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http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/1/4580084 ... kely-to-be
"While we can't talk about the details yet, it is unlikely to be a subscription-based MMORPG."

Soo... What it'll be, then? "SC universe"-based "pay2win" MMOFPS? With Kotick being at the helm of ActiBlizzard everything is possible now...
And about WoW, since they have to "beat it into the pulp" - will there be a major game engine rework (since original one is like 10 years old now, even though the renderer was improved in terms of performance and minor features)? Will there be an expansion which will somehow tie up the WoW universe and SC universe (in preparation for "Titan")?

If we go on Blizzard time, we'll have the answer to this question "when it's done".

So reading between the lines I say WoW has at least three more xpacs to it. Titan, I hope, is all new IP (I think Blizz stated this early on). Its about time Blizzard shook things up with new IP to move from Warcraft, Diablo, and Starcraft. Although I wouldn't feel entirely bad if it was Universe of Starcraft.

As for WoW getting a complete game engine overhaul, I doubt it. They have been releasing higher res models almost every patch and have promised highres player models at some point. If you look at Outlands in BC and then Pandaria you definitely see that they upped the polygons and added tons of new lighting/shading effects. One thing to keep in mind is that one of the reasons WoW is successful is because lowest common denominator PCs can run it.

Titan is, most likely, going to be completely different from anything Blizzard has already done. I believe, as tanker said, that this is being developed as a new IP and not a different genre within an existing one.

As for WoW, the complete game engine overhaul will be WoW 2 (although who knows when that will/would happen). The game is already pretty old, and having a successful MMO survive for that long has created interesting challenges, and that's not taking into account how MMOs have changed since release (such as free to play models).

I think we can expect at least two expansions for WoW in the works, a Diablo 3 expansion at some point, one more SC2 expansion, and then a solid release of...something. It could be Warcraft 4, it could be WoW 2, it could be a StarCraft spinoff (Ghost, please?), or it could be project Titan. I have no idea what is in store next from them.

They won't release a new RTS until at least 2-3 years after Legacy of the Void is released - which is still 1-2 years away, at least. A StarCraft ARPG would be pretty slick.

They mentioned thinking about doing a engine overhaul when they were working on Cata and said that since most of their userbase couldn't utilize it, so it wasn't worth their time. In other words they looked for a cop out in order to not spend money on it. Instead they completely redid the original continents. There is nothing stopping them from overhauling the engine, they just don't feel the need to do it (due to the lack of competitive pressure at the time and now cause users are quitting... wonder why). A new engine can be fully capable of running on old hardware, scaling just needs to be worked on. It's not like new engine = Crysis system requirements (which are actually pretty lax for Crysis 3).

Titan I doubt there is anything meaningful on. I'm pretty sure they scrapped and redid the game a few different times, the latest time after they dumped all the talent from the team back to which it came (this spring). I'm pretty sure we wont see anything till 2016, if they don't scrap it again. This is just another useless speculation thread.

As for WoW expansion packs? They're going to milk the **** out of that. I mean they split the level difference down to 5 per expansion, I imagine they'll do something stupid when they hit 95 like release booster packs for each additional level to 99. It's no longer about making a good game or giving users a good experience, it's about making as much money as possible off of it before it loses it's luster. Like a new whore you want to get your moneys worth out of before she ends up used and broken. I mean you guys heard about Blizzard thinking about adding a in game store, which is a f2p thing... on top of the pay subscription. They already practically have one. Making pay-ponies instead of content for users that already pay for it.

You know it's sorta interesting. When subscription fees were first introduced for MMOs, they were talked about as a way to not only pay for maintenance, but also for constant and continual development for a ever living, ever changing world. So far all I've seen them do with it is pocket every single dime. Guild Wars 2 does quite a bit better job without the monthly fee and they're still plugging away at it with a ridiculously aggressive content schedule. It puts WoWs huge lulls to shame. I'm not really sure where all the sub fees went, but it definitely didn't go back into WoW.

