f13.net

Apparently White Wolf is venturing in to the MMoG market: http://www.white-wolf.com/worldofdarkness/index.php?articleid=746 (http://www.white-wolf.com/worldofdarkness/index.php?articleid=746)

Anyone heard or know anything about it? Being a fan of the video games and a long time player of the CCG, I am at least a little interested.

White wolf + CCP. I don't think anything but "We are making one" has been released...like...at all.

We figured this out when CCP bought WW, and then CCP said they were working on avatars for EVE, which meant they were prototyping for something that needed avatars, such as a WW MOG.  I'd bet actual money on it happening.

Your skill in Cutting Yourself While Reading Your Bad Poetry And Sobbing has increased! [10]

Hmm.. Vampire the Masquerade MMO?  Could be interesting, at least it won't be a fantasy setting.

My WoD games never went like that. They were a bit heavier on political intrigue, and THEN the shocking acts of senseless violence.

Mage games just involved explosions.

Haha yeah.. our Vampire games mainly was lots of killing and backstabbing trying to take over a city.  Our Mage games mainly came down to.. hmm what can I get away with without screwing myself.

Yep, CCP confirmed that it is indeed World of Darkness back in ....March I believe it was? They also said they can't say shit about it simply because they haven't made anything for it yet. 4 -5 years out minimum.

Sources:

http://tentonhammer.com/node/8241 (Ten Ton Hammer release)

http://www.ccpgames.com/jobs.aspx (CCP job listing. Looks like it's being put together mainly in the Atlanta shop.)


Emo gothic "The World Fucking Hates Me" types aside, I'm seriously pumped for this one. If CCP can take the political environment of EvE and put it in a modern horror setting, sign me the hell up.

I'll just be happy for a decent non-fantasy setting MMO.

A good dark future/horror kind of MMO could be very good and say what you want about the emo's the story behind the world of darkness is pretty interesting and I think it would work well for a MMO. Curious if it would be vampires only or would they allow were as well.

Werewolves are an expansion.  Always.

Haven't tried the new versions, but old school Mage -- the way our Mage GM handled paradox, it was like a game of hot potato. Everyone tossing discreet spells and hoping not to be the poor schmuck who ended up with an assload of "Sorry, that's just one coincidence too many to believe. PARADOX!".

Or fireballs.

Hopefully they will come up with an economic system that doesn't skull fuck the newer players.

I always thought that was kind of the point of Vampire.  The newbies getting pushed around by the elders with 900 years worth of accumulated power.  Ventrue basically sucking up to the vets in the hope that they'll get some table scraps.  The Brujah as the WoD equivalent of Goonfleet, taking their four thousand n00b frigates up against the guys at the top of the food chain, just because they can.  The Sabbat saying "Screw this, I'm going to start my own club, and it'll be cool vampires only."  The Malkavians off in the distance somewhere gumming cinderblocks and trying to mind control potatoes.

Hopefully they can not play the game themselves. They could do incredibly interesting things with this that revolve around interplayer politics and whatnot  for the bulk of the game instead of killing a billion rats, but instead I'm sure they're going to play it themselves and completely ruin the whole thing by doing the same exact stuff they did and are still doing in EVE.

You just perfectly described the vampire community in Second Life. Except there's no actual fighting.

You'll just control a car, boat or airplane at first.  It'll be a couple years before they patch in player characters.

I haven't played the new version either.. actually I didn't even try the revised version.  My group doesn't get together too often now that we are older, and it's harder to get time to learn new systems.  Hell, we still play 2nd. edition D&D.

That's the old version.  Incase you missed it, WW decided to have Gehenna descend onto the world, by cannon.  The world ended.  Which is sad, because I really liked Ravnos.

They've made a new ver that's very different.  Generation doesn't mean anything; instead they have a concept called Blood Potency.  Mechanics for feeding/spending blood is about the same, but instead of getting daddy-1 points in it you start out with 1 dot in it.  Always, for any new vampire, you get 1 dot there (buy more at creation!).  It increases via xp or naturally over time (decades or centuries per point).  It also effects what you can feed on; after a couple dots you gain no blood from animals, and after your 6th dot none from humans.  That tends to cause trouble, as you can now only feed on vampires who you can also become blood bound to.  The way out is to go into torpor, which causes your blood potency to drop over time (decades/centuries).

Oh, and there are only 5 clans now.  Ventrue (but now crazy), Gangrel, Daeva (Toreador remake), Mekhet (Lasombra remake), Nosferatu.  No Camarilla/Sabbat; there's 5 covenants now, but they're all more or less at peace.  They did throw in VII, which is sorta like the Sabbat, and Belial's Brood which is Baali remake.

NewWoD sucks*, though.

*obligatory vampire joke here

If it ends up playing like Vampire: Bloodlines Online, it'll be a lot of fun.  That game did a great job in capturing the WoD, especially if you played a Malkavian.  They'll probably use the new rebooted WoD setting though, which kind of sucks.

Edit: bah, took too long to reply.

My guess is that any VtM game will heavily revolve around running missions in order to score money and standing.  The main theme is more or less that of an undead soap opera.  Take Eve's mission system, give it some serious polish, and that's probably what will comprise a lot of anything VtM online.

That is a change from the original.

But this game does bring up an interisting topic, could the can of worms known as "players know numbers for stats" be closed with the Dot system? I think so, and i loved it. I know the mini-maxers and mathematicians will be upset, but i hope i don't see a % # or anything any where in the game, just dots and rolls.

It was ok for (PnP) DnD, because you had to do your own math, but i always thought it was a mistake to give the player that info... Its unnecessary.

No Malkavians? What the fuck? I didn't play one, but they added a helluva good dimension to that setting.

The new system has 'subclasses'.  The new Malkavians are a bloodline that falls under the Ventrue, iirc.

Blearg.

Yeah.  Ventrue are crazy this go round - power mad in every sense.  The Malkavian bloodline is even MORE crazy, but the bloodline itself is fairly rare.  Bloodlines are, by the way, relatively easy to create; any vampire with enough blood potency can do it, and anyone with slightly less potency can join an existing line (regardless of your sire).  The only catch is that bloodlines are bound to clan, so to be a Malk you gotta be a Ventrue.  It fits, you just have to get the 'new' Ventrue, since the nature of the clan is different from what it was.

I'll fully admit that I've never played NWoD but I did play quite a bit of the old school. From what I have read from my ill gotten source books, NWoD is focusing more on mystery and suspense rather than conflict. Not sure I care for the change.

oWoD is a better world, nWoD is a better gaem. The rules are tight, streamlined and with the exception of the new Changeling so bland and boring I wouldn't dream of running them. And I guarantee the game will be nWoD.

The essential problem with the MMO is going to be the same one you ran into with the various MUSHes which populated the web during WoD's heyday: a city or area doesn't have 100 vampires, 50 lycanthropes and 50 mages with a sprinkling of whatever furry/otherkin garbage people could come up with. A city filled with vampires is City of Heroes, not World of Darkness.

I've got friends who really like the new Werewolf game, while I think the Promethean idea is gold. But from what I've read, Vampires have fallen a long way from where they were under the old rules.

The rules are much better than what they were.  Knocking the clans from 13 to 5 didn't really matter except for people who were attached to the old set.  You can bloodline anything so you can recreate whatever you want.  Getting rid of the Cam/Sab nonsense was good. 

