Titan: All current information, news and speculation

[Deleted]

I would love some Steampunk post-apocalyptic game, with giant Steam-powered beings (Titans) build after the apocalypse as moving cities and recolectors. Just my guess, that sounds and looks amazing in my head...

[noliel]

People should not take titan literally. Blizzard is known for codenaming their projects and the game might have nothing to do with the concept of "titans".

[Deleted]

People should not take titan literally. Blizzard is known for codenaming their projects and the game might have nothing to do with the concept of "titans".

I know, I know, I just loved the idea

[noliel]

so did i. was just a general reminder. many people take whats written here far too seriously and might drive off getting the wrong idea

[Deleted]

My Ideas for Titan

The world has been hit by an asteroid or something, and a large fairly big proportion of society decided to collapse. You play as a survivor of this catastrophe. you can be one of 3 "Races" and 5 Classes.

Races

Human- your a survivor of the main human cities in the world, and well Human.
Cyborg- Human with a large amount of machinery in the place of human parts, think Cyber men but not completely metal.
Feral- Animals that have been mutated by the after effects of apocalypse and now can think and have mind much closer to humans.

Classes

Mechanic- this class uses technology from destroyed labs to inflict damage. They have wrist mounted Tesla coils that shot bolts of Plasma, gravity whip that can lift objects and people into the air and bring them crashing down, an Energy Hammer that can emit shock waves when it hit the ground or can be used as a melee weapon.

Medic- These guys use old medicine to give themselves and allies energy boost, quick heals, cures to diseases. They could have belts filled with pills, vials of medicine, syringes etc.

(Basically what has been said by noliel)

Remnants of society are scattered through out the desolate landscape these are your quest hubs. there are a few places where people managed to prepare of the catastrophe and have got cities still running, floating in the air...

[tylen]

Now we are talking. The thing about climbing walls made me elaborate on that aspect. What will we see most in a post apocalyptic futuristic world? The remains and rubbles of insanely huge buildings, most of them probably crashed down in huge piles of concrete and overgrown in vegetation or simply covered in dust holding treasures of the past. The exploring in the game, climbing, moving objects out of the way, grappling down insane walls to reach hidden places sound already as something as much fun for some people (including me) to do as combat itself. Other aspects of the game will cover more strategical aspects like the clan management and NPC control / direction which i talked about earlier... Resource, power, food and water management along with construction, diplomacy, industry and other things would be just the thing for some people to look for in a game, people that might not be interested in combat.

The problem with current MMO's is that they all in general have one simple flat-lining objective to which they all boil down to: Combat. But fighting is not what playing a hero is about. Its about Exploration (real exploration not just traveling around sightseeing), building a settlement from scratch, coordinating a clan and fight together for a common purpose that really unites people to a real goal (not just looking for cheap thrills and collecting boring pixel loot over and over and oooooover.) What this scenario creates is a sense of urgency and plausibility for the players actions. A clan in a apocalyptic environment is faced with unpredictable problems like shelter, missing of food, guidance and protection from strong willed heroes and the recovery of lost knowledge to give hope etc etc. The possibilities for stories in such a world a endless too. You could even decide not to align to a clan at all too and just wander the wastelands and do odd jobs, or be a bounty hunter or mercenary renown for his skills! You could be a explorer who trades tech for weapons and food and water just to wander off into the wild. Some could be scientists exploring the changes that happened after the apocalypse and trying to fill out a journal or bestiary of new creatures and plant-life like a biologist or archeologist for lost culture. (finding newspapers from a few thousand years back and books etc which could hold valuable knowledge.) People could hunt for treasures etc etc etc.

Of course exploring all this possibilities would make one insane project, but in the end, wouldn't it be a really amazing game that would offer something for everyone? :P

True and I hope that the world would be REALLY huge, scaling in video/computer games only goes so far. I really hope Blizzard would set a record on amount of virtual space in a game! There would in return be only a few servers. It would be honestly amazing if the engine has the processing power to see mountain ranges/cities from almost the same distance as you would see it away in real life. This would relate back to the code name of "Titan" because it would probably express the titanic size of the world.


