Based on the limited amount of information available on Titan and Blizzard's history, I can make some educated predictions on what the game will probably be like. As of today, Blizzard hasn't released any details about the game whatsoever.. but there are tidbits of information collected from resumes, Tweets, and job positions. What I'd like to do is "sticky" these posts, so that years from now when the game comes out, you can go back and compare. Plus, I can show a chronology of expectations for the game as new information is made available.
Expectations: What It Will and Won't Be
Blizzard Will Be Playing It Safe
- There's a lot of hype around what Blizzard means by "Next Gen MMO". The imagination can run wild with this title, with gamers hyping up a brand new approach to gaming. But really, all they mean is a game for Next Generation consoles and systems with improved graphics.
- Most of the team members developing Titan all come from heavy console gaming development backgrounds. Blizzard also really wants to break into the console market, so it's highly likely that Titan is being developed for the PC, X720 & PS4.
- Even though high quality graphics are being created, the job requirements for some of the Next Gen MMO artists include converting high-poly sculpted characters into lower poly game models, and to develop graphically appealing but lower resolution images for older PCs. They want the game to run on as many systems as possible, just like what they've done for their other games.
- Blizzard might experiment internally, but they play it safe when it comes to the finished product. Even Bashiok has admitted that Blizzard does not innovate; they copy, improve and refine. Blizzard will not take chances, and they will only create games that they know will be successful. So, they pay attention to the success of their competitors and they create competing games. They'll take a really great game, and then improve it even more.
- Activision and Blizzard will not compete with their own games. Activision won't release a fantasy MMORPG, just like Blizzard will not create a warfare FPS shooter. They will try not to cannibalize players from one game until it's popularity wanes. For example, during the height of Starcraft 2 popularity, there will never be a World of Starcraft. WOS would only be a possibility once SC2 dies down.
- I wanted to have this up at the top before you read any further. Your imagination can be your own worst enemy, so I want to make sure you're firmly planted on level ground before you jump to conclusions about how amazing Titan will be.
- Don't get too excited. Titan will be fun, but it won't be groundbreaking or innovative. Much like the gameplay and graphics, the lore and storyline will also be repetitive and contain derivative works.
- Blizzard is not hiring a brand new team of professional writers, scientists, and psychologists to create the greatest fiction ever written. They're not even looking for new writers, and they used internal writers for Titan who have been around for a really long time (the ones who have written lore and stories for Starcraft, Diablo, and Warcraft.)
- Your mind will not be blown. It will have cool new graphics though, and it will be fun to play.
- Although there are a lot of indications that this will be a post-apocalyptic title, it's not going to be. Titan will include many post-apocalyptic environments, but it will never be strictly a post-apocalyptic game. It's the same reason why there will never be a Fallout MMO. Future Fallout installments will probably have multiplayer features, but it can never work successfully as a MMORPG due to the issues of content consumption.
- Players constantly need new environments and new colorful stimuli to remain interested in a game. The Fallout series works very well as a single player game, but MMOs require frequent injection of brand new content to prevent players from growing bored. In Fallout, the environment, players, and buildings are pretty much the same wherever you go and it can grow repetitive and tiring. So, they introduced virtual environments, alien space craft, national parks, canyons, and underwater locations to keep things fresh.
- SWTOR has many different planets to explore with wide varieties of environments. How successful would SWTOR be if the entire game were to take place only on Tatooine? It would be a huge planet to explore, but it would only consist of desert environments and repetitive buildings. This is what a Fallout MMO would be like. An Elder Scrolls MMO would be much more sustainable and longer lasting than a Fallout MMO would. Blizzard knows this very well, and have learned quite a bit from World of Warcraft player behavior.
- Because of the constant need for novel content and new stimulation, Titan will be a lot like World of Warcraft in that there will be a very large variety of environments (as well as other activities, like crafting and minigames, to keep players busy.)