Main downside as I see it (aside from loss of old favs) is that many of the discis have been heavily scaled back.  Granted, old VtM had obscene disci strength at 5 dots, but quite a few of them aren't even cool anymore.  Play with illusions?  Badass.  Fleshcrafting?  Badass.  Beating you to death with your own shadow?  Badass.  All of that is gone now though.

I hated Malkavians usually because alot of people just used it as an excuse to play silly and over the top. Jack Nicholson joker. The best Malkavian I ever saw was one that none of us knew was a Malkavian until the game was over. We all thought he was a ventrue and he even became prince of the city. Turned out he was more like Hannibal Lector than the typical "Hey look, my navel hair is trying to send me a message" that I always saw people play Malkavians like.

What's changed with WoD? Any link where I can get a current history lesson, what happened between masquerade and requiem? I haven't looked at the new source book, and don't have anyone to play with, but at least I find the story entertaining. It seems almost as if they started a new story, alternate-timeline type stuff and didn't make any effort to bridge the two.

What actually happened is a guy named Justin Achilli came on board and decided he wanted to wipe the slate clean.  He was fairly vocal about disliking a lot of the setup for old VtM and how he wanted to cut down to just a handful of clans.  All of that was years ago.  He got his wish.

On the story front, nWoD has nothing to do with the old, except maybe for some recycled concepts.  The myth of Caine is gone entirely, Golconda is all but gone, the clans have been entirely reworked, etc.  Camarilla exists, but it's a pseudo-mythical vampire utopia that was going on during ancient Rome, and fell apart for an unknown reason.  No one knows what vampire history was before that, and there is no creation myth (like Caine).  The nature of torpor is radically different, because it drops your blood potency but also gives you really bad nightmares and fucks up your memory, so even a 2,000 year old vampire can't recall with any reliability what went on in Rome.  He may not even be certain that he's really 2,000 years old.  You're better off going in with the expectation that it's not the same story, at all.  It's not Ann Rice vampire vs. Bram Stoker vampire difference, but not far from it. 

On the game front, the overall concept is pretty similar.  You struggle with your dwindling humanity, with older and more powerful vampires who couldn't care less if you were dusted, with political structures that would grind you down.  Very story intensive, as the old game was. 

By the way, I never read the old Mage rules, but the new rules are pretty sweet.  I love the whole concept of "my powers do whatever I can imagine".  Doesn't translate into a game mechanic well though, unfortunately.

Ah. New story entirely, I guess they never dealt with the apocalypse and stuff.

Old mage rules were like that too. I'll take a look at the new system. I always liked mage more than VtM anyway.

Wait, what? Entirely different game, too. Fuck. I LIKED the idea of the technocracy versus traditions and the fight for a global belief system and paradigm battles. It was totally and completely human and a great counterpoint to world of darkness where every mystical thing under the sun (or moon) was fighting for world domination.

No, they did.  They had a bunch of drummed up stuff about it, and suppliments that delt with it.  There was no official ending; instead they published a book that had a half dozen scenarios that you could pick from or mix and match. 

Published books: a full book for Vampire, Mage and Werewolf and then one for all of their other games.

No, they had it. Last set of books out for Old WoD was apocalypse. Friend of mine played through it. The ante-deluvians waking up (those that were actually asleep) and all that jazz. They went out with a bang, as best I understand.

I could have sworn that we had this same thread about 9 months ago.

True, but what didn't happen was a transition from oWoD to nWoD. They just decided "oh that other stuff didn't happen at all". Its more like an alternate universe. Which is lame, because oWoD lore was awesome. I only played a small amount of it, but I loved the novels to death.

Unfortunately, the whole paradigm system often meant there was no reason for mages of different groups to be hanging out together.  And even within groups, two mages' magic just didn't work together because the way they thought about magic was too different.  There was no real 'unified theory', each mage had his own personal theory that worked for him, and mostly only for him.  How mages learned from each other didn't make any sense because of that.

The new system has mages acting like mages, studying magic, not how it's weird that their drug-induced illusions seem more real than most people's, or that their wacky science theory works, but only for them.  OWoD mages had to delude themselves into thinking they weren't mages, because mages got slapped down by Reality, and no one wanted that; you wanted something like magic, but with enough layers of BS over top that Reality wouldn't notice.  Paradox and belief and conflict between mages are still around, but instead of fighting for hippy ideals like 'the hearts and minds of humanity', they are fighting for magical power and control/access to the Higher Reality; much more in-character for mages.  And the unified theory means mages can teach each other magic.  The traditions, instead of being primarily about paradigm, are about where your power comes from(one of 5 watchtowers), and what you believe should be done with that power (one of 5 opinions).  Well, for the nominal 'good guys' groups, anyway.  I dunno if they've done much with the enemy mage groups in the additional sourcebooks, haven't been paying much attention.

The whole technocracy vs. traditions thing was just another variation on the weaver vs. the wyld  vs. the wyrm battle, that they scrapped in nWoD.  There is a great battle, but it's over magical power, between the mages who believe they should ascend to the Supernal in order to rule humanity, and those who believe their power should be used to help humanity.  I think the new story lines up more with human nature; OWoD was very hippy/wiccan in nature, it didn't seem to fit with actual human nature very well.  The new mage seems to fit better.

--
Alkiera

We played a bit different; often our campaigns were similar to a guerrilla campaign against the technocracy. The way we played, it was similar to being inside the matrix. There was no 'hanging out' together -- you were there for a reason, something that was critical enough that you had to come out of hiding, be visible -- or possibly they took unusual notice in the players because you were on the run with important information that had to get somewhere, ultimately getting drawn in that way.

There was no real way to win; most of the time it was merely trying to survive or slow them down. Stuff like that tends to bring the players together even from different disciplines. You were ignored until you did something to get noticed, and then gradually the pressure was applied for you to keep silent. Problems were brought to bear on you in the modern world - you were discredited, finances were frozen, you may be even arrested and roughed up a bit. Most of the time, force wasn't needed -- you were living in their world after all.

Some of the time it was trying to carve out a mid-term general strategy against them or find a counter to an important artifact or discovery, or the answer to the question of how to wake up a populace that has been duped, the question of helping one person at a time on the path of awakening, instead of getting to the end and hoping (not even knowing!) everyone would suddenly be awakened all at once like the technocracy wanted. Working for personal uplifting by education, one person at a time.

In one particular campaign, I decided to focus on keeping superstition, one of the last vestiges of anti-technology sentiment, alive. I build a little cult-like following out in a small mid-west town. I made the town my own, getting to know the folks who considered me a little odd but generally good folk. This was important for when the technocracy came knocking, they wouldn't get any help from the locals when "the feds" came investigating this or that. I did free divining for farmer's wells, encouraged folk cures, and generally did my best in that direction. Ultimately, I planted a seed in that town. As long as people believed there was still a bit of mystery in the world, something that technology couldn't touch, than I and my kind could survive.

There was another reason -- we had gotten word they had broken up other 'cults' as they called them, small schools and isolated magi that were teaching people. We weren't sure how, but it came to pass that they had developed some sort of way to turn the charismatic leader insane, dispersing the cult. I figured I could get enough attention for them to use them to use it on me, so we could get information about it.

