One of Joystiq's Blizzard tipsters (Steve) has informed them that John Staats has been let go. He was a Senior Level Designer (Level 2) on Titan. You'll find this news on plenty other sites, so I won't go into it too much. (Unless I dig up some other information that they haven't already announced.)

Other prior Titan troubles are detailed here.

* Update (11/07/11):

This "tip" could have been something as simple as his Facebook status update. He changed his status to no longer working at Blizzard, but he was still working there Oct. 25th at least (based on his comments).

If this was the reason, there may have been some more terminations as well. One of John Staat's Facebook friends, Trent Kaniuga has also changed his FB status to "Worked at Blizzard" as opposed to everyone elses "Works at Blizzard". He was a Sr. Concept Artist for Diablo 3 and was present at Blizzcon 2011.

(I don't use Facebook, so I'm not too familiar with FB sleuthing.. maybe you guys can investigate and confirm if this is correct or not?)

* Update (11/07/11):

Facebook status updates are also showing "Worked at Blizzard" (past tense) now on Dana Marie Bishop (Curatorial Assistant, was at this past Blizzcon and uploaded a bunch of personal pictures 3 days ago), Gino Whitehall (Concept Artist), Matt Milizia (Senior Environment Artist), and Paul Richards (Concept Artist) on the Titan team.

There are a dozen more, at least, recent Blizzard employees now showing "Worked at" as past tense.

(On a side note, I have actually followed Gino Whitehall's artwork in the past.. for a while I had thought that he was part of the Titan team or at least worked in the same circles.)

Was there a major overhaul a day or two before the Investors Call tomorrow? Maybe an announcement of restructuring within the organization? A loss in subscribers would explain Customer Support lay offs, for example.

If you guys are "FB gurus", let me know if this information is correct or if I made a mistake. I don't think it's a mistake though, as it looks pretty legit. It would make sense too, for a mass layoff shortly before an investor call (ie, rather than announcing it during the call and then laying off everyone at the end of the week. It's better to surprise employees for security reasons, as cruel as that sounds.)

Confirmed: When you are set as employed in FB, it will say "Works At". When you change your status (quick uncheck) to remove employment, it says "Worked At.." instead. They don't have new employers to revert to and they were most recently employed by Blizzard (e.g. many employees who were at Blizzcon are now showing "unemployed" statuses.) This all could be a mistake on their part, but they're all avid users of Facebook and changing their Employment status like this would be highly unusual. This appears to be a mass (multiple not "massive") layoff.

On a related note,

I was preparing a post for November 8th (in addition to the Quarterly Results Call), to basically show what to expect from Blizzard in 2012. But, if these layoffs are confirmed tomorrow, I'll have some more to write about. What's most interesting, though, is that they won't need any of these employees for Diablo 3 "crunch time" meaning that the game is much farther along than most people suspect. The only thing holding them back now are probably still those technical challenges and the RMAH integration.

* Update (11/08/11):

Looks like I can add a couple more names to the list, if the Joystiq rumor is true and FB is the source of their "tip". Joshua Horst (Producer) and Andrea Toyias (Casting and Voice-Over Director). Andrea was actually one of the Q&A Panelists for Diablo 3 at Blizzcon. I could have sworn that Peet Cooper (Sr. Environment Artists for Diablo 3) had Blizzard listed on his FB account yesterday, but now it's gone. (This doesn't necessarily mean he was laid off, but maybe he knew about the FB sleuthing and decided to hide his employment listing.)

There are at least 20 other people I see that are "no longer working" at Blizzard, but I can't find any other evidence of their last working day - so they're all unconfirmed for the moment.

(And yes, for those who were going to ask, I'm getting a LOT of hits from Blizzard offices on this situation.)

* Update (11/08/11):

Some outside forum posters are taking this news as bad or taking their reasoning for these layoffs too far (e.g. "lost subs", "bad blizzcon", "pandas"). Just to clarify, if this rumor ends up being true, this is just a perfectly normal process and a "seasonal" activity that's based on development timelines. This happens all the time, you just don't know about it since official announcements are never made. Titan is not cancelled, there just appears to be some reorganization to keep their vision and performance on track. Besides, "Titan" is just a name.. it can be applied to any number of different MMOs they are testing internally. This is very good news for Diablo 3, however, since typically there are layoffs following development completion. And as always, make sure you read comments too.. they further expand on a lot of these blog posts. :)

* Update (11/08/11):

Blizzard Community Manager Zarhym (Jonathan Brown) has claimed that it is all false evidence, that the status changes were just accidents, and it's all just basically rumor mill while there have been no terminations at all.

"Tons of speculation based on false evidence. Score one for Internet rumor mill? RT @blakex Yeah, just read that article..."

Bashiok (Micah Whipple) is also confirming the same, that no one has been laid off. Apparently, it's all just accidental.

So there you have it. The Blizzard response is basically "Nothing to see here, move along."

Does their official stance on speculation still apply if official statements are made by Blizzard employees using official Blizzard game names and on platforms used for dispensing company news releases?

"Blizzard Entertainment does not comment on rumors or speculation."

