In an interview with VentureBeat, Blizzard COO Paul Sams talked about the upcoming MMO codenamed "Titan." The topic came up when the site asked Sams about the deciding factors of when it's time to stop working on the current MMO (like World of Warcraft) and to start focusing on a new MMO.
During the interview, Sams wouldn't refer to the MMO's "Titan" name, but rather labeled it simply as "The Project." At first he ultimately rehashed the tidbits of information we've received in prior reports: World of Warcraft will continue to receive support and additional content, and the new MMO will be complimentary rather than competitive. On the business end, that makes perfect sense: why move the herd from one farm to the other when you can earn twice the revenue with two farms and two herds?
"While people do have a limited amount of free time that they can devote to these types of games, we do think that people will want to check out the new and the old," he said. "We think the new one is very compelling and is going to capture a lot of hearts and minds and will be very successful for us. But we also believe that many people will continue playing World of Warcraft because they have such a huge collection of friends and community."
He then bragged about the team working on the new MMO, saying that Blizzard created a "dream team" by tossing together their most experienced developers -- those that made World of Warcraft such a huge financial success. That said, Sams said that their byproduct will simply "blow people's minds."
"We really try to learn from what we’ve done in the past," he said. "When you architect the game, you architect it with the vision that exists at that time. We’ve got some vision for what is coming and how gaming has evolved. Some of the new things that maybe we would want to do, we can’t do as elegantly because of the way we’ve architect-ed the old game. It’s easier if we are starting fresh. So that being said, we are doing that sort of thing and it’s also not the same game. It’s a different game, so we do feel it’s important to our developers as well as the players for us to deliver something else that can expand their gaming experiences."
Sams' words echos a similar statement made by Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime back in February who said that the team is trying to leverage all the lessons they're learned over the years, "some of which we were able to address in 'World of Warcraft' and others that maybe because of the design decisions we’ve made, you just can’t address."
"We’re kind of taking a step back with all that knowledge to make something that’s completely new and fresh," he added. "We’re not trying to make a 'WoW' sequel."
Morhaime also previously said that Blizzard's next MMO will be heavily focused on the social aspect of MMOs after expressing how much fun it was to play Words with Friends on the iPhone with people he already knew. So far, there's no indication that Titan will provide Twitter or Facebook-like features embedded within the game.
