that Asheron's Call2 was a failure in terms of game mechanics:Armor didn't work and there were ways to make sure you never got hit at all. Asheron's Call2 was rushed and as such, it took away most of the Asheron's Call 1 players :( People quit Asheron's Call 1 to play AC2.

    So Blizzard should be careful not to make the same mistake. As long as you have the leading MMO on the block, keep updating that. Keep making content for WOW and expansions. All the while, make a great project on the side in case WOW gets dethroned. I almost got a game design interview for World of Warcraft, and my big suggestion was for them was that they make enough money to create a lot more content than they do now. Aside from content, what they could do is explore end game content such as player housing and kingdom simulation. If they're worried this will screw up their subscribers in case something unpopular happens, they should run WOW experimental beta servers with different rule changes they're working on.

    I see no big problem with Titan being delayed. The longer a game takes to develop is generally a good thing. And the last thing Blizzard wants is a chunk of its WOW players to come to a sub par game, then leave for something else that is new.

    • Re:If I learned anything from Asheron's Call 2 (Score:4, Insightful)

      by autocannon ( 2494106 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @09:36PM (#43846709)

      I see no big problem with Titan being delayed. The longer a game takes to develop is generally a good thing. And the last thing Blizzard wants is a chunk of its WOW players to come to a sub par game, then leave for something else that is new.

      I whole heartedly disagree with this statement. 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. Now, not everybody cares about that, but why does it matter so much? Because the original timeline was already within that time frame. That means the game is getting grossly overdue. Grossly overdue games are in that state because the devs cannot get it to a releasable state.

      Most recent example in my head. TOR. You may have heard of that incredibly expensive, overdue boondoggle that EA put out. I bought it. Was excited to play it. Until I played it. There are many problems with that game. I won't even blame the devs for them, because IMO it's fundamental flaws in the game's design.

      Duke Nukem is another. Or the recent Blizzard offering, Diablo 3. 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.

      • Re:If I learned anything from Asheron's Call 2 (Score:4, Insightful)

        by CodeBuster ( 516420 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @11:06PM (#43847177)
        Perhaps this a dumb question by why not simply develop the parts of the game that aren't likely to change much during development, like data storage / retrieval, mechanics, and the like while saving things like graphics and sound until the game is in the final 6-12 months? In theory it should be possible to have the skeleton of the game pretty much templated out and ready to go for building out the mechanics and then working in the graphics and sound. Why do the window dressings take so much time in a game relative to the frame of the building and the wiring? Are they just doing it wrong?

        • Re:If I learned anything from Asheron's Call 2 (Score:5, Interesting)

          by windwalkr ( 883202 ) on Wednesday May 29, 2013 @12:55AM (#43847685)

          Major problems can be found after the ramping-up stage that you mention. The team decides that they can fix the problem, but only by changing some fundamental assumption upon which the whole game is based. This causes a lot of rework and can blow budgeting and scheduling out of the water. Worse, gp is fairly correct about a practical life cycle for a game engine- so if you bump the schedule like this a few times, you may need to start making "upgrades" to your underlying tech before you've even released the product. That can be a vicious cycle (see DNF.)

          "Data storage / retrieval, mechanics" are often the smallest part of a game. What's really expensive is often the art assets, sound, levels, and polish. And a change to any of these can mean updating everything else to suit (oh, we're going with an egyptian theme now?)

        • Re:If I learned anything from Asheron's Call 2 (Score:4, Interesting)

          by mellyra ( 2676159 ) on Wednesday May 29, 2013 @06:09AM (#43848685)

          Perhaps this a dumb question by why not simply develop the parts of the game that aren't likely to change much during development, like data storage / retrieval, mechanics, and the like while saving things like graphics and sound until the game is in the final 6-12 months? In theory it should be possible to have the skeleton of the game pretty much templated out and ready to go for building out the mechanics and then working in the graphics and sound. Why do the window dressings take so much time in a game relative to the frame of the building and the wiring? Are they just doing it wrong?

          that's exactly what they are doing - first they put a very small team on the project to develop the engine, backend technology, dev tools, ... while the game designers do their magic. then they ramp up the team size massively and start to develop actual art assets, start to write content, design levels, ... (which takes much longer than 6-12 months).

          My understanding is that in this case Blizzard had already started production when they decided that they need to go back to phase 1 and rework the game design and the technical underpinnings. So they scaled the team back down (no point wasting money on creating e.g. art assets which later have to be laboriously ported to the rewritten engine, or creating dungeons that will have to be trashed because core game mechanics were rethought in the meantime, ...).