I like the idea of Post-Apocalyptic but I do think that this theme should play out through different lands you go to, this is so it won't be a visual repetition fest. If you look at original Azeroth it had an amazing variety of zones that ranged through all sorts of climates. I think Catacylsm was not only a re-make but a test aesthetically for Blizzard to see how they could design the world in an apocalyptic scenario, of course there have been limitations but each zone has been affected in some way or another.

Finally one of the greatest things Blizzard could achieve is to make the experience very unique. I think it would be amazing if they figured out to way to give a different experience for each place of the world were you start out based on your place of residence. For example people in America would live in a post-apocalyptic America (Could be broken down depending on size, I.E. South, North and West), people in China (same with America) would live in a post-apocalyptic China, People in Europe would be in a post-apocalyptic Europe etc.

The reason why Blizzard says the have a "Shell" of a game is because they have probably completed the mechanics but need the lore and zone design for the world. Blizzard could have development teams from around the world working on that respective section, because the developers would feel more familiar with the history, art style, and ways of their country/continent. Instead of having people talk common and orcish in game you would find people speaking English and other foreign languages, all on the same server, trying to work together or go against each other.

It would connect people to levels beyond what is seen now in MMOs! If you see the route Blizzard is taking with the new Battle.net and their games, it is basically them wanting to play with your RL friends. A more localized way of starting out the game would make it so that all the starters are people in your RL area, making the in-game world act as a post-apocalyptic parallel to the Real Life World. Blizzard HAS said that they want to make the Social aspect a HUGE component of this game, I think doing this along with the clan ideas would make the social aspect pretty big. (Remember how Blizzard has wanted to use Facebook/Real Names more for their site/games?)

This would help prevent issues such as Gold Farming and Hacking, well it would at least limit the amounts that happen (Hey why not ship Titan with an Authenticator?) Other sites that would be databases would have a harder time gathering information since the game would be so large, and different people from the world would be experiencing different parts of the game at different times.

Eventually players would progress to other parts of the world (Through built means of transportation), and the language barrier wouldn't be to hard to fix. Players would find translation books in game that would mechanically act as a translation device (Think about how quick Google Chrome can translate web pages written in other languages) and acronyms such as "lol" in other languages would receive translations to.

Finally as weird as this sounds, I really hope Blizzard doesn't have a system of leveling in this game. That would make the game a bit linear if you had zones based off of levels, and it they succeed having a game without levels then they have reached a new level for MMOs. There may be stats in game, but they would have to play a minor role. I would wonder though if they would do expacs or maybe if the game has so many subscribers and so much constant content that it wouldn't need any for at least a long time? But I don't know about that part. Over all I have huge expectations for this game and I hope that Blizzard could pull it off well!

[noliel]

Indeed.

Progression is a good thing in an MMO but relying on levels is something that has been used since ages while there were no alternatives to give strong progression elements from the world itself. Progression should be based on experience a player acquires, but rather then gaining levels the player should gain experience in the aspects he pursues, similar to EVE online were you choose in which area you want to train.

For example, a player that does non stop hunting would get better and better at it gaining attributes and develop skills that will help them in that specific task. A person who spends his time governing a clan would gain talents in diplomacy, economy or strategical warfare depending on how he governs his people. A medic would learn how to create better medicine if he focuses on healing and more powerful diseases / viral agents if he would focus on fighting the enemy. A melee warrior who would focus on movement would get faster and another one who would stand in the line of fire and protect his friends would grow tougher and tougher from his experiences.

Talking on the aspect of variety in the world: having sections based on current cultures is an excellent idea but should not be restricted by were you come from. The world should have zones that appeal to people from a specific demographic region of our world but everyone should be given the choice of where in there world they would want to start. Not every German would still be living in Germany when the catastrophe happened and we are already a pretty mixed society. (Also having the game split into factions that represent a country in the real world could be problematic and lead to alot of grieving and racist behavior among subscribers. Otherwise a an excellent idea to have variety.

Means of transportation would of course be rediscovered or reinvented. Hell people could refurbish quad-bikes at first and later move on to recovering more futuristic 'mounts' like hovering cars or even start using vehicles for other purposes such as trade and battle. (Imagine a fully fledged army of infantry and vehicles, each one controlled by players of the same clan in open battle.) How awesome would that be?