- Since Blizzard is planning on In-Game advertising within Titan, that can give you an idea of the type of environmentals as well where the most emphasis will be. And yes, Blizzard said In-Game ads within the world (not in chat channels) that enhance gameplay. For example, Blizzard was originally planning on putting in-game ads into Starcraft, but they can't do it for Diablo or World of Warcraft. And because in-game ads are so important, it means that this world will have a modern or near-future look. So, your main character's home environment will be modern or "real world", and from there they can travel (somehow) to all of the other environments.
- Jeff Kaplan said that the Next Gen MMO would be "sci-fi, near-future, post-apocalyptic, and historical" combined. Cameron Dayton hinted that Titan would include Atlantis and Teotihuacan, and that Stan Sakai (16th and 17th century Japan) would be involved in some lore aspects of Titan.
- These are strong indications that Titan will take place on Earth (or a version of Earth), with a real world setting, and players are able to travel to historical or ancient civilizations. That leaves open possibilities for time travel, parallel dimensions, or a telepresence (Surrogates / Avatar) based storyline. Or possibly, it's a dystopian future with several events taking place worldwide and you can explore ancient and buried civilizations, but it all takes place during the same time.
- It won't be a strictly sci-fi game, though, and it won't compete with Starcraft. There may be a lot of environments or assets borrowed from the Starcraft Ghost game though.
- It will have a lot of similarities to World of Warcraft, including Blizzard's artistic style, but they need to make the game distinct from WoW to maintain long term interest.
- Many of the first employees working on Titan were part of the Console Development Team (ie, the SAS group.) Titan will be a lot like WoW in some aspects, but because the game is also being developed for consoles, and they're bringing in game ideas from Ghost (and other iterations), you can expect the gameplay to be quite different. The issues of content consumption also apply to gameplay after all.. it's not just content that needs to be new and exciting, but also the gameplay. You can expect gameplay to be much more faster, "in your face", and action oriented.
- Although players could adapt to a new WoW style game quite easily, it also become boring and repetitive too quickly. Plus, with consoles, gameplay needs to be different to adapt to the new controls.
- The User Interface, for one, will be drastically different than World of Warcraft. It will most likely be closer to Diablo 3 in comparison; designed to work well on both PCs and consoles, streamlined, more simplified, smaller in size, not as many options or keys that are typically expected on a PC, etc. The interface, combat nor movement will need to be mouse driven (think Skyrim UI) either, so combat will be much faster than WoW.
- This also limits the number of skills, abilities, or "spells" within Titan. There will be a much shorter list of skills and talents within the game, with more emphasis probably placed on loot or collecting "something". Loot could easily be replaced by pets, creatures, or anything else for example. Since a lot of skills will be cut out of the game, many of them will be saved up for future expansion packs.
- Blizzard's merchandising plans for Titan include Comic Books, Books/Novels, Action Figures, Short Movies, and Apparel. This can be hard to do with a brand new franchise, unless the characters are quite memorable and colorful. Cameron Dayton has also confirmed that the game will have major Heroes and Villains.
- If the game was targeting children or older moms, it would have been more reflected in their merchandising options. The merchandise they selected for Titan are the same that they have for World of Warcraft player demographics. The more "general appeal" most likely refers to accessibility on consoles, but they are still targeting the same demographics as WoW players but with possibly a slightly younger age in mind (so they are expanding their targeted market by just a little bit). This won't necessarily cannibalize WoW players, for example, since they're targeting the demographics but not the specific players.. they want the same age groups, but not the ones who only play fantasy RPGs.
- It won't be a casual game, but it will have casual mini-games within the world. It will have Blizzard's artistic style, and they want the game to run on older machines. Titan will probably be a lot more dumbed down and easy compared to WoW, with combat being much faster and more engaging. Because the combat is slightly faster, you might define some elements of the game as FPS, but, it will still be a looting, collecting, and achievement based MMORPG and it won't be a MMOFPS. A MMOFPS is currently unproven, and Blizzard won't risk the chance of releasing one. Plus, it's too limited in scope, and Blizzard needs several addictive gameplay elements that exist within familiar RPGs.
