CCP Shuts its doors on World Of Darkness MMO

Subject: CCP Shuts its doors on World Of Darkness MMO Tue Nov 29, 2011 11:19 pm

I apologize if this is old news and has already been discussed. I was out of the loop for a few months and I just found out today about this.

Please read this article if you haven't already: http://www.ccpgames.com/en/public-relations/press-releases

What is everyones thoughts on this? I'd like to know. It appears that Bloodlines is going to continue to be the latest and greatest PC World of Darkness game for quite a bit longer. That really puts alot of responsibility into the modders hands to continue putting out new material to keep the World of Darkness alive on PC.

Malkav? We better start crankin' away at this game and step it up! Razz

Yeah I know <_<

When I saw that HORRIBLE HORRIBLE..

They showed this at Grand Masquerade 2011, while in 2010 they got that nice teaser and stuff. They had nothing to show.
I don't mind Larpers and lul-costumes, I don't mind personal interpretations, but I wanted code, I wanted playthroughs, and they show us boobs.
And bad ones !
Come on, if you're going to play a well dressed Ventrue couple, you have the decency to have a hat and a costume that fits you, and you learn how to kneel properly <_<

It will never be.

And if it is, it's going to be released with a technology so old.. I mean, come on, MMOs are dead now, Warhammer and LoTR online were awesome but they didn't.. And we, World of Darkness lulfans, are not numerous enough. Everything is going to be on free to play basis, with buying content. It's like if I released now a PS2 game, I'm way behind...

The topic has been discussed long and large on the White Wolf thread, but right now they are under maintenance so I can't link it to you.
(and I ranted a lot Very Happy

but I was also called out because I'm French, and in France, well, boobs, we got plenty of them)

Elder Posts : 176 Join date : 2011-07-27

The only press release that I saw from the link said that development will continue, but with a reduced staff. That's a far cry from axing the project.

World of Darkness as written really doesn't lend itself to MMO's. The Old World of Darkness (what Bloodlines is based on) would have been horrible, because you have to balance all the characters, so a mage is about the same power as a vampire, which is about the same power as a werewolf (or you can play rock, paper, scissors if you go PvP heavy). "New" World of Darkness is a step in the right direction as far as that goes.

But you've still got the basic mechanics to deal with. There's no "levelling" system in the P&P game, so that has to be built up from scratch (and yes, you need a levelling system). You need classes (clans may pass for these, depending on how they are done). You need skill trees - you got the rudiments for that in place at least. Finally you've got to create a new XP mechanic. When you kill things, you need to be rewarded and grow in levels, which grant you class/clan abilities and give you points to spend in skill trees (see how it all fits together - to quote Jack from the tutorial).

You also need to handle things like daylight. Vampire players are not going to just happily log off the game every time the sun comes up, so you've got to either explain how they can handle sunlight (IMO the easier and better solution - damage over time), or else give them plenty of places to go and things to do that keep them safe from it.

All of this stuff needs to be worked out before they even start to look at things like graphical engines, so a reduced staff may be a good thing. Once they get a basic ruleset in place, along with setting, characters, plots, and quests, then they can worry about making it look good on whatever hardware exists on computers at that time (and is projected for the near future).

As for MMO's being dead... There's a little game called The Old Republic coming out you might want to take a look at...

Excuse me, but TOR is going to fail most probably. It looks so much like WoW and you can't just beat WoW. Skyrim and Assassin's Creed Revelations got more attention than both TOR and WoW and when Blizz released Diablo 3 and Starcraft II's expansion they are gonna steal their players back.

YamiRaziel wrote:: Excuse me, but TOR is going to fail most probably. It looks so much like WoW and you can't just beat WoW. Skyrim and Assassin's Creed Revelations got more attention than both TOR and WoW and when Blizz released Diablo 3 and Starcraft II's expansion they are gonna steal their players back.

