Originally posted by NetSage I think it was due to the change in the market. When WoW came out MMOs were not the giants and everyone game they are today. People for the most part now know what a mmo is what they like about them. So I forsee a much more in depth system with their next game instead of a simple friendly WoW.
I would love to see that, but all the signs point the other way. If you look at D3, if you look at WoW patches, if shows that Blizzard continues to head more in the direction of simplification and not in depth designs.
World of Starcraft here we come and it will also be on next-gen consoles in my opinion. In my opinion they tried something new and it wasn't working for investors so they scrapped it and now they will be doing the sure thing that they know will sell.
The answer is simple: Bliz did not want to blow $200-$300 mil on another shiny themepark MMO and have it crater like TOR (and why compete against yourself when you are the industry leader?). Apparently it was still early enough in the production cycle that a major overhaul was not that expensive by comparison. In the end it doesn't matter much, they are still making big bucks from WoW and laughed all the way to the bank with D3 (although that was very sub-par for most people).
"The MMO genre appears to be on the cusp of a major shift. Not only have we grown past the point of attempting to emulate Blizzard’s heavy themepark-focused success in World of Warcraft, but it looks like sandbox-style games are having a serious resurgence not just in MMOs, but across other genres of gaming as well."
uhm as great as it would be to see a major resurgence of Sandbox, where exactly are you seeing this trend? In both existing and upcoming titels I see gated, guided, daily login type content. Nothing at all I can think of exemplifies the trend you speak of. please enlighten me.
I just don't understand people at all lol. I guess there's no pleasing people. They start over and people act like Blizzard is doing something wrong. If they would've pushed the game out asap, they would've thought Blizzard was doing something wrong.
Is this the world we live in now? Where if you're successful everyone wants you to fail and will bash you until something sticks and comes true. Then it's blown way out of proportion to make others think that you've failed.
I guess I'll never understand why people hate Blizzard. I haven't played a single Blizzard game that I didn't end up playing for a long time. Even Diablo 3, which wasn't their best game by far, I just logged into a few hours ago to run around with some friends. Blizzard hasn't pulled anything like other companies, where they sell something to you, then totally switch it a few weeks later. They haven't gouged you out of your money, you know upfront what all their games will cost to play. If Blizzard was such a bad company, then why are they one of the highest selling developers of all time?
I've been on these forums a long time, not once have I ever seen a valid reason for hating Blizzard, except for the odd chance you got banned for someone hacking your account...which was probably your fault in the first place.
From being a HUGE Blizz fan and eagerly awaiting Titan information to today where I have become quite concerned with their sustainability.
To me this Titan announcement says that they're in massive damage control. Each WoW expansion has progressively become worse over the last few (IMO) and they are loosing massive numbers of subscribers each quarter. D3 was not as well received as hoped for and is considered by many to sub par Blizzard standard. And finally, this announcement that they are scrapping Titan and starting afresh highlights that their model of forward planning ,development and design has failed, once again.
Are they stepping back from Titan to save WoW from its seemingly imminent demise? Lets be honest here, at the current rate it's losing subs it won't be sustainable in the not too distant future with what they pour into it $ wise in patches, updates and expansions. Are they going to try to flog a dying horse that isn't quite dead yet?
I for one an dismayed, disheartened and disturbed by this announcement. I hope that they will shed some positive light on this to ease these concerns but I'm not holding out if their past history is any indication.
Blizzard, I'm still a huge fan but at present I'm hanging on by the skin of my teeth. You need to be more open with your followers otherwise not only will you lose more subs for now, you will lose them forever.
Originally posted by Burntvet The answer is simple: Bliz did not want to blow $200-$300 mil on another shiny themepark MMO and have it crater like TOR (and why compete against yourself when you are the industry leader?). Apparently it was still early enough in the production cycle that a major overhaul was not that expensive by comparison. In the end it doesn't matter much, they are still making big bucks from WoW and laughed all the way to the bank with D3 (although that was very sub-par for most people).
Nah, more like their market research suggested that the UI should be condensed down to a single "I WIN" button that instantly made the character max level with best in slot gear and all the Raid Bosses could be easily defeated solo. They also made sure that even a toddler could be a valued member of any group. The feedback was extremely positive as the current crop of gamers love having success with no work required. They showed the product of their work to the suits at Blizzard and were quickly told that they had failed horribly because all of these ideas were to be included in the next WoW expansion that will be launched with a My little Pony theme. I jest of course, or do I?
