Blizzard CEO: Titan ‘unlikely’ a ‘subscription-based MMORPG’

World of Warcraft developer Blizzard still won’t talk about what its Titan project is, but it will say what it likely isn’t.

During a conference call with Activision’s investors today, Blizzard chief executive Michael Morhaime confirmed that they still aren’t talking about Titan, which is the company’s next big massively multiplayer online game, but he did say the company would take a path different from World of Warcraft.

“We’re in the process of selecting a new direction for the project and re-envisioning what we want the game to be,” he said. “While we can’t talk about the details yet, it is unlikely to be a subscription-based MMO [role-playing game].”

Morhaime also confirmed that Blizzard hasn’t revealed any official release date for Titan.

In May, GamesBeat reported that Blizzard was rebooting the development of Titan.

In a statement, Blizzard spokesman Shon Damron said, “We’ve always had a highly iterative development process, and the unannounced MMO is no exception. We’ve come to a point where we need to make some large design and technology changes to the game. We’re using this opportunity to shift some of our resources to assist with other projects while the core team adapts our technology and tools to accommodate these new changes.”

Blizzard makes a large chunk of its money from World of Warcraft, which is a subscriber-based MMORPG, but that game is losing subscribers fast. Blizzard needs to both replace World of Warcraft and make something that is as exciting and fit for today’s subscription-adverse market. That probably explains why it wants to do something different.

Also during the call, Morhaime reaffirmed his belief that World of Warcraft isn’t going anywhere.

“Our priorities is to continue delivering great content to our players,” said Morhaime. “We feel that WOW continues to be the most compelling MMORPG available. We believe it still has a very long life ahead of itself. Over time we’ve seen players come and go, and we realize that there is a lot that we can do to improve the experience of coming back into the game. That’s a big opportunity for us.”