World of Darkness

[ghostveil]

Shaky-cam video from The Grand Masquerade of the trailer: www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5Wsf31WIdY

I'm certain there will be an official trailer up very soon, or at least something higher quality than this. But for now, this'll do.

Edit: Turns out there won't be for the time being. Alternate shaky cam link:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1v3rONmizs

Edit: One tiny quote I can share: “MMO will have a focus on player politics and social interaction.”

Take from that what you will.

[gothicshark]

see
www.massively.com/2010/09/24/world-of-darkness-confirmed-based-on-vampire-the-masquerade/

[The Cheshire Cat]

I dunno, a lot of games PROMISE being all about "Player politics and social interaction", but very few succeed. Off hand, there's a Tale in the Desert, and EVE Online.

So long story short, "Player politics and social interaction" generally means "You WILL get screwed over by a sociopath with bad spelling and a lot of time on his hands."

[sabakakrazny]

bleh, not in any sort of a hurry as most Maequerade games Ive played tended to be dismal,. Thats held to be generally true, though the storyteller always makes or breaks that sort of thing. But generally Masquared games tend to be oppresive and I'd rather spend my time playing a positive than a negative so I admit I dont really see the appeal.

That said the graphics look great, and who knows? if the storyline is good I may happilyeat my words, so we'll see.

[Warp Factor]

Sept 26, 2010 19:48:01 GMT -5 The Cheshire Cat said:

I dunno, a lot of games PROMISE being all about "Player politics and social interaction", but very few succeed. Off hand, there's a Tale in the Desert, and EVE Online.

It's worth noting that this is by the same studio that does EVE Online. Personally I don't care for EVE, but it's pretty much the only game of it's type right now. I'm hoping that willingness to buck trends will pay off in WoD as much as it did in EVE.

[gothicshark]

Since Eve is Economy and PVP based and WOD is very much about politics I think its a good match

[killswitch]

Which World of Darkness does this take place in? The orginal or the rebooted one?

As much as I love my whitewolf games, WoD included, I really dont see how this is going to translate well. Are we talking about a vampire game, or other races as well? Because the other players races don't have so much an emphasis on politicing, and while I can admire RPGs that focus on that style of gameplay, it relys heavily on player interactions, not the game itself. Thats a large peice of your personal enjoyment resting in the hands of people that, by and large, may be idiots.

So im not too excited. Ill give it a play though for curiosities sake and for the brand but I wont be canceling any subsciptions in anticpation.

[ghostveil]

This is based on Vampire: The Masquerade, so old World of Darkness, not new World of Darkness.

[killswitch]

Well thats good news at least.

[gothicshark]

Sept 28, 2010 9:49:45 GMT -5 ghostveil said:

This is based on Vampire: The Masquerade, so old World of Darkness, not new World of Darkness.

I would think that they will have werewolves demons and Mages included, although they may have a plan to do Expansions to release them one thing to consider CCP Games bought White Wolf, so they can do anything to it they want, however I think they will do it justice.

[ghostveil]

Another year, another Grand Masquerade, another set of details released about the game:

massively.joystiq.com/2011/09/18/ccp-reveals-world-of-darkness-details-to-bloodthirsty-fans/

I can't say anything myself, but I'll quote the sources for that article for you:

Okay. We *just* got out of the "What would you like to see in the MMO" session at the Grand Masquerade. Here're a few things they "leaked" to us (And I do understand if other are typing as I do and get this posted before me. Good on you, guys. )

*First and fore-most, this game is in pre-production, so they wanted everyone to know that whatever they said could be changed by the time the game comes out.

