1. #1

    Smile Titan - Real name Atlas - New Info / Accurate Look

    Titan... or should I say, Atlas.

    I honestly believe that we have enough information now to make a highly accurate prediction, and almost all of it is in front of us.

    Everything said beyond this is speculation, and made with the basis that there may be grains of truth in the rumors.

    The start of the idea came in 2008, when Jeff Kaplan talking about catering to both casual and hardcore crowds stated:

    "But a lot of it has to do with art style, too. Are you going for realism or an inviting world? And once you learn those lessons, I think any type of [intellectual property] can survive. I'm shocked we haven't seen more sci-fi, near-future, post-apocalyptic, historical MMOs; there's all these completely different fantasy settings beyond the traditional high fantasy ones."

    So is Blizzard's new MMO going to be sci-fi, near-future, post-apocalyptic or historical? "All of those combined!" he said, laughing.


    This is very important. It led to people's speculation of a Blizzard early 1800's historical MMO, a steampunk creation, an apocalyptic cthulhu spinoff, a very LOTResque high fantasy setting, and many others. Kaplan certainly doesn't leave anything out in his quote, but what I really stuck to was the fact that he stated quite clearly that the new game will be all of those. What world building or setting can honestly, without stretching, fit all of those genres into it, while having enough of a social aspect, to pair with a action and combat aspect?

    There aren't many that exist and that in itself is also very important.

    Blizzard and its employees have always been excellent refiners, taking their interests in games, comics, movies, humor and books and weaving together concepts that really resonate with fans. They have never shied away from other people's great ideas or stories, and have never shied away from adopting and reinventing them in a "Blizzard" way. This is not a bad thing by any means, and it honestly gives firm ground for expansion and development, rather than complete idea creation from scratch.

    As Panigg, (if believed) an ex Blizzard GM stated on Redditt:

    "It's not WoW... it's not gonna be anything new either. Just as any other blizzard game, it's gonna be a lot of proven concepts refined to the best of the genre mixed with reliable ways to sell to the masses and added with some tiny bits of hardcore to appeal to even the darkest of souls.... also sims players... Well at the time they showed it to us it looked pretty awesome. The world, the artwork was huge and awesome and the game characters had so much charisma it was almost unbelievable."

    It's not going to be anything new. This is also echoed again recently by AlphaNoid:

    "I will end with this tidbit though, Blizzard has been on record saying that Titan would be a new IP. Its not, its a spin off of an existing franchise ... and they're playing into that to allude to a new IP. Its going to be what Blizzard fans want."


    Surprising, as several times over the years, it has been said that it is a new IP.

    What if they are both right, if it is both new and known?

    Very likely it is a completely new setting, world and perspective, for new stories to be told, but it inhabits the overall gameworld canon of one of Blizzards' existing games. If this is the case, what existing Blizzard IP has enough design and story elements to support the weight of an MMO, that matches up enough to Kaplan's points?

    This is the checklist so to speak. Whatever Titan is, according to the rumors, it must have:

    - Science Fiction
    - Near Human Future
    - Post apocalyptic
    - Historical (Gameworld in this sense)
    - High Fantasy
    - Casual, Social, and Sim-building
    - Combat
    - Spin off of an existing IP, that won't take away from WOW, Diablo, or the RTS SC2
    - World potential must be larger than anything we have seen before.
    - Codename reflects the product in some way (Medusa for SC2 (think Kerrigan) and Hydra for Diablo)

    This, is where the paths lead in my opinion.

    A little spoken of piece of game history, from one of Blizzard's current games:

    ATLAS

    After Project Purification and fleeing the problems and corruption of Old Earth, the new generation of humanity drifted through the stars. The supercomputer ATLAS was installed into the first of the super carriers, the Nagglfar. Three other carriers - the Argo, the Sarengo, and the Reagan - were programmed to follow the Nagglfar as it was launched into the void of space towards Gantris VI. Over the course of this journey, which generations later would call 'The Long Sleep', ATLAS continued to monitor the humans kept in cryogenic stasis. Evaluating the numerous mutations and enhancements found within the prisoner's gene pool, ATLAS became aware of a powerful mutagenic strain that existed in some of their DNA. While this mutation was found to reside in less than one percent of the prisoners, it seemed to augment the latent psionic potential within the human brain. ATLAS calculated that, should the prisoners survive in their new environment many of them might benefit from this psionic mutation within only a few generations.


