According to an unnamed source, Blizzard has delayed their unannounced MMO Project Titan until 2016.
In a story that appeared on Venturebeat this evening, a source has stated that Blizzard is to start over with the game. It is thought there were 100 staff working on the project and this number has now been reduced to a small group of 30 who will “start over” with the project. The remaining 70 developers have now been assigned to other projects within Blizzard.
Blizzard’s Frank Pearce had stated that the game would launch some time on the latter part of 2013 back in 2010 when they confirmed it was in development, but there’s only been small snippets of information from Blizzard on the game since it was outed in a leaked release timeline document.
Project Titan is the next step for a Blizzard MMO project and CEO Mike Morhaime was keen to point out that they were looking to create something “new and fresh” when he spoke at the DICE Conference in Las Vegas in 2011.
As the MMO genre has really moved on in the years since the project was first outed, perhaps Blizzard felt the direction they were taking was simply not ground-breaking enough. World of Warcraft has set the standard for MMOs and no doubt they’re looking to raise the bar once again.
With World of Warcraft subscription numbers in a continual decline the next few years will be interesting. Blizzard still have another StarCraft 2 to complete, an expansion pack for Diablo 3, and who knows, they may just have something else up their development sleeves.
Blizzard are yet to confirm that Titan is being redeveloped, and as the game has not officially been named or announced, we’re unlikely to get to the bottom of the story. Treat the news as a possible rumour for now.
We have asked Blizzard for comment on the story and the status of Titan.
Update: Blizzard has now confirmed the staff reduction and redesign.
Thanks Muriel for the tip.
