(no subject)
Crowd Control Productions, makers of EVE Online, are buying out White Wolf. No, this is not a joke.
I'm trying very hard to avoid he typical fanboy reaction of doom and gloom, but I do not think there is any real good that can come from this, from the perspective of White Wolf's fans. CCP isn't evil, and certainly they didn't buy White Wolf just to gut the company; there are obviously some skills and intellectual properties there that CCP wants. They've already announced plans for both an EVE Online paper-and-dice RPG, as well as a World of Darkness massively multiplayer game. But I think the best case scenario is "business as usual" for White Wolf: They keep making money and CCP leaves them mostly alone. (Basically what Hasbro did with Wizards of the Coast.) If we're really lucky, we might get a kick-ass EVE Online RPG to boot.
On the other hand, if CCP decides the return on investment isn't high enough for some of White Wolf's marginal properties, they could get the ax. I don't think this is necessarily the most probable outcome, but it's certainly a possibility.
I do not foresee huge successes on the MMO front from the perspective of existing White Wolf fans. Why? Because MMORPGs are RPGs only in the vaguest possible sense. White Wolf games have always emphasized character development and storytelling, and online games just don't do that-- partly because of design constraints and partly because they're aimed at a fairly well-defined demographic that wants "kill monsters, grab loot, buff up my char." The "goal conditions" for a tabletop RPG are very different from those of an MMO. Unless CCP is ready to try something completely new and untested (and potentially financially disastrous) with a World of Darkness or Age of Sorrows RPG, I think the best we could hope for would be World of Warcraft with fangs.
I'm trying very hard to avoid he typical fanboy reaction of doom and gloom, but I do not think there is any real good that can come from this, from the perspective of White Wolf's fans. CCP isn't evil, and certainly they didn't buy White Wolf just to gut the company; there are obviously some skills and intellectual properties there that CCP wants. They've already announced plans for both an EVE Online paper-and-dice RPG, as well as a World of Darkness massively multiplayer game. But I think the best case scenario is "business as usual" for White Wolf: They keep making money and CCP leaves them mostly alone. (Basically what Hasbro did with Wizards of the Coast.) If we're really lucky, we might get a kick-ass EVE Online RPG to boot.
On the other hand, if CCP decides the return on investment isn't high enough for some of White Wolf's marginal properties, they could get the ax. I don't think this is necessarily the most probable outcome, but it's certainly a possibility.
I do not foresee huge successes on the MMO front from the perspective of existing White Wolf fans. Why? Because MMORPGs are RPGs only in the vaguest possible sense. White Wolf games have always emphasized character development and storytelling, and online games just don't do that-- partly because of design constraints and partly because they're aimed at a fairly well-defined demographic that wants "kill monsters, grab loot, buff up my char." The "goal conditions" for a tabletop RPG are very different from those of an MMO. Unless CCP is ready to try something completely new and untested (and potentially financially disastrous) with a World of Darkness or Age of Sorrows RPG, I think the best we could hope for would be World of Warcraft with fangs.