Of course, both LinkedIn and Twitter are public sources as well and anything you see written on there is also false evidence and speculation (Zarhym Logic™). No one in their right mind would ever publish accurate employment information on their Facebook profiles for heaven's sake. That's just crazy tin foil hattery. So, I wouldn't believe any information you read about on Twitter either.. it's highly inaccurate and should not be depended on.

* Update (11/08/11):

Zarhym (Source):

I'm not in PR and won't officially comment here on rumors or speculation. You control the quality of your reporting. @titan_mmo

But.. but.. you already did comment on rumor and speculation! :)

Mike Sacco (Source):

@talkingcongas I seriously hate that Daeity person

Hahahaha.. say, wasn't Sacco that guy who said Blizzard has never had any security breaches or leaks?

Official statement released on public forums:

Hey guys, out of respect for their privacy, we don’t discuss individual employees, but the speculation circulating about ‘massive layoffs at Blizzard’ is just a rumor.

Thread locked.

Now.. is that a "rumor rumor" or a "Tom Chilton rumor"? :)

Note: He's referring to a "massive" layoff rumor on the forum. On this blog, I'm just speculating on "mass" layoffs. I know it's not "massive".. maybe a dozen or more. Strange that he worded it that way though. Also, I thought that Blizzard Entertainment did not comment on rumor and speculation? Interesting..

* Update (11/08/11):

Joystiq.com has confirmed that there have been no layoffs.. including the one they originally reported themselves..

They wrote:

Yesterday, a handful of gaming news sites reported that a senior designer working on the new Titan MMO had gotten laid off by Blizzard Entertainment.

And then they linked back to themselves as the source of these rumors. Okay.

Anyways.. "layoffs never happened" and "Blizzard employees still have their jobs."

As per Joystiq, John Staats, Trent Kaniuga, Paul Richards, etc are all still employed with Blizzard. No one has been laid off recently.

(* March 2012 Update: All 3 of those employees were indeed laid off around the same time.)

Funny comments on their post though. Apparently, I was the one who started the rumor that John Staats was laid off. Joystiq is also claiming that the FB investigation revealed HUNDREDS of Blizzard employees laid off. Funny.. I thought I speculated on 8 names and assumed a dozen or so IF the rumor (started by Joystiq mind you) was proven true.

* Update (11/08/11):

Joystiq.com has two conflicting blog posts now. In one corner, we have Blizzard and Joystiq claiming that there have been no layoffs. Everything is just rumor, hence untrue. In the other corner, they're confirming that John Staats was indeed terminated.

So, this brings us all back to the original speculation. We may learn more in the coming weeks or months.

* Update (11/14/11):

Another FB profile confirmed. Paul Richards was indeed let go as speculated. I think we'll see a lot more layoffs over the next coming months too, and I'll continue to monitor.

(Continuation here. 12 employees were later confirmed, not including the several dozens of Technical Support and CSR positions. Under the WARN Act, a "mass layoff" can consist of 2 or more individuals too. So whether you use the legal definition of "mass layoff" or a mass of layoffs, they both apply.)

.. is going to blow your mind. Does this clickbait title work?

So, you want to hear something really messed up? I'm willing to bet that no one knows this (except Blizzard).

During the Blizzcon 2010 opening ceremonies, Michael Morhaime said that there were "more than 100,000 virtual attendees" watching across over 100 countries live via DIRECTV. (This was also when Blizzard DOTA was first announced, and he said it would be free to "all Battle.net players in the coming months.")

Next, during the Q3 2010 Earnings Call following Blizzcon 2010, Michael Morhaime said "More than 25,000 people attended the show with another 95,000 paid viewers following along via DIRECTV or the live Internet stream." (27,000 attendees were later reported.)

But wait.. don't you remember all of those RAYV problems? Oh right.. Blizzard also partnered with RAYV to provide live streaming through the Blizzard site.

In 2009 and 2010, Blizzcon was available live via Blizzard (RAYV) and DIRECTV as a Pay Per View event.

To clarify, there were TWO streams available for purchase: DIRECTV and BLIZZARD DIRECT

During the opening ceremonies, all of the official announcements, and shareholders meetings, Michael Morhaime only revealed the DIRECTV numbers. He was very careful about his wording, and he did not share their internal "Blizzard Direct" figures. How interesting.

However, RAYV sure did share this information in one of their official case studies.

Blizzcon 2010 served over 550,000 unique viewers watching over 100,000,000 minutes of online streaming in a single weekend, The [sic] premium package subscription cost $40 and included HD streaming of the entire event plus a special “pet code” [sic]

This was no typo. 550,000 paid viewers are mentioned multiple times in various RAYV releases. (Update: Even though they "served" customers and mention the premium package in the same statement, it's possible that there could be a percentage of free stream viewers in that 550k figure.)

So, there were 95,000 to 100,000 paid DIRECTV customers and over 550,000 paid BLIZZARD customers. HOLY CRAP.

