Blizzard confirms 'large design and technology changes' for Titan

Blizzard Entertainment has issued a statement regarding yesterday's claim that its World of Warcraft follow-up--codenamed Titan--was being sent back to the drawing board.

"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," the company said in a statement to Kotaku.

"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," the statement goes on. "Note that we haven't announced any dates for the MMO."

Yesterday's report claimed the Titan development team was cut from 100 to 30, with the 70 displaced staffers not let go, but rather reassigned to other projects inside the company. The report also suggested Titan would not be brought to market before 2016.

Blizzard Entertainment has been at work on Titan for years now. The game was playable more than two years ago, with company COO Paul Sams singing its praises thoroughly.

"We're playing it already. It is a total ball to play," Sams said at the time. "We think that the reach of that product is greater than anything that we've done before. We're very excited about that. I believe that it's the type of game that will have a very long life, much like World of Warcraft has."

Blizzard Entertainment's current MMO, World of Warcraft, is the biggest subscription-based MMO on the market. It launched in 2004 and had 8.3 million subscribers at the end of March, down from a peak playerbase of 12 million in 2010.