Bensam123 wrote:

You know it's sorta interesting. When subscription fees were first introduced for MMOs, they were talked about as a way to not only pay for maintenance, but also for constant and continual development for a ever living, ever changing world. So far all I've seen them do with it is pocket every single dime. Guild Wars 2 does quite a bit better job without the monthly fee and they're still plugging away at it with a ridiculously aggressive content schedule. It puts WoWs huge lulls to shame. I'm not really sure where all the sub fees went, but it definitely didn't go back into WoW.

Sub fees go to salaries, shareholders, profits.

Bensam123 wrote:

It's no longer about making a good game or giving users a good experience, it's about making as much money as possible off of it before it loses it's luster. Like a new whore you want to get your moneys worth out of before she ends up used and broken. I mean you guys heard about Blizzard thinking about adding a in game store, which is a f2p thing... on top of the pay subscription. They already practically have one. Making pay-ponies instead of content for users that already pay for it.

You know it's sorta interesting. When subscription fees were first introduced for MMOs, they were talked about as a way to not only pay for maintenance, but also for constant and continual development for a ever living, ever changing world. So far all I've seen them do with it is pocket every single dime. Guild Wars 2 does quite a bit better job without the monthly fee and they're still plugging away at it with a ridiculously aggressive content schedule. It puts WoWs huge lulls to shame. I'm not really sure where all the sub fees went, but it definitely didn't go back into WoW.

Seriously?? To each his own I guess. I have had more fun in the past 6 months after a year long break than I had the last two years playing since closed beta before my break.

Edit: You cite this a useless speculation thread when in fact it was a thread started based on comment/s Morhaime made in an article. But then you proceed to turn it into a Blizzard/ WoW bashing thread....good play.

It's useless speculation because they change what they're going to do with the game every six months like a teeny bopper trying to figure out what to wear to her first date, then they post it all over twitter just like said teeny bopper.

Sub fees go to salaries, shareholders, profits.

Yup.

They changed the focus of WoW almost every six months in closed beta. (heck they are still 'balancing' WoW in every patch) Its nothing new. When I got my invite to closed beta 10+ years ago, open beta was still a year out. There was a particular moment when they pretty much scrapped the gameplay for about 3 weeks and came back with a total redesign of it. And that's what they went with. So again this re-imaging/ redesign is nothing new for Blizzard its part of their iterative design process.

Speculation but:
-Previous investor conference calls / reports from Blizz have labelled Titan as "a future casual mmo"
-Jay "RMAH" Wilson is on the team
-Game was "scrapped" within 6 months of JW joining

I'm guessing that Titan was originally going to be WoW with heavily microtransactioned hats + pets (or whatever cosmetics), but with the wild success of the RMAH in D3, that they have opted to include that as a key mechanic of getting money from players, or a combination of both. I'm also guessing that art assets and story have been largely untouched, and none of that has been scrapped (but constantly tweaked), that what was scrapped was their economy model/code, and finally the actual gameplay / mechanics sitting on the backburner. Taking a look again at D3, it was clear that the actual mechanics were the least planned aspect, with wild wild changes to it being done in the 12 months before release, the item system being shallow and uninspired, and of course multiple elements just completely nonexistent at release (skills that don't work, no pvp, legendaries not only having zero unique stats but also bad stats in general).

Another thing I'm guessing is that Blizz is panicking at the art style of EQ Next, which is pretty much exactly how I imagined WoW2 / Titan to look. It's both high detailed and cartoony, has hooks for player cosmetics but also landscape cosmetics (read: microtransactions), and has melded the standard MMO playstyle with those like GW2 or an ARPG. That's not to say EQNext will be successful, but it just *seems* like exactly what Blizz is aiming for.

Whenever the reveal on Titan does happen, I'm not expecting anything revolutionary or truly exciting...except for the CGI cinematics, that will be amazing (and meaningless).

lilbuddhaman wrote:

but with the wild success of the RMAH in D3, that they have opted to include that as a key mechanic of getting money from players, or a combination of both.

How do we know this was that successful?

lilbuddhaman wrote:

Whenever the reveal on Titan does happen, I'm not expecting anything revolutionary or truly exciting...except for the CGI cinematics, that will be amazing (and meaningless).

I love cynicism! It's funny how well they do at cinematics.

The RMAH in D3 is probably mediocre at best. Personally I've spent a total of 5 bucks on it on things that ranged from .25-1.00. /shrug

I still assert, this "scrapping" is nothing to worry about all Blizzard games have been through this iterative process. Nothing to get "worried" about or even complain about until we get some concrete news or even some media on.