- Blizzard won't compete with their own games, but they do intend on stealing market from their competitors. They will take a successful franchise, but then improve upon it using proven and successful gameplay methodologies. They won't branch out into every game genre, of course, they'll stick with something they're familiar with. For example, they won't try to compete with sports or racing titles, but they will try to compete with Fallout, Mass Effect, Halo, Pokemon, and possibly The Sims. I can understand a big push into Pokemon territory, for example, like what Activision has been doing with Spyro and the pet changes to WoW. They also hired employees from Ensemble Studios (who were working on the Halo MMO also nicknamed "Titan"). So, many of the ideas or designs from the Halo MMO will probably be carried through to Blizzard's Titan. (The Halo MMO rumor has already been talked about to death, so there's no point in speculating on that.)
- There's no way they can steal all of their competitor's markets. So, they'll use pieces from each successful franchise to build something new, to attract as many people as possible, improve upon it, and use proven systems to create an addictive game (like loot-centric gambling gameplay).
- Since Blizzard won't compete with any Activision Blizzard titles, you can also know what Titan won't be. For example, it won't be a modern shooter like COD, but there might be fast paced combat in historical or other unusual locations. Activision already has Spyro, so it won't be a MMO targeting children. It won't be a horror title like Doom 3. It will have scifi RPG elements, though, because that won't compete with Starcraft's RTS style gameplay.
- The game is going to have various interfaces for both single player and multiplayer combat and participation. The UI Artist's responsibility also includes creating a "world class UI system that is movie quality (but still highly usable)."
- You might assume that because the career page I linked above includes "various interfaces in single player, in multiplayer, and on our websites for our current, and future products and expansions" that the game is going to be single player.. but remember, this is a MMO. You will always be connected, and they basically mean your primary interface when you're playing with yourself versus interfaces when you're grouped with other individuals. For example, World of Warcraft has a "single player" interface that's customizable. When you're in a Raid or Party, you also get a special "multiplayer interface" for easier group management and communication.
- A faster combat system within the game also opens up Titan to possible e-Sports options with small or large scale battles.
- Much like WoW, Titan will also have "icons, stats, inventory screens, in-game HUD elements", and expansion packs.
- Regarding future expansion packs, I wanted to point out something interesting in the Next-Gen MMO careers page: "Blizzard Entertainment is looking for an outstanding professional to build and manage a world-class art outsourcing program for a team focused on next-generation massively multiplayer online (MMO) games."
This is the standard introductory paragraph in many of their hiring posts. You'll see that they wrote "next-generation MMO games." Plural, not singular, and not a typo.
This means that the Next-Gen MMO team will be working on more than one game. This could either mean follow up expansion packs (which really shouldn't be called "a game"), or it means that they're developing a Next-Gen MMO engine for future (other franchise) games. Having an in-house engine with modular design and graphics expandability would be quite awesome for cutting down development time on future games. This could be where that "Titan As A Development Platform" opinion came from. But, Blizzard wouldn't be making this available to third parties, it would be for their own internal games.
- Cameron has already confirmed that the lore, philosophy, world, heroes and villains have been created. Since they also have merchandising planned for the game, you can assume that this is a fixed world. It won't be a craftable world or created by players like in Second Life. The world and environments have already been created, just like WoW.
- However, the Blizzard team has learned many lessons from World of Warcraft and Diablo 3, especially in the areas of content consumption. There's a very strong possibility that Titan will have randomly generated content. Not so much in the "overworld" but rather within dungeons. To a lesser extent, Titan might also take a different approach to loot and adopt a "global loot table" approach like what Diablo 3 has done. Automatically creating new content within Dungeons, having random encounters, and randomized loot ensures fresh adventures for players and significantly reduces future development time. It also plays an excellent role in internal security protection and discouraging server emulation.
- I think a lot of the systems within Titan will depend a lot on the success of Diablo 3. Read this post for more information. For example, it's really hard to determine if Blizzard will be making this a subscription based game, or if they intend on using a Real Money Auction House. Things are looking very likely, though, for a non-subscription (free to play) based game because they're planning on in-game advertisements for revenue and their finance team is focused on the business analysis and visioning for the D3 Auction House. It's highly probable that it will be a F2P game using multiple revenue models, including paid services, RMAH, a player or crafting marketplace, microtransactions, DLC, and/or in-game advertising.
