CCP and White Wolf merge?

[Angie Gallant]

CCP hf. and White Wolf Publishing, Inc. today announced that the companies have entered into a definitive agreement to merge. The creators of the single largest persistent online role-playing world and the world's second-largest developer of offline role-playing, strategy and collectable card games will create the industry's largest independent Virtual World developer. CCP is the publisher and developer of EVE Online, the world's largest virtual gaming universe. White Wolf is the creator of some of the world's most recognized role-playing titles including: World of Darkness (Vampire, Werewolf, Mage) and Exalted. The combined company will introduce new online and offline gaming products across the science-fiction, horror, and fantasy genres.

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 collectable 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.

"White Wolf possesses the RPG industry's leading offline gaming talent and some of the most recognizable roleplaying properties in the world," said Hilmar Petursson, CCP's Chief Executive Officer. " Virtual worlds are a new form of entertainment, separate from traditional computer games. By combining forces, we will create a company unsurpassed in quality, innovation, and scope which will keep us at the forefront of this emerging trend."

The combined company will continue to operate under their respective names. White Wolf will be operated as a wholly-owned subsidiary of CCP. Hilmar Petursson, Chief Executive Officer of CCP, will be CEO of the combined company. Mike Tinney, President of White Wolf, will continue as President of the independent subsidiary. Further, White Wolf will continue development and enhancement of their entire portfolio of gaming products.

"CCP brings industry-leading technical expertise and online game development experience to us," said Mike Tinney, White Wolf's President. "Together, we will create the industry's most innovative games leveraging both online and offline systems."

###

About CCP Games
CCP Games is an industry leading independent developer and publisher of EVE Online, a massively-multiplayer online role-playing game. Founded in 1997 and privately held, CCP is recognized internationally as a pioneer of the single-server persistent universe architecture. EVE Online is played in nearly every country in the world with over 300,000 players. The company is headquartered in Reykjavík, Iceland with offices in London, England and Shanghai, China. More information is available at www.ccpgames.com.

About White Wolf Publishing
Since its entry into the gaming market in 1991, White Wolf Publishing, Inc. has grown into one of the leading role-playing companies in the world. With collective book sales in excess of 5.5 million copies over the life of the company, White Wolf is one of two undisputed worldwide publishing leaders for pen and paper role-playing games. White Wolf properties have been licensed to television series, comic books, action figures, professional wrestlers, a myriad of merchandising, replica props and weapons, interactive media events, coin operated arcade games and, of course, video games. More information is available at www.white-wolf.com.

Huh. I guess we're getting a World of Darkness MMO.

Edit: Holy shit. Somehow in my first reading I totally missed that CCP bought White Wolf.

[Incendiary Lemon]

Thats like. Totally. Crazy.

[Qenan]

Very interesting. Could be good.

[EvilIdler]

That's just..weird. And cool. Gives me hope of a WoD online (no mere WoDmod!).

[Rollory]

Whatthe waita whathuh?

Never would've seen this coming. CCP must be doing pretty well to be able to do this.

[Hawkeye Fierce]

What an odd combination. Hope they make an Exalted MMO.

[Matthew Gallant]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye Fierce

What an odd combination. Hope they make an Exalted MMO.

How are they going to fit the charm tooltips onto just one screen though?

[Alan Dunkin]

Originally Posted by Rollory

Whatthe waita whathuh?

Never would've seen this coming. CCP must be doing pretty well to be able to do this.

They keep the booze flowing during shows. That's gotta help! :)

--- Alan

[shift6]

U-Mac has already worked up a ton of design thoughts for such a game. They should hire his ass.

[Bill Dungsroman]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye Fierce

What an odd combination. Hope they make an Exalted MMO.

And that will be the MMO that finally gets me to play MMOs.

[Andrew Mayer]

I actually threw around some ideas with Mark Rhein*Hagen on a World of Darkness MMO back in '97... You may be surprised to hear that it never went anywhere. But WW did end up designing "GToons" for Cartoon Network Online based on a concept that I developed before I left.

