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Blizzard delays unannounced MMO until 2016+, resets whole project [Up: Confirmed]

MooseKing said:
That said, my major problem is it is on consoles. Consoles inherently restrict what you can do with an MMO. From the community, modding, streaming, patching and technology implementation down the line. The community of people playing or who want to play MMO's on consoles is far fewer than that of the PC.
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You're not wrong right now, but anything can happen with the right game I think. Bungie did it on consoles with the shooter, maybe they can do it again in another genre (sort of another) with Destiny.
 
idlewild_ said:
If the current market for MMOs is 'dead', then it must have been non-existent prior to WoW. I think it's silly to make this claim, it's possible for them to release another hit like WoW was/is. The market for subscription based MMOs may have dried up though.
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If a Star Wars MMO by Bioware didn't get people back into MMO's then I doubt blizzards new game will either.
 
Anticitizen One said:
If a Star Wars MMO by Bioware didn't get people back into MMO's then I doubt blizzards new game will either.
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There are actually more people playing MMO's now than ever before including WoW's peak. They are just spread out among many different games. Which I think is way better for the genre.
 
From a poster on MMO champion a couple weeks ago:

One rumor I had heard a few weeks ago, was that the IGN deal cemented Blizzards' desire to move forward only into eSports. If it can't be eSported, it's off the table. Which meant Titan was now not going to be a priority, and might be sold-off lock stock and barrel.

Yesterday, Titans's senior world designer quit Blizzard, to move closer to family...
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The only person I've ever seen give accurate info on Titan says it's not even going to make it out of beta, so make of that what you will.
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The team of 100 developers working on the MMO, codenamed “Titan,” has been reduced by 70 positions, and Blizzard is reassigning those people to other work.
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good hope the D3 expansion comes out sooner now
 
I wonder if people just can't figure out where to take MMOs from here that keeps that same level of accessibility, quality, and addiction frankly.

The safe bet would be to ride out WoW and release WoW 2 in a few years.
 
vilmer_ said:
From a poster on MMO champion a couple weeks ago:
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It that's true then ouch. Of course, Blizzard isn't what it used to be so Titan could very well incorporate design decisions that hold it back (ex. Diablo 3).

wienke said:
I wonder if people just can't figure out where to take MMOs from here that keeps that same level of accessibility, quality, and addiction frankly.

The safe bet would be to ride out WoW and release WoW 2 in a few years.
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I'm still of the opinion that themepark MMOs need to go and MMOs will only truly grow once they embrace the awesome that is the sandbox.
 
So few companies in the video game industry have a foundation for Agile development and a business plan for more than 1 year. As soon as money is available, it's like blood in the water and they cannibalize themselves. It's really unfortunate as a lot of good games would otherwise come out if talent was properly rewarded and budgeted. Instead some fool goes "The waggle was my idea! I'm a genius. Fuck market analysis and software practices, I can do it again! Promote me!".
 
kirblar said:
Honestly, another MMO seems like it might actually be a disaster at this point. The market's moved on.
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a free to play MMO from Blizzard would be a huge money maker. WoW makes a shitload as is so even subscription based would be fairly profitable

of course if they sunk decades and hundreds of millions into it then that's a different story
 
Shrinnan said:
I'm still of the opinion that themepark MMOs need to go and MMOs will only truly grow once they embrace the awesome that is the sandbox.
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I agree with this. Sure there can still be a good, solid theme park style MMOs but the chance of it being a big hit and maintaining a healthy player base is much smaller since majority are sick and tired of the theme park style. Sandbox is indeed what needs to start being pushed and allowing the players to make their own settlements and towns, etc., make their own unique characters using a variety of combat, production, social skills, etc. free of the class based system with your character heavily restrained to what he/she can become, embrace heavy social interaction to actually get the players involved in the world rather then hit a button, join raid group, etc.

