Just like everyday, I checked my mail and today there was a very nice surpise there.

Erik from Project Titan Norge shared with me their version of Green Day's 'Working Class Hero' in the context of running Titan Fansites.

I feel ya bro! Good job!

It’s been a little while since we last updated this site, well *cough* maybe not a “little” but to our defense, we had to fight superhuman monsters that had occupied our keyboards, then the void tried to take us and a rabid raccoon was on the chase but we fought back!

And… what’s that? You don’t buy it?
Ok… we sadly admit… we slacked!

Hibernation is over though, and we commit to once again bring you Titan(ic) news as soon as possible starting TODAY!

Let’s get right into it with a quick roundup of facts and rumors we have up until now!

Titan will be based on a brand new IP
So, not a World of Warcraft expansion, not a Starcraft expansion, not a Halo MMO. Actually, nothing we’ve ever came across IP wise.

It is intended to coexist with World of Warcraft
A big bet for Activision Blizzard! Disregarding the latest downscaling of its subscription numbers (approx. minus 2 million since Cataclysm launched showing signs of stability in a bit over 10 million) World of Warcraft has proved quite resilient through its 7 and counting years of existence. Don’t forget all the quite promising MMO titles released through the years (see. LOTRO, Warhammer: Online, D&D: Stormreach and so on and so forth) they simply did not make the impact they were going for, stumbling upon the wall that WoW has built. Therefore saying that “Titan” will coexist with WoW is a two-way bet.
First of all, Titan must escape the fate of the other MMO’s that tried even matching the impact WoW made and reach a certain acceptable level. From the scattered words of developers, known to be a part of the Titan team, we understand that they are trying to make a ground breaking thing. A kind of game that the gaming community has never seen before. Lets assume they succeed! Here lies the other side of the bet: maintaining a high quality level in World of Warcraft, capable of keeping its subscriptions and player involvement –at least- as high, as it is today when it will have “Titan” as a competitor. Lets not forget, however different Titan will be, it is still a game and more important a MMOG. Are we in for the clash of the Titan(s)?

Titan targets a broader audience than WoW
Bobby Kotick sometime last year, admitted that Titan is being designed to target a somewhat broader audience. Whether that’s an age-wise broader audience, or an interest - wise broader audience (or a combination of the two), we don’t know. In my opinion both are welcome! Diversity never hurts! Younger gamers will want to focus on different aspects of the game while mature players might focus on more difficult scenarios, tackling harder situations that require a different approach. On the other hand we have players that prefer a more medieval setting, others that fancy powerful lasers, spaceships and aliens in a more futuristic setting and others that dig modern day warfare, with rifles, machine guns, tanks, the whole nine yards... How though, does one embed all these things in one game? That leads us to the next subject.

The Time  Travel scenario
There’s only one way for a game to cover so many settings and that is indeed time travelling. Jeff Kaplan, one of the most pronounced Game Designers in Activision Blizzard when asked whether Titan will be sci-fi, near-future, post-apocalyptic or historical responded “All of these combined” with a smile. Whether that’s true or false we cannot know for sure at this time, but it’s our best hint towards time travelling. It makes sense after all. It is indeed a great point of diversity within the game itself adding to the goal of a generally broader audience! Everyone grab a DeLorean!!!

In-Game Ads
In-Game ads are a rumor tending to become a fact about Titan. It all started from a job listing that was looking to recruit a “Franchise Development Producer” who amongst other assignments will be in charge of “Working with major consumer brands to facilitate product placement and licensing within the world of Blizzard Entertainment's next-gen MMO that enhances the gameplay experience”. Combined with the fact that most of the game will most likely take place in a post 19th century setting which can easily accommodate modern product ad placing, this rumor makes perfect sense.
So what does in-game ads mean for a “Titan” player? One thing is certain. Less subscription fees. As far as the impact this will have IN-game, personally I find nothing bad in walking through the realms cities and seeing real ads on the walls or on ad-boards. Now that I’m thinking about it, how cool would a “Red Bull Haste Potion” be? Anyhow... this probably gives a character, more choices as far as personalisation is concerned, or not... I understand there are lots of people who find this repulsive. I don’t blame you, and I totally see your point! But if the whole in-game ad scenario is true there will definitely be an alternative for you guys! Chances are that you’ll have the option to pay the regular subscription fee and make the ads vanish! Maybe you won’t even have to use your own money! You’ll probably be able to use the money on your battle.net balance which you’ll be able to fuel with the money you make out of the game itself, using the Real Money Auction House!

