The WoD Online

Just a little *wave* so you guys read some stuff that's been circulating around the WoD Online, which will be heavily based on Masquerade.

First, it "should" look like this :



It's being worked on by CCP, makes of Eve Online. No proofs, no beta tests, no nothing YET, because everything they work for the engine is being worked on in the Incarna Expansion of the game. So watch out for latest Eve Online stuff !

This one is from yesterday (September 21st)




Then, here is a little piece of article :

And finally, here are the latest info given last week end during Grand Masquerade (the "convention" for old rich dudes who could travel all the way to New Orleans to feel all nostalgic and wear black all together..) :


http://forums.white-wolf.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=52989

http://forums.white-wolf.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=36456&p=19
(yes, first post of this page is MINE, but this page is when most "true" info was given, all hopes and wishes and stuff... WW forums don't like me much because I'm not a blind fanatic... This deserves a discussion in its all )


http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/09/22/massively-exclusive-world-of-darkness-interview/

and an interview

That APEX graphical technology is SOOO freakin sweet. The character models move so life like. Keep these posts alive!

I really don't care for graphics looks, actually ! I mean, for me, as long as it's not below FFVIII, it's just fine.
A good game always makes up for bad graphics.
Good graphics NEVER makes up for a bad game (Aion, Warham... :-()

I agree. I have here populous 3, Warlords Battlecry 3 and Majesty, all of which have really bad graphics but the gameplay is insanely good.

Besides, if the game is too heavy on the graphics, my computer won't stand it

i was reading about this, sounds VERY interesting to me.


apparently, everyone starts the game as a regular mortal, but soon gets the chance to be embraced (or not). eventually they also plan to incorporate werewolves, mages, etc. or you can just remain a mortal and play as a Hunter. apparently there will also be torpor for vampires, and permadeath

Heh, interesting, I've been looking for more games to play, so what's Populous 3 like. [I've played the other two and love them.] My computer can't handle the best graphics either.

Populous 3 is kinda of a God Game with RTS in it. You control a tribe of indians who have to conquer planets in order for the shaman to achieve godhood. It's really awesome and fun.
Just put the name on pirate bay and you'll find it for download. There's no need to download the expansion, it adds almost nothing to the game.


About the WoD game
I really like the concept of starting as a human, and beign able to become a hunter. What i don't like, however, is this thing about permadeath. It's just stupid. So i pay to play, work like a freak to get levels and itens and if i get to 0 hp i lose everything? This may work in pen and paper, but to online games it's undoable. Blizzard had the "idea" of doing it once, but it was revealled it was simply April Fools, cuz even THEM weren't crazy enough to put such a thing.

theres many of online games with permadeath. the only reason it would seem unworkable is if your only experience with MMO's was endless treadmills of grinding like WoW. you realize of course that the pnp game (which they said they wanted to stay as close to as possible) has permadeath, right?


thats too bad IMO if it was an april fools joke. i couldnt find anything saying it was though :/

Online games with permadeath? Name the ones you know, then.

Of course i realize that the pnp game had permadeath. Who the fuck do you think you're talking to, a rock?
You do realize there's a difference between pnp game and online game, right? Besides one beign played on the computer?

You couldn't find anywhere saying it was a joke? try this http://www.wowpedia.org/Wisp_%28April_Fool%27s%29

All you did so far was make an unproven statement and then add some verbal diarrhea to the comment.

the main games i played with permadeath were Face of Mankind and Wurm Online (i think they may have removed it), and then just MUDs. theres several others though, not counting the non-mmo multiplayer games with persistent characters and permadeath, which are a bit more common.


and every single source for WoD says it will have permadeath. you linked a completely unrelated April Fools thing for a different game from a couple years ago, braniac. you realize theres a difference between WoW and WoD, right?



i guess id better watch the verbal diarrhea though, lmfao

Marrik, don't go smartass on people, being ironic and witsy translates very poorly in the written language of the forums ^^

Permadeath may probably happen in WoD online, but with a Torpor system. Philosopher, the permadeath exists in Eve Online up to certain circumstances Read the WoD online subject on the white wolf forums I linked in the main post

A different game from a couple of years ago? Yes, because that's the april fools joke i was talking about. It isn't my fault if you can't read, or can't differentiate the two.

I knew what you were about when you first posted. Distorting the messages of others to try to look superior. Because you need that to make a few dozens people from different continents think you're smart. Really neat, bro. People like you don't survive around here for long. I'm off this pathethic discussion.

If they do add the permadeath system (which, in my opinion, would be something of a double edged sword since it'd add more realism and tactic to survive as opposed to run back to your corpse and revive or whatever yet nullify whatever you obtained during your play-time should you do a big enough mistake and die) I believe they should do it in the same manner that Diablo 2 did it; namely the Hardcore version. Or possibly special servers or something were that rule is in effect.

Well now it will certainly not happen anyway.... Planet-vampire topic :-)

Voraxith wrote:

Oh gods -- do not get mad Tremere lady going on this topic. Don't wanna get banned from here, do we, Frenchie?

Assuming you are refering to me I'll take your word for it.
Grant me more of your wisdom, Wise Elder!

Na he was talking about me :-) Dor worry it's because I was banned from the white wolf forums for saying it would probably not happen since we got no proof it was beyond talking and promises.

Claudia wrote:

Na he was talking about me :-) Dor worry it's because I was banned from the white wolf forums for saying it would probably not happen since we got no proof it was beyond talking and promises.

