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]

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

[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 this game will not have the market appeal of the larger MMORPGs but since its one server (one universe) quite a few things are much easyer to do then say wow servers.

Whitewolf has proven to be a good company too, there highly popular in the LARP (live action roleplaying) groups and the world of darkness line makes quite a bit of money and has proven to be a long term cash flow for the company.

Whitewolf has also lived through 2 cycles or more in the RPG life cycle for publishers, this is basicly where lots of sales happen early on, then demand for the books declines a lot.

Both of these companys togeather does seem a bit odd, but both are good at there nich market.

Ah, yes. Long in the tooth.

[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 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!

Re:My prediction

[tgcid]

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 pay off Vivendi's massive debts [wikipedia.org].

Re:My prediction

[Chris Mattern]

> 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