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

[realmolo (574068)]

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.

Re:My prediction

[by Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:My prediction

[dsanfte (443781)]

Nice meta-analysis. Slashdot needs more of this.

Re:

[Ninjaesque One (902204)]

Hell, pen-and-paper RPGs that are Dungeons and Dragons are dead, too.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

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 happen

Re:

[Malakusen (961638)]

You know, in 3-4 months, I can have a character up to 60 in full tier 1 and enjoying end game content. And a few decent alts. And that's not even with obsessive life-controlling playing either, just casual play. I don't have the attention span to drudge through "the first 3-4 months". If they can't make a game that's interesting in a day, I'm not interested at all.

Re:

[FinchWorld (845331)]

Good news, come November 28th (Date could change) new characters will recieve more skills on creation (800,000 Skill points to be exact, I believe this is about 6 times more then when I created mine).

Re:

[ElvenMonkey (789317)]

You know, in 3-4 months, I can have a character up to 60 in full tier 1 and enjoying end game content. And a few decent alts. And that's not even with obsessive life-controlling playing either, just casual play. I don't have the attention span to drudge through "the first 3-4 months". If they can't make a game that's interesting in a day, I'm not interested at all.

What does that level 60 character get you? What impact do you have on the game? What does trudging through yet another elite complex actual

Re:

[dnoyeb (547705)]

I agree completely. Each region has a history of who owned it and who fights over it. Then you can build stations that exist permanently in game. Its great.

I just hope this White Wolf does not add more of the one thing Eve online players lothe. Dice rolls...

Re:

[Chris Mattern (191822)]

> You know, in 3-4 months, I can have a character up to 60 in full
> tier 1 and enjoying end game content.

How fast you can get to end game is not an indicator of the quality of a game, because if the levelling up is not itself enjoyable, it's a crap game.

Chris Mattern

Re:

[ichigo 2.0 (900288)]

enjoying end game content

AFAIK, the end game in WoW consists of raiding elite dungeon X for Y months until you have the best set you can get from said dungeon, and then moving on to the next dungeon. This, and the lack of a player-based crafting economy has kept me away from WoW. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that doesn't really sound enjoyable.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Eve-online is actuly highly popular outside the US, the company is based in island and the playerbase continues to hith all time connected users.

The reason behind this is closly tied to efforts of several communitys including the something awful goonfleet (over 1500 members strong) as well as fans of the game telling other people to try it out as well.

Other factors include the sandbox nature of the game, the somewhat steep learning curve, the true hard core pvp system and the large market theory.

Its true th

Re:

[Arivia (783328)]

Oddly enough, White Wolf's main lines (WoD and, oddly enough, Warcraft) are doing quite well. Mage: The Awakening has apparently been performing much better than expected.

Re:

[Jack9 (11421)]

While I appreciate your cheerleading (Always been a fan of WoD), you're wrong.

http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/04/12/interesting-s ales-figures/ [raphkoster.com]

Re:

[damiangerous (218679)]

That link is to a blog that in turn links to an opinion piece [gamingreport.com] that takes issue with (as overly pessimistic) the methods and data in the "study" (more like a survey). Not to mention that the study itself still puts White Wolf in an overwhelming second place, leaving everyone aside from WotC and WW as statistical noise too small to be accurately counted.

Re:

[damiangerous (218679)]

Oh I realized that you were talking specifically about WoD rather than WW as a whole. Yeah, down 61%. Odd, doesn't seem like there's a shortage of emo kids. I think that world reset they had turned off a lot of people.

Re:

[Jack9 (11421)]

A 64% decline in sales from last year is a complete rout and there's absolutely no data to state otherwise, lemme know when you have something on the dismal sales from a private company...a really intelligent response would be "I called a distributor and they said" but you'll find what I found in talking to those in Orange County (see http://www.fs-collectibles.com/ [fs-collectibles.com] where you buy CCG/RPG materials wholesale).

There's good reason WW joined with CCP, it is simply following the consumer base.