Real Money Auction House
Real Money Auction House (RMAH) is set to be implemented for the first time in Diablo III. Long story short, RMAH is just like the classic, in game, Auction House, but with real money (duh...). It essentially allows players to sell items or gold from the game to anyone in exchange for real life currency. RMAH has literally divided the gaming community in two. There is the side that is favor of RMAH and thinks that it is a great idea and that they will finally have a way to cash out on all those hours of hardcore gaming. On the other hand there is the side that finds it despicable as they claim it will ruin the game, as Chinese farmers will dominate the market once again (like they did with the -illegal- gold market on WoW) thus quickly deflating the economy on the RMAH, leaving little to no profit margins for the casual/hardcore player who bets on a rare drop to make some pocket money. They also believe the game will quickly grow unbalanced since people with more “real money” will have a huge advantage towards others that cant afford to buy items off the Auction House. Demonic or Divine? Your call... One thing is certain: if after its launch with Diablo 3, Blizzard believes it does its job, it stays and expands! My guess is that at first it will be implemented in WoW (Titan’s little guinea pig from now on) and will eventually be used on “Titan”. The gaming history will decide who was right and who was wrong!

And you...? Which side are you on?

Frank Pearce, one of the Blizzard's founders, talked to Gamasutra about WoW's subscribers and how Blizzard manages talent in order to be effective for years.

Diablo III Could Cannibalize WoW Before Titan

When Gamasutra asked Pearce if Titan might cannibalize WoW's players, Pearce replied:

Talent Transfer Within Blizzard

It is known that several of the original WoW developers have been moved to Titan's team and "It's been a very deliberate process," as Pearce says."Whether someone's leaving for another team or moving onto other opportunities outside of Blizzard, it's important for us to have a solid succession plan in place."

So, what do you think? Could Diablo III overtake a great percentage of World of Warcraft's playerbase?

Source: http://www.gamasutra...efore_Titan.php

Paul Sams, the Chief Operating Officer of Blizzard Entertainment, recently was interviewed by VentureBeat and Gamasutra in which among others he also talked about Titan, even though he didn't acknowledged the "leaked" codename (although Frank Pearce almost confirmed that codename) .

Just like any other Blizzard official that has talked about Titan, he really wanted to make sure that he got a few messages across. Basically that Blizzard is going to continue to support and produce content for World of Warcraft as long as fans demand since it currently has 12 million paying subscribers and that the new MMO is not going to be directly competitive with WoW but rather complementary.

Paul, also mentioned the assembly of a dream team that works on Titan and since most of them worked on the creation of WoW, they are really experienced and they intend to take advantage of that and apply things that couldn't be added to WoW.


Overall, Paul's words show great passion on the game as well as dare for innovation which is what we all hope for.

Sources: VentureBeat, Gamasutra

Mike Morhaime, Blizzard's CEO, talked yesterday on the Keynote of DICE 2011 along with other industry professionals. Thankfully, he mentioned some stuff about Titan and the design philosophy behind it, along with some hints about a past rumor.

The big news are surrounding the social aspect of the game, which Morhaime mentioned a bit and seem to bet a lot on it. (Hopefully social but not a la Facebook).

This paragraph immediately reminded me of a French leak that happened on the early 2010. The leak spoke of a distinction of social and combat life and although Morhaime didn't talk that much in-depth I'm starting to believe that leak is getting closer and closer to reality.

