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CCP and White Wolf Games To Merge
Evod writes "Crowd Control Productions, maker of the MMORPG EVE Online, announced today at their annual fanfest in Reykjavik, Iceland that a merger between White Wolf Publishing and themselves is a done deal. From the White Wolf Press Release: 'The merged company will enable CCP to integrate White Wolf's leading expertise in offline gaming development to enhance and create physical products for its MMOG, EVE Online. Products to be introduced in 2007 will include strategy guides, enhanced collectible card games, role-playing systems, and novels all based on EVE Online. White Wolf will leverage CCP's industry-leading technologies to bring its offline role-playing titles online. Conceptualization and early development has begun to bring White Wolf's World of Darkness, one of the world's strongest gaming properties, into the online world.' Each company will keep its own name and Hilmar Petursson, Chief Executive Officer of CCP, will step up as CEO of the merged companies." If you're a MMOG fan, or a table-top RPG fan, this is some interesting stuff right here.
Well, this type of stuff happens, i have a feeling that abandonware is a term we will be use soon enough
To the contrary, EVE Online is growing very fast, having tripled its subscription base over the last 12 months and recently opened a new server cluster in China. It is the only online game to have survived the onslaught of World of Warcraft with flying colors and barely a dent in its upward subscription trend. Granted, it is not an easy game to enter or master, but once people get past the first 3-4 months or so they tend to stay on as subscribers for years. It will be very interesting to see what happens when the game technology from EVE is merged with the rich content of World of Darkness; an interesting present-day MMORPG is sure to come out of that.
Yes, Eve is quite pretty, but that wears off kinda fast.
;)
It's actually getting a graphics face lift, but that is unfortunately tied to Vista and I'm afraid I probably won't get to experience it. (Yep, going to be duel client engines, but they promise to maintain both...)
Eve has some similarities to UO in regards to characters being decided on skills and there is no limit to what you can learn. However, skill points are earned in real time whether you are playing or not. The luxury of having a persistent universe, but without the draw backs of investing horrid amounts of time. You can still enjoy the game if you are just a casual player. This in itself I believe is CCP's one true niche in the world of warcrafters.
Give it a try and if you happen to like it... give Trade Consortium a buzz.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
I like both WW and CCP. WW basically brought avantgarde RPG Gaming into US american mainstream and finally established a standing alternative to the ancient (A)D&D crap (I don't like (A)D&D ;-) ), and CCP has a neat MMORPG title on their hands.
I do believe a well-minted 'Exalted Online' could be a competitor to WoW. I don't know if CCP can pull it off though. Spaceships and Planets are easy compared to a MMORPG like WoW. I'd be happier if WW had teamed up with Arenanet and their GuildWars line. A GuildWars MMORPG based on Exalted would totally kick ass and would be fitting aswell.
Then again they could combine the Trinity/Aeon Universe with Eve - which would rock just as much I suppose. Nice prospects indeed.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Yes, in fact those are in game shots. I've been playing Eve Online since launch, a little over three years, and it's always been a very good looking game. CCP has done a great job keeping interest within it's userbase, and has been growing since launch. The thing that Eve has going for it is quality of players, not quantity. They have been able to expand the server cluster (30,000 users on one server, not split up like every other game on the market).
:)
Eve has also managed to keep the client and all upgrades free. Only fee is the monthly fee. There is an updated client for DX10 (Vista) and they vow to support DX9 clients as well.
Eve is a niche game, not a mass-market cookie cutter game. It's very harsh, a bit of a learning curve, and not for the weak of heart. It could take you a month to save for a cruiser, and ten seconds to lose it if you're not careful. It's not a matter of going to a repair shop and paying a couple gold.
