Blizzard Entertainment cancels work on Titan online game

MANILA, Philippines – Blizzard has officially cancelled the development of Titan, its next-generation massively multiplayer online (MMO) game, according to an interview with Blizzard executives by gaming news website Polygon.

Titan was in development for 7 years and was anticipated by many as an MMO that could emulate the worldwide success and popularity of another Blizzard creation, World of Warcraft.

According to Polygon’s interview, Blizzard co-founder and CEO Mike Morhaime said the success of World of Warcraft made them feel really confident that they knew how to make MMOs. “So we set out to make the most ambitious thing that you could possibly imagine. And it didn’t come together,” he said.

Morhaime also added. “We didn’t find the fun. We didn’t find the passion. We talked about how we put it through a reevaluation period, and actually, what we reevaluated is whether that’s the game we really wanted to be making. The answer is no.”

The re-evaluation period was last year, when Blizzard announced that the project was going back to the drawing board according to a report from VentureBeat. The development team was also said to have shrunk from 100 people to 70 positions.

Chris Metzen, Blizzard senior vice president of story and franchise development, and Morhaime agree that the decision to cancel Titan was excruciating for all of them. Titan now joins other long term development titles like Warcraft Adventures and StarCraft Ghost in a list of cancelled games.

Morhaime added that even though it was hard to cancel games like these, it has always resulted in better-quality work. Morhaime added that the company would “rather cut out a game we put a lot of time and resources into than put out something that might…” Metzen then finished Morhaime’s sentence: “Damage the relationship. Smash the trust.”

Blizzard, in Titan’s deliberation has asked questions like, “Is this really who we are?” Metzen asked. “Is this really what we want? Is this really what we want to burn our passion and our work lives, our careers on, for years on end?” he added “Are we the MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) company?”

Morhaime answered the line of questions with, “We don’t want to identify ourselves with a particular genre. We just want to make great games every time.”

This year, Blizzard released a digital collectible card game (CCG) called Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft and is currently developing a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) title called Heroes of the Storm, which features and lets players take on the mantle of famous characters from all of Blizzard’s game franchises.

World of Warcraft is also releasing its fifth game expansion, titled Warlords of Draenor, which continues the players’ adventures in the world of Azeroth. – Rappler.com