V Rising developer is making its "most ambitious" vampire game yet, and players want it to be an MMORPG

Name a better combo than vampires and videogames. I’ll wait. Garlic and bread? Don’t mention that around… oh, never mind. From Regis to Astarion – not to mention the distinguished clans of Vampire: The Masquerade – vampires have been sinking their elongated canines into our digital entertainment products for as long as games have existed. After the success of V Rising, developer Stunlock Studios wants another slice of the bloody pie.

While Stunlock promises to support V Rising with balance and bug-fixing patches, it now considers the survival game content complete. Finished. With that in mind, it’s now focusing on a new game in the same universe. It says that this will be its “most ambitious project yet,” although it’s still in the very earliest stages of development.

Stunlock is moving away from V Rising to free itself of the architecture it has built, which has become something of a prison when it comes to iterating in the ways that it wants. “Decisions made to lay those bricks in a certain way often make sense at the time, but they aren’t always perfect for ideas that emerge later,” it says in a blog post revealing the new game.

While some players are upset that V Rising is being left behind, others are excited for a new adventure. Stunlock has provided a Google Form that players can fill in to assess the biggest problem areas of V Rising, so that it can direct its attention to the bugs or other issues that most players feel strongly about. However, most of the development team will be focused on the new game.

The description of the new project is purposefully vague, but Stunlock says that it “will invite you to explore your darkest whims in a world of greater depth, danger, and mystery than ever before,” and it will feel “both familiar and strikingly new.” The studio also admits that “things may grow quiet for a time,” but asks fans not to worry.

The reception thus far has been mixed, but one idea keeps cropping up: players want an MMORPG. There are numerous voices shouting for Stunlock to embrace the always-online genre in response to the announcement. V Rising is an MMO-lite as it is, so presumably players want bigger servers to fulfil the ‘massive’ part of the acronym next time around. And the studio may well be listening. At the end of its blog post, it asks for suggestions and dreams for the next V Rising game. This could just be placating the masses, but on the off chance the developer is listening… Your dreams (or nightmares) could come true.