Titan is very much an odd one. They tried to make a “real-world superhero MMORPG”, which implies a very large amount of content, using a team that was basically the leftover after Team 1 (WoW vanilla, early BC, SC2) and Team 2 (WoW WotLK onward) had been filled. And then they lost people yet again to D3.
From what I understand, using the limited insider knowledge I had, it was actually not that the projects took a long time to make. SC2 for example took 4 years, which is a perfectly reasonable amount of time for an effort its size. The issue was that there kept being interference and corporate restructuring happening at the ABK level, repeatedly cancelling one project after another.
The projects that survived were designed to not just be able to sell at a big AAA price, but also to make a continuous stream of money through low effort sales after that.
Further SC2 development was canned because making campaigns was deemed expensive, Warcraft 3 co-op in SC2 was canned, the StarCraft FPS was canned, HotS was canned at its first sign of weakness, and many more projects besides. The things they did release were profitable, but they couldn’t stand up to the mountain of cash Blizzard was pulling in from WoW, and so they were demmed not worthy.
And I honestly think the RMAH was a requisite Blizzard had to accept to even be permitted to make D3.
Projects were just being swatted like flies, one. after. the. other.
From our perspective of course, it looks like no work is being done or that things just take really long.
In any case, with Microsoft at the helm I figured things might change. Microsoft has done well by Age of Empires, for example. I think it’s too early to fully conclude anything, but I am not pleased. Feels like more of the same.
And to anyone who thinks Microsoft is going to do anything about the “woke” stuff - get real. Microsoft’s presentations literally have pronouns on them.