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Wildstar: is megaserver the answer?
Wildstar seems to be having a myriad of issues in retaining population. Lots of initial players, but now either players are already waiting to raid or have moved on. The lower zones feel barren.
ESO suffered similar population woes (I think) but they had one thing in place Wildstar did not: the megaserver.
I've been reading post after post of people going back to ESO here and elsewhere. I, too, have picked it up again and the game always feels populated. Especially the lower zones. I always see people running to and fro.
So my question is do you think Wildstar, if it had gone the route of the megaserver... would it be in a better state to retain new players or those turned off by the seemingly empty feeling world while it addresses other isues?
And if so, this begs the bigger question: with the plethora of choices out there, is megaserver the way to go for future MMOs to succeed?
Comments
Whatever reasons people had for leaving ESO, I don't think empty areas was one for many of them. The problem is that this is brand new technology for mmos and the decision to use it probably led to many of the reasons people did have for leaving the game. When it's all figured out I can't see why you wouldn't go with it.
More subs than ESO doesn't mean the actual population your players find on their servers is healthy. The two have nothing to do with each other.
Not only more than ESO but more than every other p2p mmo except WoW and FFX. WildStar after 2 months is settling in the weekly played hours of SWTOR & GW2 (not p2p but a AAA mmo), having 2 times more than ESO and 3 times more than Rift which is f2p. WildStar is not the next big thing (which one is anyway) but its population is at least healthy and higher than most of the other mmo's in the current market.
Btw i hate megaservers. I prefer free transfers tbh
All Time Favorites: EQ1, WoW, EvE, GW1
Playing Now: WoW, ESO, GW2
You two love to spread misinformation. Have you got any actual links to backup any of this. If you are going to say its based on Raptr at least link what you are basing this off.
All the nonfactual information about Wildstar seems to come from you two.
A megaserver would deifnitely have helped especially in a game focused on endgame since the few people at lower level zones would at least be interacting with each other.
The servers that were added during the launch rush are the ones that seem to have the problem. The other (original ones) appear fine, even when at low. The number of players in each bracket (low, medium, high) seems to be quite wide, probably down to the higher number they can handle. So low can still be a healthy population, but then again it can mean its a ghost town. Its not like the multitude of WoW servers that are on low, which really mean next to no one around.
The problem is there's now to many servers, not that overall there's not enough players. So yes a mega server would have helped. However that would be the case no matter the population.
Do the people who make these threads even play?
Why is this misinformation? I m not saying about something i read or hear somewhere, i m saying about a well known program that tracks more than 30m ppl playing hours. If you dont like the program or you think they are cooking stats or whatever thats not my problem.
Anyway if you want to check go to Raptr.com>your profile>game collection>discover games and check on your own.
All Time Favorites: EQ1, WoW, EvE, GW1
Playing Now: WoW, ESO, GW2
Yep. Been playing Pergo since early access. Have full roster on that server and few characters on others.
Edit: I mainly pvp'ed at launch but have become bored with the few BGs offered (one of which I dislike). So that leaves me with the PVE.
Maybe more played by users of Raptr then? That would be more accurate.
Sure
Mega server along with launching f2p would have helped. I don't think it was ever going to be a smashing success though. People leave WoW because they are sick of it. The last thing they want is another game that looks and plays almost just like WoW, but w/o the lore and the content.
I tend to agree about the look and feel. Ex-Blizzard devs that seemed to love their WoW's art style. I admit, I'm never a fan of the over cartoony. Personal preference.
Na its doing better at the moment than the majority of MMOs. No reason to go F2P if its making a good profit.
Yes, 30m users. If you check the first places you would recognize that LoL, Dota 2, WoW, D3, Counter Strike, Minecraft etc are played not only by Raptr users but from the majority of the gamers.
Just for the record, ESO hit 5th place on release and dropped more than 35 places in a short time. Considering there wasnt any kind of free trial etc this shows that ppl who play ESO use Raptr at the same % of any other game, they just quit the game really fast.
All Time Favorites: EQ1, WoW, EvE, GW1
Playing Now: WoW, ESO, GW2
Assuming Raptr tracks playtime of its members that choose to add the game, even though you can add games you dont own obviously their play time isnt going up but you cant do the reverse - Wildstar has less than 200k members and ESO has around 550k.
So this is tracking the playing time of a maxiumum 200k WS users and 550k maximum ESO users although I dare say a large proportion would have quit the game early as you said. Then minus the people who dont even have the game.
