World of Darkness

svartalf

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Here is some ... news.
CCP reveals World of Darkness details to bloodthirsty fans

by Justin Olivetti on Sep 18th 2011 10:00AM

Fantasy, Horror, Events, real-world, PvP, Massively Event Coverage, World of Darkness


Details about CCP's World of Darkness are popping out of White Wolf's The Grand Masquerade in New Orleans this weekend, and they're definitely worth draining for every last sweet drop of... information. While the game is still in pre-production -- and as such, nothing is set in stone -- the devs weren't hesitant to dish out a lot of the ideas and features that they hope will make this the best vampire MMO to date.

It's CCP's desire to emulate LARPing (live-action roleplaying) as much as possible with World of Darkness, with plenty of metaplots running inside the game and without. Players will begin as a mortal human who can make the choice to become a kindred (vampire) or stay mortal for the duration of their characters' lives. There's a very real danger that characters might experience "final death" -- permadeath -- if they take too many risks. If you get in over your head, you can retreat to your character's Haven for safety.

The entire game will take place at night and on one server, and CCP is definitely aiming it toward the hardcore set. Nudity, gore, and insanity effects are all par for the course.

If players push outside of the acceptable boundaries too often, they'll lose "humanity" points and could become flagged for constant attack by other players and NPCs. Play your cards right and you may become the prince of the city. The game will change over time with dynamic events, and CCP promises that there will be real consequences for player decisions.

Look for our World of Darkness interview with CCP coming later this week.

[Thanks Pilgrim for the tip!]

Tags: ccp, ccp-games, final-death, gore, hardcore, haven, insanity, kindred, larp, larping, new-orleans, nudity, permadeath, prince, pvp, the-grand-masquerade, vampire, vampire-the-masquerade, vampires, white-wolf, world-of-darkness

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LordjOX

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5 years of pre-production so far. The game engine (which is the one used by EVE Incarna) is still not done. No need to hold the breath for this
 

old.Tohtori

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Well i lost interest. Only at night and no real indication of werewolf play.
 

svartalf

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Interview...

Massively.com said:
Massively Exclusive: World of Darkness interview



by Chris Rippee on Sep 22nd 2011 10:00AM



Horror, Culture, Events, real-world, Interviews, New titles, Massively Interviews, Massively Event Coverage, World of Darkness, Miscellaneous


The 2011 Grand Masquerade in New Orleans is over, and the monsters have all gone home. In their wake, we're left with a series of exciting revelations relating to the upcoming World of Darkness by CCP Games. While it's only in pre-production, it has already sent fans of the World of Darkness setting into a frenzy of anticipation. The new details only give rise to more questions, however, and speculation has run rampant, especially given how radically CCP's new game departs from the standard MMO model. Thankfully, Massively has some answers.



Shane Defreest, the Community Developer for CCP North America and White Wolf Publishing, was kind enough to take the time out of his hectic schedule to answer a few of our questions relating to the game. He sheds a bit of light on World of Darkness, discussing the choice of setting, player factions and playable clans, the business model, and how he views the experience of the game. Enjoy!



Massively: The old World of Darkness setting, despite being wildly popular, was ended in favor of NWoD. Given that NWoD is still in production, the community has assumed that it would be used for the MMO. So why was the old World of Darkness setting chosen?



Shane Defreest: The decision to end that game line originally was a business decision based upon the current climate of roleplaying games, and I think that there were probably a couple of elements to it. There was some burn-out in creating such high-intensity content that was so serialistic, and also a belief that [the setting needed reinvention] -- kind of the way bands feel the need to reinvent their sound. They have to go make an album or a couple of albums that are nothing at all like what their fans are used to listening to. In the future, though, they acknowledge that people really like these hits, and then they come back together and go back to doing what they really do.



This was kind of a similar thing. Vampire: The Masquerade is what we're really known for. It's what we've done the best... all of the things people see in vampire pop culture are to some degree Vampire: The Masquerade-inspired or at least V:tM-influenced. So the hardcore gamer is going to look at the books that we're making now, but if you step back and look at our back catalogue as a body of work, there's an obvious choice.



wod-unseen.jpg
Following upon that, the World of Darkness is this huge, labyrinthine place that's full of supernatural creature of all types. As Vampire: the Masquerade is sort of the flagship of the World of Darkness setting, I have to ask how the various supernatural creature types are going to be implemented within the game and whether any of them might be playable at launch?



None; it's a vampire game. At launch, they'll be NPCs. Because it's a rich world, the werewolves and mages will have their presence felt, but they'll be flavor and not playable characters to start, much in the same way that the game was originally.



Will the Sabbat be represented as a playable faction?



What you saw last night are the starting clans. That was the big reveal: Those seven clans are going to be the starting playable clans at launch.



I was still trying to interpret how that sort of burlesque act specifically related to the game itself. Last night was actually a great way to go about a reveal. I think a lot of us expected a screenshot montage.



It's hard to describe this, but we keep describing what we're trying to do as a lifestyle experience. In my own part of the presentation last night I said that Vampire, as a roleplaying game, was kind of an anomaly, and not just in that it was adult enough to have girls and other people who were interested in it. The fact that it was a roleplaying game was an "and" and not the "the." So if we can hit that on the MMO front and put the game somewhere between an MMO and virtual world that draws people in because they like the style or the personal connectivity or the music or the style of it, and then there's a game as well, we'll bring in a broader range of people and create a very different experience than just saying, "Oh, it's a game." And I think the fashion component was the right way to sell culture before selling a game.



