According to the folks at GamesBeat, they have learnt that Blizzard has pushed the infamous reset button on the entire project, cutting about 70 team members from the project and leaving a core team which is expected to start all over again on the game. Their source has also informed them that the game will probably see a release in 2016, instead of 2014 which supposedly was the original date according to a leaked roadmap.
Blizzard is pretty notorious when it comes to delaying the release of their games and has never been shy at revisiting the drawing board when it comes to ensuring that the quality of the game is up to their standards. The company had scrapped their console title, StarCraft: Ghost despite being years in development, and even delayed the launch of Diablo 3 as they felt that there still could be improvements made to the game, so it is not surprising to learn of this.
We’re sure many gamers are probably disappointed by this delay, especially since they’ll have to wait another 3 years at least before they see it, but at the same time why would anyone want to play a hastily designed game that was released for the sake of it, instead of a game that has been carefully nurtured over the years?
Update – In a statement released by Blizzard, this is what the company had to say: “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. Note that we haven’t announced any dates for the MMO.”