Blizzard: 'Titan'

[Indie]

Try playing league of legends mate, you'll soon realise the WoW community isn't bad.

Would have to say, Any community I've been within doesn't match what WoW had....

of course you get the odd one or two that try and spoil it for everybody else, but in general, I've had some great times and met some awesome people!

 

[Tute]

I do feel that WoW is far less fun than it used to be but for the monthly fee you do get decent servers, reasonably regular patches and decent support.

 

[xGBHxPegasus]

Try playing league of legends mate, you'll soon realise the WoW community isn't bad.

HA! thought exactly the same thing.

Had some amazing times in WoW and got some good friends and my gf out of it, but as Indie said theres always one or two people you dont get along with.

 

[Newbie007]

I don't think terrible community is indicative of WoW, it’s the internet in general. The anominity of the internet breeds rude, obnoxious people. In the main those of us that came from older MMORPG's into WoW came from games where your actions had consequence, if you were an ****** word got out and you wouldn't get groups, guilds wouldn't take you in. There wasn't this sense of togetherness on the WoW servers. Nowadays you won't see the people you play with so your actions mean nothing so you are free to be a ****, who cares right!

WoW's community has always had a bad name (due to the draw of the younger gamer to WoW I think), but during Vanilla and BC the "in game" community was never as bad as the "outer game" community (forum users etc), the quaility of the community really went to hell they day the LFD tool came into being.

 

[Sakuri]

The F2P = trash argument is a little surprising considering some of the utter dross that has been released with a subscription model. Surely they balance each other out? Just because the most popular MMO required a sub doesn't cancel that out! Shock horror both models produce bad games :O

 

[Omaeka]

Skyrim must be miniscule then.

So you're admitting Azeroth is absolutely tiny?

You've never played COD or Halo then?

Religiously when I was a few moons younger, I must have had the worst examples of WoW then if the community isn't that bad as anyone I met outside of the guild were proper up themselves and thought they were the be all and end all of the game and some went even further then that.

They release plenty of patches with new content and new dungeons inbetween expansions, if you only played just before a new expansion you might know why there was not much released in that period.

Well it can't be that regular mate, as a few years ago the world was tiny and there was pretty much only one line of quests to take (with the odd deviation) on the path to endgame and every single damn quest was a reskinned version of 'go to this area, kill all the dewdz, take x amount of stuff from the dewdz, turn in, rinse and repeat'.

Releasing new expansions is not nothing, making Diablo is not nothing, making Starcraft is not nothing. The thread you're posting in is about their new MMO Titan... What are you talking about!?

Didn't Diablo 3 have something like 8 years of production? The final product only felt like a 2 year job at the max and had less content and classes than Diablo 2 which was made in 3 years, they even cut games from being 16 man squads (8 player, 8 mercs) to 4! The AH is just another example of greed, it's micro transactions hidden inside a premium title and nothing more. Starcraft is a damn fine game I'll admit that but 3 games in 10 years is hardly brain busting mate. Also, hasn't Titan been in production for a few centuries now?

Have you got any data to back that up? Blizzard have made it so you can spend thousands of hours and still not have scratched the surface.

I'm sure there are studies somewhere, but my data comes from playing them all extensively. All 3 combined have about the same landmass as Azeroth, the 3 maps are much more detailed and feel handcrafted, tons more content per square mile, and quests are more than generic turn in quests. In WoW with the exception of resource and achievement hunting, there really is nothing to do outside of the endgame content mate, WoW is for most of the top players about jumping on every week when their guilds setting up a raid, with little to do in between. By the time I had stopped playing, I had the exploration achievements for every area and over half of the quest achievements. The only reason I had all that was because at the time I was a complete achievement whore for anything I played (big Xbox gamer at the time) and I have to say getting all of that was boring as hell, had more fun chasing the 100 odd pigeons in GTA IV!

This isn't to say I hate WoW at all, far from it. I love the fact they were pretty much the first to shape an MMO in the way they did and the fact they've encouraged so many other IPs that may have never existed from other studios. The only issue is that like I said, they are making 90% pure profit on each subscription. When 70 pence of that £7 is spent on maintenance costs it's insulting to the player base. If Blizzard are relying on a subscription to pay other costs, then that really isn't what subscriptions are for. They have 11 billion in equity mate and for a studio of 3,000 people and the amount of games and content in those games they've created it really does make you wonder what the hell those 3,000 are doing. Bethesda have less than half that and look at all the combined content from the last 4 major titles they made, it isn't just copy and paste mass content either and it was done in the same amount of time. It just feels like Blizzard have a stranglehold on the genre and the genre is suffering as a result, and for 12+ years of production (counting pre-production) the amount of content on offer is pretty laughable and very CTRL+V/generic. Some MMOs that are a few years old are only a few steps behind in that department and 'sheer' scale and content is the only thing setting WoW apart, it's 12 years outdated on pretty much every other front.