Blizzard only revealed the 95,000 number though. It was a preplanned, calculated, and strategically worded delivery of speech. :)

It makes so much sense too.. with more than 25,000 (to 27,000) attendees and tickets selling out in minutes, why would virtual attendees only be 3x that number? 650,000+ viewers makes much more sense, but Blizzard does NOT want you to know this information.

It's exactly like what Michael Morhaime said, "margins are higher when we sell direct." SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER when sold direct, in fact. (I mentioned that citation yesterday too.)

In their partnership with DIRECTV, they are probably taking a larger cut away from Blizzard. But, by using RAYV technology (back in 2009 and 2010) using their own website and resources, they made a TON more revenue from virtual ticket sales.

But 2011 is even more interesting.

During the Blizzcon 2011 Opening Ceremonies, Michael Morhaime gave a "shout out" specifically to the DIRECTV members only. He said there were "more than 60,000 from 130 countries who bought a virtual ticket." So sneaky. :)

He didn't mention the number of virtual attendees who watched through the direct Blizzard live feed though. And last year, it was over 5 times the number of DIRECTV customers.

SO, IS YOUR MIND BLOWN NOW? (Hopefully not just by the number of actual viewers, but also the other revelation.)

If there were 100,000 DIRECTV customers last year, but only 60,000 this year, it's very likely that even more customers are using the Blizzard live stream this year. (By the way, there were "over 26,000" attendees announced at Blizzcon 2011 vs "over 25,000" at Blizzcon 2010.)

How much do you want to bet that the Blizzard live stream numbers will NOT be shared at this upcoming shareholders meeting? They'll only announce the outsourced DIRECTV figures, and very carefully word it. :)

Blizzard is okay with sharing numbers on behalf of partners or citing research publications (who don't have access to their internal digital numbers), but they're highly secretive when it comes to internal figures and revenues.

* UPDATE (10/26/2011)

RAYV has just updated their blog with statistics from the Blizzcon 2011 live stream.

For the third year in a row, RayV partnered with Blizzard and Direct TV to broadcast Blizzcon to virtual ticket holders. The virtual ticket increases in popularity every year. Virtual ticket holders can tune in on their computers and watch all performances, panels, and matches live. The virtual ticket also guarantees VOD access for up to two weeks after the event is over.

For the first time, RayV also streamed regional Blizzard Tournaments. RayV streamed the GomTV tournament, based in Korea, and the SiTV tournament, based in China. Both streams added to the global reach of the Blizzard and RayV community.

The Blizzcon stream attracted countless online viewers. Over the weekend, RayV delivered over 2.26 Million hours of streamed content. There were over 740,000 viewers worldwide and at some points there were approximately 200,000 concurrent viewers.

So, Michael Morhaime announced that there were "more than 60,000" DIRECTV users who purchased the 2011 virtual ticket. But, there were another 740,000 viewers who used the Blizzard live stream instead of DIRECTV (this figure might also include those who watched the Opening Ceremony and SC2/WOW matches).

Those viewer counts are crazy, no wonder Blizzard doesn't like to share them. The "revealed" DIRECTV paid customers is just a fraction of the "unrevealed" paid customers who go through Blizzard directly. A good example of why digital sales are never revealed either.. if they're not there yet, retail sales will eventually just be a fraction of digital sales.

* -------------------

It's all about wording too, like what this blog has discussed so many.. many times. Remember when they said Blizzcon was a financial loss for the company.. but it was spoken in past tense? Or when Tom Chilton claimed that Mists of Pandaria was just a crazy rumor and speculation?

If you guys were interested in tallying up sales, Blizzcon tickets cost $175 (they were $100 for several years, then $125 in 2009, and then $150 in 2010). Virtual tickets cost $40 this year and last. (In 2010, they made approximately $30 million in revenue with $3-4 million in expenses.)

Because they're delivering streaming services themselves this year, their profit is probably even higher.

Activision Blizzard Objectives

All of these deceptive choice of words and "special features" are showing very clear objectives for the company and just how important it is to keep it secret. When Michael Morhaime said that he's a crazy CEO who gets to make crazy decisions, and "what if we just made Diablo 3 available for free to World of Warcraft subscribers".. that wasn't just a crazy "idea". It was with purpose and it was all part of a strategic plan for the company.

Their objective is to push digital sales of games, expansion packs and DLC as much as possible. Digital sales (and providing sales and services themselves) is more important to them than even Paid Services. DIGITAL SALES IS HUGE FOR THEM. And they're realizing it even more every day since a few years ago.

And, I don't think Blizzard wants their competitors to know just how much money they're making from digital sales. Profit margins are massive if you can cut out the middlemen. They're doing it with games, services, music, and even video streams now.

If other competitors aren't already doing this, they will be hurting badly and simply cannot compete with Activision Blizzard. There are just so many businesses out there that haven't realized the importance of digital delivery and just providing these services in house. They should be outsourcing labor, but OWNING the digital delivery systems and finding clever ways to get their customers to buy from their digital stores. This is how Activision Blizzard is destroying the competition.. if competitors can't keep up, they'll be just like Blockbuster still trying to rent out VHS tapes.