Ultimately, of course, the technocracy came around, asking too many awkward questions about some new 'cult' in town, and soon enough I discovered they had gotten a mole inside and planted a device in the guy's bedroom that emitted some strange rays that gradually, over time, unbalanced them. They planted one on me, we traced it's construction/information, and ultimately staged a daring break-in to destroy the work and the 'scientist' that created it.

It was stuff like that I enjoyed. I don't think it was about amassing personal power, and I don't think that's more "in-character" to sit around in an isolated tower or basement or dungeon, ignoring the world for research.

Damnit.  I want to play Mage now.

I was thinking the same thing.  If the proportions are what they were supposed to be in the oWoD, there's one vampire per 100,000 humans.  Unless the game's set in a city the size of Mexico, or set up like Diablo II with eight PCs to a world, it's not going to make much sense.

And what about the Masquerade?  Does that factor into the nWoD?  How the hell will players fail to violate it at every turn?  How does the game handle millions of NPCs?

CCP just cracked their new dev house in Atlanta. This one will be the primary hub for the WoD MMO development.

http://evevault.ign.com/View.php?view=CommunityArticles.Detail&id=22

President Mike Tinney took us on a tour of the new building, giving an overview of existing and planned layout of each area of the new offices. The new location for CCP Worldwide will not only provide a new studio for the upcoming Word of Darkness project, but will also house White Wolf Publishing, and be the location for the NA based support team for EVE Online.

Tinney first went into an overview of how they are approaching the development of WoD. It's primarily a "scrum based design methodology" to use Tinney's words. What that basically means is that the project uses small, cross-discipline teams. Instead of standard teams of 4-6 people, the teams are composed of 2 or 3 people. Not only are the teams smaller but goals and project schedules are very short, with a two to four week dev cycle for turn-in, review, and completion. Tinney stated that this allows for both smaller deliverables and fresher projects throughout development. To accommodate the system, they structured the layout of the floor to allow teams to work closer but still have the ability to break away when necessary.

The interesting part about this is that the WoD project is being co-developed between the Iceland and Atlanta offices, with some outsourcing to the Shanghai office (artwork). The bulk of the content and design is slated for Atlanta and the bulk of the technical design is being developed in Iceland. This makes WoD one of the first multi-office projects of this nature, and the team may very well face all new hurdles (and find all news solutions, as well) throughout development. With 55 people on staff locally and over 260 people worldwide, the company has a sizable team to coordinate across its projects.

One, what do you ex-devs think of this smaller team thing? It strikes me that when some hideous bug is found completely unrelated to what caused it (what do you mean if you turn in 12 vampire fangs it makes vendors disappear?!?) 2-3 guys working in one hour shifts or whatever isn't going to cut it.

And they're so far from being the only MMO studio with multi-continent office locations.

My non-dev understanding of scrum principles is that the smaller teams, more focused development of code, regular short meetings that focus on solutions etc are meant to give teams greater control over what they do and allow such bugs to be stamped out sooner. That said, something big comes up and I'm sure that some teams would want to have a few more resources.

Razorwire covered the WoD stuff the other day (http://razorwire.warcry.com/news/view/77930-CCP-North-America-cuts-ribbon-on-new-office-I-saw-WoD-Online-stuff), saying:


Yay, great - concept art. The project is really moving full steam ahead.

In my experience the rate of occurrence of hideous bugs is roughly proportional to the number of people you have working on the project.

Yep, Funcom has been doing this for some time now for TSW. Oslo, Shanghai and... Frisco I believe it is?

Coming late to this party, the fact that it is likely to be the new setting (World of Dullness amrite) instead of the old-school WoD is odd if they want to really use the branding to drive sales: the number of people who cycled through the old setting and would be all "I get to play my old Tzimisce!" would surely far outnumber the new stuff (of which sales are far lower, and which has - by definition - existed for less time).

By the by, I hate Scrum based methodologies [long rant deleted because it's off-topic, but it boils down to a bazillion over-running "brief meetings" and a hundred more complaints].

I'm 90% confident that any WoD MMO will be based on the new rule set, not the old one.

First off, you aren't ever going to be playing your "old Tzimisce" in the MMO. Some rulesets would no doubt be tinkered with for the MMO, and the game won't let you get away with stuff your GM would. D&DO was an acid test for this kind of thing - one that mostly failed, sure, but you can't just port rules on paper into a MMO and think it will work. Of course, changing too much doesn't help either... anyway...

Secondly, WW would want to push the new ruleset, not the old one they have stopped producing for.

Finally, the vast majority are coming to WoD for the vampires and werewolves, not because the Assamites and Toredor have teamed up to take out the Nosferatu Prince of the city, or whatever. Until someone else announces a MMO where you can be a werewolf / vampire PC (Secret World? One of Cryptic's unannounced projects that has relevant concept art?) WoD gets those players.

D&DO was one example, but a counter-example is LOTRO, many of whose players seem to have been drawn by exactly that desire to live out the version from their head.  In either case, I'm not arguing, and I'm sure you're right: they'll make the mistake of letting pride fuck with them and using the unpopular and dreary new setting, just as D&DO used Eberron when several other settings would have sold more boxes.

The Eve crossover I would like is to see in a WoD game would be Eve's large number of conquerable systems mirrored in a similarly large number of cities, to spread out the playerbase to something approaching Canon-esque Vampire levels.  Of course, I know that the resources required for representing a city are orders of magnitude more than those for an Eve system, but one day someone will make that sort of game!

Ninja Edit:  your point about people wanting to play specific races seems odd: who said anythnig about having to be non-standard/canonical?  Are you seriously telling me that you think I was saying "yay we should be able to do whatever we like"?!?  Plus, "ever" is a very long time for which to prophesy.

Eve Online experience would seem to lend CCP fantastically towards developing systems to support this kind of thing and the online drama such systems create. I hope they can pull it off.

Given it's CCP, I can also see the devs being Princes (at least) automatically, and every time they get caught cheating they can argue that they were just acting "in character".

I'd suggest getting in as early as you can and making friends with the devs.  At least get their AIM handles.

I need to get the address and drive over there one day.

Yeah, and get on their UTK server.  Devs need friends too, after all.  They're not robots.  And I want my second tier blood magic formulae.

So I went through some of the NWoD rulebooks etc. It's definitely a more polished system than the old style. The world, on the other hand, is nowhere near as interesting as the old version.

New rulesets placed in the old world backdrop. That would be the perfect combo IMO. Problem is it will never happen since they'll want to use the MMO to push as many PnP sales as possible.

The other thing is that the whole metaplot, world driving NPC style of thing was becoming tired at the end of the 90s. In the 90s EVERYONE had it. Everyone. And it was tired at the end. Since White Wolf were the arguable kings of that style they had to blow it up if they were to get away from it.

It varies from game to game. Werewolf is completely fucking awesome now. Vampire is still Vampire but it lacks a certain something the old one had; but I was never a huge fan so I may be skewed. Mage went from best to least as it has the blandest background imaginable. The new Changeling is a complete reimagining and so awesome it hurts; just completely amazing. And don't forget that the base rules accounting for plain old people in a scary world are damned good on their own merits.

If there's PvP, how an earth are they going to keep the game remotely friendly?  Eve is the grown up game of PvP with some very grown up and dedicated cockstabs (not everyone obviously).  Any of those happy OCD people moving to this new game would be terrorizing.  I mean, WOD is RP almost by definition.  It will be a "slaughter".

pardons if this obvious has already been raised.