The social divisiveness of the setting is one of the most compelling aspects, and one of the main worries that I've heard expressed is how that sort of social conflict can be systematized within the confines of an MMO. Would you comment on how you're going to do this, or on what sort of design paradigm you're using?



One of the things that I've said in the panels is that nothing is set in stone and that we're still in pre-production. The focus, though, is on player agency. Players, obviously, make the world, and [we're focusing on putting] more systems in place to facilitate social repercussions, giving real people the ability to enforce those [rather than encourage] a mob mentality. If you're going to have a prince of a city, for example, and the prince has power, and a part of that power ultimately would be the blood hunt, it's a big deal. It's like sending someone to the gas chambers or the electric chair. There's a process, but if you can really kill people's characters after they've screwed up so many times, you can put a system in place.



It's kind of like the old Activision games. If you break the masquerade a certain number of times, then the cops just keep coming. We're not doing that specifically, but things like that will definitely be represented. With the humanity system in the game, when you get to humanity zero, bad things are going to happen and you're going to lose your character.



grand-masq-2011.png
It was discussed in the panel that it seems as if the game is going to be vastly more mature, both in content and game style, than any other MMO on the market. How will that affect the way that it's going to be marketed to the audience as a whole?



I think that's Vampire: The Masquerade overall, regardless of whatever iteration it's been presented in. I think the Activision games did a great job of accurately portraying that. I thought that while they were both great games, Bloodlines particularly did an excellent job of conveying the setting. I felt like I was playing World of Darkness. I thought that Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, the card game and the LARP, didn't diverge from the setting at all either. They haven't felt gratuitous or inconsistent, but rather "this what we're marketing because this is what we have." If people know what we're about, then they know what to expect. I don't think we need to do anything different -- we just need to apply what we do to another medium.



Do you think that the maturity of the setting and the playstyle of WoD could be detrimental to the subscription total at launch? It seems to be a difficult balance to strike between marketability and setting.



I don't think it'll be detrimental at all because if it were detrimental to this, then it would have affected all of the other iterations as well. Those Activision games each sold 350,000 to 450,000 units. I think that there's a market that really wants that experience and other games that have tried to do it. If our game gets a mature rating, it gets a mature rating. So what? I think that there are some games that have a level of gratuitousness that ours won't. If our game has nudity, then it'll be because that's part of what game needs. It won't be a T&A show, and there won't be fountains of gore erupting out of people's heads just because that's what you do.



Have you touched upon the idea of microtransactions? I know that EVE Online, CCP's flagship game, has recently introduced a microtransaction model that has received a lot of interesting commentary from the playerbase.



Without discussing the specifics too much, I would say that we're very cognizant of the way these games are developed and the trends that are occurring in the market. So it would make sense. It will absolutely be a very visually aesthetic game, and the market is changing. More games are trending that way, and I would question how long a pure subscription model would last. The tide is changing, and we see that.



Thanks for your time, Shane!



Tags: ccp, event-coverage, exclusive, featured, interview, shane-defreest, the-grand-masquerade, vampire-the-masquerade, vampires, world-of-darkness

I have to comment that where he talks about how vampires in popular culture are all influenced by V:tM, you should also bear in mind that at the back of Vampire: the Masquerade book is a (long-ish) and sometimes surprising list of credits to other popular culture productions, so I would say he's only half-right on that particular point.
 

svartalf

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I re-wrote my comment on that last piece, but I ran out of time before I could edit it. Here is what I changed it to:

Although I acknowledge that a lot of more recent pop-culture vampire-related productions seem to adhere to a V:tM style, it should be borne in mind that at the back of Vampire: the Masquerade book, Mark Rein-Hagan provides a (long-ish) and sometimes surprising list of credits (section: "Hiding Your Sources" page 258) to other popular culture productions. This is indicative of the fact that V:tM is itself an evolution of other existing productions (and as much is said in the book). so I would say Shane's only half-right on that particular point.
 

svartalf

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Ahhh the sweet smell of (what I consider to be) bullshit:
World of Darkness' Michael McDonough calms fan concerns

by Matt Daniel
writer_rss.gif
on Oct 28th 2011 3:30PM

Horror, MMO industry, News items, World of Darkness, Miscellaneous



A number of World of Darkness fans were concerned after a recent CCP CEO interview in which it was said that the World of Darkness MMO was going to be scaled back. The game's Senior Producer, Chris McDonough, stopped by the World of Darkness News forums to respond to the concerns.

In essence, he states that CCP was "staffed up as if [they] would be able to be production-ready at this point and [they] simply are not." However, players shouldn't be too concerned, because the only content that is being scaled back in World of Darkness is "redundant content that's expensive to make." For McDonough's full response, head on over to World of Darkness News.

Tags: ccp, chris-mcdonough, scale-back, scaled-back, white-wolf, wod, world-of-darkness
 

svartalf

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Original: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/165808/World_of_Darkness_is_CCPs_bid_for_the_MMO_mainstream.php