List goes on, but it's pretty clear that the reason MMOs for the most part are shit right now is because nobody has stepped outside the box and done anything to make their game stand out so you get a bunch of games that are basically the same damn thing with different coats of paint and WoW has stayed at the top for so long because devs try to mimic the formula WoW uses and can't keep up on polish and content and with nothing unique standing out from their games, people would just keep going back to WoW. Hopefully some devs out there can start the sandbox MMO movement up again and do it well because it sure as hell doesn't look like Blizz is doing anything interesting or groundbreaking any time soon.
 
mysteriousmage09 said:
I agree with this. Sure there can still be a good, solid theme park style MMOs but the chance of it being a big hit and maintaining a healthy player base is much smaller since majority are sick and tired of the theme park style. Sandbox is indeed what needs to start being pushed and allowing the players to make their own settlements and towns, etc., make their own unique characters using a variety of combat, production, social skills, etc. free of the class based system with your character heavily restrained to what he/she can become, embrace heavy social interaction to actually get the players involved in the world rather then hit a button, join raid group, etc.

List goes on, but it's pretty clear that the reason MMOs for the most part are shit right now is because nobody has stepped outside the box and done anything to make their game stand out so you get a bunch of games that are basically the same damn thing with different coats of paint and WoW has stayed at the top for so long because devs try to mimic the formula WoW uses and can't keep up on polish and content and with nothing unique standing out from their games, people would just keep going back to WoW. Hopefully some devs out there can start the sandbox MMO movement up again and do it well because it sure as hell doesn't look like Blizz is doing anything interesting or groundbreaking any time soon.
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Exactly. The sandbox movement died not because of the sandbox elements, but because the basic mechanics were rudimentary and unrefined. The actual gameplay wasn't there yet and WoW came out as a themepark MMO with refined and advanced systems that allowed for a persistent environment and so it became extremely popular.

Imagine this: SWG with good combat, good quest design, but with all of the sandbox elements that people loved. People played SWG despite its horrid gameplay because the social aspect was so good. A person could (and would) become known as the "best" crafter of his or her server and they would flock to that single person to get a certain item that he or she was known for. Also, crafters would often have to hire a combat class to protect them while they went and gathered their resources. It was a genius system held back by the times.

Even things like waiting for a ship to catch a ride on to go to another planet was actually awesome. It was a time to talk to other players while waiting on the ship to continue your adventure.

That's also not to say that themepark elements are bad. They are not. It's just that a sandbox MMO with themepark elements is much better than a themepark MMO with sandbox elements.
 
Blizzard responded:

http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=32460

"We've always had a highly iterative development process, and the unannounced MMO is no exception. We've come to a point where we need to make some large design and technology changes to the game. We're using this opportunity to shift some of our resources to assist with other projects while the core team adapts our technology and tools to accommodate these new changes. Note that we haven't announced any dates for the MMO."
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We'll all be playing this game many years from now so let's all play a fun game and predict how old and moldy we'll be. Let's see, I'm 29 and I predict I'll be a solid 37 by launch.
 
Maybe this is why we haven't heard anything of this for quite some time. It really seems like they're giving it the shaft though with cutting the development team down by such a drastic amount...
 
KingKong said:
That makes no sense, esports are a small part of the market, even on PC
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Are they though? LoL has an absolutely absurd playerbase. I'd imagine a LoL type thing is exactly what Blizz is setting it's sights on. The esports side of LoL might not be huge but I'm sure it's part of the appeal for those that play and does nothing but good things as far as publicity goes.

Regardless this must be a huge disaster. I feel like we've been hearing about this game for ages. Wasn't the vanilla WoW team making this game as well? That's a lot of work to throw out from some super talented people.
 
kortez320 said:
Regardless this must be a huge disaster. I feel like we've been hearing about this game for ages. Wasn't the vanilla WoW team making this game as well? That's a lot of work to throw out from some super talented people.
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Yeah. Some of them made the transition shortly after Wrath of the Lich King was released. I'd really love to see all of the stuff they scrapped.
 
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