I'm not surprised to hear that the company was sold though. I think the owners have been looking forward to cashing out.

[Brian Rucker]

This is some exciting news! Definitely good stuff. They've got the brainpower alright.

[Jasper Phillips]

Woa! I wonder if they'll keep up the simulation style they've pioneered in EVE?

I also wonder what they're working on, as that's not the kind of partnership/purchase you make without something specific in mind.

[Unicorn McGriddle]

EVE as an RPG will probably be interesting.

The WoD as an MMO is so easy to fuck up that I can't help but feel like it's a foregone failure, even in these hands.

Exalted as an MMO is pretty much guaranteed to suck.

[Hetzer]

So, another real rpg company gone to hell.

Sad times indeed, even if i never warmed to wod myself, but i made good business with white wolf back in the day.

[Angie Gallant]

Huh? Why the hostility to the idea, Hetzer?

[Idar Thorvaldsen]

Originally Posted by Unicorn McGriddle

Exalted as an MMO is pretty much guaranteed to suck.

Done right, Exalted as an MMO would be way better than Exalted as PnP RPG. Imagine lots of servers, populated by 1000-2000 players each playing Exalted in the different factions, determining the fate of the world, leading and wiping out armies, plotting against each other, making history. Exalted is a setting letting players be heroes. I can't think of a game other than EVE that even tries to do some these things.

[Misguided]

Huh...that's curious. I was just thinking a few days ago that it was surprising we hadn't seen a WoD MMO. And I do hope that's exactly what they do, a game where you could play Vamps, Wolves, Hunters, Mages, etc. Could be interesting.

[Unicorn McGriddle]

It's hard to be a hero in a population of 1,000 to 2,000 people with capabilities comparable to yours who all want to be heroes too.

[Brian Rucker]

No, no. The future is single-server that Eve pioneered. When you have everyone in the same space you can really tailor content to what's going on in the game. Creating events, reporting developments - it all builds into an overarching sense of place and creates a dynamic where storytelling can happen from bottom up or top down (I even consider non-roleplaying events like player corporation wars as storytelling - most CEOs, even of mostly non-roleplaying corporations, tend to create justifications and rationales that fit the setting when Eve's reporters are talking to them for a news item).

I'm almost certain a World of Darkness MMO would be quite terrible and I don't know enough about Exalted to assess that. But you've got two groups that understand settings and the nature of storytelling (hell, White Wolf invented the term as it relates to tabletop RPGs). I suspect they might initially try to bring an established property online but I think they'd be better off developing, mutually, an entirely new setting that takes into account the strengths and weaknesses of MMOs.

[Alan Dunkin]

Well, you can do that in EVE because the amount of updating (and size of updates) between server and clients is very minimal, less so than most average MMOs from what I understand. When you don't have to send a lot of info you can support a lot more people from one place.

--- Alan

[Kunikos]

I smell an EVE PnP game...

[NuclearWinter]

Originally Posted by Kunikos

I smell an EVE PnP game...

Yep.

I'm pretty sure that having White Wolf will also be a good deal for their EVE collectible card game by providing the experience and ability to mass produce future expansions and such:

http://www.eve-ccg.com/

[Unicorn McGriddle]

An EVE PnP game is very likely and will probably be pretty good. I'd rather see a WoD NWN than a WoD MMO.

[Robert Sharp]

I'm more interested in the single player games mentioned in the article. The WoD setting lends itself to that.

BTW, can you imagine and exalted TBS game? Perhaps on the DS?

[Alan Dunkin]

Remember that EVE is also already in CCG form, which is not quite on the PnP plateau is a step in that direction.

--- Alan

[Idar Thorvaldsen]

Originally Posted by Unicorn McGriddle

It's hard to be a hero in a population of 1,000 to 2,000 people with capabilities comparable to yours who all want to be heroes too.

Only if you make it like WoW or EQ. You might not be unique, but you should still be able to perform heroic acts, something WoW isn't all that good at.