gamasutra said:
World of Darkness is CCP's bid for the MMO mainstream by Christian Nutt [Console/PC, Social/Online, Design, Exclusive]
April 24, 2012
190007_5702490298_650700298_235200_9578_n.jpeg
CCP Games, the Reykjavik, Iceland-headquartered developer of the space-faring MMO EVE Online, has rooted its success in a clear game design goal: to provide full sandbox gameplay designed to empower players to create emergent situations.
Now the company will use that design principle with its upcomingWorld of Darkness MMO. In development in its Atlanta, GA studio, and based on the White Wolf tabletop role playing IP of the same name, the game is headed up by creative director Reynir Hardarson (pictured).
While MMOs typically promise players virtually limitless possibilities to explore and interact, there's a streak of linearity and hand-holding that is prevalent in MMO design. Hardarson suggests a few theories about why other developers don't follow in EVE's footsteps in providing more opportunities for emergent gameplay.
"Designing for emergence is very difficult because you can't test it," says Hardarson. "But it's extremely fun to design this way, because you design for theory. You can't test it. The market can test it."
"We feel we've discovered some design principles which aid us in this quest. Because of this ability we have for EVE, it sometimes feels like we're kind of aliens in the industry," he half-jokes.
Hardarson and his boss, CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Petursson, don't have much time for other developers' MMOs.
Petursson accuses them of making "massively single player" games.
"All to control the content and the narrative, and not embracing that people want to play together, which is what we strive for in EVE," he says.
"When I played Warhammer, I ragequit," Hardarson admits. Mainstream MMO design is about doling out hand-crafted content -- "like, here's a cookie, and all that" -- on a linear path. He wants to explore.
"I'm not a five-year-old. If I want to go in the cave and I want to die, that's my problem."
Hardarson describes the World of Darkness MMO as "a sandbox very much inspired by EVE."
"We really relinquish a lot of power to the players because we believe in emergence; the most powerful positions in the game are populated by real players," he says.
It's not just EVE that is an influence on the game's direction, though -- the live action role players of the Vampire the Masquerade tabletop game play this way, he says. "It's really about politics and power plays," says Hardarson.
"It's not a coincidence we merged With White Wolf games."
Still, he recognizes, "You cannot go pure sandbox all the way." This is something EVE has struggled with; while it does grow, it hasn't attracted a mainstream MMO audience due to its difficulty, complexity, and "learning cliff" new player experience.
"The problem with pure sandbox is you are limited to the hardcore," says Hardarson.
And the company had to abandon or severely downscale its plans to add new player-friendly PvE content into the game after its existing player base revolted. Clearly, the developers see World of Darkness as a chance to advance these same goals in a fresh context.
"Our position is that this [type of gameplay] is a really positive thing, and if you go there you'll maybe have an enjoyable experience, but it's kind of like this nebulous thing, really. 'What is it that I'm going to do?' We want to drag you into it," he says.
The way to drag people in will be traditional "theme park" style PvE play, he suggests. Once players get into the setting, they'll see the appeal of the sandbox play.
The game will have purely social play, too. "Having friends, knowing people, doing favors, gives you power in the game. You can play just socially and you can progress," says Hardarson.
"You don't even have to play the game," he says. And "if you want to play the PvE, you can do that all you want," he says.
But when it comes to the emergent, backstabbing sandbox play that powers EVE's success, "We will entice you to join -- there is pressure on everyone, because everyone's valuable," says
 

svartalf

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... ... ...
massively.com said:
World of Darkness information revealed in open letter to fans
by Eliot Lefebvre on Jun 7th 2012 7:00PMHorror, Real life, MMO industry, News items, World of Darkness, Miscellaneous, Sandbox0


Outside of confirmation that CCP Games is still working on World of Darkness, news on the game has been hard to come by. Some of the reasons behind that were revealed by senior producer Chris McDonough in a recent letter to members of the Mind's Eye Society, a fan group devoted to the tabletop and LARP games in the same IP. While the focus in the letter was not on the MMO, McDonough did still discuss the state of CCP as a company and what it means for the game.

In short, after a difficult financial year, CCP is devoting the lion's share of its resources to ensuring that DUST 514 is a successful game on launch. That doesn't mean that World of Darkness is being shelved -- McDonough stresses that development is still ongoing -- but it does mean that the company's first priority is elsewhere. How long that will be the case remains to be seen, but if you're hoping for more substantial news on the game this year, the odds are low.



Tags: ccp, ccp-games, chris-mcdonough, developments, fantasy, finance, financial, gothic, horror, ongoing-development, supernatural, updates, vampire, vampires, white-wolf, wod, world-of-darkness

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http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/0...-information-revealed-in-open-letter-to-fans/
 

svartalf

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massively.com said:
CCP employees 'losing themselves' in World of Darkness playtests
by Jef Reahard on Feb 28th 2013 1:00PMHorror, Events, real-world, MMO industry, New titles, News items, World of Darkness, Sandbox0


CCP's MMOification of the beloved World of Darkness IP is still a thing, apparently. CEO Hilmar Petursson tells Eurogamer that a "tiny" glimpse of the horror-themed sandbox will show its pasty white face at this April's EVE Online Fanfest.

"We're playing it internally at CCP. It's actually a problem that some of our employees are losing themselves already in the World of Darkness as we go through the playtests," Petursson said. "And we'll be showing a tiny piece of that also at Fanfest. So that is all I have to say about that at this time."


Tags: ccp, ccp-games, eve-fanfest, eve-fanfest-2013, fantasy, gothic, hilmar-petursson, horror, supernatural, vampire, vampires, white-wolf, wod, world-of-darkness, world-of-darkness-online
 

svartalf

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Update from Fanfest 2013.
massively.com said:
World of Darkness development shown at EVE Fanfest 2013
by Brendan Drain http://data:image/png;base64,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 on Apr 26th 2013 9:00AMFantasy, Events (Real-World), MMO Industry, New Titles, Previews, News Items, Opinion, Events (Massively's Coverage), World of Darkness, Dev Diaries, Sandbox, Crafting0


When the World of Darkness MMO was first announced in November 2006, it was just an idea and we knew that it wouldn't be released any time soon. The chance to play a sandbox game set in the Vampire: The Masquerade universe nevertheless made fans of the series go nuts, but now over six years later we haven't seen much progress on the game. At EVE Fanfest 2013 today, CCP laid the current state of development bare for all to see and showed some plans for the coming year. There are now 70 people on the WoD team, and they've spent the past week working on everything from art tools and server infrastructure to vampire powers and social options.