Of course, for yet another time he mentioned that Titan is not a "sequel" to World of Warcraft and that they envision these two games coexisting in the future. Nonetheless, they try to find way to take advantage of their knowledge and experience from WoW for Titan.

So, it seems Blizzard is trying to reinvent or boost the social aspect of MMOs with Titan, what's your take on it? Care for more ways to be social while beating down murlocs?

Blizzard announced quite early BlizzCon 2011 and as you might guess from above, it will be on the same place meaning Anaheim Convention Center in California on October 21-22, just one day prior to last year's BlizzCon.

Nothing more were unveiled in Blizzard's press release but we have a long way to go till then. Unfortunately, Rob Pardo said on an interview that most probably there won't be an announcement of Titan on this year's BlizzCon.

So, what do you expect from BlizzCon 2011?

It's official people, Titan is real and it's confirmed to be Blizzard's new MMO. During the VGAs, Frank Pearce confirmed that they are working on a new MMO property called currently titled Titan.

While it proved a bit that the recently leaked product slate is closer to reality than previously thought, (hopefully) don't expect Blizzard to stick with dates, their motto is known: "Release it when it's ready".

After the supposed leak of Blizzard's Product Slate another story arised around the mysterious name Titan showing up on the leaked slide.

Ensemble Studios (at that time part of Microsoft) was working on an MMO from 2004 to 2007 when it was cancelled. The interesting fact is that Ensemble's MMO had the code-name Titan as well. So, we just had a hint of Blizzard working on an MMO with the code-name Titan, when several years ago another studio was working on a similar project with the same name.

Check screenshots from early versions of Ensemble's Titan MMO.

I will admit that you see what you want to see but I will go this road anyway. So what links these two projects?

Code-name: Titan

Like mentioned above, both MMOs have the same code-name, but we should note one thing. During the development of Ensemble's MMO, there were some leaks of the project. The studio then decided to change the code name to Orion in order to deal with the situation. That does not prove much since the developers that were working on it, still refer to it as Titan instead of Orion.

Science Fiction theme

Ensemble's MMO started off as a "simple" SciFi MMO and later it was decided to use Halo's universe. BlizzMMO is also to be Sci-Fi themed. So both MMOs have the same genre.

Ensemble staff joined Blizzard

On 2009, Ensemble Studios was officially disbanded, at that time several people from Ensemble were hired by Blizzard. If you play World of Warcraft, you probably know Ghostcrawler (aka Greg Street), currently lead systems designer of WoW and former lead designer of Ensemble's Titan MMO as well.
Also, some artists from Ensemble are now working for Blizzard, as well as one of the lead programmers which is now the lead graphics programmer.

While from Blizzard's point of view, a respected game studio was working on a Sci-Fi MMO and disbanded, making available experienced professionals that have explored and faced the challenges of a Sci-Fi MMOFPS who could contribute their knowledge and save precious development time.

Halo & Bungie

Bungie is known for creating the Halo universe. Couple months ago a 10-year partnership between Activsion-Blizzard and Bungie was announced. I remind you that Ensemble's MMO was using Halo's universe. Interesting, eh?

Summing up

There are several hints towards the theory that a Halo MMO is being developed either by Blizzard or Bungie. But the reality is that at least by those two studios it's not happening. Why, you ask? Because it is already verified by Blizzard officials that their new MMO is a brand new IP and is made entirely from scratch.


What about Bungie? Couldn't Bungie make Halo MMO?
Most probably, no. On the press release of the 10-year partnership with Activision, it was mentioned that the deal was about "Bungie's next big action game universe". Also, Halo's IP belongs to Microsoft, so it is highly unlikely Microsoft will agree on licensing Halo and lose a big bunch of the pie.

So, it is obvious to me that while ideas from Ensemble's dead MMO may be used on BlizzMMO, it is almost certain that either of those studios will develop the Halo MMO.