Lolling at server maintenance costs being their only cost.

After overhead, payroll, benefits, rent, utilities, insurance, taxes etc. they'd be taking £30,000,000 of that as pure revenue a month easily. So $4M server costs, probably even less now, compared to 7 million subscribers, so about 70 pence of your subscription goes into maintaining the servers, nice one!

L2R.

 

[Tummy]

It's really boring and becoming more and more predictable reading Omaeka hate on another popular company, first Valve (Steam) and now Blizzard .

 

[V4NT0M]

The only issue is that like I said, they are making 90% pure profit on each subscription. When 70 pence of that £7 is spent on maintenance costs it's insulting to the player base.

I guess I would ask for more information on that too. "Maintenance" could be a very broad or very narrow term.

I think pretty much all of your problems with wow are personal opinion, all of your comments about community and content are entirely subjective.

 

[Tummy]

I played it in early 2011 I think, a month before Cataclysm released and quit a few months later. I was convinced to get into it by a mate from college and I'll admit I enjoyed the first month or so, he got me into the best guild in Draynor (I think the server was called that) and the raids seemed okay at first but not many of them were more than attack stuff while the healers heal you and the tanks protect you, didn't seem to involve any more strategy than running the standard dungeons, only harder.

So, you have only seen a very small percentage of the actual game. Brilliant.

As for content, the world is very empty mate, you can't deny that for a second, it's a pocket or two of NPCs per area with a few pockets of enemies, being connected together by stuff to harvest, outside of the instances and PvP arenas the world has very little to offer and the world itself is tiny, it's only three times the size of Skyrim!

You mean like a lot of other games. Area's are only made to feel empty because there is a lack of players in lower level zones now, however get on to a high population realm and area's maintain a good population. Also; I don't feel the zones are void of content, in fact most are content rich and provide a lot of quests.

As for the social aspect, 50/50. While it can be a lot of fun with people you know, randoms are a pain to deal with, WoW has the worst community I've ever experienced. As for becoming a social space, what's the point? If you want something like that go and get some mates together and do something, if you're hellbent on doing it in a game though, then there are better worlds to do it in than Azeroth.

World of Warcraft has the worst community you have every experienced? Really? I mean, really?

I don't think the World of Warcraft community is actually that bad, certainly there are worse communities.

I agree that random people can be a pain to deal with, a bit like real life. World of Warcraft is a great game to play with friends, I disagree.

Would you care to explain what is 'regular content'? They certainly didn't release much when I played, and again, you're paying 70p towards the server and Blizzard take the rest for the benefit of playing what you already bought.

Regular content;

• 1.1: (nov. 2004) Release bug fixes
• Patch 1.2: (Dec. 2004) 5-man dungeon (maraudon), outdoor PvP area, holidy content
• Patch 1.3: (March 2005) 5-man dungeon, outdoor raid bosses
• Patch 1.4: (April 2005) PvP honor system
• Patch 1.5: (June 2005) Two battlegrounds
• Patch 1.6: (July 2005) Raid dungeon (BWL), Darkmoon faire
• Patch 1.7: (September 2005): Raid dungeon (ZG), Battleground (AB)
• Patch 1.8: (October 2005): Outdoor PvE bosses, Revamped questing in Silithus
• Patch 1.9: (January 2006): Two raids (AQ20 & AQ 40)
• Patch 1.10: (March 2006): Weather effects & Teir 0.5 armor set quests
• Patch 1.11: (June 2006): Raid dungeon (Naxx)
• Patch 1.12: (August 2006): Cross-realm BGs

• 2.0: (December thru Feb 2007) Preparation & release of TBC
• Patch 2.1: (May 2007) Raid dungeon (BT)
• Patch 2.2: (Sept 2007) Voice chat
• Patch 2.3: (November 2007) Raid dungeon (ZA), guild banks, Season 3 Arena
• Patch 2.4: (March 2008) Raid dungeon (Sunwell), 5-man (MGT) & Isle of Quel’Danas daily quests

• 3.0: (Oct thru december 2008) Preparation & release of WotLK
• 3.1: (April 2009): Raid dungeon (Ulduar), Argent Tournament daily quests
• 3.2: (August 2009): Raid Dungeon (ToC), 5-man (ToC), PvP battleground (Isle)
• 3.3: (December 2009): Icecrown Citadel

A list of some of the content released. All of those are fairly big content patches.

