painandgreed said:
They might mean the backstory.
I confess to liking the previous high concept of Mage more, but I think Werewolf and Vampire are improved by the changes (which, in the case of Vampire, mostly means just having a blank slate about the past, which could very well be highly similar to the oWoD, but the vampires just don't know about it).
Even then, what does exist is very, very scant compared to oWoD, and to be honest, it was the backstory and metaplot that made WoD what it was.
For some folks.
I'd argue that the people who most loved the metaplot were the people who didn't actually play the game, but just enjoyed reading it. If you wanted to actually play using oWoD books, it eventually got to the point where you either had to use the metaplot, since the new material was so wound up in the metaplot, or increasingly large portions of the book were worthless to you.
The new system is much more modular (I'll take alternate versions of VII to knowing the address and phone number of the Antediluvians any day of the week, thanks), more crossover-friendly (which everyone decried in the oWoD, but seemed to do anyway) and was scaled back in power levels for the most part.
For me, what makes the WoD what it was/is is the chance to play moody modern horror stories. I didn't need a metaplot for that, especially given that it mostly read like the bad later Anne Rice novels (the ones everyone eventually stopped reading).