Merging the servers into a megaserver will simply merge the actual population, it won't bring new players.
Fixing bugs will make the product stable and make people less prone to quit, but it won't be a major source of bringing new players.
Releasing new content will bring old and new players in the game, but as a sub game with a high box price, you will be hard pressed to keep their interest at a pace you won't keep up.
F2P will bring new players, some will be freeloaders, some will support the game, the game will end up richer, and the population will be higher, it is a known fact that a successful F2P model bring more income than subs, but for the F2P conversion to work properly, they need to fix their bugs at the very least.
Refusal to turn F2P when the game has received such a crippled state in reputation will only turn into a negative effect for the game on the long run, as people will check at this game a lot less, since the hype will be greatly reduced.
"Short answer, we never set out to make our entire game about hardcore" --moore
Huh?????? I must've been following a different MMO pre-launch then; the one that bleated the word HARDCORE!!!!!! in every dev speak video, gameplay video, designer update, art blog and every single state of the game update the year prior to launch. It must've been some other game bringing back 40 man raids because 10 or 20 was too casual and not HARDCORE!!! enough. My mistake
okay 5 things carbine didn't do that caused/causing the demise of WS!
1) they believe that people can actually find 40 people talented enough to raid endgame with.
the word talented means people who can avoid junk and not die and do decent damage or heals.
2) learn from the past mistakes of other MMO's , yet instead they walked the same path as them , sadly they believe the road forks somewhere the others havent been yet.
3) the player base is the owner of the game not the developers when a majority of stock holders want change you better listen and change not ignore it and think they will like what you spoon feed them.
4) content promised patches became less and less underwhelming over time if you could't keep your promises then maybe you should never have promised them.
5) last but not least you went with NCsoft as a publisher , you should have known that plane would be shot down before it really ever took off , they are notorious for overhyped games going free to play. ie Lineage 2, and Aion was both overhyped at the time of launch .
thing is WS was over hyped and underwhelming of a game followed up by broken promises and a slow to act development team. no wonder why they could not hang at blizzard past vanilla world of warcraft.
"MMORPG.com: Many of WildStar's flicks and devspeaks are funny and entertaining, but the in-game content can feel serious, dry and tedious. Are there any plans to lighten the mood on Nexus?"
Post Massive player exodus: "I don't think we have a player interest issue"
Seriously, when will these people admit they don't know a thing about how to make a game and that wildstar is not going to maintain its p2p model. This is no longer pre-launch forum speculation the population is evidence.
They have already neatly shifted the F2P issue from a matter of necessity to 'something the players are asking for' (to paraphrase). This for me is a pretty sure sign that it will be happening, you only shift your motives in such an absurdly transparent fashion if the decision has been made.
And I love how they, like many developers will do, put it on the players.
The ugly decisions are always put on the players' shoulders.It's so freaking cowardly. Just admit you failed to create a game that enough people found worth a sub, and you have to change the revenue to one that better suits it.
"We overestimated the amount of interest people would have in paying a subscription for a game like Wildstar in today's MMO market. Consequently, we are shifting the revenue model to one that better suits the game and its intended playerbase".
Bam. Easy. People will still see through it, but at least you're not blaming the freaking players for the results of your screw-ups.
I'm so sick of the zero accountability PR BS these companies shovel out. "But the players asked for it! It had nothing to do with us putting out a poorly conceived and delivered gaming experience that too few people wanted to pay for..."
To that extent, Square Enix is the only company who deserves any respect in my opinion. They released a lousy game. They didn't spin, point fingers, or attempt to put it on the players. They said "you know what, we screwed up, we've lost the trust of our fans, and we are going to make good for it". They apologized, multiple times, for it. They took full responsibility for the screw-up, and vowed to make it right. And they did, ultimately releasing ARR which - funny enough - is doing great as a P2P MMO. One review aptly describes it as "one of the most sincere and effective apologies in gaming history". It proves that if you develop a game that enough people find worth the monthly sub fee... people will happily pay it, month after month.
If only more developers followed SE's example, owned their decisions, and stopped with the PR spin-doctoring BS, trying to put it on the players' shoulders to dodge any personal blame later.
Nice article. Nice interview, some very pointed and passive-aggressive questions there that may have made the interviewee's a bit uncomfortable when answering questions which is a sign of a good interviewer.