        • Because the graphics are 90% of the work.

      • >Or the recent Blizzard offering, Diablo 3.

        Which blows out of the water their claim the delays have anything about waiting for games that set a high bar for quality.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by higuita ( 129722 )

        ok, a good graphics engine is good to start selling, everyone likes eye candy BUT.... ... after some weeks, all what matters is the game, the history, how everything works... eye candy only last a few weeks (look at crysis games) , a good game last years (WoW have weak graphics for today standard but still a good game) or even never die (look at nethack, plain ASCII interface and its still one of the best game ever, with thousand of players)

      • Re:If I learned anything from Asheron's Call 2 (Score:5, Informative)

        by Thruen ( 753567 ) on Wednesday May 29, 2013 @07:38AM (#43849023)

        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.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Thruen ( 753567 )
          Also, I know SC2 is an RTS, I just didn't realize I did that until after I hit submit. Who needs proofreading?

      • I whole heartedly disagree with this statement. 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. Now, not everybody cares about that, but why does it matter so much? Because the original timeline was already within that time frame. That means the game is getting grossly overdue. Grossly overdue games are in that state because th

    • Re:If I learned anything from Asheron's Call 2 (Score:4, Interesting)

      by flayzernax ( 1060680 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @09:47PM (#43846783)

      Sort of but not really. They should have focused on making AC2 as much like AC1 as possible. But updating the game engine and playability with better UI design. Like doing things they would have in hindsight if they weren't locked into the feature set that AC1 had only.

      So the point I disagree on is having to have the same engine and client. If they can release content semi-annually. They can upgrade the engine and code semi-annually too. Beyond patches, or widget like features.

      No MMO has done that though.

      Though WoW could maybe use a core rewrite. The assets are not bad looking still. For the audience in question.

      But the people who liked MMO's are done with them. The new generation is not inspired by last generations toy. I think we should give MMO's a rest for awhile as a species.

      The next big thing will be a SIMULATION. That is multiuser. And user generated.

      • Re: If I learned anything from Asheron's Call 2 (Score:4, Interesting)

        by O('_')O_Bush ( 1162487 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @10:05PM (#43846879)
        Runeescap is actually one a more aggressive development cycle than the one you describe, which is why it still has millions of players (the vast majority fairly new) despite being over 12 years old.

        • Cool I didn't ever dabble with Runescape. Glad to know my idea is not completely unfounded =)

          I was a die hard EQ player. Which updated from Directx6 to 8 with Luclin. And had a big client side UI update with Velious. Nobody much liked the Luclin content. But I think almost everyone universally liked the upgrades to the client.

          And the Shadows of Faydwer client was another big re-write which was popular. So I think that might be where I got the idea in the back of my head =)

          • In my mind, the jump the shark moment for EverQuest was when they changed the ogre and troll models from their cool designs and turned them into tall, mildly misshapen humans. And then turned that on as the default model.

            • The Luclin models were outsourced out of the country. it was one of the first big mistakes SoE made. And they were extremely poly in-efficient compared to what they needed to be. Not to mention the animation was shoddy. They could have updated the models to a 2 x higher poly count and went with the same art styles. And they would have been a big hit.

      • Re:If I learned anything from Asheron's Call 2 (Score:4, Informative)

        by fast turtle ( 1118037 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @10:18PM (#43846943) Journal

        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.

    • Sounds also like Square Enix's botched release of Final Fantasy XIV. Unlike AC2 though, 14 was so bad that it didn't lure many players away from XI. Once SE went into damage control mode and decided to rebuild XIV from scratch, they threw the XI players a bone and give them a new playground in the meantime. So while XIV languished, XI went through a bit of a renaissance.

      I've been in the beta for the new version of XIV (ARR), and they've fixed all the crap that made the game so horrible the first go ro

  • Cause and effect (Score:5, Interesting)

    by girlintraining ( 1395911 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @09:21PM (#43846617)

    "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.

    This wouldn't happen to be because World of Warcraft started hemmoraging cash and players recently, would it?

    The cash cow is sick -- quick, buy more cows!

    • I'd be curious to know what, if any, shift in the makeup of the dev team occurred during the 'drastic reduction'. Was it roughly proportionate, just the hive tyrants at Vivendi responding to bad numbers by reflexivel cutting costs?