'wage war on anything that is popular' what? Lmao. Hardly, both Valve and Blizzard are the same, both have made decent games but now they have their cash generators (WoW & Steam) they are sitting back doing nothing, and they are both overrated services with a ton of flaws, that despite all the money they both make, they can't be bothered to do anything about it. Also you never hear anyone dare say anything bad about either despite this, that's what annoys me. Other companies slip up once and they get massacred.

Yes. It's really boring and becoming more and more predictable.

Valve and Blizzard have produced very good & popular games. Both companies are not sitting back and doing nothing, Blizzard are working on constant updates for their run of games; World of Warcraft, Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3. They have also been working on two new games and Diablo 3 for consoles. Valve are working on numerous new games as well as rolling out new features for Steam (big picture for example).

People are critical of Blizzard and Valve, rightly so at times but they do more right than they do wrong. I have never had an issue with either customer services nor major issues with their products although the Diablo 3 release was poor I personally didn't suffer too much. Expansion pack released for World of Warcraft always went quite smoothly considering.

With WoW though, there are much better MMOs like RaiderZ, RIFT & Guild Wars which have infinitely better combat (not hard to top WoW though in that regard, tbh) and way more content than WoW did when it was their age. Other MMOs come and usually fail because all the subs are tied up in WoW, despite the fact it has absolutely nothing to boast about considering it's a 9 year old game. Let's look at The Elder Scrolls as a series, last 10 years there has been 3 single player games released that combined have more content then an MMO that's been in constant development for 10 years, that's pretty bad mate. Also, other MMOs can't grow because they can't support themselves, the 3 I mentioned above would have so much more depth, way more content and way, way more innovation (WoW has had non for the last 8 years) if they were around that long.

I disagree about them being better MMO's and having more content.

Shock horror that a company that produces single player games produced more single player games. Blizzard have constantly updated and patched World of Warcraft in that time, not to mention rebuilding the old world .

So you're admitting Azeroth is absolutely tiny?

It doesn't feel tiny when you're in game.

Religiously when I was a few moons younger, I must have had the worst examples of WoW then if the community isn't that bad as anyone I met outside of the guild were proper up themselves and thought they were the be all and end all of the game and some went even further then that.

My experiences are the total opposite, the nice people I've met playing World of Warcraft far outweigh the idiots.

Well it can't be that regular mate, as a few years ago the world was tiny and there was pretty much only one line of quests to take (with the odd deviation) on the path to endgame and every single damn quest was a reskinned version of 'go to this area, kill all the dewdz, take x amount of stuff from the dewdz, turn in, rinse and repeat'.

Hilarious. See content I posted above and see the expansion packs. There are hundreds of sub archs in quest lines and stories in the game.

Didn't Diablo 3 have something like 8 years of production? The final product only felt like a 2 year job at the max and had less content and classes than Diablo 2 which was made in 3 years, they even cut games from being 16 man squads (8 player, 8 mercs) to 4! The AH is just another example of greed, it's micro transactions hidden inside a premium title and nothing more. Starcraft is a damn fine game I'll admit that but 3 games in 10 years is hardly brain busting mate. Also, hasn't Titan been in production for a few centuries now?

You have just held up the Elder Scrolls for making 3 single player games in 10 years, so why are you not turning that against Blizzard. They have produced World of Warcraft and constant updates, patches and regular expansion packs, Starcraft 2 and it's expansion pack & Diablo 3 and have now moved that over to a console.

Shock horror, developing and building games up from the ground (in terms of engines) takes a long time due to the levels of polish Blizzard have in their games.

I'm sure there are studies somewhere, but my data comes from playing them all extensively. All 3 combined have about the same landmass as Azeroth, the 3 maps are much more detailed and feel handcrafted, tons more content per square mile, and quests are more than generic turn in quests. In WoW with the exception of resource and achievement hunting, there really is nothing to do outside of the endgame content mate, WoW is for most of the top players about jumping on every week when their guilds setting up a raid, with little to do in between. By the time I had stopped playing, I had the exploration achievements for every area and over half of the quest achievements. The only reason I had all that was because at the time I was a complete achievement whore for anything I played (big Xbox gamer at the time) and I have to say getting all of that was boring as hell, had more fun chasing the 100 odd pigeons in GTA IV!

This is quite and hilarious.