Actually, i would first like to imagine how they are going to do the pvp, before becoming concerned over goth kids getting steamrolled by the lolzerg.

It's like someone picked an outlandish idea to turn in to a MMOG as a design exercise.  But due to a clerical error, it was approved.  And the best part is, CCP is not going to phone in a WoW-clone like STO.  WoD Online is going be pure  :popcorn:.  I am not sure I will want to play it, but I am eager to see what they come up with.

Say what you want about CCP but at least they have stones, which is more then you can say for ANYONE else in the industry apparently.

Although I give this a 70/30 chance of failure they will try to do justice to an interesting set of ideas instead of just cloning the same bullshit mechanics we've been offered for 10 years..

In the Vampire PnP game rules as written, the GM had an inordinate amount of power. If the players got out of line the Prince and/or Elders came down hard. You had to learn how to play the political game in order not to get cockstabbed.

What I would envision would be a certain area of the city would be the Prince's headquarters. Attack a player near there and you get cockstabbed, weapons confiscated, rez sickness (ugh) whatever. The further away from the Prince's zone of control, the more lax the enforcement against PVP until you get out into the "barrens" where it's no holds barred PVP. Best of both worlds, the emo goth RP'ers can do their brooding verbal masturbation in the Prince's parlor and the catasses can all go to the outskirts and kill each other. Win win.

Sounds kinda familiar, eh?

The EVE system seems perfectly suited for a Vampire MMO, so it wouldn't surprise me in the least to see it implemented that way.

Riiissseee

Three years later it appears we'll finally get some info about this. CCP's Hilmar Petursson will be the keynote for GDC Europe in August where he'll, according to Gamasutra, be revealing their next game.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23985

Awesome news this and secret world are the only games i have high hopes for.

When I read the thread title my mind went straight to Moorcock's Elric and than to fond memories of Chaosium's PnP RPG version. With all the MMORPG disappointments lately, PnP is starting to look more attractive.

Liked the PnP stuff on... well... paper. Never got the chance to play any of their books. Really interested in the Werewolf and Mage stuff. Vampires can die in a raging emo filled fire, though. Be interesting to see what they've come up with.

I hope they use the dot system.

That's funny, I also tough that PnP could be a solution last year.  I couldn't a find a decent online community to play those online D&D kit.  I waited for the online client of D&D 4th edition but it was a failure.

An announcement of an announcement: WoD to appear at CCP con 23-26 September (http://www.massively.com/2010/09/14/ccp-to-take-the-mask-off-of-world-of-darkness-at-the-grand-masqu/). Featuring a panel titled "Tell the World of Darkness Development team what you want to see in the MMO" and several LARP / MMO theory panels.

I really should announce my pronouncement denouncement of this announcement.

That doesn't even sound like it's appearing, it sounds like there's a panel where they're going to be talking about it in very vague terms.


Edit:  Also, the audience they'll probably have at that Con would be the last group of people I'd want offering any creative input in regards to the MMO.

White Wolf are also having their very own con in New Orleans soon. Maybe this weekend soon, I can't remember. Big announcements, blah, blah, blah. This one has the stench of Chaos behind the scenes but whatever. Try to convey that WW goes the way of the dodo if this bombs to pen and paper fans and it's shoutdown city.

I only want to know if it's New or Old WoD.  Answering that will tell me all I need to know about whether I even bother to care.

Shitty (new) WoD.

New WoD is fine. It's just not going to translate as well to a video game as oWoD due to it being designed with a toolkit approach in mind. oWoD really feels dated in a lot of ways, too. Very 90s.

90s were my college years, so I'm fine with that.

Mine, too. For me, it's hard to go back to games as 90s political polemics with katana wielding X-Files cliches.

It will (IMO) be a bastardisation of the new version developed for the video game. WW isn't going to want to go backwards, but a direct conversion probably can't happen either.

what's the difference between old wod and new?

It's a complete reboot of the setting, with a lot of changes and streamlining.

I suppose that it would be unhelpful to describe it in terms like "the old WoD was an exciting, confusing setting with an overarching and definable set of themes, whereas the new WoD is a dreary mish-mash of uninspiring filler released with no more inspiring a Weltanschauung than selling lots of books"?

The new WoD gets rid of that terribly unfashionable gothic-punk feel, and replaces the eschatological theme with one of mystery.

Rules-wise, the nWoD is pretty standard across the games in the setting, which does make sense (even if I, personally, felt that it made everything quite homogenous), and the mechanics are, broadly speaking, an improvement.  But I wanted to love it but utterly failed to do so: it's drab, dreary and uninspiring.

If I can offer what I hope to be help, the nWoD isn't drab by default. It's without a metaplot by default.

oWoD had huge, overarching themes tied to convoluted stories which were spread over multiple supplements. nWoD takes a toolkit approach, where there's no overarching metaplot created by the designers and the default assumptions are barebones in comparison to oWoD. Two different flavors. I think the nWoD has the potential for way better gaming experiences around a table. They're not as fun to read and they're certainly not as good for a video game.

Good to see I'm not the only one who didn't care for nWoD. Despite having never actually played oWoD, I own a number of the rulebooks and have read most of the fiction.

You know how we go on and on about how some games are better "games" and some are better "worlds"? Yeah...

oWOD was creaking apart at the seams with all the clans and supernatural creatures and 'cool' bollox they had introduced. They were right to end it when they did, it needed a reboot. The books where they ended owod (at least the Vampire and werewolf ones) were the best books they had written in years.

That's not to say that nWOD is necessarily better, but if they had tried the same style of setting the twink clans would have been back in months.

They are releasing some conversion stuff for nWoD rules with oWoD setting stuff. Starting with Vampire.

It didn't help that Achilli hated oWoD.  He said unfavorable things about it at several conventions and mentioned how he wanted to do things differently, but felt tied by the existing setting.

Really though, the beauty of the oWoD meta-plot was that GMs could take it, leave it, or twist it and you could never know which because it was all shrouded in rumors and hearsay.  Even basic clans could be twisted for any given city because a good GM would give all of the players their own goals and motivations.  No two of our campaigns were the same, even with some minor overlap of characters.

I liked the clan novel series better than then Gehenna stuff. And the few books of nWoD I read were...bleh. I wasn't sure if the nWoD was supposed to be taking place AFTER the end of oWoD, or if it was created as a separate canon.

See, I vaguely know VtM and only from the Bloodlines PC game but...I want THAT, in an MMO. Seriously.

Bloodlines is probably the most faithful recreation of an RPG's world and atmosphere into a video game ever done.  I played through it so many times.

Malk or GTFO  :tinfoil:

Bloodlines is one of my favorite games ever. 

I also find the oWoD far more interesting than the new one, warts and all.  I especially like the Kindred of the East from the oWoD.  Yeah, there was a lot of unwieldy or just plan bad elements in oWoD, but the beauty of table top RPGs is you can just ignore the stuff you don't like.  The problem with the nWoD is it seems to lack any kind of heart.  From what I've seen of it, it seems bland and flat.  Downplaying the religious undercurrents of the backstory makes it very uninteresting to me.