Source: http://www.incgamers...alo-mmo-details

An English MMO site on China published a possible leak of Blizzard's product time-line for the next four years. This leak includes a product called Titan which seems to be Blizzard's next-gen MMO. Although, the document is dated 8 months old, there are some hints that could make it a real leak. Such as the WoW Brazil which is the Portuguese localization of World of Warcraft, a recent silent rumor. It is possible that it is indeed true and it's some presentation slide for executives but don't make any plans on it. So, here we go.

As you can see below, among other things, there is the new product called "Titan" which is supposed to launch on Q4 of 2013. It seems plausible but could be fake, since with some detective work i ended up on the same period of launch date as well (Release date ).



Blizzard's response was rather predictable:

What do you think of the name Titan and the associated date?

Thanks Tyler for the tip
Source: http://www.mmogamesi...ate-leaked.html via http://www.mmo-champ...t-15-Blue-Posts

With pretty much no new clue to go on with the detective work, things are almost the same. The last major "leak" was from the European division of Blizzard or Vivendi. It was about the game being an MMOFPS (Massively Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter) game.
Even if it's true it's probably safe to say it won't be something classic, but different.

You think it will be an MMOFPS, would you like something like that?

On the live stream interview on BlizzCon 2010, Rob Pardo talked a bit about Blizzard's NextGEN MMO. Bad news though, since he verified our worst fear, there won't be an announcement for another year and most probably not even on the next BlizzCon. Thankfully we got verified some rumors going around plus some new info.

• The game's development status is between prototyping and preproduction, while Frank Pearce said preproduction.
  
• They try to invent new game-play modes.
  
• There is an internal build of the game that is being tested inside Blizzard.
  
• Also, Frank Pearce verified that there are around 50 people working on the game.

On April 29, 2010, Activision Blizzard published a press release of a 10-year worldwide partnership with Bungie, the company that made the Myth games and of course the ultra-successful Halo games.

More specifically, the deal is about a new action game universe that will be exclusively published by Activision Blizzard on multiple platforms and devices. (hint 1) At the same time, Bungie will keep its interdependency as a company and the ownership of this new Intellectual Property (IP).

I published this post because in many sites i saw some rumors regarding Bungie's deal and Blizzard's new MMO. Basically saying that Bungie is taking part on Blizzard's next MMO development.

It is very clear to me that this rumor is 100% false for several reasons.

• Referring to "hint 1" above, on the press release of the deal between Bungie and Activision Blizzard, it was said:
  
  Blizzard's Quote: (Source)

  [...] 10-year partnership to bring Bungie's next big action game universe [...] Activision will have exclusive, worldwide rights to publish and distribute all future Bungie games based on the new intellectual property on multiple platforms and devices. Bungie remains an independent company and will continue to own their intellectual property.
  
  Meaning that the IP will be owned by Bungie and Activision Blizzard has in the most part the role of the publisher.
  
• During the past quarterly results meeting for investors, Kottick mentioned the project with Bungie as well as the Blizzard's new MMO, but separately as different projects.

What do you think? Is Bungie helping Blizzard with the new MMO? Personally i doubt it.

Activision-Blizzard's CEO Kotick talked a bit about Blizzard's next MMO on the Investors' Call for 2nd Quarter's resutls. While he didn't get into much details he confirmed that the game will be based on a brand new Intellectual Property, meaning completely new lore & story. While Zarhym have confirmed that in the past as well, some people didn't accept that (too much into World of Starcraft :P), so now it is 100% certain that the new MMO will use a brand new IP.

So, speaking of visibility, do you think the game will be announced on BlizzCon 2010, or we will have to wait some more?

Yesterday it was publicized by BlizzPlanet.com that Anaheim Convention Center's website had an event listing about BlizzCon 2010 for 22-23 October. (Click the image above for full screenshot.)

After that Blizzard responded:

Feels like deja vu...

Starting from today the site will be changing bit by bit with new features, content and better integration with our Wiki.

The whole site will be available throughout this period but there may be some bumpy corners :P