Why World of Darkness Died
The Guardian has printed an interview with Nick Blood, among others, about the demise of the highly anticipated World of Darkness MMO. In a tale that sounds in some ways like 38 Studios, the project seems to have been hampered by a lack of direction, as well as constant demands by CCP Studio's major cash cow, Eve Online, for additional programmers to meet deadlines. The end result was a disaster, with non-programmers managing programmers and other faux pas of software management. In the end, after so many years, it was just decided to scrap the entire thing.
One thing not touched on in the article is yet another reason. The revised World of Darkness, which the game was going to be based within, actually flopped in the pen and paper realm. I know of plenty of people who stopped playing the flagship games: Vampire the Masquarade, Werewolf the Apocalpyse, and Mage the Ascension because of this 'new' world created to get past the post apocalyptic predictions of the three games.
The model of the computer company buying out the paper and pencil game in order to get all the rights happened again, much more successfully, when Cryptic Studios bought Hero Games in order to control the rights to Champions Online. That game still exists, still is running, though owned now by Perfect World International.