Try to back up your

Re:

[AdamJ (28538)]

The sources of the quoted info are either generally small surveys [under 100 game stores participate in the C&GR survey] and the ICV2 data seems to be mostly "word of mouth" material; there's no nice system for tracking sales in the gaming industry, as most distributors and manufacturers do not offer returnability, so there is no real way to know if a game sells out at the retail level or not.

The pen-and-paper gaming industry is certainly hurting, but things are improving for the companies that have sur

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

The CCG for EVE is already out(http://www.eve-ccg.com/ [eve-ccg.com]). Its entitled EVE: The Second Genesis. Its world premier was at this years GenCon at Indianpolis.

Re:

[damiangerous (218679)]

And White Wolf is just screwed in general, because pen-and-paper RPGs that aren't Dungeons & Dragons are almost completely dead.

Good thing they've been publishing a lot of d20 material then.

Re:

[Wellspring (111524)]

Gaming is cyclical. Alot of the reason that D&D 3.0 did so well was that people hadn't played D&D in a while.

The D&D-style fantasy settings have dominated for several years now. And d20 drives a certain vision of playstyle and progression that also has a deadly sameness if it's the only system you use. So while I love D&D 3.5, I do hunger for something different and would love to see something new pop up. Not to replace D&D, just to bring something fresh in.

The time is ripe for a new fad

Ah, yes. Long in the tooth.

[by Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:

[tolomea (1026104)]

We'll get an EVE tabletop RPG, and CCG.

The CCG has been available for a while already.

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.

The player counts disagree with you http://eve.coldfront.net/status/tranquility [coldfront.net]
Sure it's not World of Warcraft, but it's fan base has been steadily growing since it was launched and continues to do so.

As for long in the tooth, they keep du

Re:

[Lonewolf666 (259450)]

Interesting. The player count curve seems to level off in recent months, but 30.000 simultaneous logins are quite a lot.
In other places I've read that MMORPG designers should expect 20%-25% of their subscribers logging in simultaneously at peak times. If we apply this rule the other way, Eve might have 120.000 to 150.000 subscribers. Not a WOW but certainly big enough to keep things going.

Re:

[Andy Dodd (701)]

At the same "Fanfest" during which the merger was announced (which I believe is still going on), CCP gave an official subscriber count number - it was something like 146-148k subs.

EVE is small, but as one of the other posters said, it's been constantly growing.

When I first quit EVE in mid-2004 (about a year after release) my opinion was that it was a great concept with crap implementation. After hearing lots of good things about it this past summer (many from Slashdot posters), I decided to come back in Ju

RPG vs Online RPG

[Archfeld (6757)]

Hmmm I play and have played PnP RPG on a regular basis for 15 years in a group that has 10 members and a waiting list. We play World of Darkness, and a Fantasy game using the Gurps 3rd and some 4th ed rules. I've also played almost every mmorpg in creation, from the world of Norrath (EQ's mother) to DAoC,CoH/CoV,FFO,NWN, EQ2 and WoW, they are fun but they are NOT to be confused with RPing. True RPing is most akin to acting without a script and requires the kind of interaction not yet possible via the net ev

Re:

[tgcid (917345)]

From MMOGChart [mmogchart.com]:

Eve Online has been a real quiet success story since their launch on May 6, 2003, starting out small and slowly building more and more subscribers, with almost no competition in the market for its particular brand of sci-fi space simulation. As of June 2006, Eve has 125,625 subscribers.

This game would likely be a break even operation on 30,000 subscribers. While it's not the license to print money the way World of Warcraft is, it started on a much smaller budget [wikipedia.org] and doesn't have to pa

Re:

[Oriumpor (446718)]

Some people will naysay anything. White Wolf was more niche than anything, I've still got a set of white wolf books somewhere. They were unique and something I was able to engross myself in when I was younger. No longer have I the time, but still conceptually they were leaps and bounds from AD&D (read: less complex, easy to play and include newbies.) I was sorry to hear the news when they were doing poorly, but to be honest it didn't surprise me. I hadn't bo

Anyways, CCP is doing fine, they are conti

I need to start playing more games

[Salvance (1014001)]

OK, I'll admit ... I had NO CLUE what this article was talking about until I visited the websites. The limit of my recent gaming is Minesweeper and a little Dance Dance Revolution in the arcades (my wife loves it), and the last MMORPG I played was Ultima Online years ago.

