While the above isn’t a real photo from Titan’s surface, such photos DO EXIST. (You can even hear the actual winds from another world). We can DO stuff like that. When reality is so amazing, how can mere games possibly compete?
That’s the dilemma Blizzard faces as it ramps up the publicity machine for its next MMO, code named Titan. Leaked in a not-so-secret memo last month, Destructoid cornered a Blizzard exec who admitted that Titan would be the long expected follow-up to the world’s most successful MMO ever, World of Warcraft.
Four possible outcomes that I can see. The best case scenario for Blizzard is that Titan does for space-based MMOs, let’s say, what WoW did for fantasy MMOs — utterly dominate the field, and bring in zillions of new players who have never heard of EVE or Jumpgate Evolution or Star Wars Galaxies or Star Trek Online and after playing Titan, wonder why anyone would ever want to play anything else? Additionally, EVE & co would lose most of their players.
Failing that, by the time Titan comes out five or six years from now, it will be well positioned to take up the slack as WoW nears the end of its popularity.
Bad news for Blizzard would be if WoW continued to be insanely popular, and Titan is only a modest success. A million players would be wildly amazingly fantastically super with any other MMO. For Blizzard, only a million players would be seen as an abject, utter failure.
Worst case scenario is that WoW declines in popularity, and since the MMO genre has become synonymous with WoW to most people, nobody really has much interest in Titan. That’s unlikely, to be sure, but it would kill the company.
Click through for more stuff!
Minecraft uber alles: First Sweden, and then the World! Of Warcraft!
What happens when a WoW-loving child gets a taste of Minecraft, then returns to a game where you CAN’T do anything you can think of? Tesh faces that very dilemma… Will there ever be an MMO that really lets you change the world? Maybe Tesh’s daughter would like A Tale in the Desert?
EverQuest II: Can’t play GNOMEBALL with a DWARF!
EverQuest II unveiled the first of its winter rewards leading up to next year’s release of the Velious expansion (and toothy playable vampires!). EQ2 players found a dwarf and a painting in their claim-boxes. It was a seller’s market for brewers on the broker as a million few thousand players took possession of their besotted dwarf butlers.
Arkenor can’t imagine anything finer than taking one’s dwarf for a rousing constitutional on a morning. And if one should run into some scoundrels, why, it’s a relief to finally have a man-servant to take care of your waistcoat while you take care of the distasteful business at hand.
Ultima Online Revisited
They don’t make games like they used to. To be specific, they don’t make Ultima Online like they used to, and Razakius suspects that maybe they never did. Cobbling together old code and mildewed art assets to make an Ultima Online that never was is his newest project. Can he make a new world from the ashes of an old one? It’s a big job…
Gratuitous Space Battles
What’s the secret? You only have until Saturday to find out!
A World (of Warcraft) in the palm of your hand!
Gordon reports on everyAir, an iPad app that allows you to play the world’s most popular game in the world ever since the world existed on the most popular tablet computer the world has ever seen! Well, you are actually streaming it from some OTHER computer, but… read what he has to say about it, willya?
Darkfall
How important is collision detection in MMOs? Back in Ultima Online and EverQuest, you could trap people by surrounding them, close off areas, do all sorts of mean stuff. That’s probably why games like World of Warcraft let you wander right through other players. But in Darkfall, writes Syncaine, collision detection is central to the very nature of the world. I’m down with that. Now if MMOs could just find a way to let people hop over two inch ridges…
Social Networks
What has Darth Vader got to do with social networks? Tanya Khovanova explores the social networks behind the characters of Star Wars. Turns out old Vader is the only person keeping the whole kebang and kaboodle together!
And now for your pleasure, the WoW movie!
Via Rock Paper Shotgun, a movie where real people live in a World of Warcraft world….
Beyond the Real Life from Martin Kazimir on Vimeo.
I think with Titan, you have to assume that it’s going to be a different type of game from WoW. That’s probably not great news for people who like their fantasy MMOs the way they are (or were pre-WoW), but the rumours on mmo-champion were that it was going to be a shooter.
I dunno what to make of that. Blizzard isn’t known for FPS games although I guess there’s no reason they can’t if they want.
I’ve been considering returning to WoW since Cataclysm has been released and actually trying to make it to a higher level. What do you suggest?
I haven’t been at max level since before Burning Crusade… I’m the last person who’d know what the higher levels were like!
Titan = World of Starcraft. You heard it here first.
Yeah I’m with Pete. I’m betting it’s World of Starcraft too 🙂
The last time Blizzard even thought of a shooter they had someone else make it and then canceled it mid-production for not meeting quality standards. It’s not going to be a shooter.
It’s going to be a game that plays like World of Warcraft in a different setting. Blizzard aren’t innovators, they take what they know and improve upon it.
Also must remember Blizzard has bosses now. The Activision overlords will accept nothing less than an epic blockbuster, 2.0. Look at Starcraft 2 — from all accounts, a slight variation on the original.
i hope someone makes a game like Microsoft’s Freelancer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancer_(video_game)
that would be fantastic… if it wasn’t so grindey.. and a bit empty i would play it again 😉