CCP (EVE Online etc.) took over . . . White Wolf??? In 2006? WoD MMORPG in 2012?

[vicky_molokh]

Greetings, all!

Heard recently that CCP, the company known in the RPG community chiefly for its maintenance of the EVE Online spaceship warfare, asteroid mining and trade economic simulator. And that planning to release a World Of Darkness MMORPG in 2012?

How did I miss all that?

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

How did I miss all that?

No idea, but it happened. Technically a merger rather than a takeover, but CCP has a whole lot more money and seems to be calling the shots.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

And that planning to release a World Of Darkness MMORPG in 2012?

It's likely to suck though. I'll be surprised if they don't do to it something similar to what was done to Champions. What developers perceive as working in the MMO market is just too different from tabletop games.

[Andrew Hackard]

Thread moved from Geek Culture to The Industry.

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Greetings, all!

Heard recently that CCP, the company known in the RPG community chiefly for its maintenance of the EVE Online spaceship warfare, asteroid mining and trade economic simulator. And that planning to release a World Of Darkness MMORPG in 2012?

How did I miss all that?

yeah, perhaps you were busy last time 8)

[Mylon]

As long as there's more to it than vampires, I may be interested.

I've become very jaded by MMOs as of late though. Many of them promise a variety of interesting features, but these features can only be accessed if one plays the cookie cutter portion for approximately 300 hours or more. The portion that is exactly like every other MMO out there and involves a lot of boring and repetitive content, and these content is especially boring and repetitive if you've done it before in another game.

[panton41]

Originally Posted by Mylon

As long as there's more to it than vampires, I may be interested.

And as long as it's not World of Spreadsheets. Eve Online has the problem that it's, frankly, boring. It's possible to play it almost entirely offline simply by logging in ever so often, starting something going, then logging off and doing your daily business.

If a World of Darkness game ends up having similar game play it'll probably bomb so bad it'll take the tabletop game down with it.

Now I'd love to see how they take a tabletop system designed for pure roleplaying and turn it into an MMORPG. If you ever play an MMO (and I just finished a 10-hour spree on Star Trek Online) you'll know that the missions/quests/whatever that are intended to develop plot and characterization are usually dull and you get through them as fast as you can in order to kill more things. Unless they develop some kind of revolutionary natural language AI I'm not sure how it would work.

Now, unless the reviews early on were just awful I'd probably try it out. And again if they put Changelings in it later. (It's hard to judge an MMO early on since they tend to change so much as they progress.)

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by ciaran_skye

And as long as it's not World of Spreadsheets. Eve Online has the problem that it's, frankly, boring. It's possible to play it almost entirely offline simply by logging in ever so often, starting something going, then logging off and doing your daily business.

Yeah, it's the prettiest screen-saver I've ever played. :)

Unless they develop some kind of revolutionary natural language AI I'm not sure how it would work.

See this is the most disappointing thing about MMOs to me. LARPS don't have AI, yet they give an immersive role-playing experience simply due to the large numbers of players each roleplaying characters with their own interconnections and agendas. Why can't an MMO do this? It has even more players. Why are they all set up like poor copies of single player games? Why can't you establish a meaningful connection with other players and the game world? Why isn't there any mechanism to report and reward good roleplaying or penalize bad roleplaying. Ideally, IMO, you shouldn't be able to tell the difference between a PC and an NPC. You shouldn't have clearly defined "quests" that play like mini-single player games, you should be immersed in the ongoing world.

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

See this is the most disappointing thing about MMOs to me. LARPS don't have AI, yet they give an immersive role-playing experience simply due to the large numbers of players each roleplaying characters with their own interconnections and agendas. Why can't an MMO do this? It has even more players. Why are they all set up like poor copies of single player games? Why can't you establish a meaningful connection with other players and the game world? Why isn't there any mechanism to report and reward good roleplaying or penalize bad roleplaying. Ideally, IMO, you shouldn't be able to tell the difference between a PC and an NPC. You shouldn't have clearly defined "quests" that play like mini-single player games, you should be immersed in the ongoing world.

Why? simply a LARP is at a set time pre arranged so that every one is there set a side time and bee then for the length of the event.

MMO relies on when the person has a free moment to play loging on. This means to be a viable business model they HAVE to cater to solo play so people will stick around long enough to meet other players. With ou5 such quest you serve becomes a ghost doewn and NOTHING happens.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by roguebfl

Why? simply a LARP is at a set time pre arranged so that every one is there set a side time and bee then for the length of the event.

The Camarilla as a whole doesn't operate like this, and despite it's problems, is better than any MMO.

MMO relies on when the person has a free moment to play loging on. This means to be a viable business model they HAVE to cater to solo play so people will stick around long enough to meet other players. With ou5 such quest you serve becomes a ghost doewn and NOTHING happens.

There's no reason that it should have to switch from multiplayer to quest mode. "Quests" could be seamless.