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.

• Mynsc's tweet about the Titan Timeline cause a little bit of a stir within Blizzard HQ. About 3 people came here directly from the Twitter page, and then there was a rush of some 25-30 users shortly after (and the following day) who appeared to have been emailed the direct link. Might just have been non-Titan employees who were interested in what was going on though.


• Fallen Earth is going F2P this Wednesday apparently. Should be interesting, I've never played it before but I was never going to pay a subscription for it.


• The most interesting development yesterday, which shouldn't come as a surprise, was Blizzard's unique approach to implementing an acceptable RMT method within World of Warcraft. Pay $10 for a BOE pet, sell pet in-game for gold. It's also only a single pet that you can buy, unlike past pets that would be available on all of your characters.
  

  Q: Could I put the Guardian Cub up on the auction house to try to make some gold if I wanted to?
  
  While our goal is to offer players alternative ways to add a Pet Store pet to their collection, we’re ok with it if some players choose to use the Guardian Cub as a safe and secure way to try to acquire a little extra in-game gold without turning to third-party gold-selling services. However, please keep in mind that there's never any guarantee that someone will purchase what you put up for sale in the auction house, or how much they'll pay for it. Also, it’s important to note that we take a firm stance against buying gold from outside sources because in most cases, the gold these companies offer has been stolen from compromised accounts. (You can read more about our stance here.) While some players might be able to acquire some extra gold by putting the Guardian Cub in the auction house, that’s preferable to players contributing to the gold-selling “black market” and account theft.
  
  Q: What about future Pet Store pets?
  
  It's too early to say how we'll handle future Pet Store pets. We made this change in response to feedback from players looking for alternate ways to get the Pet Store pets, and we're always looking into other opportunities for improvement. We're interested in hearing what players think of the Guardian Cub when it launches, and we hope you'll have fun with this new flying friend.

  Funny how they, once again, stated that this RMT implementation was not because they wanted to do it, but because "players asked for it." :)
  
  It sure did cause a lot of uproar though. Players are reacting like Blizzard has defiled or tainted the game. It's inevitable though.. their existing Paid Services aren't as profitable now, and they're under direction from Vivendi to continuously find new ways to drive revenue.
  
  Unfortunately, because this is only ONE item, Blizzard will be benefiting from this RMT method far more than users will. With some many players attempting to profit from the pet (thinking that no one else will be doing it), the in-game price of the pet is going to plummet.
  
  Bashiok also wrote:
  

  TCG Loot card mounts like the Spectral Tiger have been BoE for a long time now (since patch 3.2), and that was and continues to be well-received, and as far as we've been able to tell hasn't had any adverse impact to the game or economy - despite them selling for sometimes astronomical amounts of gold.
  
  It’s potentially worth noting that no new gold is being introduced into the game's economy with those mounts or the new Guardian Cub pet.
  
  Our goal with the Guardian Cub is to provide alternative ways for players who don't want to spend real money to add these pets to their collection. Even though this has been available a while now with the TCG mounts, this is obviously a new kind of way to deliver Pet Store pets, and we're definitely interested to hear your feedback and ultimately see how this will play out.



• It's funny how players reacted saying "Blizzard is now making it LEGAL!" I hate it when people say "Blizzard making RMT legal".. seriously, it's just a policy. You can't get arrested for breaking a dress code policy at work.


• Other than that, it's been pretty quiet. I've gotten my hands on RAGE and will be playing that over the next couple weeks. No point in talking about the game though, there are a lot of good reviews out there that pretty much echo the same experiences I've had with the game. So far, it's a little boring unfortunately.

If you haven't watched this video yet, you should really check it out.



This is just the beta, and I'm hoping that this is just an "Act 1 thing". But it appears that there's not as much randomization or larger maps like what I was expecting.

The beta is much like a game on rails (i.e. linear paths) where all outside environments are the exact same design, but with random placement of trees and mounds. Dungeons have more randomization, but they still use fixed points and identical passageways, so they're fairly easy to navigate no matter how many times they are generated (i.e. there are points of reference that help you select correctly when given multiple choices.)

Boss encounter areas are also static. Looking at all of this tells me that botting will be easier than I anticipated, and model editing more useful. With significantly larger maps and heavy randomization, exploits become more difficult, but I suppose they took this approach to take load off their servers (and increase game efficiency) during the randomization process.

Update:

VoidTester (see comments below) has updated me to a blue post about the randomization concern. Apparently, it is limited to Act 1 and it was meant to ease players into the game through a guided experience in the beginning. But, zones are much more randomized in the other Acts. Awesome news indeed.

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.