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[World of Darkness] CCP + White Wolf = <3
Zzulu
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Registered User regular
Alright! A new MMO. We've known about this one for some time, however I could not find a thread about it so I made a new one. Also there is new material to be shared!
Background:
So what is World of Darkness, and why should we care? Well, basically it is a modern supernatural setting filled with ghouls, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, mummies, mages and other things. If you've played the game "Vampire: The Masquerade", you've taken a stroll in this setting already. It is quite a grim and dark setting, though not without its own dark humour and I personally loved the older singleplayer games even though they were horribly buggy and unfinished. Unlike other contemporary and supernaturally focused titles in development like Funcoms "The Secret World", you will take the role of a monster rather than the role of the humans who fight them.
Official description:
The setting for this game shares the same history, culture and geography as modern day Earth. On the surface, the inhabitants of this fictional world live as we do; yet here, the shadows are deeper, the nights are darker, and the fog is thicker. But most importantly, monsters exist. Beneath the thin film of civilization, Vampires thrive on the blood of humans, Werewolves prowl for carnage in the darkest forests, and Mages scheme to bend reality to their will.
In the World of Darkness, you are the monster, struggling to remember the memory of your humanity while you struggle against the evil that lurks within us all. CCP and White Wolf are now hard at work in pre-production on the World of Darkness the persistent world. Given the World of Darkness legacy, its large fan base, and proven appeal to both genders, we estimate the subscriber potential of this product to be two to three times that of EVE Online, without competing head on with CCP’s existing products thus enabling wider total appeal.
Developers:
White Wolf and CCP are the developers behind this game. I mention White Wolf even though they no longer exist because CCP bought them up when White Wolf went bankrupt, so they could pursue their goal of creating an MMO in this neat setting.
CCP made EVE online, perhaps the most successful western MMO next to WoW, and certainly one of the most unique.
White Wolf made pen and paper RPG's as well as a few PC games, their last one being "Vampire Masquerade: Bloodlines"
When?
The game is slated for release in 2010, so it will not be long until we get to see more of the game barring any unfortunate delays. The general belief is that the game is either close to finished and CCP will be keeping the lid on until they have something impressive to show like they did with DUST514 (check on youtube), or they will delay the game until further notice. Either way, news of it should be coming soon.
Now, here's some media to get that appetite going:
This video shows the new clothing and animation technology they are going to use for both the avatar focused portion of EVE online and the World of Darkness game. It looks quite good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrtwESnTOwY&feature=player_embedded
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Steam: MightyPotatoKing
and they better have sparkly vampires...
CCP is on the verge of being a top notch company, or dying a slow horrible death, depending on how well they can translate the scope of their vision into reality. If they learned their lessons from Eve, they will do great things. If they make another epic game that would be fun to play if you could actually play it (like Eve), then they may blow their shot at being one of the "real" big boys.
Still... that video looks amazing.
Still that video does look impressive
As for the World of Darkness this includes the rather strange changeling?
I believe they plan to release avatars and in-station environments in a future expansion.
Beyond that, its blank for me, can someone explain?
Yonder Thread in Critical Failures is your answer
Vampire The Masquerade is the older World of Darkness setting that Bloodlines takes place in.
Geist is part of the reboot of the setting, just to help you understand.
Vampire: the Requiem - Emo vampires doing political fang stuff.
Werewolf: the Forsaken - Spiritual man-wolfs trying to make up for their ancestors' sins and doing captain planet stuff.
Mage: the Awakening - Atlantean mythos of a time long lost where magic was leet and those that are trying to fix it/hide from it/use it to their advantage today.
Changeling: the Lost - I'm not familiar with this one, people who get kidnapped and warped by fay magic or some such rot?
Promethean: the Created - Here you have your frankensteins, your penis-less egyptian legends, and other kinds of questionably alive things trying to become a real boy by completing various "milestones."
Hunter: the Vigil - Ranges from regular ol' chaps who get off on hunting monsters to good ol' boys in the 'hood protecting their families from horrors in the dark while paying their mortgage. The far end of Hunter has MiB style monster hunters and some children of satan using dark magic as well as a medical company that implants its agents with monster bits to give them l33t pow3rz. Pretty fun, especially if you like the Cthulu-esque stuff or fighting against overwhelming odds.
Geist: the Sin-Eaters - Newest that I am aware of, and the first setting that made me interest in ghosts. You play a guy or gal that died and was brought back by a "geist." What a geist is precisely is a matter of much contention, but basically you can now see/hear dead people. And they know you can. So they bother you a lot, sometimes violently but usually just annoyingly. Like making your fresh clothes from the dryer all cold and stale. But your geist isn't gonna leave you hangin', he's got advice and kewl pow3rz for you. You can also wander into the deep horrors of the Underworld in order to seek out resolutions for ghosts/artifacts/lore/thrill. Neat, fairly original concept in the World of Darkness (Wraith, blah blah, I know).
Now how much of this is actually going to be in the MMO is up for debate and I've heard a lot of rumors one way or the other. My bet is, personally, starting with Werewolves and Vampires (arguably their biggest lines, though I believe Changeling has a bigger following that the planeteers these days) and then adding the rest in slowly as expansion packs.
My biggest question is how they will work in the day-night cycle. I mean, it'd be pretty shady to only have vampires be able to play half the time. But then again, it'd be pretty shady to take away one of their biggest weaknesses.
