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Titan MMO announcements at Blizzcon

Oct 21 2011 05:16 PM | mynsc in Blizzcon

Finally some real updates! Scroll down to the end of the article to read them ( + video ).The lock on Titan info has been nothing short of perfect lately and this usually means that any announcement is still quite a while away. Even more, they came out and said that there will be no official discussion about Titan at this year's Blizzcon.So do not expect major reveals... the focus will be on WoW, D3 and SC2.What we should expect are tiny little teasers and hints, like we got last year. Maybe a bit more consistent, since they're one year deeper into its development.If you're interested in watching the festivities yourself, my previous post has all the details, including a full schedule.

Titan @ Blizzcon coverage  

Day one #1.

Not related to Titan, but going to mention it because Titan Focus called it first (except for that huge but mostly unknown leak in March): Mist of Pandaria now officially confirmed as WoW's next expansion. It's going to focus on the war between Alliance and Horde... sounds great to me, hopefully they will deliver on this!Day one #2. Mike Morhaime was at the interview stand inside Blizzcon for 15 minutes. Unfortunately, he was asked about Warcraft 4 (about which he said in no unclear terms that is not happening while SC2 is in development) and not about Titan. Missed opportunity!He did say that he's not a fan of the F2P model and that Blizzard is trying to compete at the high-end of the market so he doesn't see F2P in the company's future. Was he including Titan too in this? Seemed like it. Here's his entire answer:


 

 

Day two #1.

Looks like their mouths are dead shut when it comes to Titan at this year's Blizzcon. Frank Pearce (Blizzard Co-Founder) was asked about the game during an interview and he pretty much refused to say anything about it, except that it is indeed true they are working at it...He did seem genuinely excited about it and I'm sure he wanted to give us something to chew on for the rest of the year (he did before), but aparently the Public Relations department wears the pants in the company. :)


 

Day two #2.

Thanks to Rob Pardo, Executive Vice President of Game Design at Blizzard, we have an update on how development at Titan is going:

  • there are currently around 90 developers working on the project, up from 40-50 one year ago.
  • it's in pre-production R & D (research and development) phase right now, but they're looking to go into full production as soon as possible.
  • they're not currently specifically planning on getting it out for consoles too, but it is something to consider further down the road.
  • "probably unlikely" for next year's Blizzcon... they feel they have always announced their games too early in the past, so now they want to see how much they can hold out with this one.
  • very big game, with brand new technology, it's important to first get in place all the tools needed by the artists.
  • people won't expect what will be coming, when they'll finally announce it.






6 Comments

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Symptom
Oct 23 2011 04:46 AM
Awesome. I somehow missed the Rob Pardo interview and that's the only one that really mattered. 90 devs... Blizz pushed the big red button. Unlikely announcement for next years Blizzcon with all of those devs? This game will be massive.
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mynsc
Oct 23 2011 11:39 AM
The interview took place right after the SC2 final between Nestea and MVP.

I was thinking the exact same thing...90 devs for a game that's not out yet (so they don't need any maintenance, customer service people) is huge. And they're still hiring for it so I'm sure they'll be 100+ by 2012.
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Sarcryss
Oct 24 2011 01:45 AM
He said they're mainly working on research and getting the tools ready for the full production phase, so I figure there is plenty of stuff to do. May already be working on the engine, they have to modify existing internal tools or even create new ones from scratch so they can concentrate on the game itself once they go full-steam in production phase. And we don't know how those 90 devs are split up on the different departments - art, systems, content, sound, lore/story, ... I guess everyone working on the title in some way counts as a "dev" in this case, but still impressive. No idea how much resources are needed for such a titan (ha-ha...) of a project.

Oh, and last but not least I bet they're monitoring other games to distill new "lessons learned" from those.


And first post, yay! o/
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mynsc
Oct 24 2011 01:57 AM
Welcome! :)

Oh, and last but not least I bet they're monitoring other games to distill new "lessons learned" from those.


Depends how innovative Titan is... if they are indeed making something completely fresh, it's hard to look at others and learn from them.

As a reference for the number of devs... WoW had 140 in 2008. So 90 is not a very big number, but it is nonetheless impressive, considering they haven't even entered production yet and are still hiring.
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Sarcryss
Oct 24 2011 02:47 AM
They already have a lot of insight on which design decisions worked out and which didn't - be it from personal/in-house experience (on other games) or other companies succeeding / messing it up. There's always something you can take away, but it may well be a bit of contemplation needed to pick the right degree of abstraction ;)

Concerning WoW development (and related) team size, there also was an interesting article on gamasutra in 2009
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mynsc
Oct 24 2011 03:29 AM

There's always something you can take away, but it may well be a bit of contemplation needed to pick the right degree of abstraction ;)


That's true I guess... nicely said.

Will take a look at the article in the morning... it's way too long for this late hour. :D
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