WoD MMO details

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 4:45 pm

So there's been some WOD MMO details coming out from a panel discussion. Main bullet points can be found here:

http://www.wodnews.net/Home/tabid/41/ct ... erade.aspx

The interesting thing is that they're pushing for player-driven content (like Eve) and heavy human interaction/LARP style experience.

If they can pull it off, and I can't believe I'm saying this, I might be very interested in the game. Most MMOs are not true RPGs, but this one might actually be. I've wondered why more MMOs haven't tried to go the player-generated content route. It's a gamble, but if you can get a core of people interested in your game enough to generate content, it should serve as reason enough to bring new players in.

At the same time, it seems crazy to say that, since MUDs and MUSHes have been around for so long, and those are highly player-driven. I guess everything old is new again.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 4:50 pm

PS: 20th Anniversary Vampire? Yeah... it's not the only new oWOD (now called Classic WOD) book coming out apparently:

http://whitewolfblogs.com/v20companion/

Plus, Drivethrurpg is doing print on demand for most of the oWOD books out there. Looks like the old beast is still alive after all.

Ikeren · Post by **Ikeren** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 5:13 pm

I've wondered why more MMOs haven't tried to go the player-generated content route. It's a gamble, but if you can get a core of people interested in your game enough to generate content, it should serve as reason enough to bring new players in.

You need to dedicate substantial resources to content screening. Like, huge. I've played quite a lot of EQ private severs, and a good chunk of them are just people producing poorly designed and poorly thought out crap, or hiding in "oh look, this makes me uber and no-one-else" sort of stuff.

Gx1080 · Post by **Gx1080** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 10:51 pm

"PvP will be more limited in some ways, yet more open in others then any other current MMO. "

So vague and edgy. Just say "there will be non-PvP zones" like everybody else.

Blah, blah, same shit that we learned to do on EvE Online, blah blah, fodder for the WW fans, wait:

"There will be final death for both mortals and kindred."

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Hell no, that's not going to happen. Is an stupid idea that has been tried and thrown aside for being stupid.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 11:00 pm

So what we can take away from this is that there is a very small chance this game will be the best MMO ever made and a very large chance it will be worse than the Korean grindfests I can get free.

Daztur · Post by **Daztur** » Tue Sep 20, 2011 3:31 am

Ikeren wrote:
I've wondered why more MMOs haven't tried to go the player-generated content route. It's a gamble, but if you can get a core of people interested in your game enough to generate content, it should serve as reason enough to bring new players in.
You need to dedicate substantial resources to content screening. Like, huge. I've played quite a lot of EQ private severs, and a good chunk of them are just people producing poorly designed and poorly thought out crap, or hiding in "oh look, this makes me uber and no-one-else" sort of stuff.

I don't think they mean that, I think that they mean that a lot of what you'll be doing is reacting to what other players do (like in Eve).

MfA · Post by **MfA** » Tue Sep 20, 2011 2:49 pm

"Griefers will suffer both in game and if serious enough out of game penalties (ie account banning)"

This is going to be a clusterfuck.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Tue Sep 20, 2011 3:29 pm

Oh right, it's by CCP.

Player-owned-structures and Outposts run by motley crews of Humanity Zero PCs. Except they won't be Humanity Zero, because stuff done in the wilderness won't affect your humanity.

PvP will be possible in all areas of the game where movement is, although some areas will have police. The police will be more more powerful than anything else in the game, and it will be considered an exploit to not get killed if they come after you.

There will be a huge hullabaloo about how equipping all the best stuff for running fast lets you engage and disengage before people can react, removing all the risk from the game.

A group of highly dedicated players who have been there since the beginning will rule vast swaths of wilderness, with seemingly nobody able to unseat them. A dev will be accused of giving limited-number items to them. Eventually someone will infiltrate the group, become the leader, and kick everyone out.

Thousands of players from SomethingAwful will arrive en-mass and swarm high level people under with new characters using only noob gear.

Gx1080 · Post by **Gx1080** » Tue Sep 20, 2011 4:03 pm

I really want this MMO to come out.