Oh, I see.
Can I still call you "Mad Tremere Lady"? Has a nice tone to it, don't you agree? =]

Go ahead, as long as I know it's me you're talking about....

I read through that long thread posted at the top and a couple other ones and it all seems so eerily familiar:

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.

A game set out being designed by arguably the best MMO designer on the planet (before he completely flipped, for whatever reason), but with a potential player base that was absolutely unyielding, unrelenting, and completely unrealistic in what would work in an MMO.

My experience comes from helping create and administer a MUD - one which is still going btw, www.mirrorsmud.net. We tried lots of ideas. Some worked, some didn't. We kept some of the ones that did, got rid of the rest, and moved on looking for new ideas. We listened to our players, but never pretended that they were the boss or that we had to cater to them, because honestly, players are generally the worst source of ideas. The get this "cool" idea in their head that they think will work without taking into account all the consequences of the idea or pretending that all (or at least most) other players think as they do.

Cutting the dev team down to a skeleton crew may be the best thing WW could have done for the project. It cools down expectations.

Add to all this the nWOD mechanics are absolutely horrible for an online game (though they are much better than the old ones were).

My thoughts on ideas I saw tossed around their, not sure how many have any "official" backing at this point or not. That doesn't really matter since anything with the game can still be changed (the good part about the skeleton crew):

1) Permadeath - any mechanic, whether actual permadeath, torpor, jail (we tried this one) that does not allow a player to log on to the game and play his character NOW is a game killer. Players just won't put up for that. It doesn't matter how cool it sounds or how right it is for the setting - people are paying to play a game (in time even if not in money, and time is the more valuable of the two anyway) and telling them "No, you can't play now" just doesn't fly.

2) Full world PvP. People point to Eve as an example of how this works. But there are so many other unique things about Eve that using it as an example for just about anything falls short. Eve is not just a PvP game. Eve is not just a market game. Eve is not just a skills development game. Eve is not just a sci-fi game. But somehow, they managed to hit a "golden balance" between all those and other factors to create a "niche" game that has grown over the years.

WoW has full world PvP servers (with some rules) and they seem to do alright, although they point out some problems - some servers reached the critical point of too unbalanced toward one side that pretty much all new players join the more populated side. Very few people like to be ganked/killed/hunted all the time, so you have for example, Horde servers with "rare alliance spawn". Many players say they want the "immersion" of PvP until they realize that means they can't collect their 20 dog ears for the witch under the hospital because a bunch of high levels have camped the area out and are killing everyone. And that before you add in gold farmers who can call in a squad of max level, uber-equipped goons to kill everyone and everything in an area for a couple of hours whenever people show up and "slow production".

3) WoW - may as well get the 600 lb gorilla out in the open. Players are bitching and complaining about things in WoW and how they don't want them in WoD. If you could find caches of the old Vanguard archives you'd find "the song remains the same". WoW is the most successful MMO on the planet for a reason. It isn't a fluke. It isn't Blizzard's name recognition. They took a lot of already existing concepts from other games and put them together in a way that worked. And they've continued that process, steadily improving the game since launch. No, you don't want to make a "WoW clone" or people will just play the original, but you can (and you should) look at what features and ideas really contribute to WoW's success and would work in your setting and start stealing like a catburglar in a jewelry convention during a security strike.

4) Skills - this is a tough one as the P&P game and the cRPG's are all skill based. Skill based really doesn't work in MMO's (this was learned way back in the days of MUD's and it hasn't changed). Classes with skill trees to customize the class seems to be the best anyone has come with - WoW's talent trees, Everquest's AA system, Everquest II AA trees, etc... You just have to take that group of fans you have, smack them on the nose with a newspaper and tell them that this will be an MMO, not a P&P game, and what works for one doesn't work for the other, so don't expect a recreation of P&P rules, cause that ain't gonna happen.

Which leaves you with level based systems. New World of Darkness did a decent job balancing the "races", so that's a good chunk of the work done for you. Now they just need to figure out what's what. Personally, I'd go with human, vampire, werewolf, and mage replacing human, dwarf, elf, gnome as the games basic races. Than use clans/pack/whatever they call the mage groupings as your class. Disciplines would get moved into talent trees so you could focus and develop on discipline (and it's many powers) or spread across two or three. Completely scrap the "dot" system.

5) XP and levelling. The cycle of an MMO character's life can be summarized: Kill, get better at killing, kill again. Break the cycle and you die. Forget objectives, you gain experience by killing things. Experience gives you levels in your class which grants you some class abilities, and gives you points you can spend in your talent trees improving your disciplines.

6) Permanight - probably the simplest solution to keep vampires always playable. TOR is going with perma-day on all planets and people seem to be dealing with it ok, so permanight has got some precedent now. And it does go along with a World of DARKNESS theme.

There are probably others, but those were the ones that jumped out at me. Do I think the game will ever be finished? Yeah, I kind of do - keeping some staff on strikes me like they're still in the planning stages, trying to figure out all these mechanics before they commit to a graphics engine (which could be anything from Unreal to Facebook): at which point the clock starts ticking to when your game stops looking good, unless you take the WoW approach and go for artsy over realistic, which I don't think would fly for a game like this. WoW was lucky that they could that - the game looks as good now as it did at launch. Other games which launched about the same time haven't been so fortunate.

It's an interesting project to keep half an eye on, but I wouldn't expect any substantial news to come out anytime soon.