I agree !
Massive multiplayer will become like the multiplayer version of Revelations. Monthly fees are an old system... And only Blizzard can impose his prices (like Apple and ITunes I guess) because it is so solid and it has the actual customer service and the means. You pay, yeah, but you get goddamn proper service in exchange.

CCP doesn't have the same means, at all...
Remember what was Warham' online ?
Eve is very niche, and scifi has much more success in the US than the WoD. I mean, 1/3 of the population are trekkers for christ sake Very Happy

Elder Posts : 176 Join date : 2011-07-27

YamiRaziel wrote:: Excuse me, but TOR is going to fail most probably. It looks so much like WoW and you can't just beat WoW. Skyrim and Assassin's Creed Revelations got more attention than both TOR and WoW and when Blizz released Diablo 3 and Starcraft II's expansion they are gonna steal their players back.

I don't know how successful The Old Republic will be, but "failure" isn't a term I expect to hear describing it.

People I know in the beta have told me it already has as much if not more content that WoW has now (after three expansions), with better graphics, top notch voice acting, and good storylines. Whether the 100% voice acting will become a help or a hindrance down the road time will tell. I played in two stress test weekends and it looked solid, polished, and well thought out.

@$15/month it's cheaper to play an MMO than to play single player titles. You'd have to limit yourself to about one new console game every three to four months to play for that price. Yes, FTP is becoming more mainstream, EQ2 is going that way with it's next expansion, but I don't see TOR or WoW having any problems maintaining a solid paying player base. And don't forget Everquest 2's main competition besides WoW is Everquest (which is still going strong after 17 expansions).

My point is they don't need a large team working on a World of Darkness MMO at this point. Better to keep a small team of good designers until you hammer out the ruleset, lore, and other systems (all of which will be very different from the P&P game, both new and old), then bring on staff when you're ready to start building on an engine and getting from paper to playable.

mouser9169 wrote:: @$15/month it's cheaper to play an MMO than to play single player titles. You'd have to limit yourself to about one new console game every three to four months to play for that price.

Wrong wrong wrong wrong.

A good quality single player /singleplayer with multiplayer game is extremely cheaper than an MMO. Especially if there is an modding community of it. Consider Oblivion, for example. I've played it for years, always enjoyed it very much, and compared to the price I'd have paid in WoW subscription for the same time, it's almost nothing.

What about VtM:B? Was released almost eight years ago, and people still play it.
Doing the math, 8 years of 15/month would cost $1440.

I don't have Skyrim yet, but when i do, i know i'll still be playing it years afterwards.

But not always mods are needed. Final Fantasy and "Tales of" series, in the gaming consoles, are just as effective.
The only way an MMO subscription is cheaper than a good quality game is if you play around 3-4 hours daily.

I am getting kinda bored with all the MMOs on the market. Many of them are a copy of WoW, other try something different but it never works out quite well.

Elder Posts : 176 Join date : 2011-07-27

Claudia wrote:: I don't mind Larpers and lul-costumes, I don't mind personal interpretations, but I wanted code, I wanted playthroughs, and they show us boobs.
And bad ones !

I don't know why but an old Dogbert quote popped into my head. He's selling the Pointy Haired Boss a booth display for a trade expo:

"I can get you booth babes, raffle prizes, and an illusionist. Ideally, you want to buy all three: create the illusion that you're raffling off the booth babes!"

mouser916 the reactions I've heard about TOR was that the cinematics were the best thing of the game. Same old kill this, steal that, collect those quests with never changing world. It's WoW in Star Wars universe with no balance at all.
I believe fail is going to be the appropriate word because if you've seen the statements they made, you know that they believe they are gonna wipe the floor with WoW. The reality, however, is that for the money they've invested into this game (which if I remember were a lot, even for a MMO) the result will not be as satisfactory as they believe it's gonna be.
I think that the Age of MMO's is coming to an end. They do not use new technologies and ways to improve the genre. They just recycle same old stuff over and over again.
Normal multiplayer games is the new trend now.