Future Plans

With their heavy emphasis on digital delivery, you can bet that both Activision and Blizzard will be finding new ways (and special promotions like "$10 off if you buy online" or "get it free by buying this") to push digital sales. One method is degrading the quality of retail boxes and promoting environmentalism or "green incentives" to move into digital.

Having an easy delivery system and purchase platform is key. The RMAH "B.NET BUCKS" system is a brilliant method to push even more digital sales.

And you can bet that Titan will be HUGE into the digital delivery system. Special coupons or incentives to buy Titan online, purchase DLC digitally, purchase expansion packs online, seamless client upgrade systems, etc.

To continue pushing the digital delivery method (to eventually replace most of their retail sales), Titan will also be incorporating a heavy payment system internal to Battle.net (e.g. more "B.NET BUCKS") If users can make money using Titan, they'll use their Battle.net credits to purchase more games or Titan expansion packs. Titan expansion packs will probably be smaller and delivered more quickly too, since they weren't able to do it in time for WOW but they can still do it for Titan. And with their digital sales objective, it makes much more sense.

More people (and in particular video game competition) need to be aware of where real game sales profit lies.

Okay, looks like it's finally online now.

It's a very disappointing read, and rather short. Nothing about Lore or Titan like what was implied, it was just a Metzen personal nostalgia and feelings piece..

Apparently, there's more to come though: "Check back tomorrow for part two!" (Even though this article was sort of Part Two already, so the next one would be Part Three.)

Still no updates on that PC Gamer article, where Nathan Grayson semi-implied that there would be more information on Titan lore. I think it was just a weirdly worded post that could be interpreted a few different ways, but it still looks like it was written that way intentionally to bring back his readers.

The latest updates are as follows:

On October 14 (last Friday), the author tweeted "Nearly done transcribing my Chris Metzen interview. He's an '80s nerd child to his very core. It's glorious."

And then followed by, "People are going to laugh at some of the things he said, but the degree of conviction in his words is incredible."

I figured his post would have been done by Monday, but I guess he's working on a lot of other articles.

I try to soak up as much information about Titan as possible, and I noticed something interesting in a PC Gamer article about GDC 2011 that they seemed to pick up on that no one else has written about (yet).

Here's what was odd about the article:

Chris Metzen is first talking about WOW lore, then customization, and then this continuation along the same line of thought:

“It’d be really cool if I could design my own castle and have people run through it. It’d be fun if I could design this big, epic quest line and let my friends run through it. The thing you run up against is quality level. With WoW, you’re going to get millions of submissions. There’s a lot of creative people out there. But maintaining a level of editorial control and quality control is just logistically impossible. But it’s something we talk about from time to time. I think it would be amazing if we were able to open this thing up.”

And then he talks about the following, like a "While we're on this subject.."

“Obviously, I can’t get into what our thinking is in particular [with Titan],” he said. “But if you’re fortunate enough to have that hit game that’s beloved by X number of people, that expectation of performing again or outdoing the competition that’s also learned from your big hit can become very, very intense.”

So.. was this part of his speech? He's talking about customization within games, which relates to the subject of Titan. Or was this a separate line of questioning?

I'll know more if I can ever get my hands on a video recording of the event. But, I thought it was of note since PC Gamer themselves made a connection between the two.

However, on the subject of their Next Gen game Nathan Grayson did continue to say:

And there’s plenty more where that came from. I was fortunate enough to sit down with Metzen after the panel for an exclusive interview, and you’ll see that in the coming days.

Implying that there should be actual Titan information, but I think he just worded it this way to attract more readers.. or maybe it was just incorrect formatting.

Below is some informative information gathered from Sam "Slouken" Lantinga's blog (Direct Link) where he talks about his work on Titan Blizzard's other Untitled Project (not the Next Gen MMO). (* Updated here.)

(There are no details about the project, but rather his working experience with Blizzard on this project which is quite interesting.)

Sam was previously their Lead Software Engineer but now works at 38 Studios.

Here's a summarized timeline of everything that happened:

January 2009

(* Note: His resume says January 2008 which is when Titan began, and a year before the Untitled Project. However, Mike Sacco claims that this is wrong and January 2009 must be the correct date.)

First beginnings of Titan Blizzard's Untitled Project.

a job opened up for technical lead on a small unannounced project that was getting underway. It was a small project, with a short timeframe, at least for Blizzard, and it was a project that I personally was very interested in.

Approx. Feb/Mar 2009

Sam was promoted to Engineering Lead for the small project.

Between Feb/Mar 2009 and June 2009

Research phase, planning, and hiring for urgent positions.

researching engine technology, getting some of the infrastructure set up, and worked with the producer on a detailed technical plan for the project.

After that, since the designers had a solid idea for the game and were making great progress in the prototype, I started work on proving out the gameplay systems and hiring the most urgent engineering positions.

July 2009

Starcraft 2 launch became Blizzard's top priority, so most of the team were reassigned temporarily to help get Battle.net ready.

"Since our team was so small, most of us went to help out, including our producer and UI artist."

From July 2009 to July 2010

The team consisted of approx. 6-8 people, while everyone else was helping out with the SC2 launch.