You'll love it, or hate it. There is no "in the middle"
--
I'm a player of Eve online, and a player of a particular WoD Game, Wraith. I find both to be absolutely amazing in terms of storylines. Instead of looking at the possible negatives, I think I'll look at the absolutely awesome possibilities. White Wolf has a fairly popular card game, and Eve is just starting one (as in, already has.) It certainly lends itself to Roleplay. And for a game with a single server CCP does a marvelous job supporting its admittedly small Roleplay community. They have a game its hard /not/ to Roleplay in. When you say 'Lets go hunt pirates, or find rats in low sec space- its all in game. It makes it easier for Roleplayers like myself to deal with non-rpers. No. From this I can only hope for the best. CCP seems to know what they're doing, making a more thinking man's MMO. And WW made a more thinking man's roleplaying game. Best of luck, peoples.
I don't see WW benefitting from this deal. WW games, the whole WoD is run on the most potent game engine ever: the human mind. In attempting to translate the game into a PC form, they would rape the number one rule: the ST makes the rules, as to fit the RP group. Which is why I believe only CCP will benefit from having a universe of lore added to some video game, instead of filling it with shallow textual depictions of events or items that give no sense of immersion at all after the first graphical "wow".
-A Metamorphosist.
Gaming is cyclical. Alot of the reason that D&D 3.0 did so well was that people hadn't played D&D in a while.
The D&D-style fantasy settings have dominated for several years now. And d20 drives a certain vision of playstyle and progression that also has a deadly sameness if it's the only system you use. So while I love D&D 3.5, I do hunger for something different and would love to see something new pop up. Not to replace D&D, just to bring something fresh in.
The time is ripe for a new fad in gaming, be it World of Darkness or some other venerable setting. My concern above is that White Wolf doesn't have the pocketbook or the people to take advantage of the opportunity.
You know, in 3-4 months, I can have a character up to 60 in full tier 1 and enjoying end game content. And a few decent alts. And that's not even with obsessive life-controlling playing either, just casual play. I don't have the attention span to drudge through "the first 3-4 months". If they can't make a game that's interesting in a day, I'm not interested at all.
What does that level 60 character get you? What impact do you have on the game? What does trudging through yet another elite complex actually do to the overall "immersive" and "interactive" world? Squat diddly. Essentially in WoW and so many other MMORPGs no matter how good your character, no matter what you do, nothing actually changes. Horizons tried to change this with a very large story arc where you could work towards making a huge change in game, but was absolutely rubbish with god-awful graphics engine and attrociously underpowered servers. Eve Online is hugely different. Get out of the 'empire' and 'n00b friendly' zones and get out to 0.0 and all of a sudden you're in lawless space. Whatever laws you and your friends choose to apply, apply. Its kinda like the wild west out there, a new frontier. The political map changes from day to day, month to month. New alliances form and take land, other alliances come in and fight for it and take it away. Change is on such a huge scale and every individual pilot can make a huge impact in that; be that as leader of a large alliance, or just a minor member of a corporation. The industrialists impact the abilities of the warriors, and vice versa. The more territory the warriors fight for and defend, the better access to the basic materials needed by industrialists, and thus the cheaper it is to produce items for the warriors. With such a no law environment and such a loose structure that CCP have provided there is a role for every type of character, be it industrialist, politician, teacher, fighter, trucker, spy or any other role you could care to develop.
If the choice is between 4 months of achieving nothing in a game other than a figure beside my name, or 4 months in which I can have an impact in a whole universe and make a difference, it's not really hard to guess which one I'd choose.
"Joy is not in things; it is in us." Richard Wagner
I find this merger kind of odd. The CCP angle for selling EvE as a board game makes good sense. White Wolf does indeed seem to have a theme going for it that fits in with EvE's lore (which sadly for me means it just sucks).
What I don't get though is the reverse. CCP has experience with building an MMO true but in terms of building good game clients CCP has only ever touched the space genre. I'll fully agree CCP has great artistic vision going on but rendering space takes a few less polygons than rendering some grass.
I personally doubt they have the technical know-how to create the software that would be required for one of White Wolf's games without a significant learning period. It's too much of an apples and oranges thing.