Blizzard confirms "Project Titan" is next gen MMO

Blizzard's senior VP Frank Pearce just confirmed that "Project Titan" is indeed the code name for Blizzard's next gen MMO.

The media is not supposed to know anything about that. It's our next-gen MMO project, 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.

According to the recent leak, Project Titan is slated for release in Q4 2013.

Blizzard's new MMO release date leaked!

This Blizzard release schedule was just leaked. We can infer that "Titan" is the code name of the next gen MMO, putting scheduled release at Q4 2013.

Click on the thumbnail below to view the slated releases for Starcraft 2 expansions, Diablo 3 and expansions, BNET upgrades, and WoW expansions and movie!

Intel from Blizzcon 2010

Rob Pardo, Executive Vice President of Game Design at Blizzard, was interviewed about Blizzard's unannounced MMO at Blizzcon 2010. He said that there won't be any official announcements for at least a year, so probably not even at Blizzcon 2011. Fortunately, he confirmed a few rumors (as of October 2010):

• The development status is between prototyping and preproduction
• Blizzard is trying to invent new paradigms of gameplay
• There is an internal build being tested at Blizzard
• There are ~50 people working on the new MMO (says Frank Pearce, senior VP at Blizzard)

That's some pretty good information considering Blizzard's new MMO is still unannounced! Video below.

Leak indicates MMOFPS with social aspects

January 8th, 2010, the French gaming site NoFrag reported that a "source familiar with the matter" revealed that Blizzard's new MMO will be a massively multiplayer first-person shooter with social elements. Here's my translation of the post at NoFrag:

According to our information (obtained, as they say, from a source familiar with the matter), the next MMO from Blizzard is in part an FPS. It will take place in a futuristic universe. It is clearly different from the MMORPG World of Warcraft.

In this new MMO, each player will have two "lives". His first "life" is a kind of Sims Online, a giant hub of social interaction with the ability to connect to the second "life", which will consist of fighting for objectives.

Until we get further confirmation, I would consider this speculative at best.

What we know from Blizzard employees about Blizzard's upcoming MMO

1) Blizzard's new MMO will be a new franchise

Community manager Zarhym posted to the World of Warcraft forums:

We have nothing to advertise for the new MMO because it's a shell of a game thus far. We've already stated it'll be a brand new franchise, which means the lore, art, and game play are being developed entirely from scratch. It's an overwhelming process, but a process through which we excel. Our track record supports this.

2) It will have broader audience appeal than previous Blizzard games

Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, said at the Deutsche Bank Securities Technology Conference:

What we've announced at Blizzard is that we have Starcraft [II] coming, Diablo has been in production...and a new, unannounced MMOG that has a little more broad appeal

3) It will probably contain some science fiction and/or fantasy elements

Jeffrey Kaplan, currently lead designer for the Blizzard's next gen MMO, when asked if the game would be science fiction, post-apocalyptic, or historical, laughed and responded: "all of those combined!"

Several Blizzard job listings lend more support, for instance:

2+ years game development experience modeling and texturing sci-fi and fantasy character armor and weapons for next-gen art pipelines

4) It might be on consoles in addition to PC
Jeffrey Kaplan, in an interview with MTV Multiplayer, hints that Blizzard might adapt a future MMO to consoles

So I don't think 'World of Warcraft' would really work that well on the console, but that's not to say that other MMOs couldn't. And we have a pretty savvy group of console developers -- a lot of the guys we inherited from Swingin' Ape [Studios] really know what they're doing on next-gen consoles. So we might have a few tricks up our sleeves in that regard.

Stay up to date on news, rumors, and leaks about Blizzard's next gen MMO

Welcome fellow Blizzard and/or MMO fans!

The purpose of this blog is to provide a reliable, comprehensive feed for all information about Blizzard's new MMO, currently codenamed Titan.

Over the next several days, I'll make several posts detailing current knowledge about Blizzard's new MMO.

In the future, you can expect

• Up-to-date news coverage of leaks, substantiated rumors, Blizzard employee quotes, and media
• Analysis and rational speculation based on current information
• Monthly news summaries