"We kept a small crew of designers, an artist and our newly hired graphics engineer to keep the project alive during our tour of duty on Battle.net."

Between July and August 2010

SC2 launched, and team moved back to Titan the Untitled Project to continue the work that had been done over the following year.

"our producer was promoted to lead Battle.net producer, and the designers made great strides in evolving the game design and the gameplay model. The graphics engineer had completed the core of the graphics engine and was roughing out the tools pipeline and content creation system.

When we returned from Battle.net, I jumped right on getting our AI/gameplay engineer up to speed on the gameplay systems and started the herculean task of migrating code I had already finished over to the new gameplay model and tools systems that were developed while we were gone."

If you recall, this is when Kotick announced (August 2010) that they were ramping up production of the game, but it looks like the reason for this was partially because the Titan team was working on the SC2 launch and there was just a skeleton crew left behind.

November 2010

His various tasks (e.g. "migrating code to new gameplay model") upon returning to the game were completed.

Sam was called into a meeting and told that there were issues on the team. He knew of issues with the gameplay engineer, but apparently there were more, and goals & milestones were not being met.

A few days later, he was asked to perform an interview for his own job.

Other Notes

The team was feeling a lot of time pressure and increased stress during the beginning phases of Titan the new mystery project. Sam didn't feel like he received any support from management, and they never provided him any details regarding the "issues" on the team.

It sounds like they were pretty much an independent group for 2 years (2008-2010) without any management involvement. But, with an accelerated deadline, management started taking notice (esp. with Bobby Koticks August 2010 announcement) and early 2011 is when they really really started stepping up hiring, with management more involved and setting clear goals.

Apparently, Blizzard was planning on developing and releasing this product at a faster rate than their previous (historical) development periods. Since they're rushing this game more quickly than previous installments, this might be one of the reasons why they brought in Kim Sellentin in Feb 2011 (i.e, Scrum and quick development principles).

If any of you follow up with this information and find some new interesting pieces of information, let me know.

• I found an interesting resume of a Blizzard employee who has been working there for the past 2.5 months.
  
  His name is Robert "Robby" Duncan, and here's the interesting part from his resume:
  

  2011 – Unannounced Game Title (Blizzard Entertainment - 2.5 months)
  
  Designed and implemented a series of single-player missions, developed new features, participated in key design decisions, and provided a thorough design-analysis of the entire product.

  As soon as I read the "participated in key design decisions", I immediately thought "this guy must be an intern!". As I scrolled down towards the bottom of the resume, it was confirmed. :)
  
  Blizzard has a 12 week paid internship program by the way.
  
  Here are the points that stood out:
  
  * This does not appear to be Titan, it's the other "unannounced" game that Blizzard has been working on.
  * Due to his early involvement in the project ("key design decision", "thorough design-analysis of the entire product"), this indicates that it's in very early stages of development. Titan is supposed to be much farther along.
  * Based on his expertise, it's a PC platform game. (He also has SC2 Editor experience.)
  * "Single-player missions" is RTS/MOBA language.
  
  Based on Blizzards franchise release trends, I've always assumed with 99% certainty that the other unannounced game was going to be WarCraft IV/SC2 Phoenix related. This looks to be a pretty good confirmation (coincidentally, even his email address was rduncanIV@gmaildotcom).
  
  Either that, he's slow, or he's trolling and it has nothing to do with a RTS franchise, even though he uses RTS language.
  

* UPDATE:


• I found a very interesting blog post that was made a few months ago by a Blizzard employee named Shay Pierce. In this post, he describes working on a prototype game within the Blizzard workplace:
  

  The idea started to come to me as I worked on card game and board game design prototypes - this, I realized, was a very pure form of game design. Though "table game" design gives you a limited set of tools compared to those you have on electronic games, it can really open your eyes as to what the core of game design really is.

  This could be very big news indeed. His mention of card games makes me think back to the Product Slate Leak, where WOW TCG was mentioned. This seems to be related to that online World of Warcraft trading card game. Perhaps this is what Robert is working on if it's not a RTS or MOBA title. "Team 4" would be the unannounced MMO and "Team 5" is this upcoming trading card game? A game like that would be very successful on PC and mobile.
  


• In other news, I caught a very interesting B.Net post about wagering within Diablo 3. It was written by Sixen, one of the Community MVPs on the official message boards.
  

  Date: 9/22/2011
  "It's something Force and I brought up at the Press Event back in July... Gambling, Replays, and Observer Mode to PvP. Jay Wilson said they're all cool ideas they want to do at some point in time... Just... Later on down the road."

  So, right now most of the focus is on PVE, but later on down the road Blizzard is really keen on implementing an observer mode and an in-game wagering/betting system for PVP arena matches. This totally fits in with the high stakes arena gambling system I mentioned in that old mock Diablo 3 X1 post. :)
  
  Not only that, but apparently Micah Whipple (aka Bashiok) is ALL FOR turning Diablo 3 into a whole PVP / E-Sports system with wagering and arena gambling for players. Very interesting indeed.. it might not be called gambling though, I've noticed that Blizzard has been very careful in how they use that word (for obvious reasons) and get rather nervous when it's mentioned.