About their responses: Good stuff. I unsubbed after 1.5 months. Love the game. I like the difficulty, but was not in love with the way they presented the "elder game". Unrewarding for bashing your head in for 1.5 hours. And I quickly realized...I don't want to guild. I'm 30 years old with a family and career. My raiding days are done. I don't have time for it, or the desire. But I do have time for exactly what they mentioned...short session gameplay. I do have time to log in for 1-2 hours at a clip, quickly get into some challenging content, be rewarded for it, and log out on a whim if I needed to do the dishes or make dinner. So... I currently am playing Diablo 3. I can hop into a T6 rift at anytime for a 15 minute run, and be done. Or challenge myself on a solo greater rift to try to progress up the ladder. I love it. If Wildstar can provide me the same short session gameplay, but as challenging and progressive as D3....I might resub. If I can progress my character on my own terms(stat progression...) with shorter game sessions, and without needing to rely on a guild, I'm in. Its what Ive been waiting for from an MMO. A solo / casual(casual in that there are no time committments) experience that offers statistical power character progression. And not in the form of stupid dailys. Put more of this type of content into your game as your solution to this problem, and I uninstall Wildstar from my computer. Give me instanced solo experience.
Forced to agree that Warlords of Draenor is going to be the final blow to WS. They will probably go F2P after that. I'm one of those that do like the core gameplay, loved the style/look, etc., but so much else went wrong. It's a shame.
Originally posted by Satsunoryu Forced to agree that Warlords of Draenor is going to be the final blow to WS. They will probably go F2P after that. I'm one of those that do like the core gameplay, loved the style/look, etc., but so much else went wrong. It's a shame.
WoD won't be a final blow to it, and WS won't go F2P after it.
The people that play WoW already left Wildstar and are back with it. They won't be losing anymore.
The core game just isn't that good - the combat, classes, the lore are all really uninspired. The seizure-inducing PvP was just icing on the cake for me. All the changes they're making will have zero impact on whether or not I resub. It's a foregone conclusion - I won't be back.
Originally posted by feztonio "Short answer, we never set out to make our entire game about hardcore" --moore
Huh?????? I must've been following a different MMO pre-launch then; the one that bleated the word HARDCORE!!!!!! in every dev speak video, gameplay video, designer update, art blog and every single state of the game update the year prior to launch. It must've been some other game bringing back 40 man raids because 10 or 20 was too casual and not HARDCORE!!! enough. My mistake
QFT you and I must have been watching a different game, I remembered people getting bashed left and right by the hardcore crowd telling them if they were not hardcore to get the heck out of their game ("hardcore"). But who knows I may have been daydreaming when that happened.
Originally posted by feztonio "Short answer, we never set out to make our entire game about hardcore" --moore
Huh?????? I must've been following a different MMO pre-launch then; the one that bleated the word HARDCORE!!!!!! in every dev speak video, gameplay video, designer update, art blog and every single state of the game update the year prior to launch. It must've been some other game bringing back 40 man raids because 10 or 20 was too casual and not HARDCORE!!! enough. My mistake
QFT you and I must have been watching a different game, I remembered people getting bashed left and right by the hardcore crowd telling them if they were not hardcore to get the heck out of their game ("hardcore"). But who knows I may have been daydreaming when that happened.
I think we all were. They hugely misjudged the current mmo market when they chose to run almost exclusively with the 'hardcore' label during all the pre-release hype, advertising, interviews etc etc.
Originally posted by feztonio "Short answer, we never set out to make our entire game about hardcore" --moore
Huh?????? I must've been following a different MMO pre-launch then; the one that bleated the word HARDCORE!!!!!! in every dev speak video, gameplay video, designer update, art blog and every single state of the game update the year prior to launch. It must've been some other game bringing back 40 man raids because 10 or 20 was too casual and not HARDCORE!!! enough. My mistake
QFT you and I must have been watching a different game, I remembered people getting bashed left and right by the hardcore crowd telling them if they were not hardcore to get the heck out of their game ("hardcore"). But who knows I may have been daydreaming when that happened.
I suspect the people who left recently are the ones who wanted it to be super hardcore, and those who are still there are now trying to figure out how to backpedal without coming out and saying "we made a game by listening to whiny people on the forums and it turns out that whiny hardcore forum users aren't a big enough audience to sustain a game."
