Blizzard has pushed back the release of its next big MMO project, currently codenamed Titan, to at least 2016, after upheaving the development of the game and slashing the number of staff working on it from 100 down to 30.
"We've always had a highly iterative development process, and the unannounced MMO is no exception," Blizzard spokesperson Shon Damron said (via Eurogamer). "We've come to a point where we need to make some large design and technology changes to the game."
"We're using this opportunity to shift some of our resources to assist with other projects while the core team adapts our technology and tools to accommodate these new changes. Note that we haven't announced any dates for the MMO."
Blizzard has a bit of a history of delaying games - though not to quite the extent that Valve does - so a push back is not entirely unexpected, though there was apparently a playable version of Titan out there in 2011.
The game has been worked on for over three years now, so any let go developers will likely be sad to see their project carved up, like Blizzard is no doubt about to do - presumably with a large new team of people who will be moved over or hired specifically for the project.
Titan is Blizzard's big future money printing game,or at least so it hopes. While games like Call of Duty might rake in big truckloads of money around release, World of Warcraft has continued pumping in tens of millions into the company every month for almost ten years at this point. Blizzard will want to replicate that success with its next-gen offering.