• Because Diablo 3 is online only, it opens up some really cool features like what they have in World of Warcraft. Nothing has been announced yet, but I'm 100% certain that there will be holiday events and special activities during certain times of the year. Specific details about these events will most likely be exposed when people finally hack apart the retail code and patch updates. There will probably be Halloween stuff around town, Christmas presents, unique items that are only available on certain days, and even random events or encounters with a Holiday-based boss. 4-teaming a demonic Santa Claus for example. Since there's a server timer involved, I wonder if D3 will be implementing daily quests for players.. an extra way to level up, or earn gold for selling?


• Constance Wang apparently left Blizzard last month, and now she's developing content for the new Wildstar MMORPG. :) Constance, by the way, was a PA on the Titan team. She wasn't directly involved in development, but assisted with the research for them (ie, lore related stuff, library book diving, etc.)


• If you were curious if there were any Titan goodies in Kim Sellentin's tweets.. there aren't. I managed to find out. She's always been pretty careful about what she writes, though, especially after she started working at Blizzard.

So, something has happened between now and 3 weeks ago. It was after I had made that "Titan Details Spotted" post. (Disappointed that TitanGuru took credit for my little find.. even though I asked nicely. No worries though, it's happened many times with this blog I've seen.)

Cameron Dayton has deleted all of his tweets regarding Titan and his work comments about his team at the time; it was a very targetted clean up of his public posts.

I guess this confirms that Stan Sakai really is involved with the Titan project (lore side of things), and his tweet about Atlantis and Teotihuacan might have some real relevance now.

So, Titan might be involving ancient civilizations in Mexico and Japan, as well as mythical ones. There will be historical locations to visit, as well as present and future.

He also revised his LinkedIn profile (after like a year of no activity.)

Old One:

Imagining, creating, and writing the universe for Blizzard's new MMO (working title: Titan) from the ground up -- the history, philosophy, heroes, and villains. In addition to the core construction of the game's story, I wrote flavor pieces for the main characters and important events to lend depth and immersion for our team. Much of my time involved meeting with the art and animation team to ensure their work wove into the narrative.

New one:

Imagining, creating, and writing the universe for Blizzard's new MMO (working title: Titan) from the ground up. In addition to the core construction of the game's story, I wrote flavor pieces for the main characters and important events to lend depth and immersion for our team. Much of my time involved meeting with the art and animation team to ensure their work wove into the narrative.

So, he cut out this very specific piece about Titan:

the history, philosophy, heroes, and villains.

I wonder what he means by philosophy. Is that the philosophy of the game, the Titan universe, or each culture within Titan?

Mynsc.. funny how both KimSellentin and CameronDayton are both official followers of the Titan Focus tweets hey? :)

Following the path left behind by some of Daeity's old drafts, I did a little investigation and came across some interesting information. You can't really call these leaks as it's just information I spotted on a publicly accessible website. The term "leaks" tends to get overused a lot.. it should only be reserved for actual leaks of insider information from real employees. If you stumble upon information on a blog, for example, it's not considered "a leak".

This is definitely new information though, I didn't find any references anywhere else to this.

So.. Cameron here was on the Titan team for 2 years as their World Designer, and then transitioned to Writing and Development for other Blizzard (trans)media in August 2010.

Here's what he had to say about their Next-Gen MMO:

Imagining, creating, and writing the universe for Blizzard's new MMO (working title: Titan) from the ground up -- the history, philosophy, heroes, and villains. In addition to the core construction of the game's story, I wrote flavor pieces for the main characters and important events to lend depth and immersion for our team. Much of my time involved meeting with the art and animation team to ensure their work wove into the narrative.

So, apparently it will be storyline driven, have main characters, histories, and heroes/villains. It won't be completely like a Second Life type game, but probably a combination of sorts with a real world, actors, story, and history.

Cameron also has a twitter account here. He makes references to the Titan project a few times, like when it's existence was first discovered. [Links: 1 2 3]

On June 10, 2010, he tweeted: 'I just got to tell the one of our artists "Yes, Stan Sakai is definitely on board."'

This was while Cameron was working on Titan and "Much of (his) time involved meeting with the art and animation team to ensure work woke into the narrative." Also, Stan Sakai at the time was already working for Blizzard on the separate World of Warcraft magazine. He had a recurring comic strip called "Goblin vs. Gnome."

This would imply that the legendary artist Stan Sakai was brought on board into the Titan MMO as a writer. :)

Cameron's first tweet (while working on Titan), was that he's "shifting tectonic plates, raising Atlantis, and reviving Teotihuacan. Damn I love my job." This might just be a figure of speech, and have nothing to do with Titan, but I figured I would make note of it.

The other discoveries, however, are certainly interesting and confirm some of Daeity's old blogposts about multiple environments (or universes) and societies intended to attract a wider audience of players. Blizzard has also been snagging up employees who previously worked on RAGE (Post-Apocalyptic), the Halo MMO, and a "next gen NCSOFT game". Also, audio engineers who developed the CryTek engine.