Hawkwing74 wrote:

How do we know this was that successful?

By many measures, it wasn't. D3's AH is bananas.

As for Titan...IT IS NOT GOING TO BE A HIGH FANTASY MMO.

Titan, from everything I've heard, is a new IP. Even if it wasn't, WoW is still functional. Yes, the engine is old, but it still works well, makes money, and has 7 million people STILL playing. It would not make any business sense to release a direct competitor to their own game. Even if Titan is a F2P microtransaction MMO, it will likely venture into SciFi as to provide a different product for the market and minimize the effect on WoW numbers.

Personally, I think that Blizzard will, eventually, release a WoW 2 as a replacement fantasy MMO, but that is going to be some time in the future. With resources working on Titan AND WoW, that doesn't leave a lot of people to develop a new MMO. Once they are done developing new WoW content, that is when I expect people to move to "WoW2". After all, so much has changed since WoW originally released (inside and outside of WoW) that a good replacement would need to be built from the ground up. And even if they reused existing assets, I am sure that the devs would do some things differently.

How do we know this was that successful?

Just throwing out wild numbers here, but if 25% ( i dunno what the real % is) of the 10million people who bought the game sold one piece of gear on the RMAH (@$1.00 to post + 15%) for $2.00 (a low end number), blizz would be looking at almost $3million. Lets just guess and say that 75% of that goes to service support / upkeep / paypal fees, you're still looking at $700k. Search a couple forums and you see that the reality of those that do buy/sell on the RMAH do many more and much higher transactions. Again, I'm just guessing, but I'd say blizz pulled in $2-4 million additional from the RMAH over the initial box sales. There is no breakout in their 2012 tax statements on RMAH money, so you can't get any real info from there, but I did look anyways and found this interesting snippet:
Net Revenues, Online subscriptions (in millions)
2012 - 986
2011- 1,357
2010- 1,230


Don't mean to derail the thread, but I'm wondering how long the powers-that-be will wait for Titan to "be ready". If WoW subs drop too much they might just decide that Titan needs to be out sooner than the devs think it needs.

tanker27 wrote:

So reading between the lines I say WoW has at least three more xpacs to it. Titan, I hope, is all new IP (I think Blizz stated this early on). Its about time Blizzard shook things up with new IP to move from Warcraft, Diablo, and Starcraft. Although I wouldn't feel entirely bad if it was Universe of Starcraft.

As for WoW getting a complete game engine overhaul, I doubt it. They have been releasing higher res models almost every patch and have promised highres player models at some point. If you look at Outlands in BC and then Pandaria you definitely see that they upped the polygons and added tons of new lighting/shading effects. One thing to keep in mind is that one of the reasons WoW is successful is because lowest common denominator PCs can run it.

I fully expect WoW to continue with it's current engine for at least 10 more years, with it's number of subscribers, especially in markets that can't really afford upgraded hardware to go with an upgraded engine it doesn't make sense to change it. See Everquest for more info, it's still profitable, the game population has more or less leveled off, it's coming up on it's 15th anniversary and the 20th expansion is about to be released, all with the original engine.

lilbuddhaman wrote:

Don't mean to derail the thread, but I'm wondering how long the powers-that-be will wait for Titan to "be ready". If WoW subs drop too much they might just decide that Titan needs to be out sooner than the devs think it needs.

Hopefully they learned from EQ2, it wasn't ready for primetime in any way when it was released, but WoW had arrived, so they released it. It had massive sales at first, everyone in EQ bought a copy, then realized it wasn't close to what they wanted out of a game. There was nothing about it that was broken, but it was hard in annoying ways, you started with nothing, not even a class, then you had to do annoyingly difficult quests to gain your archetype, and more annoying quests to get your actual class. The game was well designed and such, but it was 100% work instead of fun, the population numbers fell like a rock, after even the dedicated subscribers gave up after waiting a couple expansions for the fun to arrive. Fast forward to now, where they scrapped all of that and made it a game you can play any way you like and progress, it's fun, population is increasing, etc. Only took them 6 years or so to get it right.