WoDMMO aka Wrath of Dorks MMO aka WHERE IS MY GAME!!!

So there has been a lot of moaning in the internet-net-net-net.. Why? Because some one trolled about CCP loosing the license to World of Darkness. Now of course, those of you in know would read that article and say "bullshit". Why? Well the writer talks about White Wolf Studios - Something that hasn't been an entity for 2+ years now. Yes we know that there have been layoffs in Atlanta, but that may be the end of a phase of development, and no ones wants to pay people to twiddle their thumbs.

So of cause, the self confessed troll article set off the WoDMMO fanatics, sending them into a shit storm the likes we have not seen since the 6th Maelstrom. Since then life for CCP and Onyx Path goes on as normal. Yeah we still have no new screen shots, video etc. But then so what? Well CCP announced the WoDMMO back in 2006. But they had too. They were merging with White Wolf. It was obvious why. It would have been dishonest not to say. But it meant they had to state what they were doing a lot earlier than most companies would normally announce making a game. So of course people on the internet-net-net-net.. are whining. "WoDMMO was announced 10 years ago!" - Um no. Saying you will make something is different from starting or doing the dev. "Show us some video/screen shots etc. or it's just vapourware". Um no. Show something clearly working yet unpolished, and gain the ire of "fans" and hack journalists because the game is already "clearly shit", even though there is still 2 years work to go.

So we here at Darker Days Radio have more faith, and trust, and well, understanding, than Joe Brujah Public. Hell I doing programming for my day job, and research is fucking hard and all about developing theory, methods, tools, and coding, and for a good few years having no results. So I sympathize with those code monkeys at CCP. Plus I have had the joy of having in my gaming group in the past, and on the podcast, my friend James, a gamer, QA, and now designer of computer games. He's worked on stuff like the Magic the Gathering Duel of the Planeswalker games, Lego games, Big Point and their MMOs.

So now let's hand over to James to tell you all why you should quit your whining!

Hi, my name is James and I’ve worked in the games industry for 6 years. I’ve done a lot of QA testing, some Games Design and a whole bunch of beta tests.

Kris has asked me to write a little post about the WoD MMO and MMO development in general so here goes.

It takes a LONG time to make an MMO.

Somewhere secret and hidden there will be teams currently planning MMO projects that aren’t even going to be announced for years. They’re having discussions about how to support their servers, what kind of systems to have form the core of the game play, maybe trying to get some idea of a visual style before committing thousands of man-hours to a projects.

A case in point is The Secret World. After rooting around on the internet it seems it was being worked on in as early as 2006 but that it was planned as a spin-off of a yet unfinished game meaning there had already been previous work establishing a theme, concept of the mechanics, planning, budgeting etc. The unfinished game, Cabal, allegedly went in to pre-production in 2002 but it took until 2009 before the studio was happy to be talking about the content of their game to the press and Beta testing only became available in August 30 2011, 11 months before its eventual release on July 3^rd 2012.

As soon as it becomes public knowledge you have to maintain public interest for the whole of your super long development cycle.

The moment people hear that there’s a game coming out that they want to play people get excited. They want to know how it plays, they want to know what they’ll have to pay for it, they want to be able to reserve character names or make guild before anyone has been able to sign in.

Managing this is a mammoth task, to try and keep people interested you have to very carefully drip feed them information that’s just enticing enough to keep them excited without causing them to burn out by counting off the days until it’s released. This can go drastically wrong, especially if development hits any speed bumps as a piece of information given at the outset of the hype train might no longer be relevant when they realise they need to switch engine later in development.

Games change throughout development.

A game can start out with a clear direction only to find out systems don’t work as well as expected when put in to a playable game. Maybe resources needed are too scare and they are removed. Maybe the genre has become saturated with present day zombie survival horror games and you want to make sure yours stands out so you change to being a sci-fi zombie survival game.

When you release a game, you get one chance.

Since developing an MMO can take a long time, you want to make sure you give it the best you can do for it. You’ve carefully managed your hype engine to smoothly build up an increasing sense of anticipation for the last 6 years. You’ve settled on which features made it in to game and now it’s time to try out an Alpha of your game.

You carefully select a small group of people, probably forum members or applicants who have expressed an interest through on site registrations. You get them to sign Non Disclosure agreements stating they won’t reveal any information not available to the general public and you let them log it to your game, it’s likely not fully feature complete but you really need to test to see if your server structure can handle it.

