Hey guys, i know this is quite old news but i saw that we have not had a thread on it ( i did do a search
) and decided to compile all the information i can find out about this new game by CCP
Ok so the guys at CCP bought out white wolf and the company's are now one and a world of darkness MMO is definitely in creation no doubt, right now the devs are being very low key about it and hardly no information has been brought out about it, but in a semi recent interview the guys at CCP said the game was very much still in development and that they were even at the stage of playing shards of the game in the office.
Also all of the world will be from the vampire masquerade and the old generation of books. Im also sure i read somewhere that all 13 clans will be implemented
So here's my collected info so far:
From the Wiki
It will be a player-driven game with lots of social and political elements.
The themes that the game explores will be: Mystery, Romance, Power, Danger.
It will be an adult game which aims to invoke emotion in you.
Vampires will be the only supernatural player characters, but stuff from the other games will be present in some form. Also, there will be the option to play a human, though no specifics on that were given.
Other supernaturals will likely be presented as NPCs until post-release development allows them to be played as PCs.
Character customizability and aesthetics will be big in this game. [CCP has] even hired a fashion consultant.
They want to make the game as accessible as possible, and this is one of their criteria for success. So they want it to be fun for both hardcore and casual gamers.
They also want to cater to an array of players by having three ways you can play the game: sandbox (open-ended like EVE), theme park (traditional MMOs like WoW), and coffee shop (social). These playstyles will be interconnected, with each one feeding to and from one of the others.
The game will not be combat-intensive, unless you choose to play it that way." Political maneuverings will get a PC further ahead than being the toughest character in town.
Factions and territories will be a big part of the game.
The game will have gay clubs.
GLBT awareness was mentioned at the Grand Masquerade.
The game will be fully PvP, but that's not to say that you can be attacked anywhere. If you don't want to get attacked, you might want to hang around Elysium a lot.
PCs will likely face consequences for PvP actions, vis-a-vis the Masquerade.
Some Disciplines will not be included because they're impossible to have in an MMO, like Temporis.
Straight from the Dev's
Not a lot of quests. Org versus org. Player-driven faction content and conflict.
Not a WOW clone. Repetitive quests are boring and unfulfilling.
Concerns over how mental or social influence powers are handled. How to do this well and meaningfully? Players uncomfortable with a loss of control over avatar.
Players want to control other characters, however.
Territory control. An adult-only play space. Roleplayers want a space where the integrity of the setting colors the conversation. Don’t want to suffer through Chuck Norris jokes and other immersion-breaking chatter.
Content that reinforces themes that are the cornerstones of the WoD. “Shivers up the spine.”
An exploration of who a new character is, so that he’s not just dropped tabula rasa into the world. Random backgrounds, connections to the world, hooks into world participation.
Powers that cleave closely to the powers that exist in the game, but also expand into new directions for appropriate Disciplines. Making them work in tandem with the system, so that they make sense in the world.
Finite numbers of the supernatural critter types.
Permadeath. Server type preference?
Allow social powers to be socially versatile. A character can be successful socially; not all advancement is tied to combat or traditional “leveling.”
Factional control of regions or assets. Benefits to controlling key areas or establishments.
Live team events built upon a foundation of existing world lore. Real-time events, historical Masquerade characters, GM NPCs who can be interacted with or pull players into stories.
Influences, boons, hallmarks of the social origins of vampires.
Accessible to casual players. Low-intensity tasks to just pick up and do so players don’t have to sit there idly.
Playable Sabbat.
Creation, building visible things that can be added to game. Ex. Toreador art, Nosferatu caverns. Some kind of crafting system.
One big world with a dynamic power system that allows different factions to thrive.
Stay true to the adult content. Blood, gore, darkness, tits.
Present the themes of the World of Darkness as playable elements. Let the players participate in the things that make Vampire what it is.
Allow players to participate meaningfully as casual and part-time players.
Image and customization consultation — players helping other players create their looks.
Playable neonate-ancilla-elder model with meaningful play, all with impact on the in-world vitae economy.
Status system — how to represent and elder concept. Players that can participate as setting, a piece of the environment.
Unique and empowering via rarity.
Rarity of combat unless it’s a character’s focus.
Severity and fearsomeness of combat.
World that responds to the actions of the characters. Dynamic, changing, adapting to how players use the world.
A system to allow players to form groups of their own design as opposed to just sharing commonalities like clan and Disciplines.
GLBT friendly content.
Rewards for advancement tied to tiered mastery of ability or chance rolls.
Final Death.
Bloodline characters. Seeing the effects of actions the players have taken in character selection.
Use relationships with fan organizations to allow players to play their LARP characters and vice versa.
Crafting +1 but not materials farming.
Immersion as a priority. Reward the long-time player who’s been into Vampire as opposed to the sillier players who are aggravating elements in other MMOs. Jumping goofball players break the mood.
Non-unique names as a matter of character identity.
Other WoD critters. The whole panoply of supernatural creature types.
Cherry pick the strong parts of Requiem.
Mortals, participate in the Embrace, etc. X2 X3
Embrace. X2
Diablerie.
Ability to flag self for PvP allowability.
Communication needs. Make communication happen in a way that’s not as as intrusive as “global chat UI”.
Politics outside clan and sect. City politics, for example. Domains and territories?
A sense of history imparted to elder characters. Flashback sequences, historical instances, etc.
Narrative that’s not wholly reliant on players to facilitate the content.
Control the rate of character progression and provide content so that casual and time-constrained players can still participate meaningfully.
Personal spaces like havens. Ability to damage or conspire against havens. Or help cultivate them.