Originally Posted by Brian Rucker

No, no. The future is single-server that Eve pioneered. When you have everyone in the same space you can really tailor content to what's going on in the game. Creating events, reporting developments - it all builds into an overarching sense of place and creates a dynamic where storytelling can happen from bottom up or top down...

Why can't one do the same with several servers? Ideally, the tools should be in place to let the players create most of the storytelling after the initial setting is in place, and there's no reason why each server shouldn't be able to create a separate identity for itself; you already see tendencies in that direction on some WoW servers, where the tools for that sort of thing are mostly absent. Also, I doubt EVE would scale to anything approaching WoW-like dimensions; look at what they did for these Chinese launch, for instance.

[EvilIdler]

Neither Exalted nor the World of Darkness games really suit the large scale
trend in MMOs. I could see them producing small-scale online games, but WoD
without the actual roleplaying would just fuck up. Exalted is more likely, as it's
a munchkin game in parts.

I'd like to see them release a standalone WoD storytelling tool with oodles
of models, map-building tools like in Redemption and the mechanics of all
WoD games included where possible. WoD games aren't supposed to have
thousands of supernaturals. A city isn't likely to have as many as fifty vampires,
for example, and the over the top magic of Mage never felt like it fit in the same
world as Vampire/Werewolf/Wraith. Heck, even Wraith was practically a world
of its own (the other side, with brief visits to 'reality').

Exalted is all about heroics, but the majority of the world isn't populated by
these godlike heroes (buckets of dice!) either.

In short, I wouldn't play a White Wolf MMO unless they're strictly roleplaying
servers with enforcement of just that, and the player count per server is
very limited. Might as well make them products to run from home then.

[Brian Rucker]

Originally Posted by Alan Dunkin

Well, you can do that in EVE because the amount of updating (and size of updates) between server and clients is very minimal, less so than most average MMOs from what I understand. When you don't have to send a lot of info you can support a lot more people from one place.

--- Alan

They're introducing character avatars and gameplay soon enough. That's on the to-do list. So maybe whatever technology they have can expand to handle much more than it's currently doing?

[Brian Rucker]

Originally Posted by Idar Thorvaldsen

Why can't one do the same with several servers? Ideally, the tools should be in place to let the players create most of the storytelling after the initial setting is in place, and there's no reason why each server shouldn't be able to create a separate identity for itself; you already see tendencies in that direction on some WoW servers, where the tools for that sort of thing are mostly absent. Also, I doubt EVE would scale to anything approaching WoW-like dimensions; look at what they did for these Chinese launch, for instance.

While I have faith in many individual players to take the initiative and really build up the game with storytelling tools I don't, by and large, think it's wise to trust that too much to players. One thing they can't often do is agree on overarching themes and structures - these are things you need to have a coherent gameworld. And they're not all that dependable, frankly. Players, especially the more creative ones, can be fickle and they're like as not to get annoyed or bored or distracted sooner or later and wander off.

One server is best. You'll have overarching themes and continuity managed by the developers but they can adopt in elements that rise out of the community - roleplaying community or otherwise. If it ends up being a game with a strategic dynamic like Eve major developments between player factions can be treated as story elements and folded into the ongoing narrative. You see this, in a way, on Eve. Though it does build a real wall between the established Empires and the organized events and storytelling there and "free" 0.0 space where player alliances create their own history all are part of the same game and there's some crossover from time to time as storytellers embody the reaction of NPC factions to player alliance activities or purely military 0.0 groups get drawn back to the Empires for some particularly interesting or rewarding series of events.

This is quite a nice model to build around. While it could use some polishing it offers good flexibility to the developer/storytellers and players alike. The single server model also has the crowning advantage of being The Game. Once you have a character, you're part of the story whether you realize it or not, whether you give a fig about roleplaying or not. History's going on all around you and it's just a matter of finding your place in it.

Edit: I think the Chinese have a seperate server because the population would be too big and would quickly overwhelm the existing entities on the current server. They've got a good thing there and probably thought it would be safer to employ a seperate server for this huge fresh influx of people.