Are they stepping back from Titan to save WoW from its seemingly imminent demise? Lets be honest here, at the current rate it's losing subs it won't be sustainable in the not too distant future with what they pour into it $ wise in patches, updates and expansions. Are they going to try to flog a dying horse that isn't quite dead yet?
...snip...
Extremely unlikely, unless they are lieing to us. If Titan was in a good place they wouldn't just pull people off. They have stated the people are being shifted to other teams, WoW was just an example of several others. We don't know if 1 guy or 70 guys got shifted to WoW. If they were planning something big for WoW you can bet your ass they would be advertising it, both to pull some people back and hopefully stop people who are thinking about leaving.
I have played World of Warcraft since right about launch. I love it. I've tried other games, but I always come back to WoW.....but I can safely say this......if EQNext is anything like the original EQ, with perhaps some of the town/crafting elements of UO, I would be outta there in a heartbeat. EQ was my first love. I have gone back to play it several times. The only reason I ever quit is because endgame wise, it is far too hard to attempt to catch up to the cutting edge raiding guild there at this point. If they made it as easy to catch up as WoW did, I probably never would have come back to WoW at all. If EQNext launches and is good, it will finally put down WoW......and let's face it.....to all of you saying WoW beat Everquest.......you obviously never played Everquest.......because WoW IS Everquest, just dumbed down and oversimplified. The problem is now, you cannot make another EQ, because people want epic gear handed to them on a silver platter with barely any real input from them.
I remember playing EQ back in the Planes of Power days. I was in a Time raiding guild. It literally took you weeks and weeks to level a toon to top level, and once you got there, you could de-level dying in raids. There was a real sense of "If you're gonna be here, you need to know what you're doing, because if you fail, we all suffer". We need that again. That should weed out the 14 year old d bags. Real fast.
Are they stepping back from Titan to save WoW from its seemingly imminent demise? Lets be honest here, at the current rate it's losing subs it won't be sustainable in the not too distant future with what they pour into it $ wise in patches, updates and expansions. Are they going to try to flog a dying horse that isn't quite dead yet?
...snip...
Extremely unlikely, unless they are lieing to us. If Titan was in a good place they wouldn't just pull people off. They have stated the people are being shifted to other teams, WoW was just an example of several others. We don't know if 1 guy or 70 guys got shifted to WoW. If they were planning something big for WoW you can bet your ass they would be advertising it, both to pull some people back and hopefully stop people who are thinking about leaving.
Yeah, I doubt they're lying, however, this information about Titan being basically scrapped and started afresh has to be sounding alarm bells to anyone reading this. For Blizzard to scrap a project 5 years in the making means that they have made some massive errors in their planning whether it be Titan itself or WoWs decline in subs.
Blizzard had the right model when they launched WoW. They didn't make it casual and easy. Every level you gained felt like an achievement within itself. From this base their sub numbers grew. Personally I hope they don't try to create a game that is going to Equal WoW immediately in terms of players, rather, attract the dedicated players willing to put in effort, build quality and not quantity, uniqueness and immersion and the player base will grow just like it did WoW. They can then after a number of years dumb it down somewhat to maintain their numbers as they did with WoW whilst they work on their next project.
We don't know what they were trying to make. We don't know the reason the current direction was judged inadequate. We don't know the new direction. We don't know if somewhere deep in blizzard, a project manager is reading some random Internet forum and thinking "yeah, we just blew a couple of million dollars proving that idea is a dead end"
For some reason this doesn't come as any surprise to me.
It has D3 written all over it.
I agree with some saying that Blizzard has, in fact, got no clue of the direction the game is supposed to take. The exact same thing which (partially anyway) ruined D3. I think they restarted D3 at least once or even twice, and made that one so oversimplified it was painful.
Now, whether that has had any bearing on this, is hard to say, but it feels like, they have no clue.
Blizzard isn't about quality anymore, and I seriously doubt they have the talent there anymore to pull another WoW. If they are going to take until 2016 (the earliest) to bring Titan out, what then? MMORPG scene is not going to just be stagnant and wait for it, what happens if they think Titan will be sub par when the release date comes closer? Another delay etc.?
To be honest, Blizzard has sort of lost the plot in recent years and making another "WoW", success-wise, isn't going to be easy anyway, let alone, how they are doing at the moment.