[Mynsc]

I also think we're going to see some impressive limit pushing from Blizzard when it comes to things like server capacity, world size and people in one place at the same time.

One of their main "whines" when it comes to WoW is that it's engine is old and rusty and because of it they can't do everything they want. I'm pretty sure they are keeping this in mind when working on Titan and considering that money and technology are not an issue, we are going to see impressive things.

As I see it, one of the main reasons that Battlegrounds and Raids are so important in WoW is exactly because of this engine / technology limitation. Given ideal conditions, open-world activities would be immensely more popular than instanced ones. We see evidence of this every day in EVE, where I really haven't heard anyone ask for instanced fights and we also saw (or still see I guess) in Warhammer Online. It's main attraction was the open-world RvR and my god, even with all the glitches and flaws, it was fun!

So for the first time since MMOs took shape, I think we have a game dev in the position to bypass the main limitations and bring us a trully next-gen MassivelyMORPG. Remains to be seen if this is their goal or not.

[tylen]

Indeed.

Progression is a good thing in an MMO but relying on levels is something that has been used since ages while there were no alternatives to give strong progression elements from the world itself. Progression should be based on experience a player acquires, but rather then gaining levels the player should gain experience in the aspects he pursues, similar to EVE online were you choose in which area you want to train.

For example, a player that does non stop hunting would get better and better at it gaining attributes and develop skills that will help them in that specific task. A person who spends his time governing a clan would gain talents in diplomacy, economy or strategical warfare depending on how he governs his people. A medic would learn how to create better medicine if he focuses on healing and more powerful diseases / viral agents if he would focus on fighting the enemy. A melee warrior who would focus on movement would get faster and another one who would stand in the line of fire and protect his friends would grow tougher and tougher from his experiences.

Talking on the aspect of variety in the world: having sections based on current cultures is an excellent idea but should not be restricted by were you come from. The world should have zones that appeal to people from a specific demographic region of our world but everyone should be given the choice of where in there world they would want to start. Not every German would still be living in Germany when the catastrophe happened and we are already a pretty mixed society. (Also having the game split into factions that represent a country in the real world could be problematic and lead to alot of grieving and racist behavior among subscribers. Otherwise a an excellent idea to have variety.

Means of transportation would of course be rediscovered or reinvented. Hell people could refurbish quad-bikes at first and later move on to recovering more futuristic 'mounts' like hovering cars or even start using vehicles for other purposes such as trade and battle. (Imagine a fully fledged army of infantry and vehicles, each one controlled by players of the same clan in open battle.) How awesome would that be?

Yep I agree with you on all of the points (And they are well thought out), and I am going to go back to the one of demographics.There would be no definite factions when you started out, only places of origin. In fact the game would never have any definite faction showing Horde/Alliance, it would be all reputation based on the factions you meet of each zone (And within that zone, not choosing between two countries).

Racism is a BIG issue that I nobody likes and neither does anyone, and I hope that this would reverse it and give people a better understanding of other culture's and a better appreciation for others views. If people are united playing the same game they already have something in common, and if given the right translation technology this would be a huge new technological improvement on MMOs.

I mean I didn't mean the starting area restrictions in a bad way, it would just give each player a more unique experience and players SHOULD have the choice were to start out and that is my bad on my part and I don't want any hatred to occur.I just hope that there will be a whole bigger element of playing with friends, while introducing you to others at the same time. The zone should be evenly balanced out and populated. There will always be databases and strategy guides for each game, but I would find it truly amazing if the game didn't have a definite strategy guide/database meaning so that you would have to dive directly into and do all the learning first hand.

There could be a more in-game database as weird as that sounds and people could write and publish databases in the game. It could be that if you take screen shots you could keep it in an in game camera/scrap book and eventually send it to publisher to print it in books that contain in-game player written guides on just about anything in-game. This could also eventually apply for recording stuff in-game and putting it on the in-game TVs, when the technology would reach that point again. Imagine an evil creature being killed in-game (Basically Raid boss) for the first time and it having amazing benefits (I don't know what they would be yet, but it would be bigger benefits then just having the joy that a certain clan got server first) for the world and the videos of that said raid are broadcasted around the entire world in rejoice!