Here are some of the assumptions I'm adding to "the list":

* Titan is possibly taking a "The Secret World" type approach. Wide variety of environments or "universes" and many different types of gameplay.
* One of these worlds may have a Stan Sakai influence, but there will be elements of fantasy and scifi from the other writers.
* Possible change in gameplay depending on the "world" you're in.
* Designed with real world payment systems from the ground up with heavy social integration. Not an Auction House, but rather a way to buy, sell, rent, or trade virtual constructions or items.
* Game will have multiple expansion packs.
* Not a casual game, but will have casual elements in the gameplay. Blizzard looking to compete with Zynga and snag their customers.

I'll continue hunting around to see if there's anything else out there. This only took me about 30 minutes to find, and I'm surprised that this information hasn't been published anywhere else on the web.

There are websites out there completely dedicated to collecting Titan information, and they didn't even know this. Most of them just have outdated information, and short employee lists of people suspected to be working on Titan. It's kind of sad.

Players grumbling about the persistent online-only requirement for Diablo 3 are being encouraged to "just grab the crack" to play offline. It sounds simple enough, but they're assuming that D3 is similar to Starcraft 2. :)

Starcraft 2 is considered an "online" game, but that's only for authentication DRM. SC2 has all of the level design, maps, single player missions/campaigns, and assets built right into the game and it was designed to be playable offline. That can be cracked.

Diablo 3, however, is more like World of Warcraft but also a slightly different creature.

World of Warcraft and Diablo 3 both come with all media assets, maps, and levels built into the game. But, movement, player development and the characters themselves are controlled and stored on the server.

I think some gamers just haven't realized this. A "crack" will be possible eventually, but it will actually come in the form of an emulated server that will take weeks or even months to implement. Diablo 3 simply can't be played offline. Everything about your character is controlled by the server.

In World of Warcraft, all of the maps and levels are static (fixed). But in Diablo, the dungeons and levels are dynamically generated. It hasn't been mentioned in any interviews, but it's the SERVER that creates these random maps, random dungeons, random event scripting, mob locations, random NPCs, and vendor items for sale. The server might even control boss AI. All of this data is transferred to your client.

The game has been designed from the ground up for the server to generate all of the random content in the game.

We'll learn more soon enough (Diablo 3 beta invites next week), but because levels are randomly generated this makes botting, teleportation and speedhacks much more difficult. To conserve bandwidth, not all map data is going to be transferred to the client at once. I'm assuming that the map data will be transferred as you move throughout the world.. that is, the world is created around you (and cached) as you explore. If you jump too quickly to an area beyond an acceptable range, it makes teleportation and speedhacking very easy to detect. Imagine it like an invisible circle surrounding you.. it only caches land at its outer perimeter as you explore. The game code allows for a certain amount of flexibility, but if you go beyond its borders too quickly, it knows something is wrong. Movement tracking in D3 is more 2-dimensional too as opposed to World of Warcrafts 3-dimensional character location (making internal calculations and hack detection algorithms that much easier.)

(** Update: Here's an example of what happens when random map data created by the server isn't transferred quickly enough to the client. Local model editing for the purposes of world building or area changes, like in WOW, is not possible on live Diablo 3 servers because of this new system. However, the fastest way of getting an emulated server up-and-running is to simply create static maps and fixed weapon and item drops. It would be very easy to capture one randomly generated map, for example, from the live beta server and just use that as the template for the emulated server. So yeah.. the fastest way to "crack" the game is just to remove the random generation.)

It's easier to cheat in World of Warcraft because "explored land" is fixed and always there. Diablo 3 randomly generated terrain is more tricky though as you're now beginning to realize. :)

It's actually quite brilliant for both hack detection, preventation of botting (which relies of pre programming pathing), and DRM. It ensures that everyone buys the game once they realize "it can't be hacked" at least in the beginning.

And, Blizzard is not going to share this information with anyone. Why? Because when the game comes out, no one will be able to create an offline crack for it. Everyone will assume it's uncrackable and not realize that an emulated server needs to be constructed first.

"Dude. This game is like uncrackable.. there hasn't been a crack for weeks now and everyone's been begging for one. I'm just gonna go buy it."

During the beta, however, some clever programmers will start building a server emulator.. so if Blizzard can roll out the retail very quickly, they can hit retail a long time before the first B.NET emulators hit. They also have legal precedent on their side to combat B.NET emulators.. remember BNETD? :)

This is a great form of DRM, since it's not "persistent online authentication style DRM" that can be cracked but more like WoW with server generated levels and maps. It will eliminate piracy, at least in the beginning, and generate even more sales than an offline capable (aka "crackable") Diablo 3.

If you step back and look at all this holistically, you'll see some connections happening here.