Since WoW, Blizzard stuff is utterly disappointing. Good article but I wouldn't touch Titan if it would be free. But like all other games from Blizzard, I suspect "free" is the only feature this game has not to offer. Just for me, they can remake the game every two years
Originally posted by William12 Didn't D3 sell MILLIONS of copies and was one of the most sold PC games ever ? how is that a failure ? If you can't write unbiased articles do not write them at all.
Because most sold copies where pre-orders and trough a year sub on WoW. A game can sell millions and still be a failure. D3 is a failure as it didn't manage to deliver to the expectations. Its not him being unbiased, its how the community received the game. Many people where very disappointed with the result and how Blizzard had made some poor choices with the game. Aliens Colonial Marines sold very well too, still it was a huge failure for the many bugs, a total different engine then was shown to the press and in screenshots/trailers, etc.
About Titan, i wouldn't expect to see any information, screenshots and trailers before they released the last expansion for WoW. The news that Titan was in development was there before Diablo 3 was even announced or around the same time. Blizzard for now wants people all to focus on the MMORPG they already have and sell as many expansion copies as possible. WoW also has a 10 year life span as they said when WoW was released. So untill next year or the year after i wouldn't exspect to much info. In all these years we didn't hear a thing about Titan beside that it was being made and that it wasn't gonna be WoW 2, Starcraft online or a Diablo MMORPG.
I guess they hit the reset button cause its been in production for far to long meaning the engine is probably way to outdated and the MMO genre has shifted. My bet is that combat was pretty much like WoW where these days people want more real-time action styled combat. Though I'm slightly worried, cause they also said that Titan was gonna be more social focused. I wonder what the reset will have as consequences. Cause with more focus on the social aspect i imagined that the players had more influence on the world.
Originally posted by William12 Didn't D3 sell MILLIONS of copies and was one of the most sold PC games ever ? how is that a failure ? If you can't write unbiased articles do not write them at all.
Because most sold copies where pre-orders and trough a year sub on WoW. A game can sell millions and still be a failure. D3 is a failure as it didn't manage to deliver to the expectations. Its not him being unbiased, its how the community received the game. Many people where very disappointed with the result and how Blizzard had made some poor choices with the game. Aliens Colonial Marines sold very well too, still it was a huge failure for the many bugs, a total different engine then was shown to the press and in screenshots/trailers, etc.
So the 12m sales after launch are a failure ? That's 12m sales that WERE NOT from the wow sub crap. Your opinion is biased and you're stating false facts to try and prove its not. The game continues to sell well to this day it is the number 1 selling PC game that is NOT a failure just because the MINORITY yes MINORITY didn't like it doesn't mean it failed.
If you were an investor in Blizzard D3 is the biggest success they have ever had not named WOW.
Do you even know the sales figures or just writing ignorantly blind to actual facts ?
D3 was and is a failure, sale figures don't mean anything (at least not to a gamer).
People bought into the hype and that's it. One of the most anticipated games of all time, of course it sold well. The problem is, it didn't deliver.
And you can also look it from the point-of-view of lost future sales, because I for one, haven't bought a Blizzard product since, and won't. Simple as that.
All spelling and typographical errors are based soely on the fact that i just dont care. If you must point out my lack of atention to detail, please do it with a smile.
Since 2016 is the earliest estimate for Titan at this point they have time to get it done right. It's best for them to realize it now before a release where the players sub & quit in no time at all. I see myself buying yet another Collectors Edition when Titan is finally announced down the road if available & if I still care but whether or not I can be charmed into paying monthly fees again with B2P & F2P titles popping up so much remains to be seen. Three years is a lifetime in the mmo universe.
Yeah cause Blizzard hasn't had to let anyone go recently....
Vivendi's been trying to wash their hands of this company for over a year now and no one is buying and for good reason.
Vivendi has put the feelers out to to see who might e interested in buying Blizzard for the sole reason their other ventures have caused a cash flow issue and selling Blizzard will make it all ok,
The reason no one has shown interested is likely the price and that Blizzard will not doubt come with all kinds of conditions such as "Blizzard have full creative control", "blizzard decide what they want to create and how long they support it", "Blizzard will remain a separate entity" and to most companies such as EA for example "they" want this control, but Blizzard wont budge on that issue.