    Originally scheduled as a one-year trip, their voyage took a turn for the worse at some point during the journey the navigational systems linked to ATLAS shut down, erasing not only the co-ordinates of Gantris VI, but those of the earth as well. The four ships, carrying their hapless cargo in stasis, barreled blindly through space at warp speeds for nearly thirty years.

    Eventually, the warp-drive engines of the four super carriers reached critical meltdown. After twenty-eight years of warp travel, the huge ships emerged into real space near the edge of a habitable star system. Some 60,000 light years from the earth, their engines destroyed and their life-support batteries nearly exhausted, the ships engaged their emergency protocols and plummeted towards the nearest habitable worlds in the system.

    The Reagan and the Sarengo crash landed on the world that would be named Umoja. The Sarengo, which had suffered massive systems failures during its atmospheric descent, smashed into the planet killing all of its 8,000 passengers. The Reagan was more fortunate, making a controlled descent and landing safely. Once the ship had landed, the 'cold sleep' chambers were deactivated and the surviving passengers slowly awakened. The passengers, attempting to discern where they were and how long they had 'slept', found that the ATLAS system had somehow erased all knowledge of their journey from their computer banks.

    The Argo landed upon the red world of Moria. Its passengers met with the same fate as those aboard the Reagan, as all information regarding their current status was erased. Only the passengers of the Nagglfar could access their ship's computer to discern their plight. They accessed ATLAS directly and confirmed their growing suspicions that they would never see the earth again, for although they had landed on the temperate planet of Tarsonis, the Nagglfar was damaged beyond repair. The surviving exiles, now spread across three worlds, began to salvage their wrecked ships in an attempt to find refuge in their new surroundings.


    The inhabitants of each planet worked to survive in what they termed 'the New World'. Unaware that their fellows also thrived upon the other worlds in the system, the vagabond made do with whatever meager resources they could find. Having lost the means to communicate over interplanetary distances when their ships were stripped for essential materials, the colonists lived in isolation for decades. In a relatively short amount of time, the three isolated groups of colonists founded their sister colonies upon their respective worlds, and although it would be at least sixty years before the three colonies would be reunited by space travel, each of them grew into prosperous, self-contained communities. Tarsonis, the largest and most technologically advanced of the colonies soon developed second generation sub-warp engines. This allowed their ships to explore the myriad, barren planets of the surrounding star system and eventually led them to find the other survivors of the Long Sleep.


    This point in time during the Starcraft timeline hits all of the points.

    Its game-world and technology throws out almost everything you know about the franchise, but plants itself firmly into the roots of something substantial.

    A colony, rather, multiple colonies, and planets of the beginning of humankind in Starcraft. None of the machinery would be recognizable, due to it all being earlier marks and earlier technology. It is historical in terms of game worlds, it is apocalyptic in its setting of absolute isolation and ignorance. There are no rules, no government, no plan, no way for people to deal with what has happened, other than to grit their teeth and evolve, survive, and build.

    Casual play or life, trade, sims like interaction and endless micro potential exists with the idea that colony itself is a living, breathing city, that houses, employs, feeds and protects its colonists.

    Hardcore or combat based play exists in the endless environments that exist everywhere the second you leave safe haven.

    ATLAS was a TITAN of old, and it coincidentally is the name of the digital intelligence that places the future of mankind on the beginning of its journey. Atlas the Titan was also condemned to hold the celestial spheres upon its back, keeping all realms in order.

    Further and potentially very interesting information is the sale of 3 t-shirts by a Blizzard Employee online, with the Blizzard Logo on the arm, and a new logo on the chest with the word "Atlas" on it. (For sources, look to Titan Focus).


    Thoughts?

  2. #2
    We've already got a Titan speculation thread going right now, please use that for Titan discussion.

    http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...of-Diablocraft

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