Big topics:

* Mortals: Everyone starts off as mortal. Your character might (or, perhaps likely) will have a chance to be Embraced into a given Clan, but you can chose not to be. However, if you die as a mortal, it's for keeps. Speaking of...
* Perma-death. It's real for Kindred as well as mortals. Seems there'll be a "torpor" system in which you're just out for a bit, but Kindred cahracters can also meet Final Death.
* Torpor, they said, isn't going to have you in down-time for long bouts of time (won't work like the "Sleep of Ages" thing in the table-top game), but rather gives the in-game reason why your character didn't "die" when you lost all your health.
* Server: World-wide server, or at least continuity. Speaking of which, each "city" in which play happens will be a bit different, though they said it'll be based on character actions.
* PvP: Yes, a lot of the interations will be "PvP," but they're really working on building the interactions systems into a model under which players have reasons to form alliances and work together as well as against one another. When someone from the audience said they hate playing with a$$holes, the dev guy said "You need to have a$$holes to make political games work. That's politics." (Or something like that). The over-all impression they gave was that they're trying to work on creating a PvP environment that doesn't feel like the petty PvP we're used-to in other games.
*

More peripheral issues:
*Character sheets that look a lot like our paper sheets.
* Web-based interface: you will likely be able to go to a web-site and do things therewith that make things happen with your character, apparently without logging entirely into the game. They stressed that they want to allow for casual gaming as well as more thorough immersion (Which makes a lot of marketing sense)
* Player heirarchies: Yup, player-Princes. As well as Player Primogen, et c. Earning one of these roles will involve a lot of politicing, gaining the support of other powerful players, who likely have to have the support of other players, et c. The Prince will e the Heather with the red scrunchy, in other words.
* If there's a guy who's acting way out of character, there'll be ways to deal with him socially, to "correct" the behavior, but doing so is intended to be sufficiently costly to you that you might not then (hopefully) over-use it. (ahem. Kind of like what I'd posted up-top. heh heh heh.
* Dementation will likely have effects that mess with players' perceptions of the game (possibly similar to Sanity's requiem, for instance).
* Dominate/Presence were briefly mentioned as being a way to wear down others' will to resist doing something you want them to do.
* No Caitiff at this time. Sorry for the Caitiff fans.
* More akin to LARP than table-top, in general.

*Also, they'd mentioned that they really want to do more with encouraging players to tell the story, that players tend to consume hard-coded content a whole lot faster than WW can write it. That makes sense.


Alright. Got to go. I'll post more later. Cheers, all.

Yup. Another thing about death and PvP by the way...

* Humanity: attacking other players will drop your Humanity. They said something, as well, about how having your Humanity drop below a certain point lets other players attack you (possibly without penalty? possibly costing them less to do so?Likely connected with the above thing about being able to get other players to attack someone, this might also imply that it'll cost less to make that happen, but that's pure conjecture. )

* No alternate Paths of Enlightment. Yet.

* Web-Access: they mentioned having a website through which one can do things with one's character (Did I mention that?)

* There's a localization engine they're testing for EVE, called Cereberus, I think. It's supposed to translate between five different languages.


******* OH yeah... How could I forget?

Permanent Night.

"Daytime" is pretty much just when the servers are down. They said they played with the idea of playing Ghouls during the day, but that they're pretty set on it being night all the time.

* Nudity: Yes, your character can get disrobed. However, you can't do so in public places. They said that if your want to get naked, you can do so in your Haven. Speaking of which:

* Havens. They also said that if you get tired of griefers griefing you, you can ditch them and go back to your Haven, implying that it's possibly at least somewhat sacrosanct.

* Yeah, there's talk of "World Events" (one of the players asked about, say, a bunch of Lupines mucking about in your city's woods, and if players ignore them they'd get stronger, until being Dealt With. The dev onstage said they had something comparable in mind.

* However, they're pretty much against having the kind of metaplot you'd get from most MMO's, where huge things happen that players have to go handle en mass. They said that those tend to disempower players, and move the story away from what the players were creating with their own choices. A major theme that came out of the conversation was that the focus was going to be about having a lot more focus on player interactions, and a lot less on pre-generated "content." Something about having a metaplot that unfolded differently from the way it has in the past.

* On the subject of Metaplot and such, they also mentioned that they really don't like the idea of instances, that they tend to take players away from the "real" game, where the other players are.