Imagine getting paid tons in game by not only being good at your professions but by writing good guides about it as well, same would apply with raiding, and even finding bits and pieces of lore (This game would have to have ALOT of lore) and putting that into an encyclopedia. Eventually there could be a form of in-game internet as odd at the sounds but keep in mind it wouldn't be till far in the game were technology has eventually reached that point again. There may be actual databases online that copy it all from in-game but the fact that everyone could have the potential to take part in a database even in-game would be amazing.

I also hope that Blizzard takes bigger precautions such as issues of gold farming, it always ruins the moment when you see level 1 human warriors in SW laying down to spell out "BUY GOLD HERE". It would be a truly amazing game if Blizzard was able to somehow restrict account hackings/gold farming/power leveling (Again an authenticator that came with each copy would be great) which would stop power leveling for sure and as well as hacking (well there would be that slim .1% chance but still). It would be an ideal MMO to not have a real life money price tag slapped on in-game currency.

I hope Blizzard doesn't eventually do the Blizzard store sales with this, and I do think that a large part of their additional revenue would not only be what is seen in WoW now, but also from Product Placement as it is a futuristic version of Earth. Even look at this quote that was a requirement for a job being listed from Blizzard Work 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.



This would generate even more revenue based on who all sees it (Proportional to player base obviously) and depending on player size it could even be free to play if the product placement is well placed and people are alright with it based on the fact that it could potentially generate ALOT of revenue for Blizzard.

I saw the other post, and do hope and believe that Blizzard will break records in terms of Server sizes and even the size of the in-game world. A lot of people love Vanilla WoW because it was so large and they had that feeling of being new to the game. If Blizzard is able to create a world so large that you almost always have a feeling of discover then it would be amazing and thus the name "Titan".

Seeing the other posts here, gives me full faith on why Blizzard feels that Titan can eclipse WoW and they truly are setting the standard for the nex-generation. MMOs today have been following the formula of WoW, and I think that it is time to change that formula, well more like expand on that formula. We have made great posts and theories so far, so lets keep it up!

[noliel]

The good thing of a concept that is not level restricted and oriented for clans to gather together, and number having an effect is that newcomers would actually be sought after by clans and have a place in the game. Soldiers are always needed, no matter how experienced, you always need people to do crafting / development / exploration and there is no particular need to already have gained experience in those areas to start. The game would be nice for newcomers but definitely alluring to develop your character and give completionists the possibility to become really great in several areas of expertise.

Gold farmers should be kept away from the game by concept. Having it require to band together and actually do work that requires player interaction which is hard to automate you can make it difficult for gold-sellers to acquire in-game currencies easily by automating the process extremely hard. Of course having authenticators on top is icing on the account protection cake.

As for the action combat aspect. Blizzard could create every mob with specific 'vulnerable' points that players can find and exploit, and that is not restricted to the gun blazing solider but even could be implemented for medics that need to correctly aim at their victims as well as patients. Same goes for melee classes which should have spots they can target to strike on their opponent to inflict critical damage. Crits shouldn't rely on a dice roll but on were your character actually blows the enemy. If you hit someone in the head or vital organs its bound to be a "critical" hit and would give the game a rather high reward for skilled players. Implementing movement bumping of the aiming cursor could add additional difficulty and make running away from an enemy make it harder for them to hit the sweet spots and discourage jumping on the spot or "bunny jumping" or other lame tactics like running around an enemy in melee range like a drunk weasel.

Creating a ingame codex and database is an excellent idea indeed and could later be developed into a intranet for clans that have developed enough to have computers and communication systems invented and deployed. People could use that to facilitate diplomacy and trade.