This isn't to say I hate WoW at all, far from it. I love the fact they were pretty much the first to shape an MMO in the way they did and the fact they've encouraged so many other IPs that may have never existed from other studios. The only issue is that like I said, they are making 90% pure profit on each subscription. When 70 pence of that £7 is spent on maintenance costs it's insulting to the player base. If Blizzard are relying on a subscription to pay other costs, then that really isn't what subscriptions are for. They have 11 billion in equity mate and for a studio of 3,000 people and the amount of games and content in those games they've created it really does make you wonder what the hell those 3,000 are doing. Bethesda have less than half that and look at all the combined content from the last 4 major titles they made, it isn't just copy and paste mass content either and it was done in the same amount of time. It just feels like Blizzard have a stranglehold on the genre and the genre is suffering as a result, and for 12+ years of production (counting pre-production) the amount of content on offer is pretty laughable and very CTRL+V/generic. Some MMOs that are a few years old are only a few steps behind in that department and 'sheer' scale and content is the only thing setting WoW apart, it's 12 years outdated on pretty much every other front.

So... those 3000 people in 10 years have produced more than the Elder scrolls people you held up as doing more yet you wonder what they are doing?

I agree that Blizzard have a strangle hold on the genre and the genre is only suffering because nobody has come up with a game good enough to really challenge World of Warcraft. A football analogy would be Sir Alex coming in and talking about knocking Liverpool off their perch. Blizzard are Liverpool and there has been nobody good enough to knock them off yet.

You also just mentioned that World of Warcraft suffers from crippling lack of content and having a small game world then in the last sentence you mention that it's scale and content are what sets it apart? face bro.

 

[Tummy]

I think pretty much all of your problems with wow are personal opinion, all of your comments about community and content are entirely subjective.

This is the issue with Omaeka.

His problems with games and companies are based on personal opinions, taking in to account nothing else.

 

[Tummy]

The only issue is that like I said, they are making 90% pure profit on each subscription. When 70 pence of that £7 is spent on maintenance costs it's insulting to the player base.

Do you have sources for this too? Not a link to an article but a hard source for 90% of each subscription being 'pure profit'?

 

[Fuggan]

It's not a sci fi fps, that was a rumor created by the dude who owns MMO Champ. This site seems fairly legit: http://titanfocus.info/_/news/project-titan-info-leak-esports-jay-wilson-blizzcon-2013-and-more-r65

Main points

* It's based on Earth's history, but also includes a high amount of fiction. It will have a "deep history", just as Warcraft and Starcraft.

* It's an MMORPG. We'll play from a 3rd person view, but there will also be a first person view during "events". No extra clarification as to the nature of these events could be given.

* There will be a lot of Time Travel.

* When it comes to weapons, we'll have almost everything at our disposal, from magic to guns.

* Heavy use of Greek, Roman and Viking myths.

* They've invited some established writers (Richard A. Knaak for example) to help with the storyline.


Plan is to open Family & Friends testing in Q1 2014.

Also confirms Blizzcon as the unveiling

Nice, been out of touch with the whole Titan project for a while and hadn't read this. Sounds very cool.

 

[Tummy]

It's not a sci fi fps, that was a rumor created by the dude who owns MMO Champ. This site seems fairly legit: http://titanfocus.info/_/news/project-titan-info-leak-esports-jay-wilson-blizzcon-2013-and-more-r65

Main points

* It's based on Earth's history, but also includes a high amount of fiction. It will have a "deep history", just as Warcraft and Starcraft.

* It's an MMORPG. We'll play from a 3rd person view, but there will also be a first person view during "events". No extra clarification as to the nature of these events could be given.

* There will be a lot of Time Travel.

* When it comes to weapons, we'll have almost everything at our disposal, from magic to guns.

* Heavy use of Greek, Roman and Viking myths.

* They've invited some established writers (Richard A. Knaak for example) to help with the storyline.


Plan is to open Family & Friends testing in Q1 2014.

Also confirms Blizzcon as the unveiling

When is Blizzcon?

This sounds quite interesting but I half expected it to be space based! .

 

[francky]

they are making 90% pure profit on each subscription. When 70 pence of that £7 is spent on maintenance costs it's insulting to the player base. If Blizzard are relying on a subscription to pay other costs, then that really isn't what subscriptions are for.

Dont agree with this part one bit......Blizzard are a business....first and foremost that develop games to make money.

