Exalted - History

History

Exalted has mechanical and thematic similarities to White Wolf's previous game series, the old World of Darkness, but exists in its own product line, called the Age of Sorrows. The game has an excellent sales record, on par with the company's flagship title, Vampire: The Masquerade, the second edition core rulebook achieving a sales ranking at #23,558 on Amazon.com with a 4.5-star mean user review rating based on 13 user reviews as of January 2009. Exalted, being White Wolf Publishing's second largest franchise, has helped White Wolf Publishing to grow and maintain an average 26% market between 1991 and 2003. As of November 11, 2006, White Wolf Publishing had averaged a 22% market share since 1991, with the Exalted line maintaining second place behind the New World of Darkness line, and RPG.net also confirms White Wolf Publishing as one of the biggest trends in the roleplaying industry since the 1990s, which can partially be attributed to the success of the Exalted line.

The First Edition published material initially designed the Age of Sorrows as the pre-history of the old World of Darkness — however, this has not been dropped in the second edition. It should be noted that White Wolf has still continually inserted names and themes familiar to players of their previous World of Darkness line into the material. However, the current Developer has commented that the connections are tenuous, allowing players to be free to treat it as a prehistory or as its own world as it may suit their individual game. The similarities between Exalted and the new edition of the World of Darkness are even weaker. Exalted Second Edition seems to imply that its story is the prehistory of our own world.

For players that are interested in the prehistory idea, some oWoD supplements supported the prehistory. The Hunter Apocrypha gave a vision of the past that said that Hunters gained their power from the broken shards of the souls of great heroes of a lost age. which seems to suggest that hunters carry broken shards of Solar Essences. While the Kindred of the East supplement gave a structure of the Wheel of Ages (mirrored in Exalted first edition books as the Ages of Man) that seemed to accommodate the integration of Exalted, oWoD. Exalted being the first and second age, oWoD being the fifth age. Some players have incorporated the nWoD into this scheme, having it occur somewhere after the 6th Age.