Blizzard Cancels Next-Gen MMO Titan
"We didn't find the fun," Blizzard co-founder Mike Morhaime says.
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World of Warcraft developer Blizzard Entertainment has canceled its next-generation MMO, Titan. Mike Morhaime, the co-founder and president of Blizzard, confirmed the game's cancellation today.
"We had created World of Warcraft, and we felt really confident that we knew how to make MMOs," Morhaime told Polygon. "So we set out to make the most ambitious thing that you could possibly imagine. And it didn't come together."
"We didn't find the fun," Morhaime added. "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."
"It was hard when we canceled Warcraft Adventures. It was hard when we canceled StarCraft Ghost. But it has always resulted in better-quality work" -- Morhaime
Titan has been in development for years, though Blizzard has never actually announced the game in an official capacity. Despite that, the company confirmed in December 2010 that it was indeed called Titan, though this was believed to only be a working title.
The game's official cancellation today comes after Blizzard removed all mention of the game from its careers page back in August 2013, suggesting the company was moving away from the project.
Blizzard senior vice president of story and franchise development, Chris Metzen, said the decision to cancel Titan was "excruciating." Morhaime agreed that shutting down development on the game was a "really, really" hard decision to make. However, he says he's made these decisions before, and the end result is always positive.
"It was hard when we canceled Warcraft Adventures. It was hard when we canceled StarCraft Ghost," he said. "But it has always resulted in better-quality work."
Metzen added: "The discipline of knowing when to quit is important. We were losing perspective and getting lost in the weeds a little. We had to allow ourselves to take that step back and reassess why the hell we were doing that thing in the first place."
Though Titan is canceled, Morhaime said Blizzard hasn't closed the door entirely on making another MMO someday. "I wouldn't say no to ever doing an MMO again," Morhaime said. "But I can say that right now, that's not where we want to be spending our time."
Blizzard will continue to support World of Warcraft, of course, which is now in its tenth year of continued operation. "My hope personally is that we'll support it forever," Metzen said.
At the end of May 2013, Blizzard confirmed that Titan was undergoing "large design and technology changes." Later that summer, Morhaime said during an Activision Blizzard earnings call that Titan may not be subscription-based, or even an MMO.
"We're in the process of selecting a new direction for the project and re-envisioning what we want the game to be," Morhaime said at the time. "While we can't talk about the details yet, it is unlikely to be a subscription-based MMORPG."
What do you make of Blizzard cancelling Titan? Let us know in the comments below!
Eddie Makuch is a news editor at GameSpot, and you can follow him on Twitter @EddieMakuch
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