- What Blizzard originally intended for World of Warcraft, they might do instead with Titan: smaller expansion packs, shorter development and delivery time, and DLC packs that expand the game.
- Very unlikely, but I thought I would throw it out there. Next Gen MMO as an on-demand streaming game service? The problem with streaming video games is that it's currently unproven and not very reliable. If the game could be streamed, it would certainly open up the game to many platforms without the porting development time needed. Unfortunately, the Next Gen MMO positions are looking for artists to convert high poly graphics to low poly, and this wouldn't be an issue for streaming gameplay. If Blizzard starts testing out streaming gameplay at Blizzcon 2012 or 2013, though, it might be a possibility for future games.
"Team 3"
Most gamers believe that "Team 3" was the group working on Diablo 3 back in 2007. But D3 was still being worked on dating back to 2005 (and from 2000 by Blizzard North) and there was never any official statement linking D3 to "Team 3". Most users, including myself, believed it was called "Team 3" because of Diablo "3" and the timing of "Team 3" and the Diablo 3 announcement.
When speaking to Gamasutra in 2007, Frank Pearce had this to say:
"Our global headcount is 2,700," said Pearce, "And most of that is customer service for World of Warcraft! In terms of development staff it’s probably around 350. World of Warcraft is about 135 people, 40 for Starcraft II, 40 for team 3, our cinematics team is about 85 guys. Then there’s sound and Q/A and that sort of thing."Diablo 3 wasn't a new project though, it was just an old unannounced on-and-off project. Swingin' Ape Studios was the third division of Blizzard and later renamed to Blizzard Console. Blizzard North was the old team responsible for Diablo 1 and 2, and they were the team working on Diablo 3 from 2000-2005.
When pressed for details regarding the new project, Pearce was cagey. "Team 3 is working on something really awesome. I can’t give you any hints, but it’s totally awesome."
Gamasutra was able to confirm that, in spite of Rob Pardo's comments at Hollywood and Games that they weren't giving up on StarCraft Ghost, this Blizzard project remains something different.
The phrase "Team 3" was not revealed publicly until just a few months before the Next Gen MMO was revealed too. Also, coincidentally, "Team 3" had 40 employees which was also the number of SAS employees that remained with Blizzard. SAS had become a separate team, they had 40 employees, and they were Blizzard's 3rd division.. "Team 3" maybe?
They were specifically working on Next Gen Console games too, and were in a state of flux at this time (2007) trying out new things. Rob Pardo did confirm, after all, that they had not given up on Starcraft Ghost and there were about 40 employees working on it.
Now, there's very strong evidence to support that "Team 3" was also the Project Hydra team, but there are also hints that "Team 3" could have been the group from SAS and they were continuing work on something "totally awesome" that might have evolved from Ghost. At the time, there was never any official confirmation of who "Team 3" really was, but today it just refers to the Diablo 3 team. I thought I would mention this, because their team and project names have been known to change when they take different directions. For example, Cataclysm was rumored to be called "Project South Seas", then it was changed to "Project Worldbreaker", and then finally "Project Cerberus". SC2 was rumored as "Project Alpha" and then "Project Medusa".
Kaplan Connects Titan with SAS
In 2008, during Kaplan's infamous "Blizzard's new MMO is going to be sci-fi, near-future, post-apocalyptic or historical? All of those combined!" speech, Kaplan talked about the SAS crew while on the subject of the Next Gen MMO, broader audiences, and Consoles:
"So I don't think 'World of Warcraft' would really work that well on the console, but that's not to say that other MMOs couldn't. And we have a pretty savvy group of console developers -- a lot of the guys we inherited from Swingin' Ape really know what they're doing on next-gen consoles. So we might have a few tricks up our sleeves in that regard."A History Of Blizzard Repeating History
Have you ever noticed that Blizzard tends to repeat the past, or bring things back from the past?