My objection to the oWoD isn't a matter of bland versus vibrant. It's a matter of it just not aging that well. The X-Files hasn't, either. oWoD is very much a part of its time. I had a blast. There's stuff they were trying to do mechanically that other games do better now. There's stuff they wanted to do thematically which smells a little moldy.

I'm way, way, way more concerned about the lack of information, hiring posts on their site up for ages and what seems to be a massively long development cycle. I have felt and continue to feel that EVE's success was a fluke and happened despite CCP's best efforts to fuck it up. Lightning's not going to strike twice and it's fairly obvious that most of WW's future is tied up in the MMO being a success, which it won't be.

EDIT: I'll add that in terms of quality, both mechanically and in terms of having interesting backgrounds, the peripheral nWoD games are the best stuff they've ever done. Vampire, Mage (especially Mage) and Werewolf turned out dull as dishwater but the new Hunter and Geist are amazingly good and nWoD Changeling is something you owe it to yourself to get if you ever liked any version of WoD.

I'm probably due another play through.  Ahh, what a game.

Ok, I'll be honest here. I've never met a Malk player that didn't play it as an excuse to be annoying and act like a gobshite. Anything that gets rid of that fucking clan gets a thumbs up from me. VTM:B was the one and only time I've seen Malks used well.


Thats a very good point. Hadn;t really thought of it in terms like that


Now that's interesting, as oWOD Changling was a disaster that nearly finished WW, which had been on VERY shaky ground after Wraith. Both those books had people going "What?," Wraith was a game I would never in a million years want to play and Mark Rhien-Hagan publicly put his reputation on the line with Changeling, and lost.

Scion is actually pretty fun to read too, no idea what it would be like to play though.


Agreed on all fronts.

I think the Changeling will kill WW thing is pretty well overstated. It printed a zillion books, including a fairly healthy number after it moved to their small imprint. I have a nice complete set on my shelf which could put my daughter through college to the right buyer. She can suffer. Both Changeling and Wraith were fine; what they didn't do was lend themselves to a game world which was increasingly bought by people interested in telling what amounted to super hero stories. Which is fine if that's your thing but some of the WoD games just didn't work out super well.

Changeling was also stigmatized with the "that's the game about little kids" tag when it wasn't that game at all. There was that aspect to it but it was really unfair for it to be tagged that way. Wraith was just demanding psychologically of the players. The setting was loose in the beginning and it was all purely psychological, enemy within horror dealing with regret and loss. That's not going to sell to a dude who just wants to play Lestat.

It's very much like someone playing Chaotic Neutral.  When done properly it's amazing.  Most people have no clue how to play it well because they can't conceive of the proper morality or psychological state, so they do their best stereotypical impersonation which is really bad.

The problem is most people play insane way too over the top, like they need to wave a big 'I'm crazy' sign just to make sure people get it.  The most effective Malks are the ones who play it subtle.  You're doing it right if the other players can sense there's something not quite right, but they aren't sure exactly how.

Could be worse. Could be most of the dickbags that played Sabat.

"I'm an antisocial borderline psychopath, ooh these guys are right up my alley!" I had a lot of fun wiping every last bloodsucker that didn't want to play nice right the fuck out of NYC one campaign.

To be honest, I'd rather that the White Wolf mmog had turned out to be Exalted.

Oh yes.  I love when someone manages to pull them off like this.  So few people manage it. :sad:

I'm in a forum-based game right now going through the Giovanni Chronicles, as a newbie Setite.  One of the young players was concerned I was going to be some blatantly corrupt evil temptress.  I had to assure him this was not going to be the case.  Now I have the challenge of falling without the more oblivious players even realizing it.

News coming in from the WW convention says the MMO will be Vampire only.

Vampire: The Masquerade that is.

Here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5Wsf31WIdY

That makes sense to be honest. I remember way back in the MUSH text only days they had all the various (well it was Vamps, wolves and mages at the time) and it was easy to spot the vamps as they were the ones that said "gotta go!" when dawn broke. It was fun but really didn't work.

The various worlds work together better when they are internally isolated and consistent.

Unless you are saying its gonna be oWOD rather than nWOD.

It is oWoD. It is Vampire the Masquerade, not Vampire the Reckoning. All the oWoD pdfs will be up on the pdf stores and a supplement for playing Masquerade with Reckoning rules will be coming out. Beyond that they're not going to be coming out with any new books for oWoD settings.

The wailing and gnashing of teeth over this is pretty hilarious over on sites like rpg.net. For the MMO, specifically, they've completely lost the forest for the trees: namely, that it doesn't matter what Vampire world the MMO is set in because this shit is going to crash and burn, taking WW out with it at the end. They're talking 2012 at the earliest, meaning an *at least* six year development cycle. I can only imagine what their costs are going to be once this is done. Even if it ended up dirt cheap, I'll reiterate that EVE succeeds despite CCP, not because of them. There is zero chance, zero, that a 90% social sub based MMO about goths breaks 200k subs after five months.

Why was there a PS3 Move controller in the front of the video?

EDIT: Surprised they are going with VtM, which is outdated and has lots of baggage. The next question is: at what point in time? With which sourcebooks?

It feels incredibly dated for me. Get this: they're actually talking about setting it in the 90s, specifically. One of the WW guys on an rpg.net thread mentioned something vaguely to that effect.

So I don't know. I get why they're going with M. That was where they had their least bit of broader cultural impact. It sold several measures better than anything they have now. They have two video games. I just feel like the entire thing is insane. I'd just be repeating myself but I'm going to doomcast this one hard.

My first guess was that they could be going for a Gehenna Era end of the world type scenario, and the middle east has gotten volitile since 1990 and it saves them dealing with political ramifications of stuff that's going on there (DOES THIS MMO SUPPORT THE WAAAAAR??? etc.) But I checked and Gehenna was published in 2004, so they are going for a pre-Gehenna storyline.

There's no reason they can't throw all the hints out there for an on-coming Gehenna.  It's not like MMOs ever advance the story enough to matter.

I thought that there were like 4 or so different "Endings" for the VtM world based on what campaign/book you chose to run.

Yep. I have the book. There's 4 different stories, ranging from "God kills off the Vampires quietly while your Group is tested by God for redemption. No-one in the world notices the Kindred's passing" to "Oh hai we're the Antideluvians. IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AND WE'RE HUNGRY BABY MUNCH MUNCH MAD MAX TIME"

And in fact all 4 are interesting and well written. If I was running it I'd pick and chose between elements of all 4. The Werewolf ending book was similar.

Isn't one ending that neither Ghenna or "judgment" nor WW3 happens?

Kind of. There's one that's basically a localized bitch fight between Lillith and Caine that takes place in one city (the least interesting of the lot imo), but even in that, all vampires die away or become mortal as their blood finally loses its potency.

All of the end times books were like that. There was one book for each of the big three (Vampire, Werewolf, Mage) and then one book for all the other lines. They were harbingers of the toolkit approach nWoD would take.

Prediction: WoW-clone but with 1990s oWoD window dressing, with the Alliance Camarilla vs the Horde Sabbat. Brujah = warrior, Tremere = Mage, Gangrel = Druid, etc. etc. The 'social' bits will be the equivalent of idling in Dalaran in your best armour on your best mount. Sandbox? Player & guild coterie housing.

(You know that's what's going to happen, right?  :awesome_for_real: )

I'd play the shit out of that, just sayin'.

