Blizzard cancels Titan MMO

Blizzard's next-gen MMO Titan has been canceled, despite never officially being announced.

The eagerly awaited MMO had been in development for seven years, but last year, Blizzard said they were going back to the drawing board to reevaluate the project. Turns out, it's gone the way of StarCraft Ghost.

"We had created World of Warcraft, and we felt really confident that we knew how to make MMO. So we set out to make the most ambitious thing that you could possibly imagine. And it didn't come together," admitted Blizzard co-founder and CEO Mike Morhaime in a recent interview with Polygon.

"We didn't find the fun," he continued. "We didn't find the passion. We talked about how we put it through a reevaluation period, and actually, what we reevaluated is whether that's the game we really wanted to be making. The answer is no."

"It's always really, really hard to make those kind of decisions. It was hard when we canceled Warcraft Adventures. It was hard when we canceled StarCraft Ghost. But it has always resulted in better-quality work," Morhaime said, explaining that Blizzard was "losing perspective" and "getting lost" in the development of the game. "We had to allow ourselves to take that step back and reassess why the hell we were doing that thing in the first place."

Morhaime didn't rule out ever doing an MMO again, but Chris Metzen, Blizzard's senior vice president of story and franchise development, said Blizzard will continue to support World of Wacraft, the company's long-standing MMORPG which has seen its own subscription numbers drop in recent months. However, with the Warlords of Draenor expansion is set for release on November 13 it's possible Blizzard would like to see if it can ride the momentum an expansion usually brings.

If anything, perhaps Blizzard is finding it more lucrative to focus on smaller-scale releases like Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm.

"Maybe we can be what we want to be and inspire groups around the company to experiment, get creative, think outside the box and take chances on things that just might thrill people," Metzen said. "Maybe they don't have to be these colossal, summer blockbuster-type products."