http://data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAMgAAAAIAQMAAACGfiJpAAAABGdBTUEAALGPC/xhBQAAAANQTFRFAKZRQ0tH1wAAAAxJREFUCNdjYBheAAAA0AABKl3uzAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==
"You're a powerful, immortal lord of the night. You don't want to stitch a shirt."

http://data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAMgAAAABAQMAAAChcXOhAAAABGdBTUEAALGPC/xhBQAAAANQTFRFZmZmfFaCBAAAAAtJREFUCNdjYMAFAAAaAAEkRE7lAAAAAElFTkSuQmCCDevelopment plans for 2013 include working on out-of-game web-based social tools, clothing systems, and PvE game environments. There are also plans to work on item creation, but direct crafting is probably not on the cards. As the presenter put it, "You're a powerful, immortal lord of the night. You don't want to stitch a shirt." Though the game is still in the pre-production stage, CCP was keen to show off the tools it's made to speed up the development process. "Some of these videos are a bit dry and technical," joked the presenter, but it came across as more real and honest than another trailer or musings on theoretical gameplay.

CCP showed some interesting tools that it will use to rapidly develop procedural content like buildings and cityscapes. It's not the gameplay fans were eager to see, but it was an honest look at the state of the game and it shows that development really is still ongoing. We saw a building going through the entire development system from basic block shapes to the graphically impressive final results, with plenty of eye candy to go around. As an indie game developer who specialises in shader programming, I can say that the video they showed of shader tech was genuinely impressive. Whenever World of Darkness finally does release, it's going to look amazing.

Developers also showed video footage of their own internal visual targets running in the WoD engine but were adamant that we not film it since it's not actual gameplay footage and may give a false impression of how far along development is. The animations were clearly unfinished and much of the graphical detail was added in post-processing, but the video clearly showed the direction the game is heading and it looks like it'll be worth the wait.

xeveblip.jpg.pagespeed.ic.acPnIWW_q6.jpg
Whether you're a die-hard fan of internet spaceships or just a gawker on the sidelines, EVE Fanfest is the EVE Online event of the year (and the key source of new DUST 514 and World of Darkness scoops!). Follow Massively's Brendan Drain as he reports back on this year's Fanfest starpower, scheming, and spoilers from exotic Reykjavik, Iceland.



Tags: breaking, development, DirectX-11, dx11, eve, eve-fanfest, eve-fanfest-2013, eve-online, eve-online-fanfest, eve-online-fanfest-2013, event, event-coverage, fanfest, game-development, graphics, iceland, massively-event-coverage, rekyjavik, sandbox, vampire, vampire-the-masquerade, wod, world-of-darkness, world-of-darkness-online
 

svartalf

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At least they've not given up on it quite yet.

massively.com said:
World of Darkness 'years away' from launch
by Justin Olivetti http://data:image/png;base64,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 on May 6th 2013 5:00PMBetas, Fantasy, Horror, Interviews, World of Darkness, Sandbox0


If you are hanging your hopes and dreams on World of Darkness coming along to rescue you from the humdrum of life and your precious mortality, well... be prepared to settle in for a good long wait. Executive Producer Chris McDonough said in an interview that the title is still in pre-production and that players shouldn't expect to see it for a few years yet. However, CCP did show a few technical videos to the press to assure folks that the game is still alive.

McDonough did have good news to share, however. World of Darkness has a 70-person crew that is currently building the framework for the title, and according to the producer, they are "making phenomenal progress." The team plans to host the entire game on a single server where active combat and politicking between vampires will be the crux of the content.

"We're making sure this is a next-generation MMO. It's very focused on movement and motion and capturing what it's like to be a vampire," he said. "People ask about our high level designs for World of Darkness, and we've called this a vampire simulator. What's it like to be a vampire. Not a superhero, but a super-powered individual. The way the characters move around the city feels very vampiric."


Tags: alpha, beta, ccp, ccp-games, Chris-McDonough, fantasy, gothic, horror, masquerade, pre-production, supernatural, vampire, vampires, white-wolf, wod, world-of-darkness
 

svartalf

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massively.com said:
Layoffs at CCP's Atlanta office confirmed: World of Darkness development affected
by Brendan Drain data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAsAAAAKCAMAAABVLlSxAAABRFBMVEXwuon/vzskkj0p1f/v36tmb1nUX2n0b+8Ob0o1DumE3um0/6p0f4oED+58vtjUP8rEj5o0D7tmjpgj3/r0jzl0j9+vj+9+/2mjv2wJXvj0D1rmr7y5r2qF/90qP+9Or8v3TyoVT+8OPtmlDusYD5uHLmdzP5nz37qUn9qD/+4Ln4z7H/Pf+sU3wuIT2tXz96NPvuIj87dz8rE73o0v61LL4pEf0zaf1mT/8vG/1p1fwo2n1olH88OX/58j82LP5o0Trk0jwnlH8tGH93LTyo1PvtofwvpbplVj9uWb/fjzpFjqhkT9zJL55tPvsIr77eLzlED3rGDxoFL5rFbvizn3v430rm/mejr//84sf4tGv2vIrzwpH1mj/6p0nsiUDyn1nzqFj7xontomLzmkf3o0b10rLshTrtoF/ypGj7wH5K7/HyAAAAgElEQVQI12PwS2HiclL0tmKOFWPI5JfUt5Hg1RARTGdwTDQSl5fh0RSI12NQFpWOlmOxM1ZnZ2DgluWIElLQsbcIZGAINsnmY7RMZgwPNWRwNWP11FIKMtDOcGPgdI50CfGKMQ3wUWFI0vVVjQvLsvaPcGcwT3NgS5VKEFbzsAUAyHEWlIvfK8YAAAAASUVORK5CYII= on Dec 11th 2013 4:25PMFantasy, Culture, Events (Real-World), MMO Industry, News Items, World of Darkness, Miscellaneous, Sandbox, MMORPG0


