[Megathread] Titan Speculation

[Goosebump]

Not a fan of the whole MMOFPS possibility personally - I hope it's an MMORPG. If it is some spin-off of Starcraft Ghost then at least it can be soaked in all the Starcraft goodness. If it was basically WoW but in the awesome Starcraft universe and lore, units, races etc, I'd be totally hooked on to it - play off your strengths Blizzard!

I'd be far more concerned with them moving to a battle.net subscription model for every one of their games tbh. They've already totally lost the eSports crown to Riot Games and looking to charge a sub for Starcraft down the line might be the final nail in the coffin. I enjoy the SC eSports scene but I worry for it moreso with this rumour. Mercifully these are just rumours of course but still...

[Deleted]

Because generally they tell their shareholders important things during earnings calls or make press releases? You think they have shareholders who aren't fans? >.>

Yes? Is that a serious question? Isn't their majority shareholder Vivendi? Don't you think they could tell them more info than they actually tell the public?

[Edge-]

Yes? Is that a serious question? Isn't their majority shareholder Vivendi? Don't you think they could tell them more info than they actually tell the public?

Erm...Vivendi owns them...So...um...That's kinda like...their boss and all. I really don't think Vivendi gives a shit about anything other than the usual parent company deal which breaks down to, "Show us how you are doing now, and show us how you are going to continue to make money."

[Deleted]

Erm...Vivendi owns them...So...um...That's kinda like...their boss and all. I really don't think Vivendi gives a shit about anything other than the usual parent company deal which breaks down to, "Show us how you are doing now, and show us how you are going to continue to make money."

They own them because they're their majority shareholder. And if they really don't give a shit, like you say, which I doubt, then why does it matter what they tell them.

[Edge-]

They own them because they're their majority shareholder. And if they really don't give a shit, like you say, which I doubt, then why does it matter what they tell them.

Right you are on that, I blanked for a second.

Regardless, I'm pretty sure that any information like that would need to be made public. If I'm not mistaken, that could essentially amount to insider trading, which is kinda illegal >.> (And I don't see why shareholders would care about the lore/name of a game)

[Wilian]

How do you know they're telling the same thing to their shareholders as they're telling their fans?

Because it's public so all shareholders who cannot be in place themselves can listen to it. You can download the soundfile for 2010 Q2 earning calls and wade through hours and hours of talk about anything that's related to business side of Activision-Blizzard from their archives.

[Conbot]

Because generally they tell their shareholders important things during earnings calls or make press releases? You think they have shareholders who aren't fans? >.>

Shareholders don't care what they make. They care that the game will make a significant return on their investment. Blizzard is obligated to inform their shareholders as to what they are doing, but it's not like some suit cares about the plot of this new game.

[Wilian]

Shareholders don't care what they make. They care that the game will make a significant return on their investment. Blizzard is obligated to inform their shareholders as to what they are doing, but it's not like some suit cares about the plot of this new game.

It doesn't matter what shareholders actually care about. It is ILLEGAL to tell them things that are not absolutely true regarding the company.

[Deleted]

It doesn't matter what shareholders actually care about. It is ILLEGAL to tell them things that are not absolutely true regarding the company.

I'm not an expert on law, but I can very well imagine that this only relates to things like numbers, because that's kind of important. I mean here's the thing: companies don't always reveal their projects right away. How long have they internally worked on WoW before they revealed it to the public? Things like subscription numbers - yeah that's important. If they claim they have 12 million subscribers and in reality only have 100000, yeah that's bad. Stockholders would have a reason to feel cheated, because they bought Blizzard's stocks. They invested money and they did it because they thought it was worth investing into. They did it because they thought one of their games was doing well. So subcriber numbers can be relevant to whether someone buys their stocks or not. So is it also relevant whether a game they've been working on, that nobody has seen any footage of yet anyway, is based on some tiny bits of lore and maybe concept art from a game that was published almost 20 years ago (I'm assuming Blackthorne here) or if it's something completely new? Does knowing whether it's an already existing IP, or not, tell you, if that game will be successful or not? Maybe a little bit. But I think as long as you don't know the exact franchise and have seen at least something of the game you can't really judge whether the game looks promising or not. So the stockholders, just like us fans, are pretty much in the dark as to what this game is anyway, and have no idea if it will be a success or not. And this is because Blizzard is withholding information about the game.

And look at it this way. If they actually planned a Blackthorne MMO and would come out and say it's an already existing IP, wouldn't then a lot of people assume SC, WC or Diablo? So that is also misleading.

[BenBos]

They did say it would be kind of like a First Person Shooter MMO, I'm thinking Starcraft would be ideal for this type of thing.

1. It is a new IP. Confirmed 10.000 times already over the last 3 years.

2. It is very casual with many options both for hardcore as for softcore players. (source : Kotick)

3. blizzard spoke about a HUGE project attracting ALL players. Much bigger than WoW or "anything they ever did..."

So with this in mind we can delete science fiction (much too niche)' we can delete First Person Shooters as these games are hardly played by women or elder people. We can delete browser games too (seen by the scope and production resources).

----

Titan will probably be set in early to modern times. It will include all kinds of different MMORPG play and it will be based on their NEWEST backbone structure seen in D3 and MoP: ONE centralised server for one continent, regrouping all the players in whatever content/level/region they play.

Since Blizzard spoke about possible product placement in their new designed games, expect to see publicity adds popping up in this new MMORPG. For this I think their setting will be modern times (30's) and/ or a near future setting.

But NO SF and certainly NO shooters and NO web game.

Perhaps Lovecraft ? (since it is license free and older than 75 years and still set in more modern times allowing publicity for Coca Cola and General Motor Cie). Salient detail: Bobby Kotick resides now in the board of Directors of ... Coca Cola...(not kidding).

