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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.
We'll get an EVE tabletop RPG, and CCG. They'll be supported for a couple of years, and then abandoned due to poor sales.
In a few months, we'll get an announcement *with screenshots* about a "World of Darkness" online MMORPG game. They'll never specify a release date, and over the next couple of years, we'll hear less and less about it, until it is finally quietly cancelled. At that point, the companies will split up again.
Honestly, I don't expect either company to be around much longer no matter WHAT happens. EVE Online is getting long-in-the-tooth, and really doesn't have mass-market appeal. And White Wolf is just screwed in general, because pen-and-paper RPGs that aren't Dungeons & Dragons are almost completely dead.
Well, this type of stuff happens, i have a feeling that abandonware is a term we will be use soon enough
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.
Despite showing continual subscriber growth since its inception. CCP is suddenly going to collapse because, what, Oveur's apartment is filled with so much money that he can't breath? (I could see maybe being strangled by the pink wig, but that's a different problem entirely.)
Yes, EVE lacks mass market appeal. However, EVE is the only game of its kind. It doesn't need mass market appeal. It's been successful, it is successful, it will continue to be successful. Despite what the morons of Slashdot will tell you, there's more to 'success' than 'marketshare'.
EVE has already 'outlived' most other MMOGs. Outlive, I must quantify by stating, continued to grow where other MMOGs have seen their subscriber bases dwindle to a mere fraction of their height. EQ, DAoC, et cetera. Most other MMOGs have suffered from this - something new and shiny comes along, and suddenly everyone's leaving. EVE, however, has maintained steady growth. Why? Because there's little that can be new and shiny to EVE's subscriber base. World of Warcraft? Mention it on the EVE forums sometime, see what kind of reaction you get - the subscribers of EVE aren't the mass market.
People seem to equate this with failure, for some reason. It's an asinine assumption to make. How much filet mignon is sold in the US each day? How many double cheeseburgers from McDonald's are sold in the US each day? Clearly, prime cuts of beef are a failure; anyone who doesn't sell preprocessed crap is an idiot, right?
Well, what's the argument, really? Steady growth in subscriptions rules out failure due to cash flow. The only thing you have going for you as an argument is 'LOL NEW AND SHINY!'
To put it in terms Slashdotters can understand: Look at this guy. He's doing the MMOG equivalent of saying everyone's going to abandon Unix because it's old, and Vista is coming out. With Aero! Ooh! Shiny!
I hear the final differences were settled with rock-paper-scissors.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Well, CCCP never actuallly stood for "Central Comittee of the Communist Party" in any case, thats a misinterpretation. The "C" is the Cyrillic alphabet "/S/" sound and the "P" is the Cyrillic "/R/" sound, so you would pronounce this abbreviation in Russian as "Ess Ess Ess Air", and it stood for "Soyuz Sovyetski Sotsialisticheski Ryespublik" meaning "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics".
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
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.
That can't be right. I've seen communists on TV - they all speak English, but with a strange accent.
I found lots of things to interest me over the past year, and the game just keeps getting more interesting. I like how things get built in-game, so I've been playing the part-time industrialist for a few months here. In two more months, I'll be able to fly capital ships, and a whole new part of the game (installation assaults and defenses) will open up to my character.
But if you're looking for instant gratification, you're right. It won't be found in EVE.
Regards,
Ross