Clans would make the game very very interesting in terms of warfare. Alliances can brake easily in times of crisis, people can exploit alliances to infiltrate spies in a clan they know they will turn on sooner or later. The bigger the clan the harder it is to protect against intelligence warfare and its harder to protect a large clan's secrets as there are many more ears listening. Hell someone could play independent from clans and simply broker information, if hes smart enough to acquire it :P

[tylen]

The good thing of a concept that is not level restricted and oriented for clans to gather together, and number having an effect is that newcomers would actually be sought after by clans and have a place in the game. Soldiers are always needed, no matter how experienced, you always need people to do crafting / development / exploration and there is no particular need to already have gained experience in those areas to start. The game would be nice for newcomers but definitely alluring to develop your character and give completionists the possibility to become really great in several areas of expertise.

Gold farmers should be kept away from the game by concept. Having it require to band together and actually do work that requires player interaction which is hard to automate you can make it difficult for gold-sellers to acquire in-game currencies easily by automating the process extremely hard. Of course having authenticators on top is icing on the account protection cake.

As for the action combat aspect. Blizzard could create every mob with specific 'vulnerable' points that players can find and exploit, and that is not restricted to the gun blazing solider but even could be implemented for medics that need to correctly aim at their victims as well as patients. Same goes for melee classes which should have spots they can target to strike on their opponent to inflict critical damage. Crits shouldn't rely on a dice roll but on were your character actually blows the enemy. If you hit someone in the head or vital organs its bound to be a "critical" hit and would give the game a rather high reward for skilled players. Implementing movement bumping of the aiming cursor could add additional difficulty and make running away from an enemy make it harder for them to hit the sweet spots and discourage jumping on the spot or "bunny jumping" or other lame tactics like running around an enemy in melee range like a drunk weasel.

Creating a ingame codex and database is an excellent idea indeed and could later be developed into a intranet for clans that have developed enough to have computers and communication systems invented and deployed. People could use that to facilitate diplomacy and trade.

Clans would make the game very very interesting in terms of warfare. Alliances can brake easily in times of crisis, people can exploit alliances to infiltrate spies in a clan they know they will turn on sooner or later. The bigger the clan the harder it is to protect against intelligence warfare and its harder to protect a large clan's secrets as there are many more ears listening. Hell someone could play independent from clans and simply broker information, if hes smart enough to acquire it :P

True very good ideas here. It would be hard to place more limitations on clans from having them get to big and out of control. It would be interesting though that if the world is huge enough you could claim in-game pieces of land. You could also have the clan treated as even more as a sort of faction having your clan even have reputation with NPCs Faction/clans so that they can recognize you as being part of an enemy clan.

One way to tune down clan sizes is to provide not as big as an incentive to role an alt and instead give more content for one to experience on only about 1 or 2 characters at the most. Classes would be determined by the pathways that you would take, and with a non-level based path of progression one would probably be able to experience all the zones. Plus this would make the game so that players are even more dependent on one another to survive.

The idea of a non-RNG based combat system sounds pretty amazing, and if the new engine is powerful enough this may be a reality for the game. And looking back earlier you could have the environment play a much larger role in the game rather then just as a means of line of sight for the opponent. Being able to pick up, run on, blow up, etc. with objects around you would be pretty interesting. In terms of dying, it should instead be harder to die but there should be a more severe punishment for dying instead of a standard corpse run/rez sickness.

Clan warfare would be pretty interesting, but what would they fight over? It would either be land, items, currency, or honor. It would be interesting if players could spy on other clans and be given the abilities to assume another player's appearance and name to temporarily breach their clan. A spy's most common objective is intelligence and assassination. Assassination would to get even with clans by killing another's leader, it could give some type of benefits to the given spy and his/her clan.

The intelligence a spy would obtain could either be plans, research, and that given clan's vulnerabilities. Clans would have to progress to gain measures of securities against given spies of enemy clans. Now lets elaborate on these points for what clans have of value:

Plans:
Plans could be first be attack plans of when that clan is to engage is PvP/PvE combat, if it is recorded down in-game about a week (Or change the amount of days) in advance they would gain bonuses for being prepared (It could be proportional to how far in advance it is planned to a certain point) I.E. additional NPC mercenaries for PvP or stat/damage increases for PvE. It would encourage more in-game planning, and there could be Plan Bs which wouldn't give as much a benefit but could be use as an alternative if nobody is able to show up for that given event.

