CCP’s World of Darkness is not dead, just like a vampire

Chris McDonough, Senior Producer on World of Darkness, told audiences at EVE FanFest today that “reports of our undeath have been greatly exaggerated.” CCP had a bit of a rough time last year, and news on the upcoming MMO has been somewhat scarce, but McDonough said that the game is still under production, and that they’ll only release new information whey they can show something that can live up to the legacy. 

CCP’s Atlanta offices have 55 people working on World of Darkness. They’ve built a staff of AAA developers that have worked on just about every MMO in recent memory. McDonough says that they’ve been spending this quiet time working hard, doing things like creating tools, designing gameplay, and shaping the story and art. The development team even held an in-house two-week beta of an early version of World of Darkness running, with feedback from that session rolled back into their work.

Several slides of gorgeous concept art were shown at an afternoon session at FanFest, all being quite dark and some showing a bit of nudity. The presentation wrapped up with a short demonstration used the World of Darkness graphical engine to show off the game’s gritty, modern city setting.

Very few new details on gameplay were revealed during the session. We know that the game will first focus on vampires, and will only move onto other monsters of lore when they’ve perfect them first. Darkness will feature hand-to-hand combat, though some weapons will be involved. Finally, it was revealed that game will be set in multiple cities across in a unified world, and players can fight to become princes to take control of them. 

McDonough admits that that CCP has been a bit divided, and that development practices have not been at their best, but now they’ve refocused, and are now hard at work. As of now there’s no release date for World of Darkness, though we were told to expect more information on the game later this year.