[Vankrys]

1. It is a new IP. Confirmed 10.000 times already over the last 3 years.

2. It is very casual with many options both for hardcore as for softcore players. (source : Kotick)

3. blizzard spoke about a HUGE project attracting ALL players. Much bigger than WoW or "anything they ever did..."

when a game is so highly overhyped, it almost always disappoint.

a factor of WoW success was especially that nobody expected them actually. i have no doubt titan will be a good game, should be after 5-6 years of devellopement, but when you talk about a "HUGE project attracting ALL players. Much bigger than WoW or anything they ever did...", you're setting yourself up for huge letdown.

As always with everygame, there will be enthusiat that will think it's the best thing ever, other that will say that wow was far better than this "crap".

[zera]

Starcraft ghost. gogogo

[Goosebump]

when a game is so highly overhyped, it almost always disappoint.

a factor of WoW success was especially that nobody expected them actually. i have no doubt titan will be a good game, should be after 5-6 years of devellopement, but when you talk about a "HUGE project attracting ALL players. Much bigger than WoW or anything they ever did...", you're setting yourself up for huge letdown.

As always with everygame, there will be enthusiat that will think it's the best thing ever, other that will say that wow was far better than this "crap".

Good points - totally agree.

As for people saying it is a new IP, the OP's link cites it as a spin off of an existing IP, so yes technically a new IP but it's a grey area since it's mooted to be a spin off.

What do we have to choose from? I can't imagine it would be anything WoW related as it is it's own highly profitable thing already so that leaves the Starcraft and Diablo 'universes' ( or a very long shot outside chance of it being in The Lost Vikings setting :P ).

Kotick's comment about it being targetted at a wider audience would lead me to believe it won't be Diablo based as that's simply too "dark". The Starcraft or Starcraft Ghost setting makes the most sense to me too at the moment. Think it would be alot of fun tbh!

[Deleted]

1. It is a new IP. Confirmed 10.000 times already over the last 3 years.

2. It is very casual with many options both for hardcore as for softcore players. (source : Kotick)

3. blizzard spoke about a HUGE project attracting ALL players. Much bigger than WoW or "anything they ever did..."

So with this in mind we can delete science fiction (much too niche)' we can delete First Person Shooters as these games are hardly played by women or elder people. We can delete browser games too (seen by the scope and production resources).

----

Titan will probably be set in early to modern times. It will include all kinds of different MMORPG play and it will be based on their NEWEST backbone structure seen in D3 and MoP: ONE centralised server for one continent, regrouping all the players in whatever content/level/region they play.

Since Blizzard spoke about possible product placement in their new designed games, expect to see publicity adds popping up in this new MMORPG. For this I think their setting will be modern times (30's) and/ or a near future setting.

But NO SF and certainly NO shooters and NO web game.

Perhaps Lovecraft ? (since it is license free and older than 75 years and still set in more modern times allowing publicity for Coca Cola and General Motor Cie). Salient detail: Bobby Kotick resides now in the board of Directors of ... Coca Cola...(not kidding).

Last time I checked sci fi was a lot less niche than fantasy. Sci fi could be a game where the setting is 10 years into the future where only very few improvements on our everyday life has been made but that is still sci fi. Your arguement for no shooter is just stupid, it doesnt have to be CoD or BF3 but it could very much be something like firefall with even more RPG elements.

I do agree that it probably wont be a web game, honestly I think that is bad as Blizzard could innovate and get the game on facebook with technology from Onlive and stream it to casual facebook users. That would also allow a lot more people to play the game but again I dont think it will happen.

[stellvia]

Scifi is a rather broad term. It's not likely to be hard scifi, but more likely either near-future or some kind of Firefly style future that is both approachable, yet also retaining scifi elements.

With the direction and development of new Blizzard tech in recent years, I also believe it will be casual-friendly like WoW (whether that is a good or bad thing) and rely heavily on the phasing/cross-realm zone style technology they've been developing. It's likely to be either very few servers, or only one universe. My question is how they would handle the character namespace -- would character names be non-unique then and messaging would just rely on your unique Battle.ID I guess?

I just hope it has a lot of sandbox elements to it and a full-fledged crafting system ala Starwars Galaxies. I'm afraid the slippery slope of WoW going more and more towards broad, homogenized, casualization will make the game bland and not have staying power for me. I'm not really in the mood for hardcore raiding anymore, but I still feel like handing out lots of items for little to no effort is bad game design even if it makes people feel better.

[Wilian]

Scifi is a rather broad term. It's not likely to be hard scifi, but more likely either near-future or some kind of Firefly style future that is both approachable, yet also retaining scifi elements.

I'd kill for Firefly styled wild west scifi setting.

[Mefistophelis]

I'm back from a hard day and I've done some research for you guys .
And because you just can't search the Internet for Titan, I've found the perfect site for you to read up and learn that:
1) It's "mostly" an FPS
2) NOT AT ALL related with other IPs Blizzard has developed all these years.

Here's the link: http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/pc/blizzard...1223423p1.html

[Conbot]

It doesn't matter what shareholders actually care about. It is ILLEGAL to tell them things that are not absolutely true regarding the company.

"New IP" doesn't necessarily mean it can't be loosely based on existing franchises. The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are 2 separate IP's technically.

[Deleted]

Later in 2009, Bobby Kotick said Project Titan "has a little more broad appeal."

Blizzard's games are already have broad appeal, as they belong in the mainstream of gaming. So what does 'more broad appeal' actually mean? You can't get broader than that, unless you reach out to people that can't even fit into mainstream gaming.


Who are those?


People that play facebook games. Casuals, in a bad way.

[ro9ue]

I have a feeling that Titan isn't going to be something geared towards people who identify themselves as gamers, but rather people who just play games to kill time.