All the drama between the Something Awful peasants and the White Wolf [EDITED] will be epic.

The lulz shall bring years of amusement.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Tue Sep 20, 2011 5:11 pm

Also, someone will run off with enough in-game money to buy a real-life car.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Wed Sep 21, 2011 8:59 am

I believe my fark greenlight when WW & CCP merged is still appropriate:

Vampires Accountants! In! SPAAAAAACE!

Looks interesting in theory though. And as for the player generated content, I always look fondly at Shadowrun as being a gold mine for that. The scenario I always think of is a player hiring a group of runners for a run against a company so that he can short sell the stock on the market the next day, or whatever. Player-run news organizations over the matrix, shit like that.

A lot of that shit shows up in Eve. Despite how much I hate the game, I admire some of where it's gone.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Sep 22, 2011 6:06 am

I reserve judgement* until I see it in action. And if it's anything like Eve, then "action" is not the right word to use.

*Lies. I'm sure it will be utter shit.

K · Post by K » Thu Sep 22, 2011 6:31 am

Isn't Eve just a proof-of-concept that people will spend years of free time to swindle thousands of players in an epic single act of douchebaggery?

I mean, Eve is legendary for the player-run Ponzi schemes and people running off with everyone's money to buy a super-ship, then dare people to come after them.

A WoD version of that.... does not appeal.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Thu Sep 22, 2011 6:41 am

K wrote:Isn't Eve just a proof-of-concept that people will spend years of free time to swindle thousands of players in an epic single act of douchebaggery?

I mean, Eve is legendary for the player-run Ponzi schemes and people running off with everyone's money to buy a super-ship, then dare people to come after them.

A WoD version of that.... does not appeal.

If in WoD people will spend months and years to maneuver, plot and plan a coup, cutting off rivals and hiring others as distractions, to then pull of the coup in a single night full of assassinations and betrayal, then that could be awesome. It beats the old "kill monster, loot, repeat" game.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Sep 22, 2011 6:43 am

I am personally looking forward to people figuring out how to get large numbers of people to sign up for some kind of organization only to find out that it is a trap and they are all getting diablerized. The Vampire equivalent of the EVE corporation-theft is I believe the climax to Blade - and I want that to happen so that I can read about it.

-Username17

A Man In Black · Post by **A Man In Black** » Thu Sep 22, 2011 6:44 am

Fuchs wrote:If in WoD people will spend months and years to maneuver, plot and plan a coup, cutting off rivals and hiring others as distractions, to then pull of the coup in a single night full of assassinations and betrayal, then that could be awesome. It beats the old "kill monster, loot, repeat" game.

For the coup master, sure. Sucks to be everyone else.

Bihlbo · Post by **Bihlbo** » Thu Sep 22, 2011 7:15 am

My intense loathing for vampires as a concept, godlike beings among a world of ignorable pissants, and all the gothy crap that surrounds everything in WoD will make it really hard for me to get into this game. I would seriously rather play Wizard 101 or a my little pony mmo than to involve myself in the lives of people who think bloodsucking and crap is cool. There's a reason I don't hang out with maladjusted pubescents.

So when they say that this MMO (and keep in mind, that means it's the same genre of game as WOW, and so will have many of the same mouth-breathing players) will be based more on human interaction, and will also be world of darkness, my assumption is that this game is going to be 10% fun and 90% cringy horror-wank and antisocial skullrape.

So, that's off my chest.

As for the specific points, some of them seem pretty interesting. I honestly do applaud any attempt at an innovative MMO, since I haven't seen one in about 5 years that comes close to trying something new and interesting. While most of the ideas mentioned in the link aren't new to multiplayer gaming at all, they are severely underused and rarely done well. SWG may have been the last innovative MMO ever made on a large scale*, and eventually it fell to crap when faced with the hordes of players who only see numbers. The producers just caved and gave then the high score features they were expecting out of a video game, throwing away everything about the game that made it good. If CCP pulls off something brave, does it well, and makes a game that's more about telling interesting stories that involve people, emotions, and creativity, then I might actually care a little less about the setting.

