'Warcraft' studio cancels seven-year project 'Titan'

"It didn't come together," explains the video games giant behind "World of Warcraft," "Starcraft" and "Diablo."

'It didn't come together,' explains the video games giant behind 'World of Warcraft,' 'Starcraft' and 'Diablo.'

Sci-fi MMO 'Titan' was an opportunity for Blizzard to take all it had learned with 'World of Warcraft' and start again.

But the project had been undergoing reevaluation for at least a year and, speaking to Polygon, Blizzard chiefs revealed that they had finally nixed the title.

'We felt really confident that we knew how to make MMOs, so we set out to make the most ambitious thing that you could possibly imagine,' said co-founder and CEO Mike Morhaime. 'It didn't come together.'

'We didn't find the fun, 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.'

That's not to say the project was unneccessary or wasteful, at least not from the perspective of Senior VP Chris Metzen, who foresaw the work on 'Titan' producing better fruit elsewhere.

'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.'

One thing that helped convince Blizzard to step away from 'Titan' was the success of card game and 'World of Warcraft' spinoff 'Hearthstone,' as well as the upcoming 'Heroes of the Storm,' inspired by the hugely popular fan mod 'DotA' that leveraged Blizzard's 'Warcraft III.'

'Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft' released on Mac, Windows PCs and iPads in the first half of this year and immediately became a reference point for successful, free-to-play card games that appealed to traditional game fans while remaining accessible to newcomers and flexible when it comes to time commitment.

'Heroes of the Storm,' currently in closed beta, is a free 5 vs 5 team game in the vein of Valve's 'Dota 2' or Riot Games' 'League of Legends,' both incredibly lucrative, with more details on Blizzard's effort expected to emerge during this year's Blizzcon convention, November 7-8; 'World of Warcraft' expansion 'Warlords of Draenor' releases November 13.