Wildstar was everything that nobody wanted. A hardcore raid-only game that older gamers don't have time for any longer and younger players don't have the patience for. This game might have done well in 2006, but in 2014 it's a total flop. Between ESO, Wildstar, and Archeage this has been the worst year for MMO's since 2007 when we got Vanguard and Tabula Rasa. Accept the facts of failure and move on.
Originally posted by Satsunoryu Forced to agree that Warlords of Draenor is going to be the final blow to WS. They will probably go F2P after that. I'm one of those that do like the core gameplay, loved the style/look, etc., but so much else went wrong. It's a shame.
WoD won't be a final blow to it, and WS won't go F2P after it.
The people that play WoW already left Wildstar and are back with it. They won't be losing anymore.
Sure, keep telling yourself that.
WS is doing enough damage to itself, it got nothing to worry about from WOW.
Originally posted by Ragnar1337 Wildstar was everything that nobody wanted. A hardcore raid-only game that older gamers don't have time for any longer and younger players don't have the patience for. This game might have done well in 2006, but in 2014 it's a total flop. Between ESO, Wildstar, and Archeage this has been the worst year for MMO's since 2007 when we got Vanguard and Tabula Rasa. Accept the facts of failure and move on.
I will agree with the first part, yes. I will also say the game might have done well in 2001, not 2006.
As for the rest, well that is just general whining about MMO's in particular. A lot of people liked Vanguard and TR, same with ESO and Archeage. And there have been many more in between. According to these forums, It seems every year is now the "worst year for MMO's".
Wildstar has been unsuccessful to date for obvious reasons. Misjudging the market, is the main reason.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
It really angers me when gamers say "I won't play this game" then say "But if it goes F2P I"m all in!!!"
I've lost a lot of respect for gamers these days and generally won't even talk in local/general chat functions knowing they're out there (when logged into a F2P/B2P game.)
As far as this game is concerned...I'm subbed and I enjoy it as my off game. The Secret World is my main game and the one thing that people always complain about: combat...is the reason I like it so much. Of course I'm intelligent enough to build a build that's better then 111112. (My actual build is 111211121113 with 4-7 as buffs and situationals...exactly how I want it.)
Back on topic, I enjoy Wildstar a lot. I play about 16 hours per week (mornings on I'm on wildstar on the weekends, evenings on TSW.) However, should the game go completely F2P apart from it's C.R.E.D.D. system...I've already got a F2P/B2P game and so I'll be dropping wildstar like hot...stuff.
What we need to do--is focus on the content locusts who can game for 40 hours per week plus. They are the ones that need to get debuffed and time monitored and logged to tweak the system.
We need publishers to shine a fine light on the content locusts and give us some empirical evidence of their activities. With that information and knowledge the genre can move forward.
I really like WildStar, I believe it was a smooth launch compared to other mmos I have played. I am more patient than others when it comes to mmo's. I took my time, got to max level. I started the attunement and after they said they was gonna change it, I then cancelled my account. I didn't cancel because I was upset. I know how MMO's are, and I knew these changes where gonna happen. So I started going back and forth to other MMO's.. That's how I play MMO's, I play it for a month or two, then switch back to another one I like. Each time I do it, I don't get burnt out on the genre.
I think some people play mmo's wrong. I see a lot of people trying to rush to max level, get the best gear as fast as they can. Then they get burnt out and complain.
F2P is dumb, means your cheap, and you get what you paid for. Most f2p I have experienced have more toxic attitudes from the player base. F2p also attracts the gamers I don't want to be around.
In time Wildstar will correct the issues, and I am patient enough to wait and come back at a later date. I can't wait to see what they have to offer.
Bottom line, I got my money worth when I purchased it. I moved on just waiting for the changes and content. When I feel ready I will be gladly hand them my 15 dollars and progress further and deeper into the game. Once I get my character to where I want, rinse and repeat.( Switch to another MMo I like playing, then come back in future time)
Should have launched as B2P (or maybe F2P/P2P Hybrid).
Looking at the way many MMO's over the lest ~5 years have gone after their first few months post launch, coupled with the fact that they were targetting a niche group (hardcore end-game raiders), they should have had some idea that this is what was going to happen.