I would actually have to agree with YamiRaziel in that MMOs are the same old grind, level up, craft, routine. This formula has not changed in the past decade and so far nobody has succesfully given us anything new. In fact all but the most L33t MMOs (aka WoW) are going to a free monthly subscription because they are losing too much money. And not just old MMOs either, more like recent ones like Star Trek, Champions, City of Heroes, DC Online, Aeon, and I've ever heard Rift may be going in that direction.

Personally it seems like 1st person shooter multiplayer games (Battlefield and Call of Duty) are the most popular, with games like Skyrim and Demon Souls right behind it. I personally think MMOs are on the way out and if CCP actually creates the World of Darkness MMO, it's going to fail miserably on a financial level. I think it will end up being much like EVE in that only a few very dedicated people will play it. It will be more like an online clubhouse than an MMO. And I guess as long as it pays the bills, CCP will keep the servers running.

mouser916 the problems you descibed with making a wod mmo are a result of trying to make the game in a wow cast, but it's probably the same work to make a new kind of mmo instead so no problems to deal with there and i think they all ready hava a graphic engine

Elder Posts : 176 Join date : 2011-07-27

FallenRaven wrote:: mouser916 the problems you descibed with making a wod mmo are a result of trying to make the game in a wow cast, but it's probably the same work to make a new kind of mmo instead so no problems to deal with there and i think they all ready hava a graphic engine

If they had a graphics engine they'd be pushing forward. Once you commit to that, the game starts aging whether it's released or not.

As to grind... The formula for MMO's hasn't changed much because it works. You need timesinks to keep players playing. It's all based on the old Gygax/Arnesan D&D formula to some extent anyway, so saying something is "copying WoW" because they have things in common is missing the point a bit. All the streams come from the same source.

The main problem I see with a WoD (or nWoD) MMO is that the original game isn't level based. Which doesn't matter as much as you might think, since most people who will play the MMO will never have touched the P&P game (if that isn't true, then the game dies a very early, very horrible death). Skill based MMO's just don't work. This is going all the way back to MUD's. Circle and Diku MUD's were much more popular than ROM MUD's for exactly that reason. WoW borrowed from Diablo 2 and worked skill trees back into a level based system, and pretty much everyone has been following suit because it worked.

I don't understand all the negativity towards TOR. I won't be playing it at launch, because it just isn't my kind of game - I'd go back to Everquest 2 if I was going to play an MMO again <- that's the model I think a WoD MMO should follow - important cities, good player and guild housing, and soon player created content (though how well that actually gets implemented remains to be seen). In their last report, I think Blizzard stated they expect to lose close to 6% of their player base to TOR. If TOR gets that, and the same number from other sources (ie: Star Wars fans), it will be a very successful game.

i think that the mmo formula needs a injection of something that will make it fresh and fun like wow did, meaning a new kind of system hopefully without levels (as i hate grinding) and if you make a mmo game of the wod pnp that isn't level based from the beginning it would be smarter to stay with that system and make the mmo fit around the system instead of making the system fit in the mmo
by the way i learned of the pnp after i played bloodlines and i didn't hate the system( i know it's different from the pnp), if they use the system from bloodlines( first person shooting, third person meele and skill points gained from doing things/quests combined with person/player/GM created quests/personal plot advancment i think they have a working new system

Caine Posts : 3768 Join date : 2011-12-05

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/03/25/confirmed-permadeath-in-world-of-darkness/

You'll be able to become prince and have other players executed. Permanently.

megalomaniac Posts : 2744 Join date : 2011-12-27

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF- CCP Shuts its doors on World Of Darkness MMO Fuck_yes_cupcakes_via_jsr.spathis-photostream-450x233

CCP Shuts its doors on World Of Darkness MMO Fuck_yes_cupcakes_via_jsr.spathis-photostream-450x233

I think they're limiting their fan base a bit by making it PC only. I know there aren't many vampire games on consoles but there are plenty of vampire fans out there that would play it. They'd probably make quite a bit of money since there wouldn't be that much competition out there.