Blizzard Finally Spills About Their Cancelled MMO Successor To World Of Warcraft

At long last, we finally have some details pertaining to what actually happened to Blizzard Entertainment’s cancelled follow-up to World of Warcraft, the mysterious project known only as Titan.

Way back in 2010, Blizzard announced that it had a team of crack developers working on an MMO that would prove to be the successor of the highly popular World of Warcraft. In September 2014, however, the studio announced that the game had been cancelled. No reason was given and, since then, Blizzard has gone on to continue supporting World of Warcraft with regular updates. Still, we’ve always wondered what actually happened with Titan and if the game might eventually resurface. Blizzard designer Jeff Kaplan recently did an interview with Gamespot to finally answer that first question, and the answer was a little surprising.

According to Kaplan, everything about Titan was a failure. I’m going to give you a moment to let that statement sink in. In case you are puzzled as to why that’s such a shocking revelation, you have to remember that Blizzard basically eats, sleeps and breathes success. World of Warcraft, Diablo III, Hearthstone, Starcraft II and Heroes of the Storm are all massive successes for the developer.

When a developer churns out so much quality content on a regular basis, it’s a little staggering to hear that they completely missed the mark with a project that was already getting buzz in the early development stages.

According to Kaplan, that fact hit the Titan development team hard, too. In his interview, which can be seen in video form in its original post, the designer says that he was working with “a really amazing group” of developers that somehow “failed horrifically in every way.” Kaplan didn’t need to get too much more specific, but he went on to say that the failures were across the board, in “every way that a project can fail.”

He added that this was especially hard to stomach for the team as, being a part of team Blizzard, they had only known success in the past.

Kaplan said the pressure of being responsible for one of the studio’s only failures led to a sense of embarrassment. That, in turn, helped forge the team into a stronger unit, one that felt it had something to prove.

When everyone shifted over to Overwatch, Kaplan said that the team saw it as their last chance to prove themselves. He said they saw it as a chance to prove they were still capable of making a great game. Based solely on critical and fan reception of the beta, it sounds like they’ve accomplished that goal. We’ll get the full view on May 24 when the game launches but, at this point, it doesn’t sound like we’re dealing with a rehash of the Titan experience. Quite the contrary, all signs are pointing to another Blizzard mega-success.