Subscritions are not just to cover maintenance costs for servers, they are there to A) support the costs of running the game, B) to pay for new development of new content and C) to make the company money so that they can expand and develop other games and grow the business.

a lot of gamers seem to think that gaming companies owe them something and that they should only be charged tiny amounts or its "insulting to the playerbase" but the fact of the matter is that something is only worth what the punter is willng to pay and they've had 12 Million punters per month at the peak.

Wow has been very successful and made Blizzard a lot of money......this allows them to produce even more high quality games.

I played WoW for 5 years and was one of the best gaming experiences I had during that time....Im bored of it now and wont play again as i've burnt out and dont have time for MMO's.

But paying £8 a month was nothing for the amount of hours I got out of it and I think most people who played and enjoyed it agree.

 

[Tummy]

I agree .

 

[No1newts]

I would like to see Blizz move the genre on rather than do an updated wow (no indication if this I know before people jump down my throat)

I think a combination of gw2 and wow would be perfect. The living world gw2 has created and the greater impetus it has placed on self reliance and skill are great things. This combined with wows slickness, the massive feel of wow (huge continents as opposed to seperate zones) and even trying to work in large scale raids would be perfect.

However I really doubt blizz will push the boat out too far and more expect them to "go safe" and create something they know will sell in buckets and lure their playerbase across.

Whilst gw2 isn't perfect I think it's a great step for the genre in moving away from the wow clones with a tweak approach that has been pandered to gamers for years. Would be really excited if blizz are equally as bold in their approach.

Regards the f2p/p2p argument going on whilst as a more casual gamer I like not having to pay and still get a good game (gw2) I will pay monthly for the right game. I will play the best game and whether its f2p or p2p is irrelevant if its the best on the market.

Fingers crossed but I will approach with my usual cynicism

Oh, and re wows community. It does stink something rotten these days. Pre wrath it was a great community as with not having a group/raid finder you had to rely on your rep to get into runs (discounting guild runs if course) so people acted decently and were genuinely helpful knowing a wrong move could see them black listed by a community. I can still remember logging in and seeing te names of the good guys and chatting away and it was all good. Adding the anonymity of cross server groups and raid finders and the ease to be able to pop into unorganised raids and advance whilst good from a $$$ perspective as it got more players murdeted the community as people could do what they want and act how they wanted with no worry of censure. Oh the good old days /nostalgia

 

[Purdy]

L2R.

Official source?

Also I'm pretty sure 'pure revenue' is still just revenue which doesn't account for costs, unless you've pulled it from somewhere and have worded it poorly

 

[Fuggan]

Taken from mmo-champion.

Titan project "reset", delayed until 2016
Venturebeat broke the news earlier today that Titan has been "reset" and will be delayed until at least 2016. The decision was announced to employees a couple of days ago and sources close to the project gave us more details on the subject:

Blizzard felt that Titan wasn't going in the right direction and decided to make significant technological and design changes to the game. This happened in the past with Starcraft and Warcraft 3.
A smaller dev team will be in charge of redesigning the project and about 60 or 70 developers are being moved to other teams (WoW, Blizzard All-Stars, Diablo 3 expansion, Battle.net)

Blizzard didn't officially comment on the subject yet, hopefully this is a step in the right direction and Titan won't have the same fate as Starcraft: Ghost.

I'm sad that this has happened but glad to see they're going all out with it and not shipping some ********. Hopefully we'll see some more developments in WoW/"The WoW Movie" in the meantime.

 

[Skunkworks]

More half-assed WoW expansions.

 

[arknor]

That's funny because WoW is pretty much the only MMO I've played mate and as far as content goes, a lot of it is nothing but filler on your way to 85. The end game content made me stop playing through boredom as I wasn't interested in PVP or rolling new toons after doing everything. Over £100 in software and £30 in subscriptions for 3 months of gaming is a lot of money. Sure there are people who can make it decent value for money by subscribing for several years, buying no other games and putting in a good few hours a day but I cannot see how anyone could do that in WoW, it gets very tedious to play it after a while.

WOW started going down hill after classic and has been streamlined and simplified for the masses ever since.

I will happily pay subs for a game that has dedicated mature players like mmo's of old and a strong community spirit like mmo's of old before all the kids and casuals came along..

MMO's used to pick a target audience and focus on that audience and keeping them happy like EVE-online has done for about 10 years, the games because of this were full of like minded players and it was amazing.
Modern MMO's since wow want to appeal to everyone and their partner and struggle to please anyone for more than a few weeks before it gets boring

WAR probably would have been a success if it catered to the hardcore pvpers that loved daoc etc but instead the end game pvp was an unbalanced joke, the map tickers were a joke , nothing seemed to have been tested apart from stupid quest events for the mindless peons