Is there hope for a World of Darkness MMO? I don’t know, honestly, because it’s a tough question that I have no answers for. Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines is one of my all-time favorite games, for a variety of reasons, mostly relating to the fact that there is a laundry list of enjoyable mechanics and storylines that constantly bring me back to keep playing.

What is VtM / World of Darkness you ask? Well, White Wolf made a series of RPG campaigns around vampires, mages, and werewolves that all intermingle. The whole World of Darkness series is basically Dungeons and Dragons for the super natural. That’s not to say it’s rare to have roleplaying supernatural series, but World of Darkness is a rather popular one.

One of the things I love about WoD is just the setting. The original setting to me was a little bit better, because I’m rather a fan of the “punk attitude” attached to it, but modern World of Darkness is still good. The vampires are much older than Twilight and don’t sparkle as so much so they hang out in sewers feeding on rats and trying to hide their vampirism from the public eye.

That was actually one of the coolest mechanics in Bloodlines. You would be severely punished if anyone caught you using your vampire powers. That’s not to say there were ways to deal with that, but if you were caught enough, then the final death came (you basically had a save file where one masquerade violation was it).

I could go on and on and on about Bloodlines and how amazing it is, but let’s churn back to the idea of a World of Darkness MMO. CCP has washed their hands of the franchise, passing it on to Paradox, makers of tons and tons of RPGs and other games. You might know them from Cities Skylines, Europa Universalis, Pillars of Eternity, Crusader Kings, etc. This is interesting in the sense that they obviously are going to be making games, but the question is, will they be making an MMO?

The problem here is that you might not believe this but the WoD MMO was in development for NINE YEARS. That’s a lot of technology, work, theorycrafting, planning, etc. I don’t believe it had a huge team for nine years, but it definitely had a lot of work. In the purchase of White Wolf, we don’t’ know what Paradox actually acquired beyond the company and its brands. Did CCP keep the technology behind the WoD MMO, was it even usable / modern enough to be a viable game, or did they pass the source to Paradox? I don’t know.

I will say that I honestly feel like the WoD MMO that CCP was working on probably won’t ever see the light of day. WoD lends itself too well to various RPG formats, like Baldur’s Gate-esq Infinity Engine style game or similar to Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption which was very similar to Diablo (click to hack and slash). Paradox is an expert in making RPGs, especially RPGs with in-depth systems (WoD has plenty of those) and lots of story.

The problem with the idea of the WoD MMO happening is if Paradox wants an MMO, do they have the technology associated with it or would they have to start from scratch, and Paradox has gone on record stating that they already have several digital game titles in the work, meaning they’re working on several titles in the series.

This opens up, actually for fans of the series, an even more important question. Will they make a Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines sequel? While difficult, since VtM is legacy content at this point, I’m sure fans are clamoring for some kind of sequel, even more than the MMO version. It’d basically be Witcher IV, technically, considering there is a lot of similarities between the franchises.

But Paradox isn’t really well known for 3D as well. I believe War of the Roses is the only Paradox 3D title I can think of on the top of my head. Which makes me wonder myself what exactly do they have planned? Paradox does a lot of strategy games, mostly, and while WoD has a lot of strategy concepts, you couldn’t really put a map down and highlight which clans owned which territory.

Like all speculation, we’re just going to have to sit on our hands and wait it out. Who knows specifically what will occur with the franchise. In all likelihood, my best guess is an Infinity Engine style game, but I could very well be wrong. Only time will tell, I suppose.


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our World of Darkness Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 20, 2016

About The Author

Get in the bush with David "Xerin" Piner as he leverages his spectacular insanity to ask the serious questions such as is Master Yi and Illidan the same person? What's for dinner? What are ways to elevate your gaming experience? David's column, Respawn, is updated near daily with some of the coolest things you'll read online, while David tackles ways to improve the game experience across the board with various hype guides to cool games.

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