So when I looked at some of the screenshots of EVE Online [eve-online.com], I was blown away. Are these in-game shots? If so, wow wow wow.

Hopefully this merger helps them create better Online RPGs with those type of graphics, rather than detract fr

Re:

[Cylix (55374)]

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 univ

Re:

[novalogic (697144)]

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

Re:

[blahplusplus (757119)]

"I was blown away. Are these in-game shots? If so, wow wow wow."

Yeah and you'll be blown away by how bored you get after playing it. I couldn't stand how slow paced and non-action oriented the game was.

Re:

[rossifer (581396)]

I couldn't stand how slow paced and non-action oriented the game was.

I played the "training game" (grinding missions, etc.) for a while at the start, just to make sure I understood the game controls and could help in a fight. Then I joined a 0.0 corp and the action level went through the roof. Admittedly, the mining/ratting isn't overly exciting, but whenever I'm up against another person in a PvP fight, my heart starts thumping and I get my daily adrenaline fix in a hurry.

I found lots of things to intere

well...

[thejrwr (1024073)]

Well, this type of stuff happens, i have a feeling that abandonware is a term we will be use soon enough

Re:

[dsanfte (443781)]

We already do.

Two very neat game companies.

[Qbertino (265505)]

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.

Re:

[harbichidian (803937)]

"Spaceships and Planets are easy compared to a MMORPG like WoW."

Have you played EVE Online? The amount of time and effort the developers spent on the economy system alone blows World of Warcraft out of the water. EVE isn't some "me too" MMO from a company that has made it's name on rip-offs, it's a highly-sophisticated and sometimes overwhelming *simulation*, and to suggest that its all just "spaceships and planets" is to miss the whole point of the game.

Re:

[ichigo 2.0 (900288)]

Technically the best way to simulate free markets is to not spend time and effort on the economy system, and leave it up to the players to produce goods and work out things. =)

But the fact that the developers have grasped this and let the market forces sort it out so to speak, is what makes Eve such a cool game.

Re:

[Wellspring (111524)]

Most of the talent that was at White Wolf for their big successes is long gone. I'm a big fan of the WoD, but we have to be honest about their ability to create new content. Certainly, WoTC brought D&D back from boredom-- but they did it with a top-notch development team. White Wolf could be well-positioned as an alternative to D&D now that they're so dominant again if they get the talent.

Honestly, this might be a cheaper way for CCP to be buying the gaming rights to the WoD. The assets are worth mo

I for one...

[Surasanji (938753)]

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

You know you've thought about politics too much

[MikeRT (947531)]

When you see the title of this post and think "CCP--Central Committee of the Communist Party?" Then you see that there are two Cs and you feel a little sheepish...

Re:You know you've thought about politics too much

[Phrogman (80473)]

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".

Re:

[grimJester (890090)]

That can't be right. I've seen communists on TV - they all speak English, but with a strange accent.

Re:

[Minwee (522556)]

You can always tell someone is a communist by the trenchcoat and furry hat.

Contract details

[AndroidCat (229562)]

I hear the final differences were settled with rock-paper-scissors.

No comments on technical expertise?

[Jartan (219704)]

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.

It's Reykjavík, not "Reychavik", FFS

[1u3hr (530656)]

First line of TFA Reykjavik, Iceland and Atlanta, GA, USA.

Zonk, it's so sad you're illiterate, but maybe you could USE SPELLCHECK. Please.

Yay for White Wolf

[Minwee (522556)]

In other news, all ship-to-ship combat in Eve will now be resolved by a round of "Rock-Paper-Scissors". Players who posess a cloaking device can signify this by crossing their arms across their chest.

Re:

[cyber-vandal (148830)]

Wish we could send them all there.

Re:

[headonfire (160408)]

Actually, White Wolf put out a (tabletop RPG) game like that. It was called "Hunter", and it was pretty fun. Everyone is a basic human, and you can then play it like 'night of the living dead', or 'resident evil', on up to some (pretty mildly) super-powered 'ghostbusters'.