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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.
My prediction is nobody really cares what you predict unless they disagree and then they will only care because they think others will read the reply.
Nice meta-analysis. Slashdot needs more of this.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
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.
The CCG for EVE is already out(http://www.eve-ccg.com/). Its entitled EVE: The Second Genesis. Its world premier was at this years GenCon at Indianpolis.
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
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