The second type of plans would be emergency plans, and this would be what is to happen if the clan headquarters is invaded. This plan would designate which players would gain benefits (Presumably officers for better defense and since they are higher up) and which types of NPCs would spawn to defend the clan's headquarters. It would also designate where the contents of the bank would go for safe keeping and were the point of refuge would be, having an emergency plan of this (Again it would be planned by means of in-game) would give clans advantages such as quick transport of the clan bank's items to the given refuge point. Finally it would designate who would be in charge if their is an absence of the leader (As in being offline/Being unable to lead because of a penalty of in-game death).

Research:
Having clan's would mean they would want to have research projects to their advantage. They could be attempting to gather a certain material(s) to create new technology, and attempting to combine these materials in a way to create that technology. This technology could either be offensive (I.E. weapons/damage increase) defensive (I.E. healing/ ways to increase a clan headquarter's defense) or utility (I.E. A new type of transport/a way to gather materials). Some clan's could follow a more aggressive research path while others follow a more passive research path. When the research is done the clan could sell the tech for money/resources/alliance to other clans and players.

Vulnerabilities:
Clans would always be in need of improving their weakest point, for example one clan could focus their research on gathering and professions while having no defense what so ever. The clans could hide their weak points and try to solve them privately. Other vulnerabilities could even include social issues that are going on with the clan drama wise and which players don't get along in the clan, and thus being exploitable to the spy's advantage.


So those are the three main things it seems that a clan would have to protect and they would even ally with other clans for advantages. Hopefully Blizzard would design a way to prevent clans from getting way to big and it would be helpful if they did so. Clans could have tech races to use developed weapons against each other/ on raid bosses, clans could engage in trade of resources, and even form alliances to fight as a team. This would make clan spying all the more interesting and the clan would have to improve their ways to counter spying on them as well.

[noliel]

Politics would be a very interesting factor as well. You could decide on how to rule the clan, you could apply monarchy were a single leader makes all the decision, a smart move if you have one person that is really good at this task for example. Or you could work on a council or even a clan-wide open decision making process. This politics system would mostly be run by the players themselves and would simply entailor the decision making process for their clan. there should be tools that help with politics like a voting system and NPC controls for the leadership that could even be divided into subsection like economy, diplomacy and military each with their own representatives.

Military leaders could decide to be more strategical or more heroic. Either staying at home or behind the front lines and analyzing the running of a battle making smart decisions to keep his men safe or attain a certain goal at all costs (being able to mark targets from a tactical map that then would be transmitted to players, marking monster that were assigned to them on their hood or something) or risk it all and charge with their fellow warriors into battle to boost morale.

The diplomacy leader could also be either reserved or more involved with the process, traveling to enemy towns as a diplomat and try to negotiate peace or establish the terms for a cease fire (Which could be a sheme only to be broken to gain an advantage). However people allying with clans and then turning on them would obviously gain a really untrustworthy reputation and might even make small clans band together and start a 'crusade' against the liars ;D

Economy would be a really important factor to control and require a smart person or council to execute effectively. They would be able to assign importance on materials required to achieve the next goal on improving infrastructure and technology to enhance clan growth and NPC effectiveness at producing vital survival goods like food and water while still advancing the clan in terms of defense or offensive technology, or ignore those two aspects all together as already mentioned above and simply BUY their military protection from mercenary players or military clans. Alot of fun could come out of this, like a military clan trying to squeeze out as much goods out of their protectorate as possible or the other way around the economic clan turning on their former protectors buy paying another strong clan to go in and wipe them out. Might is not only military, but goods and tech themselves present as powerful an army as weapons and armor for soldiers, if used right.

Selfish reasons aside there will of course be clan that genuinly trust each other and grow strong and allied over months and then years, creating bonds that might be so strong that no price can brake them. clans that would gather together and then let democracy and the advancement / rediscovery of human greatness be their objective. Or simply to be able to beat any enemies that might appear in a PVE environment and profit from their defeat.

