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.

Well, not really.

But they do own all of the GLIDER trademarks now. :)

This one must have flew under the radar. It appears that the exchange took place about a couple weeks ago.

The (MMO) GLIDER trademark was previously owned by MDY INDUSTRIES LLC (remember the one they sued?) and they're all still LIVE:

http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=77301195
http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=77301191
http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=77301198
http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=77301201

I never really followed the case, but maybe this was part of the judgement?

Pretty cool anyways. :)

• 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.

• Rockstar has officially announced the release dates of LA Noire PC. No one cares. Everyone just wants to know when Red Dead Redemption PC is coming out.


• Apparently, LA Noire also turned out exactly as Daeity had predicted. High sales in the beginning, will never be able to match RDR sales, novel type game, linear, and with very little re-playability. That's the biggest complaint that most users have now.. once you beat it, there's no point in playing it again. With the death of the main character, what's really the point in DLC now?


• Here's a really good video embedded below about the future of AAA MMO's, operating costs of MMOs, and gamer psychology regarding subscription fees. I pretty much agree with everything he said.