Canceled Overwatch 2 PvE Mode Was Meant to Lead to MMO

Earlier this week, Blizzard Entertainment canceled the Overwatch 2 PvE mode Hero Missions. As it turns out, those missions were part of a bigger, now-nixed plan. In fact, the PvE Hero Missions were step two of a three step plan that would’ve led to a new MMO.

Back in 2013, a first-person shooter MMO called Project Titan was canceled at Blizzard Entertainment (although it wasn’t announced publicly until 2014). Several members of that development team were moved to a new team called Team 4, and were set to work on Overwatch. However, they still considered themselves to be an MMO team and they came up with a three step plan to get themselves back to developing MMOs.

The first step was to use Project Titan assets to create Overwatch, which turned out to be “a runaway hit.” The second step of the plan was a dedicated version of PvE, which was meant to be a combination of Hero Missions and Story Missions in Overwatch 2. Eventually, this would lead to an MMO that would be “a true realization of the original vision of Project Titan.”

So — what went wrong?

According to Overwatch 2’s current game director Aaron Keller, the team “[wasn’t] as focused as we should have been on a game that was a runaway hit” and focused too much on a plan that they couldn’t get to work anymore. The result is a new roadmap for Overwatch 2, which still includes the Story Missions alongside co-op content.

Overwatch still has a future, but it is no longer in the form of a new version of Project Titan.