Rumours began circulating just a few hours ago about layoffs at CCP Games' Atlanta office. It was reported that an unknown number of staff working on the World of Darkness MMO had been unexpectedly laid off right before the Christmas holidays. The originally unconfirmed tipoff came from several posts on Twitter, and GameBreaker later reported that an anonymous source named the layoffs as Level Designers and various other Producers and Designers on World of Darkness.

Massively reached CCP Games for comment and received the official statement below confirming that the layoffs are real and that they are from the World of Darkness team:

"CCP today made strategic adjustments to the staffing on the team working on the World of Darkness project in Atlanta that resulted in the elimination of approximately 15 positions at the company. The change was due to our evaluation of the game's design and ongoing development needs. While this was a difficult decision, CCP remains committed to the franchise and our promise to make a compelling, rich, and deep World of Darkness experience."



Tags: atlanta, breaking, ccp, ccp-games, ccp-layoffs, designers, fantasy, fired, gothic, horror, layoffs, level-designer, level-designers, news, producer, producers, supernatural, vampires, white-wolf, wod, world-of-darkness

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http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/1...lanta-office-confirmed-world-of-darkness-dev/
 

svartalf

Can't get enough of FH
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This game always seemed like an impossible mission, but one I had great hopes for. Such a pity.
massively.com said:
CCP shuttering World of Darkness
by Jef Reahard http://data:image/png;base64,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 on Apr 14th 2014 11:30AMHorror, MMO Industry, News Items, World of Darkness, Sandbox0

wodrumor.jpg

After a weekend full of Reddit rumors, CCP has formally announced that it is ceasing development on World of Darkness.

The company laid off 56 employees from its Atlanta-based studio and will now focus exclusively on games set in its EVE Online universe. "To our current and former employees and fans of World of Darkness, I am truly sorry that we could not deliver the experience that we aspired to make," CEO Hilmar Petursson said in a statement. "We dreamed of a game that would transport you completely into the sweeping fantasy of World of Darkness, but had to admit that our efforts were falling regretfully short. One day I hope we will make it up to you."



Tags: breaking, ccp, ccp-games, ccp-layoffs, fantasy, gothic, hilmar-petursson, horror, layoffs, supernatural, vampire, vampires, white-wolf, wod, world-of-darkness, world-of-darkness-closing, world-of-darkness-layoffs

CCP said:
ImageGen.ashx


CCP Games Halts Development of World of Darkness MMO
April 14, 2014




CCP Games today announced that they have cancelled the World of Darkness massively multiplayer online (MMO) game project in development in their Atlanta, GA studio.



As a result of the change, 56 employees of the Atlanta studio have lost their jobs. Some team members have been offered roles on other projects inside the company, and CCP has provided severance packages and job placement assistance for those affected.



The remaining team in Atlanta will focus on games in the EVE Universe, which will mark the first time since 2006 that the entirety of CCP will be working on a single universe.



CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson:



The decision to end the World of Darkness MMO project is one of the hardest I’ve ever had to make. I have always loved and valued the idea of a sandbox experience set in that universe, and over the years I’ve watched the team passionately strive to make that possible.



I would like to give special thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make the World of Darkness MMO a reality, especially the team members affected by this decision. Their considerable contribution to CCP will not be forgotten, and we wish them well.



To our current and former employees and fans of World of Darkness, I am truly sorry that we could not deliver the experience that we aspired to make. We dreamed of a game that would transport you completely into the sweeping fantasy of World of Darkness, but had to admit that our efforts were falling regretfully short. One day I hope we will make it up to you.



Although this was a tough decision that affects our friends and family, uniting the company behind the EVE Universe will put us in a stronger position moving forward, and we are more committed than ever to solidify EVE as the biggest gaming universe in the world.



ImageGen.ashx



Journalists seeking information about CCP or its products,wanting to set up interviews, needing assets or interested inreview copies should contact:

Ned Coker (nedcoker@ccpgames.com)








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svartalf

Can't get enough of FH
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...

massively.com said:
Here's what CCP's World of Darkness looked like
by Jef Reahard data:image/png;base64,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 on Apr 30th 2014 11:30AMHorror, Game Mechanics, MMO Industry, News Items, World of Darkness, Sandbox, Sunsets0


CCP may have cancelled World of Darkness, but thanks to a leaker on Reddit you can get a look at some screenshots from the game as well as the lengthy manual from a March 2014 alpha playtest.

Eurogamer reports that WoD featured safe zones such as your haven and various Elysium areas near churches, but otherwise the game allowed for open PvP. CCP's take on the beloved White Wolf property also featured four clans: the Tremere, Brujah, Toreador, and Ventrue, each with different skills, abilities, and aspect buffs.

See the links below for the original Reddit post as well as the screenshot gallery and manual.



