CCP Cancels World of Darkness MMO, After Seven Years of Development

This might not come off as a major surprise to those who've been waiting all this time - 7 years - to see CCP's World of Darkness come out, but it's still incredibly unfortunate. Despite being in development since at least November, 2006, CCP's hand has been forced to pull the plug on the project; at the same time, it has also had to cull 56 workers from its Atlanta studio.

World of Darkness was an MMO announced at the EVE Online fanfest in Reykjavik, Iceland, to much praise. It was to bring players into an enormous vision of the World of Darkness, a world first introduced to RPG fans in 1991, with Vampire: The Masquerade. The series eventually evolved into different card games, tabletop games, and of course, video games, starting with Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption in 2000, a game that has since developed a cult following.

CCP doesn't give an explicit reason for canceling World of Darkness, but we'd have to wager that it was taking after Duke Nukem Forever a wee bit too much: Too much money being spent, and not enough progress to be made. In some ways, CCP deserves some praise for preferring to cancel the series rather than give fans a lackluster game - but at the same time, die-hard fans are no doubt going to be upset at the fact that they'll never get to play what could have been an incredible addition to World of Darkness universe.

The most unfortunate side-effect of this is the 56 CCP employees now jobless. Hopefully they'll find themselves in a new position very soon, and likewise, hopefully CCP can utilize its relationship with White Wolf in the future to actually deliver a World of Darkness-inspired title.