Personally, I didn't think it was all that bad. The combat is a bit over the top at times (a bit much on the eyes, a lot going on at once, etc.), and the questing isn't too out of the ordinary, but I still think it's a solid title and I enjoyed what time I put into it (I even like the art style). It just doesn't do enough to be worth a subscription in my opinion. With the many B2P/F2P/Hybrid games out there that do the same thing (some better, some worse) it's hard to justify the $15/mo for it.
Answers are ridiculous and delusional but kudos to mmorpg.com for asking the right questions.
Stages of a new mmo: 1) It's just beta. It still has plenty of time before release. 2) It just launched. Give it time. WoW wasn't built in a day. 3) We don't need you anyway. 4) F2P announced. 5)Huge influx of players. 6) Look how much has changed. 7) Cash shop is the only thing developed lately. 8) It has been a long journey and we thank everyone who was part of it. Shutting down in 3 months. (Courtesy of Robokapp.)
Personally, I didn't think it was all that bad. The combat is a bit over the top at times (a bit much on the eyes, a lot going on at once, etc.),
The problem with fatigue-inducing combat like that in an MMO is that by nature, MMOs generally have their players do combat a LOT to progress. When that combat is fatigue-inducing and you have to do a lot of it to progress (and/or tolerate hours of it at a time for hours-long raids), problems happen.
I saw several posts by people who've been gaming for years and actually hurt their wrists playing Wildstar, when that never happened to them before in any other game.
For a game or genre where you'd only have to do such twitch action combat for brief moments at a time, it's not as much an issue, of course.
In your particular case, you might have quit before this could become an issue (or maybe not. Some people were able to tolerate and work just fine with it, after all. Probably mostly younger people I imagine since it gets harder for older people to deal with strenuous activity like that)
Comments
Merging the servers into a megaserver will simply merge the actual population, it won't bring new players.
Fixing bugs will make the product stable and make people less prone to quit, but it won't be a major source of bringing new players.
Releasing new content will bring old and new players in the game, but as a sub game with a high box price, you will be hard pressed to keep their interest at a pace you won't keep up.
F2P will bring new players, some will be freeloaders, some will support the game, the game will end up richer, and the population will be higher, it is a known fact that a successful F2P model bring more income than subs, but for the F2P conversion to work properly, they need to fix their bugs at the very least.
Refusal to turn F2P when the game has received such a crippled state in reputation will only turn into a negative effect for the game on the long run, as people will check at this game a lot less, since the hype will be greatly reduced.
Huh?????? I must've been following a different MMO pre-launch then; the one that bleated the word HARDCORE!!!!!! in every dev speak video, gameplay video, designer update, art blog and every single state of the game update the year prior to launch. It must've been some other game bringing back 40 man raids because 10 or 20 was too casual and not HARDCORE!!! enough. My mistake
okay 5 things carbine didn't do that caused/causing the demise of WS!
1) they believe that people can actually find 40 people talented enough to raid endgame with.
the word talented means people who can avoid junk and not die and do decent damage or heals.
2) learn from the past mistakes of other MMO's , yet instead they walked the same path as them , sadly they believe the road forks somewhere the others havent been yet.
3) the player base is the owner of the game not the developers when a majority of stock holders want change you better listen and change not ignore it and think they will like what you spoon feed them.
4) content promised patches became less and less underwhelming over time if you could't keep your promises then maybe you should never have promised them.
5) last but not least you went with NCsoft as a publisher , you should have known that plane would be shot down before it really ever took off , they are notorious for overhyped games going free to play. ie Lineage 2, and Aion was both overhyped at the time of launch .
thing is WS was over hyped and underwhelming of a game followed up by broken promises and a slow to act development team. no wonder why they could not hang at blizzard past vanilla world of warcraft.
"MMORPG.com: Many of WildStar's flicks and devspeaks are funny and entertaining, but the in-game content can feel serious, dry and tedious. Are there any plans to lighten the mood on Nexus?"
please no
And I love how they, like many developers will do, put it on the players.
The ugly decisions are always put on the players' shoulders.It's so freaking cowardly. Just admit you failed to create a game that enough people found worth a sub, and you have to change the revenue to one that better suits it.
"We overestimated the amount of interest people would have in paying a subscription for a game like Wildstar in today's MMO market. Consequently, we are shifting the revenue model to one that better suits the game and its intended playerbase".