Tags: ccp, ccp-games, fantasy, gothic, horror, supernatural, vampire, vampires, white-wolf, wod, world-of-darkness
 

Mabs

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had hopes for it, but CCP was never the company to do it, so yea, hopefully someone actually decent gets a chance at the IP :(
 

svartalf

Can't get enough of FH
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World of Darkness apparently reached alpha three different times...


http://www.theguardian.com/technolo...-darkness-the-inside-story-mmo-ccp-white-wolf
The Guardian said:





World of Darkness - the inside story on the death of a game

This April, the long-awaited multiplayergame World of Darkness was cancelled. Ian G Williams explores how bad management hubris wasted nearly a decade of work

e6bb1b42-1b45-443a-9190-6b19953b247a-460x276.jpeg

World of Darkness – cancelled after several years of development. But why?


For the video game industry, Monday 14 April 2014 was just another day of layoffs and wasted creative energy.

The massively multiplayer online game World of Darkness had spent nine years in development but was being cancelled, and its production studioCCP Atlanta slashed to a sliver of its former size. Fifty-six people lost their jobs.

Insiders could barely muster a collective shrug. A few wondered if anything could be done about the increasingly sorry state of the business, about developers like Irrational and 38 Studios closing and constant downsizing, but not many questioned how it had all happened this time. This was a project with a promising pedigree – based around one of the most popular table-top gaming franchises since Dungeons and Dragons.

How did it fall apart after almost a decade of work?
The origins of World of Darkness


The story begins 25 years earlier at the peak of the tabletop roleplaying games industry. Back in the 1990s, a company named White Wolf loomed over this arcane landscape with a hugely successful series of games about vampires, werewolves, and wizards lurking behind our mundane reality.

Years before Twilight and its sulky undead hordes, World of Darkness mixed punk-rock rebellion and gothic style into the vampire mythos, grabbing the 90s zeitgeist by the throat and selling millions of books in the process. There was even a short-lived Aaron Spelling television show.

But the good times didn’t last for tabletop gaming. Over-confident expansion, rising printing costs and the growth of video games brought the sector to its knees. And White Wolf wasn’t immune.

That’s when Icelandic studio CCP Games swooped in. Founded in Reykjavík in 1997, the company launched its ambitious sandbox spaceship game, Eve Online, six years later. Boasting a complex player-made economy and dramatic space battles, it was like nothing else out there – a living, breathing sci-fi universe. By 2006 it had attracted 100,000 subscribers. Flushed with success and confidence, the company was looking to expand.

White Wolf was a natural fit. There was plenty of desirable intellectual property locked up in its range of board games and trading cards, especially World of Darkness. And CCP was effectively White Wolf for the MMO era: hipper than the competition, punching above its financial weight, and flirting with wider mass market attention.

Disorganised management


In November 2006, the two companies merged, with White Wolf becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of CCP. Immediately, work began on a massively multiplayer online game based around World of Darkness, featuring all of the unpredictability and openness of Eve Online.

CCP, to its immense credit, offered to keep on most, if not all, existing White Wolf staff. It was, according to those involved, a smooth transition; artists stayed on as artists, accountants as accountants. The existing staff who needed to transition to new roles were quick to learn fresh skills in areas like coding. However, plans for a swift ramp up to full production on the World of Darkness MMO faded as the pre-production and training phase dragged on.

There was another problem. Several members of the WoD development team told the Guardian that this early bump in the road was exacerbated by extreme disorganisation on the part of CCP’s Icelandic management. Very shortly after initial development began, the company started blurring the lines between the World of Darkness and Eve projects.

Repeatedly, staff were shifted over from the former to work on expansion projects for the latter. At times, our sources say, the entire WoD staff was put onto Eve, particularly during the development of 2009 add-on Apocrypha.

“On many different occasions throughout the years I was there, CCP would often ‘poach’ WoD staff for expansion projects,” recalls Nick Blood, a former developer and game master at CCP.

“There were plenty of developers who would get redirected to create Eve content for three to six month cycles… During these times, World of Darkness development was significantly slowed down. I remember the upper management often exasperatedly trying to figure out what to do with the remaining staff for a six-month period while their artists and programmers were busy elsewhere.”
'There was very little of the core game in it'


This constant yo-yo effect contributed to a development cycle in which planned features were partially completed and then dumped numerous times over. There seemed to be no clear vision on how the various parts would create a cohesive end product.

Sources report that, over the nine-year period, the game effectively reached alpha – the stage at which all the major features have been implemented - three times, only for each version to be scrapped.

“I tested it myself, on two different occasions out of those three,” says Blood. “With the first playtest, I was amazed at how little of the core game was there – at this point the game had been in development for over half a decade. I mean, there was just nothing, literally nothing, for someone like me, a complete outsider to the WoD IP, to appreciate.

"Other testers who were familiar with it thought it was great that they could finally see their avatars ‘diablerise’ – or consume – other player’s corpses, for health, or something. I just kind of shook my head and wondered how this would ever draw in anything other than die-hard fans.

“On the second play test, quite some time later, I was struck by how much had changed – and yet remained unfinished. The flagship achievement was a new movement system, made after scrapping the old one, which was similar to the Assassin’s Creed gameplay – with mantling walls, etc. But it was very basic in comparison. CCP was quite self-congratulatory on achieving this much, and the internal propaganda was that this kind of movement system would revolutionise MMO gaming.”
'Coders had to throw work away again and again'


For the coders there was a constant state of flux. “Almost every system in the game was designed, built and tested at least once, most of them multiple times,” says one gameplay programmer. “Some of the systems were reportedly pretty cool; they had never been seen in MMOs before. The problem was that, without a cogent vision, none of it gelled. There was no clear path towards ‘done’.

"So the team just ended up building stuff and throwing it away, over and over again. It's something I saw on Eve and Dust as well - the teams would build a feature, then be told by management to make ‘small changes’ which necessitated a full, back-to-square-one rewrite.”

