During the recent EVE Fanfest, some new information was revealed about CCP's World of Darkness MMO.
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They defined the 3 types of game play
Coffeehouse - the social aspect, low to no conflict, casual or social player focused
Theme park - The spirit of WoD, politics, backstabbing, etc
Sandbox - Primary focus, the biggest part of the game, control cities (prince)
Features
Intense hand to hand (HtH) combat
Vicious politics; players vote for other players for positions (like prince)
Fashion; lots of styles and options
Aiming for stunning visuals that age well
General
They feel no pressure for peaks in vampire fads (like twilight) they feel vampires have and always will be popular peaks aside. Thus the fads have no influence on their game design. As they feel it is a mistake to jump on the peak bandwagons.
WoD was formed from the remains of a secret undisclosed project they were working on ~2005 they decided to change and move it over to the WoD MMO.
The game world will mostly be fictional places and landmarks but use real world city names, to quote "(we will) be using stylised versions, but they will be named after real cities."
You can read the rest of the info at World of Darkness News. They also have a video showing some in-game footage.
Nice to see more WoDMMO news. A lot of cool sounding stuff in here too. Glad to see the project is still moving forward.
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When asked about crafting they downplayed it quite a bit. It did not sound as if there will be much in the way of crafting. They answered by saying players will "not be able to sew your own clothes". They also down played possible weapon making. Saying most kindred will fight using their innate abilities.
hah GOOD. Never got the concept that all MMO's need to have some kind of crafting system. When it's appropriate and natural to the game/environment, it's great. Nothing feels worse than a tacked on, forced crafting system though.
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Sounds like they're only really doing the vampire portion so far.
I thought that was the case from the start, but this line is in there:
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Cities will have types of "territory markers" to separate different supernatural types.
There's an old MMO called Dark Ages that had politics. Players could vote for various positions, even lower ones like city guards. There were even trials were people could vote to ban someone from town.
Hmn.. I hope they're planning on some significant changes in the art direction. To me, that little snippet didn't look like the WORLD OF DARKNESS- it just looks like a city at night. There's a difference.
You'd think they'd pay at least some attention to what Troika did with Bloodlines. That game superbly captured the mood and atmosphere of what WhiteWolf were aiming for.
I also think that, at least at this stage of the development, CCP haven't quite succeeded with that whole "stunning visuals that age well" thing. That little fragment was entirely underwhelming and forgettable.
Perhaps I'm being a little harsh, but this is the fuckin' Jyhad we're talking about here... Don't fuck up my Gehenna dreams you hoors...
There's an old MMO called Dark Ages that had politics. Players could vote for various positions, even lower ones like city guards. There were even trials were people could vote to ban someone from town.
As soon as they mentioned politics I immediately thought of Dark Ages.
Eh, not sure why they are even doing an MMO. Do a couple of normal RPG games first, see if they sell well. Then if they do, do an MMO. Its been a long time since the last Vampire game and while it was awesome, it was still far too long. Build up that loyal customer base again first.
One of the reasons why WoW did so well is because Warcraft was already an established gaming franchise and the Blizzard factor. This game has neither.
Didn't they kill off Masquerade? I'm definitely not an expert on the lore, but I did enjoy the "old" Word of Darkness more, especially Vampires.
The nWoD is so drastically better than the old stuff, it's not even funny. The old system relied to heavily on metaplot, it was almost ridiculous. Granted, there's always the storyteller's fiat...but most games I participated in held fast to the established metaplot. I loathed the global vampire political system, so the decentralized system utilized in the current version really clicked; you might be the Prince in Chicago, but that would mean shit if you happened to wander into LA.
I stopped bothering with White Wolf once they went 100% digital. I like my books, damnit...not some PDF.
