Hearthstone turned the tide, although it didn't make Blizzard go further - it's impossible, although the card game has a large number of users, but after all, it is different from the big games, not that card games are niche, in fact, card games can be regarded as the most popular games, because the poker we play on weekdays can also be regarded as one of the card games. It is said that card games cannot support the backbone, mainly because of the attributes of the game, as a casual game, the user stickiness of card games is far less than that of other large games. Hearthstone can outperform World of Warcraft in terms of revenue for three reasons.

First, there is no opponent at the time. At the time of Hearthstone's launch, there was no game on the internet that could affect it. Although there are more types of physical card games, and there are many more famous and popular games than Hearthstone, they are all physical games, and compared to Hearthstone, which is synchronized on both ends of the PC/mobile game, the convenience is much worse.

Second, Warcraft drainage. What was the situation with Blizzard at that time? Warcraft had begun to show its decline, Diablo 3 had average results, and Interstellar 2 was too niche...... At that time, Blizzard didn't have a game that could really hold up the field. Hearthstone, which is equivalent to the anticipation of countless loyal fans, was born out of nowhere, although it is a card game, but because the content in it has a great connection with Warcraft, it has successfully attracted a large number of players. Hearthstone's original name also had a "Legend of Warcraft Heroes", which actually played a role in drainage. Later, Hearthstone became popular, attracting a large number of passers-by and players, and Blizzard removed the words "Legend of Warcraft Heroes" and let Hearthstone develop a world view independently.

Third, it is a problem of its own quality. I have to say that although Hearthstone has too many imbalances, each version belongs to tearing down the east wall to make up the west wall, and if this hole is filled, new problems will arise over there. But that doesn't stop it from being competitive, and in the early versions, when there weren't as many cards, the balance was relatively good. Game graphics, sound effects, card interactions...... In short, although Hearthstone is the product of haste, it has to be said that Blizzard is really capable, and even with such a quick product, the quality can be maintained at a fairly high level.

To sum up, the sum of the three makes Hearthstone brilliant.

It's hard to imagine that a card game that doesn't seem to be a big deal can indirectly save Blizzard, which was crumbling at the time.

So on the other side, what about the Titans, who were pinned on by Blizzard?

Fail!

Yes, Titan's development plan failed, and it was a complete failure, almost ruining Blizzard's development opportunities for almost a decade.

Some people may wonder, as for the seriousness of what is said?

However, in fact, the defeat of the Titans will only get worse.

"Blizzard's products must be high-quality", this is the most widely circulated sentence among gamers in the game community back then. From Warcraft, to Diablo, to StarCraft and World of Warcraft, Blizzard has brought one surprise after another to the majority of gamers, and has also gained a better and better reputation. "Blizzard's production must be a high-quality product" is the recognition and approval of the majority of players for Blizzard. And behind this golden signboard, the game projects that have been cut by Blizzard have reached almost 50% of the total. It can be said that the ultimate pursuit of word-of-mouth and game perfection is the key to Blizzard's success.

Among these axed game projects, the most regrettable and the most serious impact was the "Titan" project in 2014.

In 2005, Blizzard revealed for the first time that it was working on a new MMO game, and at that time, the big IP masterpiece "World of Warcraft", which was also owned by Blizzard, was still popular all over the world, and players may not have considered this game and "Warcraft" on the same level. And two years later, in '07, when Blizzard announced an open recruitment of multiple classes for the next MMO game, players began to realize that "Blizzard may be playing for real this time". However, as of this time, this mysterious "MMO game" is still in the clouds, and its true face is not visible.

It wasn't until 2010 that that all changed, when a Blizzard "project schedule" popped up on a website in China.

And in this "project plan", there is a top-secret project called "Titan". Soon after, the general manager of Blizzard Huaxia resigned, or he may be fired, after all, the leakage of company secrets sometimes has a really huge impact.

But in any case, the interest and enthusiasm of players have been aroused, and people have privately speculated about what the new game that has made Blizzard take its serious business will end up in the end. However, in September 2014, Blizzard finally suddenly announced that it would cancel the next-generation online game "Titan", which had been developed for many years. Before that, players even knew about Titan only by one name, one MMO game. This epoch-making masterpiece, hailed as Warcraft 2.0, fell on the way forward. According to the conversation of Blizzard game director Jeff Kaplan in an interview, in the past 10 years of research and development, the entire Titan project has brought Blizzard a loss of about 50 million US dollars, equivalent to nearly 325 million soft sister coins, and Blizzard can be said to be a complete failure in the Titan project.

In fact, speaking of money, although such a loss is not small, for the world's top game company like Blizzard, although it is also painful, it is not enough to hurt the vitality. What really hurt Blizzard's vitality was the manpower and material resources consumed in the process...... And time!

Time is a more precious resource than any money, and a "titan" involved almost all of Blizzard's energy at the time, and they even ignored the cash cow of "World of Warcraft" to some extent.

In the gaming world, there is a concept that is very similar, what is it?

That is to say, when a certain version of a game is released, the subsequent version has actually been developed and tested, and the subsequent third version enters the development stage, and the documentation for the fourth version begins. The four-step process is the development sequence that a mature team should have. Warcraft, on the other hand, has been greatly affected in the process of "Titan R&D". Why has the number of gamers decreased since the release of Lich King? The reasons are of course multifaceted, but a large part of the reason is that players don't like the subsequent story.

Of course, the two versions of Cataclysm and Pandaren were barely acceptable to players, until the King of Draenor version, that is, Warcraft 6.0 was launched, and players' dissatisfaction with the plot and game content design began to become more and more intense.