One manager couldn't answer questions on gameplay or focus. I remember him standing over the shoulder of a programmer putting his finger to his lips and saying 'No - make it more... psssshhhh

This constant build and rebuild approach meant massive issues in the development process. Features that were good enough to retain in one build had to be redesigned from scratch for the next because so many other interconnected parts had changed. Even when there was enough to play, internal testing revealed a confused and unfocused experience.

Most of the sources spoken to for this piece identified the same problematic CCP manager, who had little vision for what the finished game would look like.

“Not once could he answer any question about moment-to-moment gameplay or areas of focus,” says one source. “Instead, he preferred to deliver buzzword-laden rambles… It was not uncommon for him to communicate in onomatopoeia.

"I once saw him looking over the shoulder of a programmer at some bit of User Interface the poor guy had hacked together. He straightened up, put fingers to lips and said, ‘No, this isn't it at all. Make it more... psssshhhh’ He hissed on his fucking fingertips, like the air coming out of a bicycle tire, and then just walked away.”
A blame culture

Former staff claim that the management team charged with creative oversight on WoD did not accept responsibility for the increasingly chaotic game development. “When things started turning sour in 2010, it was categorically not the fault of management, executive or creative," said another source. "The line employees were blamed.

"One email sent on the eve of the company's 2010 team-building trip stated that all teams had to work through the weekend - and that this necessary overtime was the fault of the teams, that it was their failure to plan and scope their project accordingly. Never mind that management insisted on changing requirements and designs on a weekly basis, without pushing the schedule out to accommodate the changes.”

Design meetings were decidedly robust affairs. Lead designers piled into what was known as “The Sweaty Room” and yelled at one another. “It was very alpha-male, whoever shouted longest and hardest would dominate the meetings,” recalls one developer. “This didn't seem to spill out into the rest of the project until later.”
Budgeting problems


The budget for the game was also affected by the lack of oversight. While no one interviewed for this article was in a position to quote exact numbers, all were under the impression that CCP dealt with one unified research and development fund, rather than allocating money by project. Former staff claim this explains why teams shifted regularly between WoD and Eve.

CCP lusted for relevance, the expectation that it should do more than its peers. It constantly attempted to recreate the buzz that followed a favourable article in the New York Times

This unusual state of affairs meant that any development on WoD was extremely reliant on the success of CCP’s other projects. When it was just WoD and Eve, WoD development could be theoretically funded indefinitely without much worry. This remained true even as Eve’s subscription rates appeared to plateau, becoming more reliant on players with multiple accounts. The sensible thing would have been to concentrate on Eve, while settling on a single vision for WoD in an attempt to get the latter out the door.

That wasn’t how things turned out. Spurred by Eve’s status as a unique brand in the MMO space, CCP developed an odd internal corporate culture which insisted on what CCP refers to as a "War on the Impossible", an idea that the company should do more and expect more than its peers in the industry. This mission became tangled up with what Nick Blood calls CCP’s “lusts for relevance” - its constant attempts to recreate the buzz that followed a favourable article in the New York Times. There was a growing sense of hubris.
Dust to dust


But the company’s ambitions grew. In August 2009, CCP announced Dust 514, a multiplayer shooter for the Playstation 3 which was set in the Eve universe. Players would even be able to affect the main Eve Online universe via their planetary battles in the console spin-off. It was a hugely innovative endeavour and once again, staff were pulled off World of Darkness to help deliver on the promises.

When Dust was finally released, however, reviews generally praised the concept, but savaged the well below par execution. It flopped.

The beginning of the end for WoD predictably didn’t have anything to do with that project at all. In June of 2011, CCP launched Incarna, one of Eve’s regular expansions. Incarna was primarily focused on allowing players to interact with the world as their character avatars, rather than just their ships, for the first time.

Without the time or resources to properly do so, many things were left half-delivered, to be iterated upon later – which never happened. CCP has an extensive track record of promising to return to features and never doing so

One of the key new additions was the “Captains Quarters”, which allowed your avatar to leave their craft and wander around a limited section of the game’s space stations. The system was underpinned by CCP’s Carbon framework, a technology designed to allow the sharing of code between games; this would facilitate the transfer of WoD’s character movement technology to the Eve project.

But development of Incarna was not going smoothly. “As little as a few weeks out from launch, the lead designers were still trying to add features to the Captain’s Quarters,” says Blood. “But without the time or resources to properly do so, many things were left half-delivered, to be iterated upon later– which never happened. CCP has an extensive track record of promising to return to features and never doing so. There was little discipline to the process.”

Worst of all, according to Blood, the entire point of the expansion (walking around space stations) was let down by the Reykjavic office’s art team; it took them nearly the entire development time to create one faction’s Captains Quarters. Yet again, the WoD team was asked to cross over in order to bail out an Eve expansion.

Our sources say it took them a fraction of the time to create the one room station interiors for the other three factions. Blood recalls the friction between the teams on this point. “While it certainly vindicated the WoD artists in terms of work ethic, I remember it was a sore point between the offices that the much vaunted Icelandic crew had been so demonstrably shown up.”
Microtransactions and 'monocle-gate'


The development difficulties were only part of the Incarna problem. According to sources, CCP management had decided to introduce microtransactions, unbeknownst to most of the rank and file, charging real money for cosmetic items with which to customise character avatars. This is a familiar feature in online games, but usually a new outfit for a player character will cost $15-20. CCP decided to charge much more. The most notorious example was a monocle costing $70. The price tag infuriated fans kick-starting a major pricing controversy that would go on to become known as Monocle-gate.