At this point people are already judging you, if early screenshots are released then they are torn to shreds and dissected by potential consumers and opinions will be formed. You might have lost some of the player base you’ve been carefully cultivating for years.

World of Warcraft suffers from this due to data mining sites that extract data from the patches on the test realms, new models are extracted from the test data and players are absorbing this content months before it comes out.

So be patient. CCP has no publisher pushing they to deliver on a certain date. If they had that, then people would be forced into what is known as crunch time - doing extra hours, often unpaid. And that's shit. CCP have the flexibility to not have to burn out their staff, and they can take their time to make the game as good as possible on day one release.

So be patient - go play some other games, have a holiday, play some tabletop WoD if you want.

[review] Werewolf the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary

Werewolf the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition - Review

This is a hard review to write. Hard, because it may come as me being overly critical of the product. But the thing that is important to point out, is that I am approaching this product as someone that never played Werewolf the Apocalypse (WtA). When I got into World of Darkness games in 1996, I of course was a bit of a proto-goth. I was into vampire films, listening to Marilyn Manson and Atari Teenage Riot. So of course I was running Vampire the Masquerade for the first time. I also eventually picked up Mage the Ascension, and of course some of the most influential films at the time for me would be Fight Club, The Matrix, and Blade. So a lot of things would classify me more towards the goth/cyber goth side of things, rather than metalhead. And in some ways, this is perhaps why at the time WtA didn’t appeal to me. It seemed all a bit too gung-ho and rather superficial.


So given the above and the fact I have never played WtA, yet I know plenty about the setting due to where Mage and Vampire crossed over with it, I am approaching this review blind.


Let’s start with the easy bit. Layout and art. Generally the book is excellent looking, but I feel that there is not a unified look to the book. I understand that much of the artwork is from the original books, or is new work by the same artists, and that in itself is a good thing as it means the product taps into the nostalgia of the fans of the game. But, as a new reader, I find the mixing up of full colour art, greyscale, and black and white line art, a bit jarring. Now some of the art work I do like, especially some of the more rough, dreamy pieces. I have to admit to not being a Ron Spencer fan. Sorry guys. But it's just all guts and guns, and rather flat and boring. But then I am a big Christopher Shy fan so you can make your mind up on that front.


So onto the text. There is a lot. This is a big book. All the tribes are there. Even the extinct ones - yes even White Howlers. Plus every Changing Breed is in there. I have also been told on good authority that every gift, rite and fetish is in the book, plus with a few mechanical changes to reflect adjustments in the rules (so Athletics and Dodge skills now are one thing), and of course changes to accommodate how our world has changed (so gifts that influence technology).


Speaking of changes, of course the setting has taken into account events around the world that have occurred since WtA was in print. We have a brief insight into the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, fracking, the tsunami and nuclear power plant explosion in Japan, the more recent wars and conflicts in the Middle East, and of course the continuing degradation of the environment. All of these events have been looked at through the lens of WtA, and have been used to highlight the ongoing war of the Garou against the Wyrm and the Weaver.


So how would I sum up this book? I can easily see that this product has everything anyone would want for a WtA game. It would be difficult to exhaust all the content within. There are plenty of antagonists and examples. But then I feel I should also give my opinion as someone who has fresh eyes on the product. I think that while the Changing Breeds are an interesting addition in the book, I think they could have waited to have been released in a different book. I found their addition diluted the core theme of the game - the horror of being a werewolf that walks two worlds. To me they add an unnecessary distraction to new readers. I also have to admit that some of the Changing Breeds come across as a bit silly. Furthermore I have mixed feelings about the Tribes. Some of the tribes I like, since they represent a theme. A core concept, that you feel more free to manipulate and play with in order to fit the setting for your own game. Which is why I find the tribes based on ethnic groups less useful, and perhaps feel a little shallow and have a sense of cultural appropriation. Finally the scope of the game is a bit weird. There is a big, global scale theme to the game - that you and your pack will be fighting the manifestation of the Wyrm and Weaver, as they stretch out over the globe. The premise is that all the Garou who will fight in the final battles are already born. But, by knowing that, the core game makes personal horror, which I think really grabs the attention of players, pointless. It makes more mundane concerns, such as the safety of family, friends, your workplace, seem rather inconsequential. Which comes across strange, since the game is about the real world and the spiritual reflection, and so surely even the small battles on your doorstep should be made to feel important.





But as I have said, if you are an old fan I am sure this book won’t disappoint. Maybe this is all just me being rather post-millennial and all that shit.