In fact, if you take a closer look, it is not difficult to see what year Draenor was launched?14 is the year when the Titan was completely abandoned. In fact, because of the development of Titans, since the Cataclysm version, the plot of Warcraft has not been as good as one another, and the gameplay has begun to be more and more criticized by players. After the Draenor version, the design of the fortress quickly experienced a reversal from particularly favorable to particularly negative reviews, and in fact, there is also a Titan pot.

Why?

Quite simply, let's go back to Titan.

After the cancellation of the project was announced, the specific relevant information was released one after another. Titan is a sci-fi MMORPG in the genre. The story takes place in the future, after defending off an alien attack, the world splits into three factions, and players will choose one of them to join and help the faction seize control of the planet. In known sources, players will have five classes to choose from, which are Titan, Jumper, Reaper, Ranger, and Juggernaut. Each class has its own character positioning and special skills. And judging from the development method of "World of Warcraft", if "Titan" can be successfully developed, there will be more new characters to join it in the future.

Titan's game mode combines large-scale life simulations with exciting abilities combat.

During the day, players will feel like they're living in the real world, with a job, friends, and even a family. To this end, Blizzard even recruited excellent AI designers from the "Sims" team to improve the communication and interaction between the characters in the game and the realistic restoration of the game world. At night, the player transforms into a special identity and can use special skills to fight for their respective factions.

Here, attention, see?

In the game content of Titan, there is a lot of development-related content, and just after Titan was abandoned, World of Warcraft version 6.0, which was launched in the same year, appeared in the setting of the fortress.

It's clear that Warcraft was unknowingly influenced by the Titans.

And the playability of the subsequent versions of Warcraft is gradually declining, the reason is that players generally believe that Blizzard has recruited a large number of Ah San. In fact, Blizzard can't be blamed, because the development of Titans back then caused all of Blizzard's other game teams to enter a situation of staff shortage, and they had to recruit more people to fill jobs. It was at this time that these curry people joined Blizzard.

Far away......

Let's talk about Titans.

Actually, it's a bit of a pity.

To say the reason for the failure of Titans...... It's really hard to say.

How to say that?

Too ambitious?

Too big a step?

It's all reasonable.

In fact, when "Titan" was developed, Blizzard wanted to combine the two game modes, and once successful, this new next-generation game will have both the Sims development system and the World of Warcraft combat system, plus the text, plot, CG, music and other elements that Blizzard has always been good at, it is conceivable that this game will be very interesting.

However, the problem is that in the development process, the team in development mode and the team in battle mode are actually divided into two parts. Not only that, but they haven't really been able to integrate together from beginning to end, and they have been fighting on their own, which is equivalent to working on two games at the same time.

Working on The Sims and World of Warcraft at the same time? No kidding, even Blizzard can't do it.

It is precisely because of these various reasons that "Titan" is still gone after all, but the data it left behind, including exquisite character modeling, huge map data, etc., is also a valuable asset. In just 6 weeks, Titan's R&D team came up with a new game plan, abandoning Titan's original huge structure, changing to an FPS game mode, and selecting characters from other Blizzard games to build a new character model, and Overwatch was born.

In 2016, Blizzard released the FPS masterpiece "Overwatch", which received a huge response and became popular all over the world. He was praised for having a character with a strong personality, flashy skills, excellent map design, and tactical depth. As a result, the warrior who shuttles through the night in "Titan" is transformed into a hero who fights for the world in "Watch". The original game world has been shredded into one battle stage after another, such as Flower Village, Valley of the Kings, Anubis Temple, etc., and these maps have a striking resemblance to real-world scenes. From this, it is not difficult to feel the hard work that Blizzard has put into the project "Titan".

It can be said that the "Titan" project died sincerely, because it did not live up to Blizzard's initial expectations. The cancellation of the Titan project is fundamentally due to the fact that its completion cannot be recognized by Blizzard. Overly detailed requirements and overly large architecture, the game is bigger than anyone could have imagined. It is said that the game engine at that time could not fulfill Blizzard's vision, so the developers even needed to develop a new game engine to meet their requirements. Under the dual limitations of technology and economic power at that time, the completed works may not meet Blizzard's original expectations, at least, they cannot replace Warcraft's position in the world at that time. Perhaps, at that time, Titan could already be called a pretty good game, but when its opponent turned into a Warcraft, it was obvious that such a rating as "good" was far from satisfying Blizzard.

Second, the fast-food market, which makes it difficult for Blizzard to hold on. The whole society is slowly entering the era of fast food, and the endless stream of fast food games continues to eat away at the market, and Blizzard's management is becoming less and less confident in this "ten years of sharpening a sword" research and development model, which can be seen from "Hearthstone" and "Overwatch", with the hot reaction caused by Hearthstone and Overwatch around the world, Blizzard's view of the market's demand is also slowly changing, no longer waiting for the Titans who cannot see the future, but seeking high returns from short-term development.

20 years ago, Blizzard canceled a sci-fi RPG called Nomad, and World of Warcraft was born. In the previous life, "Titan" disappeared after all, but "Overwatch" still achieved certain results. In this life, Blizzard is still majestic, and Warcraft continues to rule the game world, but under the control of Zhou Fangyuan, Hearthstone, a classic card game, and the Titan, which was once cut in half, have once again embarked on their original journey. But this time, with Zhou Fangyuan's help, the "Titan" project will definitely burst out with different brilliance. At the very least, he could have invested Blizzard with a stroke of his pen, helped them complete the development of the engine, helped them go further, and finally completed the development of Titan.

He had fantasized countless times about what the Titan would look like if it was really made, but unfortunately he couldn't see it in the previous life, so it seems to be a good choice in this life.