The 70 who were taken off the project were reportedly not fired, but reassigned to other projects at Blizzard.
Blizzard has yet to confirm nor deny the report. Stay tuned.
Update:
IGN has announced Blizzard sent them the following statement: ”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.”