* Also on the subject of player choices and influencing the game world, it sounds like the cities themselves might look *fairly* similar, but that the players would be working on who controls various things within them. One thing they mentioned was "A Church won't ever change into a gas station," so those looking to radically transform a neighborhood probably aren't going to get to do that, so much as (and here's my interpretation of what they said) gaining "control" of it, and maybe building up or tearing down certain aspects.

* Technology: They mentioned having two settings, "High" and "Low," to allow players to access and experience the game either at the current cutting edge of technology, or a notaby lower level (that they hven't sorted out just yet). There was joke about how the dev would like the game to be playable on a laptop. Not sure how much of that was a joke, once again.

One last point I wanted to put forward, just because, if I might. I jumped toward the front of the line and asked the second question of the afternoon, requesting on behalf of the online community, that they give us more transparency. Not asking them to tell us everything, nor asking that they spoil every secret before release date, but ya' know, giving us a bit more helps us see it being something other than vaporware. Sounds like the Pre-Production cycle is certainly trucking along nicely. We'll just have to continue rooting about for scraps.

Off to the Succubus Club, and the epic awesomeness that that entails. Devon Birkeneau, signing off from the Big Easy.

Donovan and I were at the 2p MMO conference here at TGM. CCP Producer Chris and others were present and we got lots of new info. Before I start let me preface, the game is still in pre-production, they were very clear NOTHING is set in stone, as things stated today may still change. But as of now the facts listed below are the current stances of the direction of the game.

Eddy Webb mentioned in the Q&A before the MMO panel 'EVE is player vs player fucking each other. That is the kind of games CCP makes' - Very interesting and telling IMO.

The producers stated their philosophy in making this MMO was "human interaction". They feel that is limited in the current crop of MMO's and their biggest weakness.
They are trying to emulate the feel of LARPing more then EVE or any other game system with this MMO
There will be a general CCP run metaplot that develops over time but the main metaplots will be left for the players to drive forward.
Next year is when more specific info and details will come out
Incarna is actually considered a prototype, the rendering engine that will ship with the MMO will be much more advanced.
Everyone starts as a mortal, becoming kindred in optional and can not be forced on you. You can play he entire game as a mortal only.
There will be final death for both mortals and kindred.
There will be cities (plural) and communication between them (the various kindred and clans) will be encouraged/possible.
Caitiff will NOT be in on release. They discussed it internally and couldn't find a way to make them work in a way they liked.
Casual players will find the game accessible but hard core players will have a much deeper experience and more rewards/benefits.
Considering some kind of web site access interface for the MMO
NO day/night cycle, only night.
Humanity is a stat is game and one use is to address griefers. The more you cause issues for other players, break the masq, etc the more you can loose humanity and once it gets too low other players (and NPCs?) can attack you (implied even if you flag yourself non-pvp).
Griefers will suffer both in game and if serious enough out of game penalties (ie account banning)
Helps to make friends and not enemies in game as you can not get to the top of the food chain without networking and having friends to assist you.
Players will have havens.
Players can climb the ladder and get to Prince levels of power and run a city
Can get to Prince level power without killing a single thing, all done via networking, politics and friendships
ONLY kindred on release of game, no were's, mages, etc. However those other supernaturals may be used in a NPC fashion or/and their lore appear in game.
MMO character sheet very similar to the V:tM PnP character sheet.
Character names over the avatars head by default turned off, but can turn them on.
Game world/environment will change over time; real in game consequences for player actions.
Diablerie and related game mechanics from the PnP game is "under heavy discussion" no decision as of now.
Dynamic NPC missions/World events
One world server, no shards/instancing.
Torpor in game but not used as in PnP game, used as a mechanic to explain why a kindred did not die/final death
They are aware the WoD is is a adult setting and the devs are going to not shy away from gore, blood and nudity. However such will have a reason and not adult content for the sake of adult content.

We have video of the panel that Donovan took. Going to try to get that online soon, also after to go though the notes may follow up with more tidbits this post missed but I am pretty sure this is the core of what was said. We also have the Succubus club event tonight that has been hinted even more MMO info will be released so we will see tonight!