      Was it the project getting more or less thrown away and rebooted? Was it the entire art team busy modelling pet zergling DLC for 'World of Starcraft' being sacked and the remaining developers told that they'll have to actually develop a new game, not a WoW mod?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by osu-neko ( 2604 )
      If by "sick" you mean still the healthiest, fattest cow in the field, several times stronger than the next biggest cow, then yeah, you're right.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by halivar ( 535827 )

      2007 was well before their peak of 12 million subs during Wrath of the Lich King, so no, it wouldn't.

      • Huh? That statement makes no sense. They started out in 2007, when WoW was expanding rapidly and thus may have based a lot of the games mechanics on WoW. However WoWs sudden contraction over the past year should definitely give them cause to re-evaluate the direction Titan is going.

        • Except the OP is saying Blizzard is "buying more cows". It's not. It's cutting down its existing herd, exactly the opposite of what she said.

        • Did you mean WoW was released in 2007? Because I remember it was released my senior year of high school (204-2005)

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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

      • WoW is indeed losing subscribers. Not a little but a lot. It's still very profitable though, so I'm not sure where the "hemorrhaging cash" comes from, but indeed it IS hemorrhaging players, to the tune of about 1.1 to 1.3 million every quarter for the last 3 consecutive quarters (prior to that they were losing in the low to mid six digits per quarter.)

        Eventually it will reach the point where it starts to become unprofitable until they scale down their servers, which they are still running as if their subscr

        • Whilst I'm not a very active WoW player, I can tell you that there is an increasingly large number of servers, or "Realms" as they're called, that are very empty (200 players online at peak time). This doesn't just have a negative effect on the social side of the game, it also causes a whole host of issues for the in-game economy, and the ability to party up for dungeons and raids.

          I think from a player point a view, downscaling their number of actual game servers would be a welcome move (albeit tricky to ca

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ildon ( 413912 )

        They've been losing subs, but I SERIOUSLY doubt they've been losing cash.

  • They need something to replace WOW (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @09:23PM (#43846625) Journal

    I was really hoping SWTOR would be that next gen game as I actually liked the huge improvements over wow with companions, voice driven quests, choices, and companions doing the dirty profession work for you.

    Wow seemed so primitive in comparison yet was bashed on slashdot for some unkown reason by Wow loyalists and other gaming sites. Sigh.

    Of course I grew up but I want to see more than just wow but the fact of the matter is it is very very expensive to make a MMO. In time you run out of ideas like Kung Fu Panda in Wow. Man it rocked when Arathas was still around and Wow for me died when he was finally defeated.

    • Re:They need something to replace WOW (Score:5, Insightful)

      by halivar ( 535827 ) <bfelger@gmai l . com> on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @10:23PM (#43846963)

      It was a perfectly serviceable KOTOR 3 single-player game. Then you got to level 50 and you were done. Not quite a replacement for WOW though.

      • Yep, a lot of people don't give SWTOR enough credit. The level 40s drag for a bit, but it's a really fun single player game that just happens to be an MMO.

        I don't think I bought more than one or two items on the auction house on my way up to 50, as opposed to Diablo 3, where spending even a small amount made your character six billion times more powerful and had a much worse storyline.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ildon ( 413912 )

        It was a serviceable KotOR 3 with 60 hrs of MMO grind tacked on for no discernible reason.

      • The main issue is that everyone is competing against WOW that has had seven years to improve. Everyone's expectations are set to that. You've also got MMO pros (which didn't exist really when WOW launched) who already know how to play games like these. They blow through the content and go "That's it!!? WTF! This game SUX, I'm out of here!" Personally, I'm of the same opinion as Billy. I thought and still think SWTOR is actually pretty decent for a new MMO. They've had a couple years, things are slowly impro

    • Re:They need something to replace WOW (Score:4, Insightful)

      by flimflammer ( 956759 ) on Wednesday May 29, 2013 @12:45AM (#43847645)

      It always amuses me when someone comments on the latest expansion being "King Fu Panda in WoW," as if Blizzard actually didn't already have these creatures and their style many years before that movie was even a script being pitched to a studio.

      • I'm a long-time Warcraft and Blizzard fan, and I don't recall the classic Wacraft Pandaren being bouncy food-lovers. Yet those attributes were given to them when they were included in World of Warcraft, well after the release of a certain film containing an anthropomorphized panada who was an elastic glutton.