So the 30mil users figure doesnt mean too much you have to agree.
wild star reminded me of rift lol, rift had nearly 1 million players/subscribers few months after lunch but then people hit the wall of difficulty of raiding and many casuals realized that its hard core raiding game and left.
same goes for wild star, although its not doom and gloom of course, but these games with difficult raiding always find small dedicated community of players and survive but will they ever be among top 5 mmos in terms of money making and player base well i dont think so.
It tracks time in game. People are playing Wildstar more than ESO. Also you dont know how many copies have sold for either ESO or WS. But having more time in game you would think that WS would have more players unless the majority of ESO players only play for a little and WS players play for a long time. Either way it would sound like WS would be better wouldnt you say?
I don't think the gaming population (in general) has heard of it. Its not really that visibly on sale (at least in the UK), other than online.
I was just catching up with some MMO (vet) friends yesterday and they'd not heard of it.
Can you read? "Maybe more played by users of Raptr then? That would be more accurate."
Unless you're saying Raptrs 180k registered users represents the entirety of Wildstars player base.
It doesnt surprise me that people would be playing Wildstar more after the first month since it has time intensive hardcore endgame compared to ESOs casual lite player experience with only PVP that could drag me on for hours. That doesnt mean more people are playing, its just more time spent online as a scenario.
180k or 550k are like forums. you dont have to own or play the game to join. i m in ws, eso, wow, eq next, gw2 and eve forums but i dont play them all. On the other hand you must play the game in order for Raptr to track hours.
Anyway i dont think WS sold more copies than ESO or any other big IP game, but i think players finds it way more interesting, thats why after 2 months it has double hours played than ESO.
All Time Favorites: EQ1, WoW, EvE, GW1
Playing Now: WoW, ESO, GW2
Currently I don't see megaservers as being all that of a good thing. Plenty of games doing just fine without them plus still a problem with rendering all of that graphics for too many people, still a ways off from it being a really working tech.
Now I don't think Wildstar has had as major a collapse of people as it seems. Sure ALL mmos lose people after the first month or two, that's normal. I think with the normal loss of people and the ones still with it moving to higher areas it has caused the lower areas to thin out which is going to happen. This also happens in all mmos after launch.
I have a feeling WS will eventually switch to a megaserver. Will it be better for retaining new players or give the impression that it's full like ESO? Maybe yes to both?
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
Megaserver????
Just merge what little population is left into one standard server. It would only be half capacity anyway...
Aren't pretty much all MMO's doing the megaservers thing these days? SWTOR and ESO both did it. (Though SWTOR still has different ones, not sure that's the case with ESO beyond the obvious regional separation)
And many others games may as well be mega servers; the Secret World's "dimensions" are linked, and so are GW2's worlds if I'm not mistaken. The old individual servers architecture appears to be on its way out, since it eventually results in either having to go through ugly merges where a lot of people rage quit over losing their character names, or they wind up eventually converting to a megaserver anyway.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
I hope not. I absolutely despised eso's megaserver. Mega servers are one of the reasons that mmo's can feel lifeless and like single player games. They destroy any community that could be there with the idea that "this will be better cause there are more people, therefore more interaction." In actuality, the more people just removes interaction because you know you will almost certainly never bump into the same people again (unless you intend to).
Also, have any of the people talking about wildstar's low level population played at low level recently? I just started a week ago and there are people all over the place, I can complete group quests easily - most of the time there is some group fighting what i want to kill when I get there. The contested zones have plenty of people to kill, sure it's not wall to wall with enemies, but no one wants that.
Lastly, the people I do fight I already have started to recognize, like an unfortunate medic named thana that calls her lvl 50 friends every time i kill her... knowing that that player will call level 50's and that after killing her I need to escape would never happen on a mega server. I wouldn't recognize her name and if she wanted to escape pvp she wouldn't call her friends, she would just switch shards (gross).
Exactly. Megaservers are newer tech that I would imagine being a lot more efficient to maintain than individual server farms. However, I'm not a network guy so I can only guess. So it seems to me that megaservers are win-win for both publishers and players. The players are able to see other players in all areas regardless of a dipping pop.
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
I didn't think it'd be easy, but some games still do it though. Even WoW eventually linked its servers.
It might not be a "megaserver" exactly, but it's a workaround to achieve the same result.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/