Same thing with the Uratha and their spirit-scape travel, one would hope spirits are done well but things that are so conceptual I would imagine would be time-consuming to implement in an MMO (for those unfamiliar, the werewolves can go to the spirit-realm more or less at will since they are half-flesh and half-spirit, and everywhere has its own domain of variously influenced spirit stuff). They'd have to make two versions of each area to be accurate, really, which would only be viewed by werewolf players (and later lines when they get added... there is a Promethean type that can go to the spirit realm, and I believe some Changelings can?).
I dunno if you can tell, but I am kind of excited about this :P
Also, the Werewolves really aren't planeteers anymore; they're more along the lines of spiritual guardians against things better left unsaid. When they slaughter human tresspassers, it's not because they have strict anti-littering rules, but because they don't want anyone getting close to the giant spirit monster that's sleeping in the nearby cave network.
Why the FUCK haven't I seen anything like this before.
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And yeah, I know werewolves aren't really planeteers as much any more. I actually like the Forsaken/Pure paradigm a lot more than the Wyrm thing or whatever Apocalypse had going on. The description just conjures such hilarity in my mind I cannot help but use it.
Just so I'm clear, by freeform customizable magic system, you mean something like... Oblivion? You can make your own spells, I.E. A Weakness to fire spell, cast the same time as fireball? So that they get set on fire and run around screaming?
Frenzy cast the same time as confuse (dunno the actual spell title, but it makes your enemies attack other enemies.) So they get super powerful, and begin attacking allies?
Or am I thinking of this wrong.
I kind of explained that poorly because it's been awhile, but I think I got the point across.
@Undead Scottsman: Yeah, it's not as potent as in Ascension, but there is still quite a bit of freedom in your spellslinging. Paradox is lighter too, in my opinion, though to be honest I never got deeply into the mechanics of Ascension, just the setting.
Edit: In other words, not quite like Oblivion. You don't create spells to use, you just have these abilities and mesh them together how you see fit. There are, however, rotes that can be taught and... yeah. That kind of discussion prolly belongs in Critical Failures, really :P
If they did manage to make it properly, Mages would be so overpowered it'd be unfair. Of course, Mages that abused the system would get fucked in the end too, but in a PvP situation, being the other player would suck.
E: a way they could fix magic if it gets overpowered, put a system in, I THINK. Key word. THINK, they did something like that in Warhammer online. Where if you cast too many spells it would backfire and deal damage to you. More powerful spells had more of a chance of backfiring, especially if they are piled on one another.
Come to think of it, it probably wasn't warhammer, but that would be a cool system. I think.
It's pretty interesting and certainly a different take on how to use magic. It blew my mind pretty much going from mana-pool systems in video games to pnp Mage. It really made magic seem, well, magic. And if they can incorporate that into an MMO... well, like Ragnar said, it'd probably be pretty overpowered. Because Mages can do crazy shit, but they pay for it later via Paradox (reality pretty much being like... wtf, that isn't supposed to happen. I'm going to fix it with your blood).
My only real worry is how the world will be set up, will there be a hand full of cities or one mega city?
I just hope it captures the essence of the games and doesn't end up being EVE with fleshy avatars.
I'm wondering if this project is even being developed, or if it's been axed.
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At least that tech demo thing looks nice. The stair-walk animation made me think that it'd be nice if there was no jumping and your movement animation in direct relation to what kind of surface you're on.
The D20 version, or Midnight Circus?
The video I posted in the op is very recent, only a few days old. I think they spoke about the game at the GDC as well, so it's still going strong afaik.
Perhaps they will unveil it at E3, even,
I would kill many people in order to get an Exalted MMO.
That would be fairly sweet, but then since it's fantasy somehow someone would compare it to WoW and then another different silly goose would declare that it was dead or failing, because it didn't magically top WoW's sales/subscriptions.
Of course, that's what will probably happen anyway with this game, bloody silly geese.
Mages are an even bigger headache. If they find a way to keep the freeform magic system in, kiss class-balance goodbye. It's pretty much settled in the pen-and-paper games that a halfway-decently built mage character can pretty much wipe the floor with any other character concept. Usually while the mage is chilling on the other side of the world. I suspect that mages in the WoD MMO will get smacked HARD with a nerfbat from the get-go.
It would also be sort of a limited-subscription thing, since there can only ever be 700 Celestial Exalted. Everyone else would have to be a Dragon-Blooded or a raksha or something, which is cool, but they ain't Solars.
Don't get me wrong...I'd give many souls to play as a Green Sun Prince, just starting out in Malfeas.
I thought one of the points of nWoD was to equilize power between the games some? I don't know I've only done some basic looking at nWoD but that's what it seems like from what I have seen.
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There's two things that should prevent that.
1. Every supernatural has a "anti-magic" stat that can be used to defend against effects from other supernaturals, even mages. (Vamps have Blood Potency, Werewolfs have Primal Urge and Mages have Gnosis (and Prometheans have Azoth, Changlings have Wyrd, and Sin-Eaters have Psyche)
2. Paradox is a nice limiter for Mages, and can be scaled according to balance, leaving mages with their awesome effects; if they dare to use them.
But like expressed above, I'm wondering how they're going to do the day/night cycle in a game that has Vampires in it. Unless it's just permanently night.
I don't really want to speculate on how they're doing it, because there are a million different ways they can do it. Though with the same company that is doing EvE behind it, I can only imagine/hope it won't be as much of a cluster as something like STO...