    • The same way people swore up and down that Guild Wars 2 would be the WoW killer?. Instead they turned it into a P2W Game and now people have just given up on the MMO Genre. If anything, 'Titan' will be a 'buy once, play for free' game with a shop; like GW2. Blizz has already mentioned the F2P model in their future plans.
      To be quite honest, I can't see a success for Titan in the way WoW was. The best days for an MMO are gone, the market is too saturated.

      Blizzard does/did make great Games, and I have much res

  • hurray for World Of Starcraft! (Score:3)

    by slashmydots ( 2189826 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @09:52PM (#43846817)
    Well, I can hope at least

    • I was really hoping that was what Titan was going to be, before they announced it would be an entirely new bit of IP.

  • I hope this is Blizzard learning from their own recent mistakes. The cynic in me thinks that they are cleaning out the old blood, the ones who knew how to design games and what made them re-playable, and replacing them with developers who know and love the McWoW formula.

  • They've ruined their own market. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @10:23PM (#43846967)

    WoW is still the biggest MMO several times over, even a decade later. Because of every game's attempt to mimic WoW in every aspect possible, the genre has made almost no progress in the last decade. They're all just re-skins of WoW and because of that, few are successful. However, because developers feel only a WoW type MMO can be successful, they're not willing to take steps to make bold new MMO games that are not just re-skins of WoW.

    So, a decade later, the MMO genre is gasping. Clones of clones of clones. People aren't tired of MMOs as a concept, but are tired of their execution. Unless Blizzard has something amazing up their sleeve, they're just going to wind up releasing yet another WoW (though in space or whatever). They'll just be appealing to the existing WoW addicts they already have who are somehow so brain-numbed that they'll sit and play the same thing for a decade, even after they've gone through all the content a dozen times.

    Though perhaps not directly, Blizzard has spoiled the genre and the audience. Their game sucked the air out of the room, making it difficult for others in the business who can only be bothered to poorly mimic them. And now everything is drying up.

    I won't be surprised if it is completely canceled. Or, at least, postponed long beyond 2016, ultimately.

    • Re:They've ruined their own market. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mark_wilkins ( 687537 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @10:33PM (#43847013)
      There's always EVE Online, which is about as far from a WoW clone as one can get. It's not an alternative to WoW, but a successful, different MMO model, and I think there's a lot to learn from the differences between the two of them. For the record, I've played both extensively.
      • Can't leave out Tera's amazing combat system. That game was amazing. Stopped playing it because it was making me screw up in school.

    • I disagree with this assessment. Yes, there are an uncountable number of WoW clones out there, but there are many games that are trying to break the classic MMO mold that Blizzard essentially set the gold standard to, with varying degrees of success.

      Now is an exciting time for MMOs with more and more of them taking on more action oriented combat and stepping outside of what we consider traditional.

      I think Blizzard just created a target they are not even sure they can even beat themselves.

  • I question the logic. It seems to me that developers who reach that status have tired old ideas and/or have blown their creative wad, so to speak, and tend to coast by on past achievements. Luminaries such as Richard Garriott, Will Wright, Bill Roper, Chris Metzen etc... have they really created anything notable after their breakthrough games?

    It might be better to throw the project to a team of fresh developers full of exciting, new ideas and give their vision a chance to live.

    Old hands are safe hands, but

    • I question the logic. It seems to me that developers who reach that status have tired old ideas and/or have blown their creative wad, so to speak, and tend to coast by on past achievements. Luminaries such as Richard Garriott, Will Wright, Bill Roper, Chris Metzen etc... have they really created anything notable after their breakthrough games?

      It might be better to throw the project to a team of fresh developers full of exciting, new ideas and give their vision a chance to live.

      Old hands are safe hands, but make for a dull journey.

      There are some. For instance:

      Doug Church: Ultima Underworld, Ultima Underworld 2, System Shock, Thief, Deus Ex, Portal 2

      Ken Levine: Thief, System Shock 2, Bioshock, Bioshock Infinite

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AuMatar ( 183847 )

        The one true video game god, Miyamoto- Donkey Kong, Zelda (all of them), Mario (all of them), and half the rest of the nintendo catalog.

        But these are few and far between. Normally when you see a game hyping their lead designer, its a doomed project. It means they don't have enough ideas to hype them instead. And at the same time it raises the expectation levels. Bad combo.

