Blizzard cancels 'next gen' World of Warcraft successor after seven years in development

The game was rumorued to be a "sci-fi, post-historical" title set to take over the massively popular World of Warcraft franchise

World of Warcraft developer Blizzard has announced that is has cancelled development on its successor to the massively popular role playing and real time strategy franchise.

Blizzard had previously said that they were developed the project known as Titan as a next-gen successor to WoW, planning to offer players a game with a mixture of “sic-fi, near-future, post-apocalyptic and historical” themes.

Now, gaming site Polygon has reported that the title has been cancelled after at least seven years in development, with Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime saying that the company just “didn’t find the fun”.

“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,” said Morhaime.

Although it’s certainly unusual for a gaming company to throw away so much effort, the company has a reputation for producing polished franchises such as StarCraft and Diablo, and has cancelled numerous past titles that didn’t meet its standards.

These include a third-person shooter set in the StarCraft universe known as StarCraft: Ghost and even a black comedy point-and-click adventure game for Warcraft, which would have used animation to tell its story.

Blizzard executives speaking to Polygon said that recent titles such as Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft had helped changed the company’s mind about working on big-budget titles such as Titan.

Hearthstone, a digital trading card game for iPad based in the Warcraft universe, has proved a success with critics, with Blizzard's senior vice president of story and franchise Chris Metzen commenting: “Maybe [Blizzard’s games] don’t have to be these colossal, summer blockbuster-type products."