Comments
I would love to see that, but all the signs point the other way. If you look at D3, if you look at WoW patches, if shows that Blizzard continues to head more in the direction of simplification and not in depth designs.
"The MMO genre appears to be on the cusp of a major shift. Not only have we grown past the point of attempting to emulate Blizzard’s heavy themepark-focused success in World of Warcraft, but it looks like sandbox-style games are having a serious resurgence not just in MMOs, but across other genres of gaming as well."
uhm as great as it would be to see a major resurgence of Sandbox, where exactly are you seeing this trend? In both existing and upcoming titels I see gated, guided, daily login type content. Nothing at all I can think of exemplifies the trend you speak of. please enlighten me.
21 year MMO veteran
PvP Raid Leader
Lover of The Witcher & CD Projekt Red
I just don't understand people at all lol. I guess there's no pleasing people. They start over and people act like Blizzard is doing something wrong. If they would've pushed the game out asap, they would've thought Blizzard was doing something wrong.
Is this the world we live in now? Where if you're successful everyone wants you to fail and will bash you until something sticks and comes true. Then it's blown way out of proportion to make others think that you've failed.
I guess I'll never understand why people hate Blizzard. I haven't played a single Blizzard game that I didn't end up playing for a long time. Even Diablo 3, which wasn't their best game by far, I just logged into a few hours ago to run around with some friends. Blizzard hasn't pulled anything like other companies, where they sell something to you, then totally switch it a few weeks later. They haven't gouged you out of your money, you know upfront what all their games will cost to play. If Blizzard was such a bad company, then why are they one of the highest selling developers of all time?
I've been on these forums a long time, not once have I ever seen a valid reason for hating Blizzard, except for the odd chance you got banned for someone hacking your account...which was probably your fault in the first place.
From being a HUGE Blizz fan and eagerly awaiting Titan information to today where I have become quite concerned with their sustainability.
To me this Titan announcement says that they're in massive damage control. Each WoW expansion has progressively become worse over the last few (IMO) and they are loosing massive numbers of subscribers each quarter. D3 was not as well received as hoped for and is considered by many to sub par Blizzard standard. And finally, this announcement that they are scrapping Titan and starting afresh highlights that their model of forward planning ,development and design has failed, once again.
Are they stepping back from Titan to save WoW from its seemingly imminent demise? Lets be honest here, at the current rate it's losing subs it won't be sustainable in the not too distant future with what they pour into it $ wise in patches, updates and expansions. Are they going to try to flog a dying horse that isn't quite dead yet?
I for one an dismayed, disheartened and disturbed by this announcement. I hope that they will shed some positive light on this to ease these concerns but I'm not holding out if their past history is any indication.
Blizzard, I'm still a huge fan but at present I'm hanging on by the skin of my teeth. You need to be more open with your followers otherwise not only will you lose more subs for now, you will lose them forever.
Nah, more like their market research suggested that the UI should be condensed down to a single "I WIN" button that instantly made the character max level with best in slot gear and all the Raid Bosses could be easily defeated solo. They also made sure that even a toddler could be a valued member of any group. The feedback was extremely positive as the current crop of gamers love having success with no work required. They showed the product of their work to the suits at Blizzard and were quickly told that they had failed horribly because all of these ideas were to be included in the next WoW expansion that will be launched with a My little Pony theme. I jest of course, or do I?
Extremely unlikely, unless they are lieing to us. If Titan was in a good place they wouldn't just pull people off. They have stated the people are being shifted to other teams, WoW was just an example of several others. We don't know if 1 guy or 70 guys got shifted to WoW. If they were planning something big for WoW you can bet your ass they would be advertising it, both to pull some people back and hopefully stop people who are thinking about leaving.
"The fact of the matter is we don’t know."
...
"It’s all a whole heap of speculation at this point, but that’s all we can do right now."
...
"But why do this at all?"
I think that pretty much sums up this entire article.
Who's actually still left from the original team? I don't think the quality is there anymore.
I'm of the opinion that they really don't know what direction to take the game after realizing what they had was subpar.
Yeah, I doubt they're lying, however, this information about Titan being basically scrapped and started afresh has to be sounding alarm bells to anyone reading this. For Blizzard to scrap a project 5 years in the making means that they have made some massive errors in their planning whether it be Titan itself or WoWs decline in subs.
