Welcome to Drop of Vitae

Welcome to Drop of Vitae, my new blog devoted to the World of Darkness MMO just recently (officially) announced by CCP and White Wolf.

Read more about the blog, about the choice in title and about the writer after the break.

About the Blog

So what is this blog about? As I said this blog is mainly devoted to World of Darkness, the MMO developed by CCP and White Wolf. It is a sister blog to my Star Wars: The Old Republic blog Moon Over Endor.

The main purpose of this blog is to (re)post news regarding the MMO. Whenever there is new official news released or when other gaming sites post things like interviews and hands-on articles and such then that news should be reflected here as well. Though I do not expect this news, particularly in the beginning, to be very frequent. Unlike SWTOR, which posts some new official bit ever week and that's besides what other sites report on the game, I've got a feeling that news in World of Darkness is going to be a lot more sparse. With a current release estimate of "2012 at the earliest" there's a long road ahead. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if, next to hopefully a higher resolution version of the teaser trailer, there won't be much of anything more for the next year or so. As such, as far as news goes, it might remain silent on this blog for a long while.

Something that I do a lot less of on Moon Over Endor, and something I'm planning to do more of for World of Darkness, is opinion and speculation articles. I don't have any particular schedule for this; I just intend to write something when I feel like it (almost like a real blog). And it's dependent on my time as well, which can be limited. So it's quite possible that one moment there's a lot of posts in short order and another there's nothing for expended periods of time. We'll see.

Another thing I do now and then over on Moon Over Endor is post about other games (besides SWTOR) and other things going on that have no direct bearing on SWTOR. As such I posted the official announcement of World of Darkness there as well (and have copied that post over on this blog). But I'm planning to do a whole lot less of that here. After all, there's generally little point in posting the same thing twice. I might only post things if somehow they directly relate to World of Darkness. Maybe things like something noteworthy happening in EVE Online (CCP's other MMO) or if something specific about the pen-and-paper games happens. But again we'll see.

All in all I expect this to be a fairly slow-burning blog where I just get to post random thoughts and news about World of Darkness. And since, just like Moon Over Endor, I've created this blog mostly for myself and perhaps some interested friends it doesn't matter to me if people follow it or not.

Finally, also note that as of this writing the look of the blog is still very much "under construction". I haven't really found any base style I like yet and am having some trouble finding decent blood-themes images for the background and such. Maybe I'll just scan in the cover of Vampire: The Requiem and use that as a base.

About the Title

When I decided to create a blog for World of Darkness I spent about an hour on blogger trying to find a name (or more specifically an URL) that wasn't taken yet. I went through pretty much every vampire-related word I could think of (many taken directly from Vampire: The Masquerade). And all of them had been taken. I think someone else probably went through all those names as well at some point. Frustratingly most of them seemed to be for blog with only one or two posts which hadn't been updated since 2002 or such. I almost gave up when I thought up "Drop of Vitae", and it took.

And I like the title. Because that's what it all begins with; a single drop of vampire blood to turn someone into a vampire. Right now we're in the gestation period of the MMO, the period between going from the mundane (when the world was without the MMO) to the full state (the release of the MMO). Now is the time when the drop of blood falls down and does its work turning something ordinary into something, hopefully, extraordinary. And the exciting thing is that we can follow that drop of blood as it falls on the lips of the community to be consumed.

Even beyond that it's in their blood that a vampire's power lies, even if a single drop is just a tiny part of the larger whole (which too neatly reflects on just one small blog site in the larger steam of the World of Darkness community). Without blood there is nothing. In that sense an MMO's community is truly the lifeblood of a game, without it the game is just an empty husk, a corpse. Blood fuels a lot of a vampire's abilities and shapes what the vampire is (different clans having different Disciplines and such) and similarly a community shapes what an MMO is. In that fashion this little drop would be happy to do my little part in shaping the whole.

And finally, blood is life and is invigorating. And that's partly how I feel right now (next to the usual skepticism and worry and all of that). I feel full of ideas of what the game could or should be, and how it might approach it (and probably wrong on all counts). I've always found myself particularly interested in MMOs when they're still in development because then it can still go in so many directions (where once it is released I tend to just play and enjoy the game).

All in all, though I realize that it's partly making the facts fit my fancy, I think the title is quite appropriate for a blog.

About the Writer

I'm someone who uses a number of different aliases online as I tend to create new names for new communities, and I won't bore you listing them all here. On Blogger (i.e. for this blog as well as Moon Over Endor) I'm using the name "Ayane" mainly because that's the (first) name of the character I played in Star Wars Galaxies and it seemed suitable to continue that for The Old Republic (though I don't think I'll use the name for a character in either SWTOR or World of Darkness). Next to these two blog sites I also run the website Eilistraee.com, a community devoted to forum roleplaying and good-aligned drow. That site was originally created for Neverwinter Nights and Dungeons and Dragons, but is (in my view) currently only historically related to them. On that site and D&D/Forgotten Realms/BioWare related sites I tend to post as Shir'le E. Illios.

I've also ran MMO guilds before, most recently I ran the Age of Conan mature roleplaying guild Dark Desires for a year. In the end I left because the game just didn't appeal anymore (I had already stayed much longer than I would have without the guild) and felt it was affecting my ability to lead. I still stay in contact with the guild and though I don't really plan to lead any guilds in the future do hope to be able to play with them again.

I also hosted (though not ran) the Neverwinter Nights social server Island of Mianyr for a number of years until my second computer gave out and refused to run the game any longer (with a lot of effort I probably could've gotten it working again, but I'd long since stopped playing on the server and felt that enough was enough).

Though there are many more projects and groups and such to mention, those are probably the main things.

So a little about me personally. I consider myself a roleplayer and tend to find the most enjoyment in games when roleplaying with others. I do not enjoy PvP, at all, to the point that it tends to scare me. I don't tend to be very good at it and tend not to really like the mindset of PvP (getting your enjoyment at the cost of others). So next to roleplaying I tend to stick mostly to PvE and often find myself doing PvE solo because then I can go through at my own pace. Some of the main MMOs I've played in the past include The Sims Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Final Fantasy XI (for 20 levels anyway), City of Heroes/Villains, Age of Conan and Guild Wars (which I've been playing again now and then for the last six months or so). I've also played a lot of other MMOs for relatively brief periods, including open betas, first months and free-to-play.

For the rest I enjoy single-player roleplaying games (as long as I can play a female character) and adventure games. I've recently become addicted to the King's Bounty (The Legend and on) turn-based strategy games. But over the years I've played pretty much every genre at one point or another. I just as happily pick up a good FPS (Portal 2 being one I'm looking forward to) or such.

For Pen-and-Paper games I've played two primarily: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (2nd ed). But I've got/read a lot more roleplaying rulebooks; I've got a whole stack of D&D 3E books as well as a selection of Vampire books (The Masquerade mainly, but I've got The Requiem as well). Should have at least enough of a basis for talking about the games. Though I never played any of the PnP World of Darkness games, I did play the Vampire: The Eternal Struggle (or "Jyhad" as it was called at the time) collectible card game for a while. I've also played a fair bit of the Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines computer games. Oh, and I've seen the television series (Kindred: The Embraced) which has a shocking lack of Tremere.

Well, that's enough about me.


We'll see where this blog ends up. But whether it becomes something or not, welcome regardless.