Did NWoD Kill White Wolf?

[Iguazu]

I read that on the internet from an old-discussion thread; is this true? I'm not sure about the popularity of NWoD from a marketing-perspective, other than I do remember buying WW:tF from Borders book-stores.

[ArcaneArts]

Nope. White Wolf was already facing a decline for a variety of reasons before NWoD even entered into the picture (hell, 9/11 was a not-insignificant factor), and in fact one of the many reasons behind making NWoD was dealing with those factors and keeping them from exacerbating. NWoD actually did a fairly good job keeping the lights on, at least in terms of the new modus operandi White Wolf had to change into to keep awake at all.

Why the original White Wolf eventually "died" is a mess of factors, but if we have to name a final nail in the coffin, it was the partnership and eventual purchase with/by CCP for the development of the World of Darkness MMO and the way CCP exercised it's creative control over White Wolf in that relationship.

[Iguazu]

Ok, so, I had no idea what CCP was, so I Googled it, and no wonder; it's the Chinese Communist Party; I do remember, in '04, buying like, all the new Dark Ages books, we played that for the summer, but, I don't remember NWoD coming into the picture; we probably knew about it, but we didn't want to change our gaming-system.

I didn't get into NWoD until a few years later, and by that time, the local gaming-stores had closed and Amazon was the only option; and some of the books I got off of there seems, well, of low production-value.

[wyrdhamster]

CCP Games is Icelandic gaming studio - they most famous for making EVE Online, at least at the time. CCP bought White Wolf in 2006 to make Vampire: the Masquerade MMO. If I recall correctly, even Rich Thomas and Eddy Webb worked on VtM MMO for some time, before founding Onyx Path.

BTW in 2015 another gaming behemoth - Paradox Interactive - bought White Wolf once again, to get over (old) World of Darkness IP licesne. (o)WoD video games are 'in production'.

Rumours - or rather fans deductions - point that now Paradox is strangling making any new nWoD/Chronicles of Darkness books, by not approving any new products ideas for it from Onyx Path. Situation is about like that 3 years now... 😐

[Ragged Robin]

No probably not, but it might have been an error. Alienating a big chunk of your fanbase and losing brand recognition is probably an business gaffe even if the games are good.

[Heavy Arms]

While the roll out of the nWoD was certainly flawed (Vampire, Werewolf, and Mage in particular were heavily attacked by older fans for the stuff that was intended to be appealing to them, while the new lines and more heavily revamped lines that came after softened the divide, nothing really indicated it was an error to do. The WoD brand wasn't really in a great place in the early 2000s. Revised was an extremely contentious edition (a lot of the metaplot changes were not well received, the flood of new games was a mixed bag at best, etc), the OGL boom was setting the WoD fall farther away from it's position as the second biggest RPG as suddenly everyone could make their setting/etc. in the D&D rules, and even things like Bloodlines 1 were being lambasted for being messes (remember BL 1 basically destroyed the company that made it instead of saving it) and it would be awhile before enough patches and fan fixes turned it into the cult hit it is now.

In 2002, looking at the reality of the RPG industry, it would be hard to make the case that the WoD would be fine with just a new edition. This is especially the case with the 2000/2001 recession caused by the dot-com bust starting to hit home and was really punishing for small niche products (or more importantly at the time, it was the beginning of a massive decrease in local gaming-focused stores that were previously the bedrock of the RPG hobby).

A large number of WW (even those that stuck on for the CCP days) also expressed being very burnt out by trying to keep the cWoD going despite some many decades old problems being unfixable without a major overhaul of the games.

It feels worth making a distinction between a choice that didn't work as well as hoped,and making the wrong choice. We can pick apart all sorts of things in hindsight that couldn't have really been predicted at the time.

It's also essentially impossible to figure out exactly how much the 2008 housing bubble burst/recession hurt the nWoD from doing better financially as it was starting to do better within the hobby. That happened right after the release of Changeling: the Lost 1e, which is largely used as a reference for when the nWoD started to find a different a valuable voice from the cWoD. Pushing CtL harder was clearly the right choice because it seemed to be really bridging the gap between classic and new finally, but then people didn't have nearly as much spare cash, so a lot of potential sales to fans of the older games probably just didn't better since they had older books and suddenly a lot less cash for new stuff.

You can do everything right, and the economy and still screw your business over in ways that you couldn't do anything about.

[Father Enoch]

No, I killed NWoD, by getting into it.

I have a curse, every time I try to choose between two franchises or "universes," the one I pick crashes and burns. I picked Warhammer Fantasy Battles over Warhammer 40,000, WHFB got "End-Timed." I started a D&D campaign in my old gaming club, Fourth edition happens and suddenly D&D is the worst thing to ever happen. When I finally found stores that sold the old World of Darkness books, they were already publishing the new ones. I didn't understand my curse at the time, so I choose NWoD, since I figured that was the one that would get new material.