        • Miyamoto has his faults, he's not perfect. He doesn't understand discoverabilty, he doesn't understand western tastes (navi, Tingle), and he should NEVER be let anywhere near a controller design team.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ildon ( 413912 )

      We'll find out when Hearthstone comes out. They basically took all of their top talent and made a tiny supergroup to try and make a small scope, short dev time game.

  • What the hell? (Score:4, Funny)

    by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @10:53PM (#43847097) Homepage

    This summary and article read like someone issuing a denial about actually making a video game.

    Blizzard would like to announce it is delaying the release of a product it has not yet announced.

    We at Blizzard are actively pondering creating the Next Big Thing, but we might cancel it, or we might not, but we're doing it with fewer people, starting from scratch, and won't have anything for several years. But don't panic, we have agile programming.

  • Apart from the premature press release, I'd give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt on going slow with their next MMO.

    They have proven their prowess at MMO's with WoW, which like EQ and others will eventually stale for players and be rendered technologically obsolete by new engines, platforms, etc. They probably realize that an advanced 100% interactive sandbox world, perhaps like the rumored Everquest Next, will take a ton of time and effort to get right.

    MMO players, especially RP types, tend to be very fra

    • The thing is, theres barely any RP element in WoW. Nor any MMO.

      Theres a bare handful of players who empathise with their character in any way at all, or have any kind of backstory for their character. Its just not part of the mindset; its more like "pew pew pew I get to blow stuffs up with ma lazors/lightning bolts/2 handed sword of buttkicking". Thats about how shallow it is compared to the RPG genre.

      Notice how we refer to them as MMO now, not MMORPG?

      But hey if you know an actual MMORPG please tell me abou

      • Sadly, I tend to agree. Hopefully the character-specific interactivity that comes with "sandboxing" will give individual characters an identity, and unique "life story" beyond "Level 99 Troll Ninja Paladin" or whatever. I don't know which publisher will be first-to-market with a sandbox MMO, but it should help make RP a viable experience in MMO's again.

        The only real RP I've seen lately is pretty limited. There are still some active RP guilds on the EQ2 primary RP server, Antonia Bayle, but the server as a w

        • I think character levels is one of the worst things to have in an MMO, the way Eve does it is good but the backstabbing psychopathy in Eve really puts me off (its not roleplaying, its people being dicks). What I'd like to see is a game that encourages RP rather than a game that merely pays lip service to the RP in MMORPG.

          • XI actually had a lot of individual character development. Each expansion means you have to save the world from some different calamity. You get a pretty NPC girl as a companion for each story. (Really, the expansions are her story and you're just along for the ride, but she's part party member, part cheerleader, part heroine. So far we've had Lion, Prishe, Aphmau, and Lilsette, plus the new Danerys clone whose name I can't remember.) The Rank leveling quests (basically your military rank) put you in th

        • LOTRO sees a little bit of RP on the servers that encourage it. Much of it tends to revolve around the in-game music system, which is one of it's more unique features.

      • I always get creeped out by the true role players in an MMO, especially when they stand around and talk in character. It feels more like actual human beings LARPing than it does people enacting a role. *shudder*

  • Smaller team, less bickering (Score:3)

    by fufufang ( 2603203 ) on Wednesday May 29, 2013 @08:00AM (#43849171)

    This might get the job done faster, you never know.

  • It's going to be a monumental task for Blizzard to one-up themselves. They came out with the best and biggest game this side of the Call of Duty franchise, with subscribers who buy the game again every 4 months (@14.95/mo), with a bonus 4 months added with every expansion they pump out. They had the perfect formula and it came together beautifully.

    And then they got lazy. They decided they were infallible. The very fact that you can claim to have a "dream team" of designers tells me that they weren't eve

  • Virtually no one cares about Titan now, imagine how little we'll care in 2016.

    Here's the problem with these stupidly retarded long development cycles; by the time the game actually comes out a majority of the code can be up to a decade old, and it shows, re: Duke Nukem Forever and Tabula Rasa.

    But whatever. Blizzard isn't the Blizzard we all once knew and loved anymore, now it's just a corporate nameplate, shill, and underling for Activision. No vision, no breakthroughs, nothing new or exciting. Just stale o

  • Just goes to show how irrelevant this company is. They have supposedly been developing this project since 2007, and this is the first I have ever heard of it. Hopefully they restarted the project to increase the difficulty and implement a system to prevent children (mentally) from speaking their racist garbage.

    EQ Next has started over 2 or 3 times already, it is refreshing to see that Blizzard is having the same trouble even if their project has flown well under the radar.

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