Blizzard News: Attack On Titan

[Visions of Khas]

So long, sweet prince, we hardly knew ye.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/23/68...raft-successor

[DemolitionSquid]

[hyde]

Destiny and the $$$ returned from Hearthstone (10 man dev team on their spare time) probably green lite the cancel button. Also assuming why Rob Pardo quit. I find it really hard that figures like Bioware;s Dr Zseschuk and Dr Muzyka would just leave (Yes 'burn out' is one factor). But yes suddenly one day you're not just in a (in this case) Irvine office floor/garage coding Diablo1/WC1, but instead you're getting a proverbial Bobby Kotick Dick (I am an Activision shareholder just FYI) down your throat on a game of golf to go shut down your baby cause it'll conflict with Destiny.

Destiny is Bungie and not even an internal product. Talk about getting shafted (From a Design POV) huh.

That's my 2cents & speculation.

[NikoMyCousin]

Destiny and the $$$ returned from Hearthstone (10 man dev team on their spare time) probably green lite the cancel button. Also assuming why Rob Pardo quit. I find it really hard that figures like Bioware;s Dr Zseschuk and Dr Muzyka would just leave (Yes 'burn out' is one factor). But yes suddenly one day you're not just in a (in this case) Irvine office floor/garage coding Diablo1/WC1, but instead you're getting a proverbial Bobby Kotick Dick (I am an Activision shareholder just FYI) down your throat on a game of golf to go shut down your baby cause it'll conflict with Destiny.

Destiny is Bungie and not even an internal product. Talk about getting shafted (From a Design POV) huh.

That's my 2cents & speculation.

If I had to guess, Rob Pardo left immediately following Titan getting cancelled, with Blizzard announcing it only a few days ago.

http://kotaku.com/heres-what-blizzar...was-1638632121

Titan is Blizzard's spin at a Matrix style video game, with it ending up feeling like a hybrid of Team Fortress 2, The Sims, World of Warcraft, and Destiny. By day you were a business owner building relationships with people, but you were able to plug yourself into another world/dimension, and that's where the action is. They ended up hiring a bunch of Sims developers to develop a next gen, intricate AI system. I really hope they don't trash any of this game's assets and that they use it in their future projects.

Really an ambitious game when all Blizzard had to really do to make a WoW successor was copy and paste WoW's design and apply it to a sci-fi universe, and they'd still generate billions of dollars.

I think what I like the most about this news though is that Blizzard has all but confirmed that they're not willing to spend massive amounts of budget on future games anymore. I think games like Destiny and GTA with an absolute insane amount of budget is incredibly unhealthy for this industry.

On a side note, it's amusing that Blizzard now has a history of having trouble releasing shooters.

[Hawki]

Heh, Titan is the fifth* shooter game Blizzard has failed to release. I always considered shooters one of the easiest genres to develop for, but what do I know?

Anyway, I definately concur with Niko's post in many regards. Blizz seems to be shifting towards smaller projects nowadays, with Hearthstone and HotS. WoW is unlikely to go anywhere anytime soon - there are MMOs with far fewer subscribers that are still operating (e.g. EverQuest and Ultima Online), so I can honestly see WoW being a perpetual project. Not sure how SC2 and D3 would operate outside a AAA model, but at least with the latter, Path of Exile demonstrated a viable F2P ARPG model.** They're not the only one that's aware of this either, with Ubisoft's Child of Light, Valiant Hearts and Rayman games. Can't comment on any of them personally, but I'll give Ubisoft credit for being able to see the worth of such games while still applying the AAA model to Assassin's Creed and Far Cry for instance.

As for Titan, I could see two independent games emerging from it based on the available info - a Sims-type game per the business angle, and a multiplayer shooter per the TF2-esque angle. However, I'm not sure if either would emerge. Warcraft Adventures and StarCraft: Ghost were fine functionally, but were still never released. One can hope though.

*Said shooters being Crixia, Nomad, Ghost, Bloodlines, and Titan. Least they released Blackthorne I guess. 0_0

**Though I admittedly never finished Path of Exile - prefer Diablo III's gameplay by far. Deal with it.

[Jconant]

its too bad, because I've read a lot of criticisms regarding some of the let downs destiny has provided; if titan was a sci fi mmo, it might have competed well against destiny and eve (considering eve is an older game now)

- - - Updated - - -

its too bad, because I've read a lot of criticisms regarding some of the let downs destiny has provided; if titan was a sci fi mmo, it might have competed well against destiny and eve (considering eve is an older game now)

[NikoMyCousin]

its too bad, because I've read a lot of criticisms regarding some of the let downs destiny has provided; if titan was a sci fi mmo, it might have competed well against destiny and eve (considering eve is an older game now)

Here's a scary though. MMO's have long been dominated by Blizzard and CCP.

The scary part is that both companies cancelled their upcoming MMO's this year.