At the end of November some leaked documents appeared online via MMOGameSite which seemingly detailed Blizzard’s release schedule up to 2015.
In this document there are the details of WOW, Starcraft and Diablo 3 expansions but interestingly there was also a release date for an unknown title called ‘Titan’ for Q4, 2013. There were rumours circulating that this could be Blizzard’s next gen MMO which was first hinted at a couple of years ago.
Interestingly at Blizzcon this year Blizzard announced that other than WOW Blizzard were not currently developing another MMO and had no plans to.
Seemingly this has all changed because when Blizzard’s senior VP, Frank Pearce, was interviewed by Destructoid he was asked about Titan:
The media is not supposed to know anything about that. It’s our next-gen MMO project.
So it all seems pretty clear to me that Blizzard have a new next-gen MMO in development contrary to their attempts to cover it up at Blizzcon. Frank then went on to say:
We’ve only started talking about it in a limited fashion because we want to leverage the fact that we’re working on something like that for the purpose of recruiting – getting some of the best talent in the industry on that project.
Noticeably in the leaked documents ‘Titan’ is to be released alongside WOW’s fifth expansion pack which leads me to believe that ‘Titan’ will not be based around WOW. A while back Blizzard also stated that they would not develop an MMO to rival WOW or to split it’s user base.
It seems time will tell on this one as to what ‘Titan’ is and I doubt it will be anytime soon as Blizzard seem to be keeping their cards close to their chests as always. The biggest questions I have right now are whether ‘Titan’ is just a code name and as to whether it will be a new IP or based on an existing franchise (Starcraft MMO anyone?).
AJ
Gaming and Tech Network 