Why are people surprised that they're going with V:TM? That's the only WW property that has any name recognition whatsoever. Until I read this thread I didn't even know that V:TM was not current. V:TM is what put WW on the map, it's what people have heard of, there are games based off of it.


What's your alternative? Base the game on new irrelevant properties that nobody has ever heard of and sell like garbage? Why not just shovel money into an incinerator instead?

I always assumed that the game would be based on V:TM because quite frankly I didn't know WW even had anything else and I'm sure I'm not alone.


So basically WoW but a thousand times better?


Does that matter? For the game to be a success it has to appeal to more than the 5000 vampire RPG nerds who are even aware of the baggage. Whatever lack of internal consistency or dangling plot threads or whatever that bother you can just be papered over, ignored or rewritten. I think the mistake people in this thread are making is thinking that the MMO is for people who have played all the games and read all the books. If that is the target audience then the game is absolutely certain to fail.

For an IP like Star Wars or Star Trek appealing to fans of the series is a good start and sticking closely to the series fiction is probably also a good idea. For something like Champions Online or World of Darkness the license provides very minor name recognition and some broad stroke ideas.

Don't come out with it at all.

You're maybe misunderstanding me. I'm not saying that a different WoD MMO would sell. I'm saying there is no WoD MMO that will sell. Not in the numbers that will make up for an over six year development time. Not developed by CCP.

It can't do worse than APB...

Nah, no way does it do that poorly.

If that's the case, call it VtM Online, not WoD Online.

And again, IP might get people in the door, but they stay for the gameplay. Say, "Based in WW's Vampire mythos" and leave it at that.

We're surprised in the same way that if a Doctor Who MMO came out and they announced it was set in the Fourth Doctor's period. Sure, he's popular, but things have moved on since then.

I still somewhat expect Vampires, Werewolves, and humans (Mages, and hunters) as race options.

Really? You are aware of how EVE came to be, right?

Nobody gives a fuck about nWoD, even the people who still play P&P games.  Some people still care about oWoD.  However the only factors here which will translate to big numbers are the Hunter console games, the PC games by Troika, and all the terrible vampire shit on television.

Mage would be very constraining.  Hunters would fit with the other two fine.

I fundamentally believe that EVE is a success despite CCP, not because of them. It's also buoyed in part by people with multiple subscriptions which (probably) isn't going to translate to WoD. Even aside from that, you're looking at a development time over six years (I'm betting you don't see it until 2013), a budget which will be in APB territory by the time it's all said and done, an IP which isn't even in the top five of TT games sold anymore, direct competition from a more traditional MMO set in the same basic type of world and a millieu which will be past saturation point when the game finally comes out.

I just do not see any way this game does anything but bomb compared to the expectations, though I feel that way about basically every upcoming MMO but GW2. Given the past three years and the corpses littering the sidewalk I think you'd have to be fucking insane to release *any* subscription based MMO unless you're one of the big boys.

The people that developed it went bust and CCP bought it for a song, and launched it without having to pay development costs, and the majority of design decisions they have made since then have been disastrously ill thought out. Your point?

Outdated?  It's a made-up world.

I would imagine that some people in the capital-raising side of things looked at which version sold 5.5 million copies (oWoD) and which sold 1.5 million (nWoD).  Since nWod has been around for seven years and oWoD was published for 13, that's a significant underperformance, which I bet was heavily weighted to years one and two of nWoD with fans of the previous version buying the main rulebooks on the strength of the older, successful brand.

Edit: I imagine I'll play with goons, which almost certainly will mean malkavians on an RP server.

I imagine their level of fun will depend on whether they include Dominate or Dementation as a clan discipline.  :grin:

We goons are ace roleplayers we will simply roleplay those disciplines and stay strictly in character :colbert:

Don't know how they'd do it, but I wonder if they'll end up with a single shard world a la eve.  Considering how much they talk it up, I can't imagine they'd want to have different server shards, but being set on a planet leaves them with several more preconceived notions to deal with.

http://planet-vampire.com/main/forum/index.php?topic=4941.msg85550#msg85550

Report from a Q&A panel. So it sounds like closed source Second Life with fangs.

Ok. I'll add my rather cynical commentary here.


629k man hours and they are just out of "pre-production"?


Ok fair enough


Ahh the holy grail of gaming, appeal to WOMEN. Please play our game!


Noble aspirations but...


Yeah. Thats worked SO BLOODY WELL in eve. But allows them to try and save money on GM staff...


No, there WON'T be guys waiting outside the safe starting areas to murder Newbs. Not in this mature playerbase we are aiming for! Eve wasn't forced to include NPC police to pry fuckers lose from camping starting stations and stop them blowing up newbies incessantly, after all.


And how to keep and take territories without having combat (with permadeath) as a big part if the game?


PLEASE PLAY OUR GAME!!!


Probably easy enough to manage. Just vamps with no blood pool or blood fueled powers.


Fully PVP + permadeath = griefer heaven. I'm sure they will hate being called bad names by the playerbase police...


Well hopefully they will manage a better job than EVEs story arcs. Of course the story arcs will NOT be camped by "mature Sabbat roleplayers" reveling in the "not combat focused but fully pvp" gameplay with permadeath.

I'm sorry, this is smelling more and more like a trainwreck.

I think they have a tremendously challenging task ahead of them but to pull out the tired old "smelling more and more like a trainwreck" cliche after the first official release of pre-production details is lazy and dreary.

Of course, the odds are that it won't be a huge success.  That's always the case with any MMO at this stage.  I'd not bet on it any more than I'd bet on a polar bear raising all four cubs to maturity.  But there is nothing in their vague description of their planned game that rings any actual alarm bells of awfulness, and you saying "oh lordy they're trying to get non-traditional MMOers to play what a to-do *snigger*" doesn't suddenly make that a bad idea.  The fact is that vampire fiction (all that horrible Sooky Stackhouse/Anita Blake/Hope Winterborn shite) is read overwhelmingly by women.  The Twilight Saga is read, watched and adored disproportionately by women (in fact girls, mainly).  The Underworld series had a significant female fanbase.  Vampire fiction is, for terribly obvous reasons, easy to target at a female audience.  So of course they want to draw those into their vampire MMO.

Half of the rest of the stuff you made up there about camping stuff is just pure interpolation on your own part: strawmen that you then use to say "oh how awful".  Well yes, your ideas that you list are awful.  Maybe they'll come up with better.  Maybe not.  But I'm not going to come to a decision on the basis of what Sir T reckons they might do.  And some of the stuff that they would like to design for happened in early Ultima Online, so if you know your history it's not entirely laughable in the way you snidely put it (just naively optimistic, perhaps).

The alternative reply, snider but more apposite, would have been to just quote your CCP-damning response, followed by:

"

I just prefer to leave it at it sounding like Second Life with fangs. Which it does. Which might be perfectly fine with cheap development costs.

They should look into getting APB's character creator.  Second Unlife sounds fine with me.

I like that bit about attracting women.  And gay clubs.  Double woot!  (The secret is to not hang out at the clubs, as all the guys in digital drag will be there.)

*snerk*

Don't need it. They're doing new proprietary clothing physics tech. There was a thirty second video lurking somewhere on youtube but its inexplicably difficult to find. It's neat. It also looks expensive and system intensive.

