Vampire: The Masquerade

That last post got me thinking about the gaming I did a little later in life.  In my late 20's I was introduced to V:TM.  I'd been a D20 gamer for a long time already, and it took a bit to wrap my head around the D10 system, but eventually I got it, and fell in love.
That is...until Gehenna.  To give a bit of a background, the entire premise of the game was pre-apocalyptic.  Everything was building up to the final nights where all hell was going to break loose.  So basically a game, where you build these characters up, fall in love with them, and then watch them be destroyed.  I found it a lot easier to get into character with my Vamps.  I also found it a lot more disturbing that I was creating them, just to have them destroyed.  In games there's always that risk.  I lost my favourite Rogue in 1990, and stopped playing for 2 weeks as I mourned his loss.  But that was a fantasy world...ok, so is the World of Darkness, but WoD used real life locations, historical settings.  So it was a bit more personal.
We had a small group of players, so some of us would play multiple characters in a night.  One thing we agreed on, was that this whole Gehenna thing was for the birds.  So, we broke away and developed our own version, where Gehenna was a possibility, but not set in stone.  We used the rules set out by White Wolf, but ran off on our own tangents.  Then...they started changing things.  You know small things like Clan Histories, Bloodlines having different backgrounds, some of the Historical Events...no big stuff. *insert sarcastic voice*  Up until then, we had continued buying the books, using the source material.  After that, we started rewriting it.  We created our own world timeline, to better reflect history.  Our characters became more fleshed out so to speak.
White Wolf brought Gehenna down, and then launched a new series.  Vampire: The Requiem.  Clans were destroyed, disciplines changed, it just wasn't worth it for us.  Especially as some of our characters wouldn't translate over.  We all agreed, that White Wolf was dead to us.
I understand the need to progress, and evolve.  White Wolf at it's core is a business, they're in it to make money.  But we can't be the only ones who felt alienated.  And yes, there was always the disclaimer.  The world is going to end.
A few of us have started to get back together to play.  We still refuse to go the path of Gehenna.  We're old school.  And we like our old WoD just fine.