Edit:
* - okay, the last innovative MMORPG; Eve is very innovative, but has virtually no rpg elements at all.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Thu Sep 22, 2011 8:19 am

A Man In Black wrote:
Fuchs wrote:If in WoD people will spend months and years to maneuver, plot and plan a coup, cutting off rivals and hiring others as distractions, to then pull of the coup in a single night full of assassinations and betrayal, then that could be awesome. It beats the old "kill monster, loot, repeat" game.
For the coup master, sure. Sucks to be everyone else.

And being "everyone else" behind the hard core raiding crowd who gets catered to in every other MMOG doesn't suck harder?

I've been involved in roleplay plots and betrayals and assassinations in MMOGs before, and not on the "coup master" level, and it sure beat any "let's go kill Dragon X for the 11th time, maybe today drops something we can use" content any day of the week - twice in the week after "content was made more challenging for your enjoyment of the game" aka "Fuck you, casual players".

A Man In Black · Post by **A Man In Black** » Thu Sep 22, 2011 10:14 am

Fuchs wrote:And being "everyone else" behind the hard core raiding crowd who gets catered to in every other MMOG doesn't suck harder?

WOW has more hardcore raiders than EVE has subscribers. Hell, I'd be willing to bet a second-tier game like Aion has more hardcore raiders than EVE has subscribers.

Cooperative constructive encourages likeminded people to find other likeminded people to work together at a (hopelessly grindy) task, and improve each others' gameplay by playing effectively.

Competitive zero-sum encourages likeminded people to find suckers to endlessly grind, then cheat them out of the profits of their hopeless grinding.

Guess which builds a bigger playerbase?

EVE is a tiny-ass game and will never be anything but a tiny-ass game. I respect the devs for doing their own thing and getting a small project going, but dog-eat-dog games only appeal to people who don't understand that most of the playerbase is meat.

Further relevant commentary.

And also this.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Thu Sep 22, 2011 10:38 am

Oh, of course more people will play WoW than WoD or Eve. That's not the point though. The point is that a roleplay and social advancement focused MMOG can be a lot of fun, especially for those who do not find traditional (WoW) grind any fun at all.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Sep 22, 2011 10:55 am

A Man In Black wrote:
Fuchs wrote:And being "everyone else" behind the hard core raiding crowd who gets catered to in every other MMOG doesn't suck harder?
WOW has more hardcore raiders than EVE has subscribers. Hell, I'd be willing to bet a second-tier game like Aion has more hardcore raiders than EVE has subscribers.

The WoW comment is true. Otherwise, basically no. EVE is in the upper bracket. Only barely, but it is there. There are basically three tiers of MMOs: WoW, everything else you've ever heard of, and essentially dead games. More recent numbers from brighthub:

* World of Warcraft – 12,000,000 (2011)
* Aion - 3,400,000 (mid 2010)
* Runescape – 1,300,000 (2009)
* Lineage – 750,000 (2009)
* Lineage II – 750,000 (2009)
* Dofus – 520,000 (mid 2010)
* Final Fantasy XI – 350,000 (mid 2010)
* Eve Online – 325,000 (2011)
* Lord of the Rings Online – 210,000 (mid 2010)
* City of Heroes/Villains - 125,000 (2009)
* Age of Conan – 120,000 (mid 2010)
* Ultima Online - 100,000 (2009)
* Everquest - 100,000 (mid 2010)
* Warhammer Online – 80,000 (2010)

Basically there are only three games with more than a million subscribers and there's only one game that has more than ten million. If you compare things to WoW, you basically don't get meaningful numbers. If you take that outlier away, you have 100,000 as the dying and/or dead mark and 200,000 as the mark of doing pretty OK. Games in the 300k range are actually the middle of the pack. Games with over a million subscribers are monster hits that drive the industry.

By any sane calculation, EVE is very successful. They aren't meaningfully competing against WoW, but
nothing in the whole world is actually doing that. The second biggest game is ten times EVE's population, but that doesn't mean that EVE is not doing well or that it is not a big fish as such things go.

