Blizzard Cancels Titan

It was the MMO that none of us were supposed to know exists, but now Blizzard have announced that they’ve cancelled Titan, their sci-fi massively multiplayer game.

The idea that they’ve publically cancelled an unannounced game should give some indication to just how terribly kept this secret was. While there was never any solid details released – possibly because it changed direction several times – the code name and the idea that it was a sci-fi MMO of some sort was pretty constant. It had been in development for close to a decade.

Speaking with Polygon, co-founder of Blizzard and CEO Mike Morhaime explained why the game was binned after such a large investment of both time and money:

We didn’t find the fun. We didn’t find the passion. We talked about how we put it through a reevaluation period, and actually, what we reevaluated is whether that’s the game we really wanted to be making. The answer is no.

With World of Warcraft, Blizzard created something that launched the MMO genre to an entirely new level. For that reason alone, a follow-up was always going to be a difficult product to ship. Morhaime continued:

I’m not saying we’re an old rock band. But you watch documentaries about The Rolling Stones or U2 or these bands that have lasted for a while. And there’s times where they just drive each other batshit crazy. For as good as they are and the experience they have, sometimes you just don’t find it, and you’ve got to get out of the damn studio and go have a beer and regroup.

In many ways, Titan was that for us. We took a step back and realized that it had some cool hooks. It definitely had some merit as a big, broad idea, but it didn’t come together. It did not distill. The music did not flow. For all our good intentions and our experience and the pure craftsmanship that we brought together, we had to make that call.

It’s likely, as often happens in the game industry, that someone who has been a part of development will leak various bits and pieces on Titan in the coming months and years, so don’t expect this to be the last we hear about it. For now though, it seems unlikely we’ll ever get to play Blizzard’s ten year developed MMO.