As for military conquest, destruction should be part of the equation but something handled with restriction and with the possibility to appease a furious allmighty attacker by laying down weapons and surrendering to the attacking clan. Clans should never change ownership but could be "annexed" to clan that conquered them, becoming controlable by their leaders and serving as a puppet for that clan. People could try to rebel and retake their clan or simply abandon it and wander off into the world in search of a new clan that would accept them, should the condition in the conquered clan become unbearable under tyranny. Of course they would not do so before letting the world know about how evil the clan that conquered them is to the world and carry a grudge against them for the following years and attempt to exploit it. (maybe trying to infilitrate and sabotage the clan that destroyed them a few weeks later, stealing from making an agreement to spy on them for a rival in hopes for revenge ;D

All this options bring one thing to the table: Life. What better world for people to join together in then a intensely dynamic player driven world were everything you do could have consequences. Where you must think very strongly about what decisions to make, or else they might come back to bight you in the butt.

[Deleted]

I really hope they go All out on this one.

[tylen]

The end quote does mean a lot, to have a game where every decision you make would have an outcome. Not only would this be an outcome in relation to NPCs but also the other part of the environment with other players. Blizzard has probably thought of loads more of what can be done with clan politics and it will blow us away when it is released.

What I am also curious about now is how the story of the game will work. If you look at the timeline it looks like it is only 1 game to be released in the new few years of the Titan MMO. Would this be an MMO that requires no expansions? Its money be from basic micro-transactions, Subscriptions, and most importantly well done product placement. Anyways back on track with how the story would work. The idea of having a bunch of expansions at one point would scare newcomers in to not joining, as well as if there were to be levels.

What we have now in MMO story-telling (well I am looking at WoW) is the characters joining along with the ride of the hero. For example in Icecrown Citadel it is known as Tirion killing the Lich King with a bunch of Heroes or in Black Temple Maeiv & Akama killing Illidan with back up from heroes. Instead lore would officially recognize the clan of heroes who killed them first, but there can be exceptions for replays for other clans (but second and beyond wouldn't get world first recognition) What if the servers are strictly RP? This would have you choose a first and last name for your character and would relate to the fact that you would have little or no alts, to make one's alias more authentic.

The story would be influenced by the player base of the world, in-game players who slayed stuff would become officially recognized lore-wise in later patches. Guild Names would also have to follow a strict RP naming code, and would have to have private sponsors (Or none) to make them seem more authentic. There would have to be limitations from having one clan becoming the top clan or most well known but I think if the politics system is done right, it would work out well.

The game would progress by not as frequent but large patches. It would introduce new abilities/content/items as the first of the clans would reach that level of progress. Lands would be properly adjusted in terms of what happens to it lore wise and new places would be added as the technology would let them. Books could come out with actual in game player characters being included in the lore. This again would have to take on a strict RP concept, but if done well would offer a whole new level of immersion and also make decision making feel all the more critical. Also relating back to the concept of death in-game that it would be a lot more rare, but quite a bit more crucial once one would die.

This also is interesting in terms of the fact that Blizzard can set the pace for the maximum of which players can progress (well all developers can) they will indeed set a whole new standard for MMOs, and even re-define gaming in general as we know it. If the revenue makes it powerful enough, we may be able to stream the game through a newer version of the Battle.net Client (Think Steam+OnLive)

I am really curious though what would happen at the end of the game's life, when every clan would reach their technological pinnacles, maybe they would even develop and use the technology to expand in to space or destroy other clans setting them back gain. If they expand in to space then that could be the theoretical expansion pack, but it could yet again be another expansion pack. It would be nice to have it so that all players who would just play a single game fee and monthly fee would have as just an equal chance as all other players in the game to progress.

Finally if the engine is coded right, the AI in the game could advance for years to come. To the point were they can fluently pronounce your character in-game and remember their exact move, as well as predict it. Maybe it could expand platforms based on what the new consoles would be able to do (Because it is nex-gen) Maybe by expanding platforms it would help merge computer and console gaming together, since gaming consoles are computers!