Bam. Easy. People will still see through it, but at least you're not blaming the freaking players for the results of your screw-ups.
I'm so sick of the zero accountability PR BS these companies shovel out. "But the players asked for it! It had nothing to do with us putting out a poorly conceived and delivered gaming experience that too few people wanted to pay for..."
To that extent, Square Enix is the only company who deserves any respect in my opinion. They released a lousy game. They didn't spin, point fingers, or attempt to put it on the players. They said "you know what, we screwed up, we've lost the trust of our fans, and we are going to make good for it". They apologized, multiple times, for it. They took full responsibility for the screw-up, and vowed to make it right. And they did, ultimately releasing ARR which - funny enough - is doing great as a P2P MMO. One review aptly describes it as "one of the most sincere and effective apologies in gaming history". It proves that if you develop a game that enough people find worth the monthly sub fee... people will happily pay it, month after month.
If only more developers followed SE's example, owned their decisions, and stopped with the PR spin-doctoring BS, trying to put it on the players' shoulders to dodge any personal blame later.
Nice article. Nice interview, some very pointed and passive-aggressive questions there that may have made the interviewee's a bit uncomfortable when answering questions which is a sign of a good interviewer.
About their responses: Good stuff. I unsubbed after 1.5 months. Love the game. I like the difficulty, but was not in love with the way they presented the "elder game". Unrewarding for bashing your head in for 1.5 hours. And I quickly realized...I don't want to guild. I'm 30 years old with a family and career. My raiding days are done. I don't have time for it, or the desire. But I do have time for exactly what they mentioned...short session gameplay. I do have time to log in for 1-2 hours at a clip, quickly get into some challenging content, be rewarded for it, and log out on a whim if I needed to do the dishes or make dinner. So... I currently am playing Diablo 3. I can hop into a T6 rift at anytime for a 15 minute run, and be done. Or challenge myself on a solo greater rift to try to progress up the ladder. I love it. If Wildstar can provide me the same short session gameplay, but as challenging and progressive as D3....I might resub. If I can progress my character on my own terms(stat progression...) with shorter game sessions, and without needing to rely on a guild, I'm in. Its what Ive been waiting for from an MMO. A solo / casual(casual in that there are no time committments) experience that offers statistical power character progression. And not in the form of stupid dailys. Put more of this type of content into your game as your solution to this problem, and I uninstall Wildstar from my computer. Give me instanced solo experience.
It saddens me that a new game needs to justify themselves and explain their lack thereof, and seeing the mmo community gloat over it.
times have changed..
WoD won't be a final blow to it, and WS won't go F2P after it.
The people that play WoW already left Wildstar and are back with it. They won't be losing anymore.
The core game just isn't that good - the combat, classes, the lore are all really uninspired. The seizure-inducing PvP was just icing on the cake for me. All the changes they're making will have zero impact on whether or not I resub. It's a foregone conclusion - I won't be back.
QFT you and I must have been watching a different game, I remembered people getting bashed left and right by the hardcore crowd telling them if they were not hardcore to get the heck out of their game ("hardcore"). But who knows I may have been daydreaming when that happened.
want 7 free days of playing? Try this
http://www.swtor.com/r/ZptVnY
I think we all were. They hugely misjudged the current mmo market when they chose to run almost exclusively with the 'hardcore' label during all the pre-release hype, advertising, interviews etc etc.
I suspect the people who left recently are the ones who wanted it to be super hardcore, and those who are still there are now trying to figure out how to backpedal without coming out and saying "we made a game by listening to whiny people on the forums and it turns out that whiny hardcore forum users aren't a big enough audience to sustain a game."
You blew it, CUPCAKE!
Sure, keep telling yourself that.
WS is doing enough damage to itself, it got nothing to worry about from WOW.
I will agree with the first part, yes. I will also say the game might have done well in 2001, not 2006.
As for the rest, well that is just general whining about MMO's in particular. A lot of people liked Vanguard and TR, same with ESO and Archeage. And there have been many more in between. According to these forums, It seems every year is now the "worst year for MMO's".