* Only the server generates random content and stores the character, so the game client must be connected at all times.
* In order to crack the game, a server emulator will be required.
* They don't want users to know this until it's too late (e.g. they bought the game, emulated server comes out months later).
* Blizzard already has legal backing to prevent the creation of a server emulator.
* Because terrain is randomly generated, it makes teleportation and speedhacking much more difficult. Botting is also more difficult since pathing changes with each game session.
* The online-only component allows Blizzard to implement paid auction houses, and because of their immense popularity they can create a new standard for other businesses. Not only for RMT, but also their online-only approach.
* Any single player game can be redesigned so that a server is required to transfer simple on-the-fly content.
* While other game developers will be "indebted" to Blizzard, this opens up more business opportunities for their new 3rd party RMT partner (PayPal?).
* This RMT scheme also makes the Titan MMO RMT surprises much easier to accept when it's finally announced. Titan RMT will be D3 RMT v2.0. If Titan were announced today, I think there would be a LOT of angry people. D3, though, will get their feet wet and ease them into this new business paradigm.

Blizzard has some really smart people working for them.

As mentioned, here are all of the wonderfully leaked goodies (ie, the "motherload" I mentioned). Most of this is related to this year's BlizzCon and I'm sure the (wrong) heads are probably going to roll after releasing this information. =]

Keep in mind, that I'm still not done yet.. this is just the tip of the iceberg. I've saved the best for last and I'm typing as quickly as I can.

- So just to recap, I've already covered the D3 release, the (insightful) financials and subscriber figures with a quick analysis.

- DIABLO 3: The "planned" beta release date will be announced at BlizzCon 2011. The D3 beta will actually be taking place this year, but it's in such a stable state, and no problems are expected, that they expect to have it out before Christmas 2011. Sorry for the duplication, I know I already talked about this and the backup 2nd quarter date.

- DIABLO 3: There's going to be a Diablo 3 press conference before the beta begins, so sometime around August. Below are big D3 details of what will either be announced at BlizzCon or during the press conference.

- DIABLO 3: There's going to be a level cap of 60 (future expansion packs will expand the level cap by 10, it's all just like WoW), they're already planning ahead for the next exp. pack and they have in fact cut out zones, art, and skills/abilities out of the main game to be saved up for later.

- DIABLO 3: It's going to require a persistent internet connection through Battle.net. Disappointing, but I'm not surprised.

- DIABLO 3: The big shocker: Blizzard will be allowing players to buy/sell items, players and gold using an in-game system and real world currency! Seriously, I can't make this shit up. Diablo 3 will be using Blizzard's first gold selling service which they've already been building into Battle.net / Blizzard store code. They're working on a new money meter and "banking system" into Battle.net accounts, so it will probably be a storage system like PayPal for real currency that can be used to purchase games and virtual stuff. This is all being used in future games too, and possible older ones. Players will be encouraged to "stay at home, play games, make money". Because of this, they're implementing a no mods/addon policy in D3 as mentioned earlier so that this system can't be exploited (e.g. Auctioneer).

- TITAN: Just wanted to throw this little piece in here because it's related to this new gold selling system. When you see the pictures in the next post, you'll know what I mean. There will be a lot of buying and selling of virtual and real world items in Titan (tied into heavy social interaction) and this new D3 development indicates that Blizzard wants their customers getting used to this new and controversial approach. I don't want to spoil anything else.. you'll see it soon enough. =]

- WOW FIRELANDS: (Note: This is still being updated). The Firelands content patch should be available in the next couple months. A friend of mine is digging through the details right now, but I'll update this section later today. It's a little low priority as you can imagine, but he did say something about a fire-based cat form for Druids and a flaming (Blizzard Store collectible) mount. =]

- WOW EXP PACK: (Another work in progress) A little more details below, but my sources tell me that the next expansion pack will focus on the Island of Pandaria. This is no April Fool's joke, and yes, they're running out of ideas. You can already guess what race will be playable, and there's going to be a new overpowered healing class. I'm still waiting for more details from my sources and I should have some confirmation soon, but they've never steered me wrong before.

- BLIZZCON 2011: They have much more excitement planned for 2011 and there's going to be a TRIFECTA of announcements. First, there's going to be details, a trailer video (and playable demos) of their next SC2 expansion pack (HOTS). Second, they will be announcing their next WoW Expansion Pack (the Pandarens) and there's a video demonstration with details planned (I'm trying to get more details). It sounds like their final expansion pack will be announced at BlizzCon 2013.. Third and finally, there will be the surprise announcement of the "imminent" D3 release. (They're making it the THIRD announcement on purpose.) =]

- TITAN CONT'D: There's not going to be a Titan announcement at BlizzCon 2011. It still needs a lot of work and they're not planning on revealing any details about it just yet. I suppose they could always whip something up to show off, but it can still undergo a lot of changes between now and 2014.

Phew.. deep breaths, deep breaths..

It's not over yet though! Even though this information sounds completely unbelievable and that official documentation was pretty undeniable, I'm positive that many of our more special visitors here will claim that everything is made up. In fact, I'm expecting a TON of skepticism.. that is until these official announcements are made. =]

(For those who haven't been drinking the blue kool-aid, it's going to feel great to be completely vindicated.)

I still have a lot more to write about which I'll do over the next couple days.. I have a LOT to say about that new gold selling system. I'm also expecting a lot of heavy traffic and questions, and I really don't know what's going to happen after revealing all of this information.

Alrighty.. onto the final reveal!