[Mynsc]

What we have now in MMO story-telling (well I am looking at WoW) is the characters joining along with the ride of the hero. For example in Icecrown Citadel it is known as Tirion killing the Lich King with a bunch of Heroes or in Black Temple Maeiv & Akama killing Illidan with back up from heroes. Instead lore would officially recognize the clan of heroes who killed them first, but there can be exceptions for replays for other clans (but second and beyond wouldn't get world first recognition) What if the servers are strictly RP? This would have you choose a first and last name for your character and would relate to the fact that you would have little or no alts, to make one's alias more authentic.

The story would be influenced by the player base of the world, in-game players who slayed stuff would become officially recognized lore-wise in later patches. Guild Names would also have to follow a strict RP naming code, and would have to have private sponsors (Or none) to make them seem more authentic. There would have to be limitations from having one clan becoming the top clan or most well known but I think if the politics system is done right, it would work out well.

While your ideea is great and I do hope game devs are going to be headed in this general direction, I do see some problems. For instance, it might limit the story a bit... what if the writers want to kill or turn to the dark side the slayer of some powerful beast / villain. What would happen to that character ? What if the player would not agree with the new twist ? And even more troubling... will writers have to consult every player that had a world first kill on lore issues ?

Plus it takes the shine of the story a bit... Thrall would not be the Thrall we know and love if he wast just another player character that got a couple of world firsts. Most fantasy stories need to be based on strong "pillars", on heroes that are waay above the level of the reader (player) for them to have the desired effect.

One way of integrating players with story that I'm a fan of is a strong political system. This way villains, beast and heroes stay somewhere up on their pedestal, free to be manipulated by the writers in any shape or form, but players get in on the lore action by making their own stories: dictatorships, flourishing democracies, revolts, civil wars, backstabbing, alliances etc.

[noliel]

Player heroes should indeed not be the main driving character focus as they are unreliable. What would happen if thrall suddenly decided he didnt wanna play anymore? But you have a strong point. Players should matter and be reflected in the story. We could form alliances with specific hero clans that have a definitive goal. Becoming an ally of a hero would not be easy, and even then you would still just be a "sidekick" type of character in the story and assist the hero in his quest for glory or even stab them in the back by being selfish or whatever. The system should allow many clans to ally the same hero of course but that should not influence their personal standings between each other.

The friend of my friend should still remain my enemy if he was my enemy.

[tylen]

True the story would have to remain unique but also inclusive of players. I wonder how many features from WoW this would start out with. Would there be an LFD? Would instances/raid remain the same? There could be a bigger shift towards outdoor raids, with a way to include everyone in the loot. With a new engine there could hopefully be a potential for new mechanics of PvE.

Questing would be one thing that I really do hope they would change up. Many quests are "Kill X amount of creatures" or "Gather X amount of items" They could hopefully make quests non-mandatory (although they are never mandatory) but re-design the whole idea of questing. Maybe there could be less quests but when one goes on a quest it would be a lot more epic. For example a gathering quest wouldn't have materials spawn for you to collect but rather already collect materials for that given quest, and the quests could also be reactionary to the world how it progresses so it couldn't be tracked in an online database.

Raiding would probably remain the same but they would have to innovate new mechanics with a new engine. Also instead of distinct 10/25 man raids there could be an accommodation system. This could work so that for each player who joins (minimum 10, capping out at 25/40) the boss increases in X amount of health/Damage done/amount of adds that spawn (and their strength) it would be a formula rather. This would try and help prevent issues such as carrying players in raids due to the room for extra spaces (Such as guilds can carry players who pay) military clans could be used for protection.

[Mynsc]

My gut feeling tells me that "raids", in their classical WoW meaning, are not going to be a part of Titan. The big guns at Blizzard have said that they are not making a WoW2 and that they hope the new mmo will be an alternative and not a replacement for their current juggernaut. So introducing the same old mechanics, even with some improvements here and there, would be against these statements.

I too hope for more open world mechanics. "Raids" could be about fighting for territories and resources, against both AI and other players. Especially since, atleast in theory, a futuristic scifi universe usually centers around these types of fights and not on killing dragons and old Gods holed up in some deep dark dungeon.

[Nition]

has been speculation that it will be a halo mmo (according to Legendary and MikeB akaFony)

[Deleted]

If speculation is true, sounds like a Fallout MMO, which, isnt bad