To be fair, "Second life with fangs" sounds pretty ok actually, especially if they are going for the elusive "appeal to women" bracket. The Sims is one of the most successful game franchises ever after all.

And Endie, act mature for 2 minutes and take your stupid EVE grudges to PMs and the EVE forum where they belong. Thanks.

Sir T don't flatter yourself: you're a bad poster but i can't imagine why you think you are worth a grudge.  I just disagreed with you and stated why.

There are two discussions to be had

1) Is this going to be a good game? Way too early to tell. There's this vague sense that they're developing it like it's the LARP translated directly to a persistent world which I do not think will be good if they go that way but it's way too early for sure.

2) Is this going to be successful? I won't repeat myself but this is a conversation we can start having.

I think everyone can agree that initial "Box sales" will be strong based on the VTM brand and the Bloodlines game. Whether it lasts depends on a lot of things.

I'll be a lot more forgiving of flaws in a VtM game than I would be in something like warhammer where the IP only vaguely appeals to me.  So, I think there will be a market for this but it really depends on if they screw the pooch or not.

I need more details all around before doomcasting any more than I would for New MMO Property Announcement 001.

I don't know that I'd bank too heavily on the success of Bloodlines.  The game sold badly enough that it killed Troika.

And if they try to Twilight this game, there is going to be some serious gnashing of teeth.  You cannot have one audience picking up a game hoping for some tweeny romance and another hoping for a blood drenched "EVE with Vampires" PvP-fest without someone being disappointed.  You're either going to have Goons crying in the corner about being unable to grief anyone, or they're going to be scraping Bella off the cieling with a spatula.

I wish I had never read this thread.

I missed out on Bloodlines when it came out. I was in my third year of law school, then studying for the bar exam, then broke as hell till I found work, etc.

So I read a bit here about how nifty it was, and I go grab it on Steam.

Hours later, I'm still trying to read through various forums to figure out how to fix some "Only 15 mb available memory" cockblock bug that won't let the game load. In the process, I discover a very emo community that rails against various mod/patch makers in an attempt to establish the one true mod. Determined to not see my 20 bucks go to waste, I am actually wading through this pap to find the brilliant nugget of "HOW SLACK CAN MAKE HIS GAEM WORKS."

To be all emo and facebooky, fml.

I always just downloaded whatever the one was they have hosted here, which worked fine for me. (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=4556.0)  Though I haven't tried it with the Steam version.

A lot of the stuff CCP mention are around the edges but a big draw card, much like 0 space is what everyone talks about in EvE but most players rarely venture outside of the safe areas.

What's critical here is how the PvE element plays out. Women coming to WoDO for the Vampire setting (if it really is a key market for them, and I don't think it is) aren't coming for hardcorz PvP aktion. I can accept permadeath as a concept that fits the genre (perhaps through diablere (sp?)) but it's a lousy game mechanic for retaining players.

The other big unknown is the emergent player politics that I'm not sure you can develop systems for. In the PnP, the GM has control over NPC reactions to players, no matter how they really conduct themselves, so that the combat monster player puts enough points in the right stats and gets to have a silver tongue. In WoDO, player politics won't work like that, so that MakkEAV3ll1 won't be able to gain political favour no matter how many points he invests in stats / skills / attributes if he leads off conversations with, "SUP BITCHES".

I can't see permadeath and fully open PvP being in the slightest bit compatible with retaining casual players. The moment their investment (time, RP, whatever) disappears permanently in a puff of smoke, the majority will quit. Much more so for casual players than hardcore, as a reasonably developed character represents a significantly longer period of time - and casual players tend to have fewer resources to help them rebuild.

They're not going to have permadeath. I think there are going to be a not insignificant number of LARPers coming to the game who are absolutely expecting them to.

I'm going to have so many black veins running through my aura you'll think I've had it decorated.

linky (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf26ZhHz6uM) - It's called Carbon, looks pretty nice :)

I love when someone else does all the work for me, and it only requires one extra person rattling around my head.  =9

Yeah, that's the stuff. Looks amazing. NOW, mesh that with the audience of Twilight housewives they're talking up as a portion of their business. Mesh it with LARPers who don't play PC games on a modern machine. Compare it with EVE, which relies on art and cool lighting for most of its good looks.

I'm looking at that, picturing 100 of those dresses moving around in a club and I'm not seeing how it works. Of course, I've felt like my machine hasn't been pushed in years so it's past time to move up...

I sound like I'm really rooting for this thing to fail. I'm really not. I love the Wolf. I'd love to see it succeed. There are just some really fundamental warning flags popping up that have nothing to do with what's in the actual gameplay giving me the willies.

I love you too man  :awesome_for_real:

Our booty call is at the same place and time this week?

If that tech is runable on current systems with multiple characters on screen - well holy shit is all I've got to say. That's a long waays from waiting half an hour for Poser to drape a peice of clothing.

You guys are expecting a club packed with people dancing, but without collision and with Jita numbers it'll be a completely different thing.

I'm looking forward to the physics when someone steps on one of those long, flowy dresses.

I read that as ...

:awesome_for_real:/ :ye_gods:

Vampire players... there will be lots of that, too. ;D

Vampire is about sex. Mage is about drugs. Werewolf is about rock and roll!

Keep in mind that CCP at the earliest won't release this MMO till 20123. Intel's Sandybridge architecture releasing next year is going to have integrated option that will threaten low end discrete graphics for once.  It's not helpful to anyone who has brought a cheapo pc in the last two years but everyone else who is inclined to upgrade cheaply from older machines will have something that would make things acceptably beautiful.

-

I'm curious about something. I never played anything related to WoD but I've heard a few things about it.

Wouldn't it be prudent of CCP to actually appeal to that fanbase to have layers of anonymity that can be removed through game mechanics?

From what I understand while the Vampires are generally the dominant species they have a social structure in place that keeps the humans largely unaware of them, hence the Masquerade. On top of that, in comparison to table top games like DnD or btech, WoD games have always left an impression on me social dynamics mean a lot because there's a lot of political maneuvering and as a result is much closer to the mind games seen in Paranoia.

What I mean by layers of anonymity I'm talking about something like:
Level 4- Individual Player characters
Level 3- Characters known to be used by the same account
Level 2- Characters having strong associations with the account (accounts that use the same credit card or share the same IP address but are played in a way that suggests the accounts are used by different family members or roommates.)
Level 1-Potentially allied characters not associated by guild tags but are notorious for being used in conjunction with the account holder.
Level 0- Facebook homepage (sort of kidding with this last one) :grin:

The issue with WoD in an mmo is the big three systems are really not compatible.  It was always easier to build a respectable vampire combatant than a werewolf.  I do not blame them for going vampire only.  Mages would be nearly impossible to implement faithfully.  Imagine getting some watered down dev client with various confusing options depending on where you spend your xp.  The rules are simple.  You are a mage, you can do anything!  Now, if you crash your client your character spends X number of days unavailable as he/she recuperates.  Crash the server?  Your character is wiped as paradox consumes them and everything they own.   

What's the point of being secretly special unless everyone KNOWS you are secretly special?  :grin:

Get away from me you simpering malky!

Right, that's sort of my point. They have stated that they want non-traditional gamers in on this, specifically women and (without actually saying it) people into stuff like Twilight and True Blood. WoW did that and it's a large part of their success. Awesome, cool. Totally with them on this.