I'd say I regret my error, but I'm pretty sure if I bought the older WoD books instead, Requiem would have been the runaway success V5 was.

[ArcaneArts]

Ok, so, I had no idea what CCP was, so I Googled it, and no wonder; it's the Chinese Communist Party; I do remember, in '04, buying like, all the new Dark Ages books, we played that for the summer, but, I don't remember NWoD coming into the picture; we probably knew about it, but we didn't want to change our gaming-system.

I didn't get into NWoD until a few years later, and by that time, the local gaming-stores had closed and Amazon was the only option; and some of the books I got off of there seems, well, of low production-value.

It's been cleared up already, but to be clear-No, the Chinese Communist Party did not kill White Wolf. The folks who make Eve Online were the final nail on the coffin.

Honestly, I'm a little concerned you readily took the Chinese Community Party angle rather than asking for clarification.

[Lysander]

No while it’s convenient to blame the NWOD for company failure. But I heard that they chose To end the old gaming line due to the notion that they went as far as they could and it wouldn’t be profitable anymore. Others more dialed in the corporate workings could give more details such as Gentleman Gamer or CTPhipps.

[Heavy Arms]

You.. might want to talk to other folks (namely older ones) about this? This isn't a knock on either but Matthew didn't start officially working on WW properties until 2014 (a decade after what we're talking about), and CT is a fiction author that does his own stories who's a fan volunteer moderator here. Neither was involved at a corporate level with anything that happened at the original WW before CCP bought it or really during the CCP era at all. Matthew knows plenty about what's going on in the Paradox ownership era of the properties of course.

[Lysander]

Be as that may Heavy Arms. They are involved now and would have a better idea on what truly happened then most of us on these boards.

[Heavy Arms]

Just to be clear, CT isn't "involved" on a business level. He volunteers for the forums. I'm not saying this to impugn anyone, but the only thing he has over the rest of us is that people that know the insider scoop might maybe respond to him faster if he asked them directly.

Matthew is in a slightly more informed position, but barely.

Like, if they want to voice their views on things? Great. But trying to get people to ask them stuff they don't know isn't cool.

[ArcaneArts]

No while it’s convenient to blame the NWOD for company failure. But I heard that they chose To end the old gaming line due to the notion that they went as far as they could and it wouldn’t be profitable anymore.

Arms already addressed Proper Citation, so back to this:

I wish I had a specific source citation for the fact that World of Darkness was starting to Not Get Returns, but it comes up enough in regards to the subject of Reasons Why the Shift to nWoD enough that I'm willing to safely rely on it as a probable fact. It helps that 9/11's shake up of the economy did a lot to kill moderately profitable RPG's of the time (I know for a fact it was why Guardians of the Order stopped being profitable, which eventually led to selling BESM Third Edition to White Wolf), so it's not unplausible given the general state of RPG's at the time.

[Heavy Arms]

I can't find a source of this, so take this with a grain of salt, but my memory is of Mike Tinney saying that the "supplement treadmill" was becoming unprofitable; not the WoD itself. This is also something that you can see from other companies of a similar size to WW at the time. WotC never relied on the supplement treadmill for D&D as the core duo of PHB and DMG have always been their big D&D profit drivers. Smaller RPG companies weren't in any position to do what made the "mid-sized" production studios successful via going for a large number of supplements and were already putting their eggs in a small number of books at a time.

WW, being in that middle size company status (by RPG standards) was struggling with the 2001 economy because their main model was to make a lot of books because they couldn't sell enough copies of one or two books to be their core profits, they needed to sell lots of books that sold a decent amount to aggregate into good profits. That's where the recession hit them (and a bunch of other similarly positioned companies): too many people weren't buying the supplements to get into that aggregate profit level, and not enough people were buying the core books alone to pull an adequate profit for the size of the company.

IIRC, this is was part of why Orpheus got a green light: to experiment with a different publishing model organized somewhere between "core books and the rest is gravy" and "supplement treadmill."

I don't know if Orpheus's performance really pushed anything regarding keeping the cWoD vs. the move to the nWoD, but we saw some changes in publishing strategy that seemed to build off of Orpheus.

[Lysander]

Just to be clear, CT isn't "involved" on a business level. He volunteers for the forums. I'm not saying this to impugn anyone, but the only thing he has over the rest of us is that people that know the insider scoop might maybe respond to him faster if he asked them directly.

Matthew is in a slightly more informed position, but barely.

Like, if they want to voice their views on things? Great. But trying to get people to ask them stuff they don't know isn't cool.

Precisely and that would help to get more details about the inside scoop of what went down if they asked much faster then you or I would. Do you know for sure if the other former WW employees would be available to answer such questions like Justin Achil or would they be to busy doing there own things? CT & GG at least can answer questions if asked.