The CEO had members of the fiction writing team put the apology together -he was either so out of touch, so arrogant, that he couldn’t find the words himself

The management response was elusive. In June 2011, senior producer Arnar Gylfason delivered an ambiguous statement, comparing the pixelated monocles to $1000 jeans and questioning whether people should buy clothes in real life at all. Eve subscriptions declined sharply and precipitously, and there were actual in-game riots in protest.

Eventually CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson issued an apology to the players. But even this short appeasement wasn’t what it seemed; according to Blood, Petursson didn’t actually write it.

“He had members of our storyline team – a group responsible for writing in-game content and fiction – put it together,” he says. “He was either so out of touch, so arrogant, or perhaps both, that he couldn’t find the words to say himself.They bailed him out big time.”
Darkness descends


Even after Monoclegate blew over and CCP backed away from the cash shop, the bugs in Incarna remained. The main feature, the Captain’s Quarters, just didn’t work very well. It was buggy and a major system drag, killing performance on older computers. Eventually, CCP added an option to disable the feature entirely.

The damage was done. The subscription numbers would eventually rebound, but player trust in CCP was strained. As WoD dragged on with its constant reboots, as Eve Online began to decline in the wake of Incarna, as Dust sucked the oxygen out of the development process, even the high end employee benefits, the main selling point for American CCP employees, began to disappear.

"In Atlanta, the first benefit – the cantina – has been dramatically cut with no compensatory salary increase,” says Blood. “Meals used to be a fantastic benefit, and even included dinners at one point, but the ‘culture of frugality’ as they put it, has resulted in cut after cut and the current quality is simply not worth the lowered salary. The medical benefits have similarly been cut. Previously CCP had a very good coverage plan, but they swapped that out in 2011, and again in 2012, for plans with less coverage options. Again, there was no commensurate increase in salaries to make this loss up.”

Late 2011 spelled the real end of WoD as a viable project. CCP had to shed costs and 20 percent of its overall workforce was laid off, with the bulk of the cuts coming from Atlanta. WoD was slated to continue, according to the press release, but “with a significantly reduced team.”

Shockingly, given the turmoil, a flythrough video for WoD was released at Fanfest 2012, CCP’s annual fan convention. At barely over one minute long, it showed an impressive grasp of the World of Darkness universe – but it also displayed no moving NPCs or collision, the hallmarks of a developed product. Reviews were predictably mixed. Plenty of fans expected things to begin to look up from there; the video was proof that something was being worked on. Lots of others, particularly those with experience in the industry, sensed smoke and mirrors.

This was the last the general public were ever to see of WoD. Behind the scenes, morale was shot. A source who was in the Reykjavik office at the time recalls, “The 2011 layoffs incited a lot of anger. A lot. I heard it was worse in the ATL office, and most of the folks I know down there have never forgiven CCP's management.” CCP announced a fourth project, a game for the Oculus Rift tentatively titled Valkyrie. This stretched resources even further. Even staff with secure positions began to leave for other studios or to get out of the industry altogether.

And so it went. Fifteen more employees were let go from the Atlanta office in late 2013. Then finally in mid-April 2014, the World of Darkness MMO was canceled, with 56 redundancies – among them numerous staff who had been with White Wolf for 20 years.

The Guardian approached CCP for comment on the details this feature and were directed to the company's statement on the closure of World of Darkness. We then contacted the company's US PR department again, detailing the specific allegations, and received no response.

As a bizarre postscript to the saga, the Georgia state legislature announced a fresh round of tax cuts for the video game industry within hours of the official announcement of WoD’s cancellation. It was, perversely, a fitting conclusion: a tax incentive meant to reward and spur job growth in an industry notorious for shock layoffs, while what was clearly the state’s video game studio crown jewel was announcing a new bout of job cuts.
The industry that closed its eyes


Perhaps the real scandal is that there’s nothing truly unusual about what happened here. Earlier this year, Disney announced 700 job cuts, many from its casual games division; Sony Santa Monica made redundancies, Irrational Games shut down. Partly it’s the economy, of course, but a lot of it is just down to the games industry not functioning as well as it should, on outdated production methods and sky high budgets.

In the US, for example, video game company layoffs are twice the national average. “GameJobWatch tracked 73 layoffs in the first ten months of 2013, totalling more than 3400 jobs lost, not including studios among those 73 that they didn't have a head count for. That's almost two studios with layoffs each week," said Darius Kazemi, a former developer and once a board member for the IGDA.

“A layoff-heavy strategy means that people burn out of the business quickly. Last I heard the average time spent in games is seven years. You get tired of being treated that way and you realise that you can probably work somewhere else doing more boring work and get a lot more money and stability. Or you try your hand at going independent, where the odds are low but at least you control your own destiny.

"When experienced people leave the industry entirely, we lose institutional memory. Our games stagnate. I think AAA is in extended death throes. I think it's going to look like the comics industry in a few years: a couple of huge corporations that dominate the mainstream attention, and then an enormous number of very small indies. Actually, it looks like that today.”

Speaking to Rock Paper Shotgun during the annual Eve Fanfest in May, CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, showed some acknowledgement of the company’s mistakes over the past few years. “I would say we’re re-focusing on simpler strategies and smaller teams,” he said. “I think that helped make us successful: EVE was made like that. And maybe we scaled up our teams and our ambitions too rapidly.”

But for the staff we spoke to it’s too late. Only one remains in the industry, working as a designer at a small studio. The others left or were made redundant.

“I wasn't laid off,” points out Blood at the end of our interview. “I left voluntarily, out of disappointment at what the industry is increasingly becoming.”

He has no intention of returning.

EVE Online fanfest: the party at the top of the world


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