So we have a proto-business model relying on non-traditional gamers. Those people do not upgrade their PCs. Repeat it with me: those people do not upgrade their PCs. CCP is releasing a game with cutting edge physics tech which people will have to upgrade their machines to play. The game's budget we can probably estimate as Way Too Much given the development length and amount of hiring they're doing.

This is just stuff that we absolutely know from the little they've said or can extrapolate. That's the crux of my saying this is crazy. This is an experiment you run with a budget half of what they may be looking at. Points for trying to do something different, if they do. I mean that. There's just some stench around the way this sort of thing shakes out business-wise that I can't shake.

Niche product + relying on people who don't upgrade their machines + cutting edge physics + bloated budget = potential disaster.

Isn't this already approximately two years in development?  Seems to me they already did some experimenting, liked what they saw and now they are gearing up for production development.  I'm willing to admit that I have that perspective due to wanting to play a game in this setting.  Also have to admit that I'm scairt of them trying to pull in the Twilight crowd and what that implies.

Huh?  Weres are built for combat.  It's hard to make one that wouldn't kick the arse of an equivalent-level kindred.

It's been in development since 2006, near as anyone can tell. That's going to put it at six years, at least. Probably seven. Maybe eight, who knows? They claim to already have done 630k man hours on it.

My experiences say otherwise.  Maybe at the very start?  Rage and Gnosis are simply not as easy to sustain through a fight or regain.  Vampires have lots of easy access tricks.  We never had much trouble fighting them, the biggest deal was claws.  Our whole group concluded that the systems were simply not compatible, to say nothing of mage which was wtf.

Then your players didn't know Werewolf well enough.  Or the GM didn't want to kill you off.  Or they weren't really equivalent level.

Rage is really easy to sustain.  Like almost anything gives a Garou rage.  For every discipline dot a vamp has, a Garou will have a couple of Gifts.  Even with physical attributes as tertiary, they get pumped heavily while in Crinos.  Mix in fetishes and they just get scary (Fang Dagger is one of my favorites).  A good Garou doesn't need more than a few rounds to shred a coterie.

Of course I liked playing an Ananasi which aren't nearly as tough, but could still easily hold their own.

Lets say you are right, how does that change the fact that the systems do not work well together?  Since some kind of balance act is needed in an mmo you might as well throw out t he system and make an entirely new one.

They don't work well, short of tweaking the rules to take the differences of the systems into account.  (Which I've seen done in mixed games, but that's easier with a GM to adjucate.)  I wasn't arguing that, just that vamps lay the smack down.

Really, they don't tend to overlap at all without really stretching plot points.  Glass Walkers and Bone Gnawers are the only ones that would have any realistic chance of crossing paths with a Gangrel, much less other clans.

Mixing them would be bad anyways, since it'd be perfectly fine RP for Garou to go leech hunting.  Maybe as a PvP mini-game it'd work, but not if there is unrestricted combat in the open world.

I don't see why they wouldn't tweak the rules heavily. Bloodlines didn't bear much resemblence to oWoD in terms of rules.

Here, though, is an example of why a lot of folks prefer nWoD. It's still a pain in the ass to cross over but it's easier in n than o.

I think you people are confusing what a table top is with what an mmo is.  Anyone who things they are going to wholesale implement rules/strategies or any other such nonsense from the sourcebooks directly into this game are delusional.  Mages will probably be in the game, so will werwolves and as pc's why? because people want to play them.  Rules? What rules?! They are just going to take the names of ab ilities and slap them on to tried and true mmo tropes such as...

1.heal
2.taunt
3.nuke

and variations thereof. Will is be a let down to many fans? sure it will, they want an exact replica of WoD but you are kidding yourself if you think it'll even come close to the same ruleset.  You know how well WAR meshed with warhammer fantasy? Expect that.

Ayup, though they seem to be pretty adamant *right now* about Vampire only.

Werewolf will be the first expansion, at which point CCP will be accused of 'going furry'.

While you are correct to say CCP won't adhere to the WoD rulesets you are off base to imply they'll follow normal MMO presets.

Their attempts at doing so with EVE pve have been laughable so far.

We should expect something different even if CCP didn't initially envision what they are going to end up with.

The fact that this is being made by the crazies in Iceland is what should have people excited as patience says. Anything could fucking happen but its bound to be a mess at launch and have really cool original ideas sprinkled throughout.

Yeah, my concerns are solely with where they seem to be going as far as business model, costs and such. I want WW to keep making books. They will not be doing so if this costs too much and then bombs. I'm all for some original ideas, even if they're not things I'm personally interested in playing with.

Is it necro when it's a game about vampires? :uhrr:

Anyway, CCP is showing a bit of game footage during EVEfest: http://www.vg247.com/2012/03/24/ccp-shows-world-of-darkness-footage-during-eve-fanfest/

difficult to say if that's pre-rendered or actual in-engine stuff.

There's also some info about planned perma death:


given typical playerbase spread, that's effectively handing the goons keys to the city, isn't it? :grin:

I spoke to the guy after the presentation. The city fly-through is all in engine. It's just a static level though, there's no animation or actors in it.

During the presentation I asked why there was so little to show for 6ish years of development and the guy basically shrugged and said 'making games is hard' (paraphrased).

Yeah, normally, I'm in favor of weird shit like permadeath, but this sounds alarmingly one-sided.  Like, the Prince can just unilaterally act against anyone he feels like, while nobody can act against him?  I'm not seeing the fun here.  Enacting a democracy seems kind of pointless when the Prince can just straight up murder anyone who might vote against him with no repricussions.  There's got to be more to it than they're telling, even CCP wouldn't be this clueless.

I thought they had cancelled this to focus their resources on Eve.

It's not in a happy place but apparently there are still people working on it, just not many.

You'd think a game about vampires would be moneyhats, if released soonish.

Looking at the totality of this abortion I could not think of a more wrong way to do things. Every bit of it, from concept to execution to stringing people along to etc etc etc.

Should WODO ever launch, this will be Exhibit A of why it's either 1) a mess, or 2) incredibly over-budget when the 'old version' has to be thrown out / re-written.

Or it could be just the engine team at work, and WODO is the place they put them.

At GDC a few years ago there were roughly a million people with CCP shirts, nearly all of them young dudes, and they had their own party in the evening. I sort of got the impression that they were riding high and had gone out and hired a huge mass of people all at once and were sort of throwing their weight around by sending them all to GDC. Almost like some sort of DotCom era remnant.

Also I fully admit that I had to double check to make sure this wasn't the same game as The Secret World, something I have to do EVERY SINGLE TIME I hear about either of them.

On a complete tangent, it's only because I am *really* interested in seeing that video that I sat through a 30 second unskippable advert for Hotmail (Hotmail!) to get to it. Usually I'd immediately hit the back button on my browser - I don't even need to move my mouse, just press a button on the side of the mouse with my thumb.

Only if they sparkle in the sunlight.

Sad thing is if it was a Twilight MMO, it would kill WoW. 

Hell I think a Harry Potter MMO would make bank. 

The Harry Potter books vould fit into an MMO pretty well, withthe different houses and so on.

But with my faith in Humanity I think you are dead on with a twilight MMO. Right down to the getting rewards for number of girls stalked.