They're bringing back in-game advertising (planned for Titan, but they had originally wanted it in SC2 because they didn't have any games that could support it.) They're getting back into Next-Gen Console gaming. They're reintroducing Real ID, but in a different non-offensive flavor. They frequently reuse assets from older or abandoned games (e.g. WOW or SC Ghost assets used in SC2). They reintroduce classes or races previously planned for older WOW expansion packs (e.g. Pandaren planned for TBC instead of Draenei.)
I had always wondered why they bought Swingin' Ape Studios so quickly, especially when the SC Ghost project wasn't doing too well, Metal Arms didn't sell very well, and SAS only had the console game Metal Arms under their belts. There must have been something else about the company that impressed them.
Diablo, for example, was being developed by Condor Games. Blizzard was so impressed by their game and creativity that half way through the development of the game, Davidson acquire Condor Games and they renamed it to Blizzard North. They were still very new to project management during this time, but they recognized just how valuable Diablo was going to be.
In SAS's case, Blizzard outsourced the SC: Ghost Console project to them. Perhaps there was something more within the company that Blizzard wanted, like other video games or ideas they were working on, much like they had done with Condor Games. :)
It's possible that a very early version of Titan was around at one point, but it was put on the back shelf due to the immense popularity and new resource requirements of World of Warcraft. It would have been an early prototype but with very ambitious plans. It's possible that Titan isn't a very new idea, and it's something that has been sitting on a shelf for a lot longer than people might think.
In order to know more about Titan or predict it's future, it's important to understand it's past.
Nomad and Guerrilla
Swingin' Ape Studios was secretly working on a next-gen console game called Guerrilla. The demo was a post-apocalyptic themed game, which eventually evolved into something more military ("FarCry") themed. This game was demonstrated to Blizzard before they were contracted for the SC Ghost project. I wonder if they showed the post-apocalyptic version along with their ideas for the future of the game, or they were showed the FarCry version that EA had wanted? :)
Whichever the case, the engine was adapted for the SC Ghost game. In a way, SC Ghost could be a precursor to Titan. (I won't be surprised if Titan contains scifi assets from the old Ghost project.)
Right after StarCraft, Blizzard also started working on their own post-apocalyptic scifi (squad based) RPG entitled Nomad. Blizzard had put a lot of work into the game, but they decided to work on WOW instead because they just weren't ready for Nomad at the time.
Nomad was mentioned again in 2008 (along with other cancelled projects). The cancelled Shattered Nations was also a post-apocalyptic scifi themed game by Blizzard, and some people have suspected that Nomad might have mutated into MMO form.
SAS's Metal Arms
If Titan has a past history with Guerrilla and SAS, there might also be a connection to Metal Arms. For example, since many of the current employees working on Titan came from SAS and they worked on MA, they might have adopted some of the ideas from MA or what was planned for Metal Arms 2. (If you read the SAS post, Metal Arms was originally the story of a bounty hunter traveling to many different planets, with one inhabited entirely with various types of robots.)
For example, a lot of robots or a "Control Tether" feature borrowed from MA. Glitch was able to "possess" other robots, gain their abilities and control them. (Sort of like an Avatar-like or mind control game, something that's missing from a lot of games these days.)
I haven't been able to find too much online, but here are some examples where Steve Ranck commented on future work:
SAS_Steve [Source]
We (the developers) would love to work on a sequel. Glitch on next-gen would be really fun to work on. Vivendi owns the property, though.
SAS_Steve [Source]I often wonder if "Project Titan" name was chosen as an internal joke to the Next Gen MMO team's previous work on Metal Arms. There were infamous Titans in Metal Arms (dangerous robots), and Project Titan might have originated some MA after all (e.g. MA -> Guerrilla -> SC Ghost -> Titan).
BinfordKid, we're sitting on a huge amount of AMAZING story that's just waiting for a sequel.
Heck, for all we know, it could have been borrowed from Blizzard's scrapped "Path of the Titans" too. In Path of the Titans, the player could join various cults and investigate history. :)
If there is a connection between SAS, their old IP, and Titan, we might see a lot of their ideas or innovations being inherited. This is why I'm interested in old game ideas or early game concepts. So, if you discover any old sources or mentions about "SAS/Blizzard games in development" from really old magazines, for example, let me know.