-Username17

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Thu Sep 22, 2011 11:30 am

FrankTrollman wrote:I am personally looking forward to people figuring out how to get large numbers of people to sign up for some kind of organization only to find out that it is a trap and they are all getting diablerized. The Vampire equivalent of the EVE corporation-theft is I believe the climax to Blade - and I want that to happen so that I can read about it.

-Username17

I laughed when I read this. Out loud. Pretty hard.

Yes, I'd like to see this happen too. And it wouldn't be out of the genre anyway, since old WOD was about f*cking over people with a higher generation than you.

A Man In Black · Post by **A Man In Black** » Thu Sep 22, 2011 11:47 am

FrankTrollman wrote:Basically there are only three games with more than a million subscribers and there's only one game that has more than ten million. If you compare things to WoW, you basically don't get meaningful numbers. If you take that outlier away, you have 100,000 as the dying and/or dead mark and 200,000 as the mark of doing pretty OK. Games in the 300k range are actually the middle of the pack. Games with over a million subscribers are monster hits that drive the industry.

EVE still has about as many players as a game like Aion has raiders.

You looked at a list, figured things in the middle must be middling-successful, and ran with that. It just isn't so. Games with 200K or less are barely keeping the lights on unless they are subsidized by other projects or run very cheaply. Look at the games below EVE: all of them have either tossed their old business model out the window (LOTRO, COH), are all-but-dead remnants of failed games (WAR, AOC), are ancient games kept alive on a shoestring (COH until recently, EQ, UO), or are buoyed up by being bundled with some other game people actually want (FFXI, EQ).

After years of running on a shoestring, EVE is finally seeing some greater momentum in the last couple of years, but bear in mind that this is after three years of <100K subs and two more years of <200K subs. It's a model of perseverance, but not a model of success. EVE is at the bottom of the pack, and below EVE are sketchily implemented flash games (some of which are actually ahead, like RQ and Dofus) and rotting corpses.

On top of this, most people do not play in the areas where anyone can kill anyone. Only about 14% of players play in nullsec/wormhole space. Most accounts spend most of their lives ratting or mining in high security space, or just hanging out in empire hubs socializing or trading. Fuchs complains about the hard-core raiding crowd in other MMOs in exactly the same way that empire space players complain about CCP catering to nullsec players!

The idea that there's a significant number of people playing some sort of high-stakes game of politics and betrayal even in the game known best for high-stakes games of politics and betrayal is absolutely silly. It makes for very good stories, sure, but successful games are not pyramids of player-controlled bodies upon which a few successful schemers sit.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Thu Sep 22, 2011 12:00 pm

Again, I have some experience with such social (mind)games. They are fun and contrary to your post, you can be involved without ending up a victim or being on top. Just the knowledge that this mission I am on will actually have a cosnequence, and effect on the game world, and not simply a meaningless static quest is what makes a game fun for a number of people.

Not to mention a game where the goal is not to amass "phat lewt" and "epic gear" but to find your niche in an active society and (hopefully) player-driven economy cater to a much different crowd.

Less numerous? Sure. But why actually do you think this is a bad thing for those who like that game?

Seriously, your whole point is: Oh, they cater to a different crowd, they won't have as many players as WoW.

WoD is going after a different crowd, and for those it's a good sign that they are not copying WoW, they might get a fun game instead of an unfun WoW clone wannabe.

And economically it makes sense as well. Every game that tried to out-WoW WoW failed spectacularly.

A Man In Black · Post by **A Man In Black** » Thu Sep 22, 2011 12:16 pm

Fuchs wrote:Less numerous? Sure. But why actually do you think this is a bad thing for those who like that game?

Because to have a game that pays for electricity and servers and support people and updates, you need people to pay the bills. Otherwise you end up with Tale in the Desert.

I'm not saying WoD the MMO should copy WOW. I'm saying that cooperative games tend to outlive competitive games, and that more people are interested in beating the computer than fighting each other.

And economically it makes sense as well. Every game that tried to out-WoW WoW failed spectacularly.

Now who's comparing things to WOW? The last big game to try to out-WOW WOW has a multimillion subscriber base.