Wildstar has been unsuccessful to date for obvious reasons. Misjudging the market, is the main reason.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
yea "when" it goes F2P
ill play it,THEN ill decide if it worth my time/money or not,
It really angers me when gamers say "I won't play this game" then say "But if it goes F2P I"m all in!!!"
I've lost a lot of respect for gamers these days and generally won't even talk in local/general chat functions knowing they're out there (when logged into a F2P/B2P game.)
As far as this game is concerned...I'm subbed and I enjoy it as my off game. The Secret World is my main game and the one thing that people always complain about: combat...is the reason I like it so much. Of course I'm intelligent enough to build a build that's better then 111112. (My actual build is 111211121113
with 4-7 as buffs and situationals...exactly how I want it.)
Back on topic, I enjoy Wildstar a lot. I play about 16 hours per week (mornings on I'm on wildstar on the weekends, evenings on TSW.) However, should the game go completely F2P apart from it's C.R.E.D.D. system...I've already got a F2P/B2P game and so I'll be dropping wildstar like hot...stuff.
Have the Will to change the world. We are The Dragon. #d13
What we need to do--is focus on the content locusts who can game for 40 hours per week plus. They are the ones that need to get debuffed and time monitored and logged to tweak the system.
We need publishers to shine a fine light on the content locusts and give us some empirical evidence of their activities. With that information and knowledge the genre can move forward.
Have the Will to change the world. We are The Dragon. #d13
I really like WildStar, I believe it was a smooth launch compared to other mmos I have played. I am more patient than others when it comes to mmo's. I took my time, got to max level. I started the attunement and after they said they was gonna change it, I then cancelled my account. I didn't cancel because I was upset. I know how MMO's are, and I knew these changes where gonna happen. So I started going back and forth to other MMO's.. That's how I play MMO's, I play it for a month or two, then switch back to another one I like. Each time I do it, I don't get burnt out on the genre.
I think some people play mmo's wrong. I see a lot of people trying to rush to max level, get the best gear as fast as they can. Then they get burnt out and complain.
F2P is dumb, means your cheap, and you get what you paid for. Most f2p I have experienced have more toxic attitudes from the player base. F2p also attracts the gamers I don't want to be around.
In time Wildstar will correct the issues, and I am patient enough to wait and come back at a later date. I can't wait to see what they have to offer.
Bottom line, I got my money worth when I purchased it. I moved on just waiting for the changes and content. When I feel ready I will be gladly hand them my 15 dollars and progress further and deeper into the game. Once I get my character to where I want, rinse and repeat.( Switch to another MMo I like playing, then come back in future time)
Should have launched as B2P (or maybe F2P/P2P Hybrid).
Looking at the way many MMO's over the lest ~5 years have gone after their first few months post launch, coupled with the fact that they were targetting a niche group (hardcore end-game raiders), they should have had some idea that this is what was going to happen.
Personally, I didn't think it was all that bad. The combat is a bit over the top at times (a bit much on the eyes, a lot going on at once, etc.), and the questing isn't too out of the ordinary, but I still think it's a solid title and I enjoyed what time I put into it (I even like the art style). It just doesn't do enough to be worth a subscription in my opinion. With the many B2P/F2P/Hybrid games out there that do the same thing (some better, some worse) it's hard to justify the $15/mo for it.
Stages of a new mmo: 1) It's just beta. It still has plenty of time before release. 2) It just launched. Give it time. WoW wasn't built in a day. 3) We don't need you anyway. 4) F2P announced. 5)Huge influx of players. 6) Look how much has changed. 7) Cash shop is the only thing developed lately. 8) It has been a long journey and we thank everyone who was part of it. Shutting down in 3 months. (Courtesy of Robokapp.)
The problem with fatigue-inducing combat like that in an MMO is that by nature, MMOs generally have their players do combat a LOT to progress. When that combat is fatigue-inducing and you have to do a lot of it to progress (and/or tolerate hours of it at a time for hours-long raids), problems happen.
I saw several posts by people who've been gaming for years and actually hurt their wrists playing Wildstar, when that never happened to them before in any other game.
For a game or genre where you'd only have to do such twitch action combat for brief moments at a time, it's not as much an issue, of course.
In your particular case, you might have quit before this could become an issue (or maybe not. Some people were able to tolerate and work just fine with it, after all. Probably mostly younger people I imagine since it gets harder for older people to deal with strenuous activity like that)