Torpor as a clone-type mechanic as a backup.
Casual player rewards and impetus.
Clip from penny arcade
“It all begins when you die,” the video shown at the beginning of the World of Darkness panel told attendees. The developers working on the game can relate; CCP laid off 20 percent of its workforce in 2011, with many developers let go from the Atlanta office, where World of Darkness was being developed. We haven’t seen much from the World of Darkness MMO since, but that’s about to change. The presentation was shown in one of the smaller theaters at CCP’s Fanfest in Iceland, but fans packed the seats, with many standing near the walls without being able to see the screen. They just wanted to hear news about the game. Interest in White Wolf’s long-running table-top world of vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures remains strong.
“Our project is still very much in active development,” World of Darkness Senior Producer Chris McDonough said. “Part of the reason we’ve been keeping it such a secret is that I don’t want to release any information until we’re ready to show something that really makes you go nuts. I don’t want to feed a marketing machine for years and years.”
I had spoken to CCP CEO Hilmar Pétursson earlier that day, and he also noted the company’s dedication to the game. “We have about 60 people working on it, and they have made amazing progress now that they’ve been given clearer direction and priorities. They’ve put it upon themselves to do that,” he said. “Everyone at CCP wants to see World of Darkness made real.”
What vampires and space ships have in common
The team has learned from the success of EVE Online; every World of Darkness player will be on the same shard, interacting with each other in the same virtual world. This won’t be a “fruity, care bear game,” we’re told during the presentation. There will be nothing that resembles Twilight. The play of World of Darkness will be based around politics, deceit, and violence. The game world is made up of stylized versions of real-world cities and, while there is some danger of players migrating to the more popular cities, it will be a self-correcting issue: If too many characters are trying to control New York, it will create a power vacuum in other areas of the game. If the battle for control of one area becomes too bloody, players can use that opportunity to gain power elsewhere.
Each city in the game will be controlled by a Prince, and those Princes will be player characters, not NPCs. You’ll have to gain support among other players and fight your way to power, but the rewards will be many. As a Prince, you can call a blood hunt on other players, a sort of declaration of war on individuals that calls every vampire to destroy the selected character. This can even lead to permadeath. In other words, don’t piss off the guy in charge, as he has the ability to potentially remove your character from the game entirely. Or course, using power recklessly may lead to player revolt, and the Prince can be overthrown. “Just because you’re undead doesn’t mean you can’t be destroyed,” we’re told.
There will be a focus on vampires in the early days of the game, but other creatures from the World of Darkness may be added in future expansions. Their interactions are described as animals leaving territorial markings, and we’re assured that vampires and werewolves won’t be competing for the same resources. What resources matter in the game? As a vampire you need blood to survive, which makes human society the ultimate resource. Whoever controls the cities controls the blood supply. The game will be a competition for territory and power, just like EVE Online.
Small parts of the game are already playable. “We actually built something called World of Darkness Year One, which was a full vertical slice of all the features we intended the have in the game,” McDonough said. They ran a global playtest between all the CPP offices for about two weeks, and the feedback was rolled back into the game. We’re shown a brief technology demo of what the environments may look like, and the graphics are impressive. The artwork that is shown on the screen during the panel is dark and twisted, and is reminiscent of the tone and feel of the early Vampire: The Masquerade source books.
It was announced that the clans in the games will be “the originals.” There will be a system for dealing with generation, but it won’t be tied to leveling.
Right now the team is focusing on hiring more staff, building up development tools and creating game play. After this presentation they expect to fade back into the shadows, although more details will be coming by the end of the year. There is no release date, but the few details given during the presentation were more than enough to re-energize the CCP and White Wolf faithful who traveled to Iceland for Fanfest.
The World of Darkness, and particularly Vampire: The Masquerade has always been about power, politics, and subterfuge. CCP may be the perfect company to recreate that environment in an online game; EVE Online already excels at allowing players to make their own rules and fight for power and control. This is a detail that CEO Hilmar Pétursson understands. “If EVE was this, oh my god, what will World of Darkness become?” Pétursson told the Penny Arcade Report. “What if we take all this learning and all this understanding, and put it into that world? Mankind will not be the same.”
The game will have a single-shard world, with sandbox territorial warfare for control of cities mirroring EVE Online's nullsec warfare. Developers investigated using real cities for the game but found that "real cities were generally boring." Presenters told fans that the team will "be using stylised versions, but they will be named after real cities." Each city will be lorded over by a player prince, who will under rare circumstances be potentially subjected to permadeath. The world's original vampire clans will be available on release, and CCP confirmed that it won't be using vampire generations as a form of leveling system but instead will be doing something different with it.
players will begin the game as a mortal, but as time goes on, they’ll have the option to become a part of vampire clan. The information also indicates that the devs will add a Torpor system, which will explain why players don’t die and are just out for a bit. But the post also indicated that there will be a chance for players to experience “final death” or “perma-death”, so choosing your fights wisely may be advisable.
Also as far as i can tell all positions of power will be up for grabs, so you will have a bishop and arch bishop, harpies and justicars and the feared black hand.
Vids:
Character models :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr_KVNrxtRI&feature=relatedTrailer :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odkZHjKOY8gin game ( only environment ) :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6PZBSxspvc&feature=relatedKnowing CCP i bet they will be able to pull of this game and make it feel like true Vampire the masquerade and have it very immersive. i cant wait to play this game and its a long time off yet but i have faith !
i for one cant wait to commit Diablerie.
As always expand and discuss
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Topic: World of Darkness Online (Read 6115 times)