Blizzard had the right model when they launched WoW. They didn't make it casual and easy. Every level you gained felt like an achievement within itself. From this base their sub numbers grew. Personally I hope they don't try to create a game that is going to Equal WoW immediately in terms of players, rather, attract the dedicated players willing to put in effort, build quality and not quantity, uniqueness and immersion and the player base will grow just like it did WoW. They can then after a number of years dumb it down somewhat to maintain their numbers as they did with WoW whilst they work on their next project.
I'm sorry, but Wildstar looks terrible. It might be good, but nothing says "Man, I gotta have that".
We don't know what they were trying to make. We don't know the reason the current direction was judged inadequate. We don't know the new direction. We don't know if somewhere deep in blizzard, a project manager is reading some random Internet forum and thinking "yeah, we just blew a couple of million dollars proving that idea is a dead end"
For some reason this doesn't come as any surprise to me.
It has D3 written all over it.
I agree with some saying that Blizzard has, in fact, got no clue of the direction the game is supposed to take. The exact same thing which (partially anyway) ruined D3. I think they restarted D3 at least once or even twice, and made that one so oversimplified it was painful.
Now, whether that has had any bearing on this, is hard to say, but it feels like, they have no clue.
Blizzard isn't about quality anymore, and I seriously doubt they have the talent there anymore to pull another WoW. If they are going to take until 2016 (the earliest) to bring Titan out, what then? MMORPG scene is not going to just be stagnant and wait for it, what happens if they think Titan will be sub par when the release date comes closer? Another delay etc.?
To be honest, Blizzard has sort of lost the plot in recent years and making another "WoW", success-wise, isn't going to be easy anyway, let alone, how they are doing at the moment.
Because most sold copies where pre-orders and trough a year sub on WoW. A game can sell millions and still be a failure. D3 is a failure as it didn't manage to deliver to the expectations. Its not him being unbiased, its how the community received the game. Many people where very disappointed with the result and how Blizzard had made some poor choices with the game. Aliens Colonial Marines sold very well too, still it was a huge failure for the many bugs, a total different engine then was shown to the press and in screenshots/trailers, etc.
About Titan, i wouldn't expect to see any information, screenshots and trailers before they released the last expansion for WoW. The news that Titan was in development was there before Diablo 3 was even announced or around the same time. Blizzard for now wants people all to focus on the MMORPG they already have and sell as many expansion copies as possible. WoW also has a 10 year life span as they said when WoW was released. So untill next year or the year after i wouldn't exspect to much info. In all these years we didn't hear a thing about Titan beside that it was being made and that it wasn't gonna be WoW 2, Starcraft online or a Diablo MMORPG.
I guess they hit the reset button cause its been in production for far to long meaning the engine is probably way to outdated and the MMO genre has shifted. My bet is that combat was pretty much like WoW where these days people want more real-time action styled combat. Though I'm slightly worried, cause they also said that Titan was gonna be more social focused. I wonder what the reset will have as consequences. Cause with more focus on the social aspect i imagined that the players had more influence on the world.
So the 12m sales after launch are a failure ? That's 12m sales that WERE NOT from the wow sub crap. Your opinion is biased and you're stating false facts to try and prove its not. The game continues to sell well to this day it is the number 1 selling PC game that is NOT a failure just because the MINORITY yes MINORITY didn't like it doesn't mean it failed.
If you were an investor in Blizzard D3 is the biggest success they have ever had not named WOW.
D3 was and is a failure, sale figures don't mean anything (at least not to a gamer).
People bought into the hype and that's it. One of the most anticipated games of all time, of course it sold well. The problem is, it didn't deliver.
And you can also look it from the point-of-view of lost future sales, because I for one, haven't bought a Blizzard product since, and won't. Simple as that.
Titan will be the Blizzard version of classic UO
hey I can dream right?
the missing link in a chain of destruction.
All spelling and typographical errors are based soely on the fact that i just dont care. If you must point out my lack of atention to detail, please do it with a smile.
Vivendi has put the feelers out to to see who might e interested in buying Blizzard for the sole reason their other ventures have caused a cash flow issue and selling Blizzard will make it all ok,
The reason no one has shown interested is likely the price and that Blizzard will not doubt come with all kinds of conditions such as "Blizzard have full creative control", "blizzard decide what they want to create and how long they support it", "Blizzard will remain a separate entity" and to most companies such as EA for example "they" want this control, but Blizzard wont budge on that issue.