Anyone moderately paying attention to MMO’s was aware that Blizzard had something cooking in the back room. That mysterious project, labeled Titan, has been canceled. The next-gen project has spent the past seven years in development.
The project was a consequence of World of Warcraft’s success. With Blizzard’s clear ability to build and run an MMO, why not make another, better MMO to succeed it one day? Blizzard CEO, Mike Morhaime, told Polygon,
…We felt really confident that we 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 continued to explain that the project couldn’t find the “fun or the passion.” During a recent evaluation meeting the team decided this wasn’t a project they enjoyed working on and it wasn’t something they wanted to invest a large part of their careers in.
Blizzard also hopes to use those now freed resources for other projects. Blizzard wants to keep games like Hearthstone and World of Warcraft fully supported for as long as possible. Resources invested in a project that may never meet Blizzard’s standards are resources that could be used to improve the quality of their other already proven games.
Titan becomes another one of the many anticipated projects that Blizzard has abandoned such as Starcraft: Ghost and Warcraft Adventures. Blizzard wants to avoid being the “MMO company.”
While not stated openly in Polygon’s interview, bringing a second powerhouse MMO to the table would surely steal players away from the massive success of World of Warcraft and surely affected the decision.
