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[Column] WildStar: Life in a Free World
BillMurphy
Former Managing EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 4,565
Carbine has announced that WildStar will go free to play this Fall. In his latest column, Gareth “Gazimoff” Harmer asks if the studio’s proposals represent a good deal to players, and what pitfalls it must avoid.
Read on for his thoughts on Life in a Free World.
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
Comments
love the game- either way. ill be playing it.
my #1 mmo.
Not going to lie.
That is an awesome picture.
Star Citizen – The Extinction Level Event
4/13/15 > ELE has been updated look for 16-04-13.
http://www.dereksmart.org/2016/04/star-citizen-the-ele/
Enjoy and know the truth always comes to light!
"For seasoned MMO watchers, this all feels rather inevitable. WildStar may have held out longer than most, but now seems to be following the same route taken by almost every other recent launch."
Err... not really. It went live in June 2014 if I'm not mistaken. Which means it lasted little over a year before going F2P, which is pretty much in line with TSW, SWTOR and TERA's conversions.
As for why they launched as a box + sub game, I can only go with overconfidence - which seems to match what they said on the other article. They overestimated people's willingness to expend money on an unknown IP in today's (huge) market of MMOs. (Maybe they decided on their business model way back when F2P's rise was only just beginning in the West and refused to change it to match today's environment?)
Either way, past mistakes aside, their F2P model looks good. I might give the game a try myself at some point.
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/
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
I think this is awesome and I support this change but I gotta say that all of these hardcore types who love to grandstand about the notion that subscription is better, that it's fully supportable, and all the demands of the 1% on MMOs for years now with false arguments like "welfare epics" etc, to know that once again the market has spoken that once again the so called "scourge" players, casuals are the largest market. I personally find it funny because of all these folks talking to loud about what's "so much better" yet we've seen time and time again how they can't even support the things that are designed just for the 1% to make them happy.
I'll try this now not just because it's F2P but also because i've read of the huge changes to the game to attract players like me, you know the new majority.
subscription is better for the payroll for the devs.
more hires which means bigger teams= faster content release.
thats my reasoning.
Unfortunately, only works if they can keep subscribers.
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/
Another game that was not good enough to warrant charging a sub fee...
This is a surprise? This is news?
Not really.... that is the fate of "meh" MMOs these days.
Now, which one of you will adorn me today?
Not saying WS is the be all end all but what MMO would be good enough to sub?
MMO seem to need time to mature rarely is everything available or perfect at launch. I can see where there is more toleration for this in a F2P game. After all you and download it and try it for free. When all MMOs were P2P players were more tolerent of a rocky launch with missing content. All I'm saying is the bar seems pretty high for a game released now as P2P. Seems like there are quite a few quality F2P games out there, yes many started as P2P but now that they are F2P they set the bar. WS has had a year to mature. From comments here and other threads it is a much better game then when it launched but that hasn't helped it attract players. So does a P2P game have to be better then any F2P game out there at release? Where is the bar set for warranting a sub fee? It certainly is much higher then the MMOs of nostalgia.
There is no magical universal quality threshold from which games are "worth" a sub or not. That's such a dumb thing to say.
Either you like a game and you play it, regardless of the costs, either you don't play it cause you think it sucks.
People who play a game they barely like just because it's tagged as free really need to rethink the way they spend their free time. And the people who can't afford a 15$ sub/month to play a game they like really should be trying to increase their income instead of wasting their time playing video games.
They went with box+sub because contrary to popular propaganda, sub is more profitable and more compatible with MMOs.
I don't really think it will make any real difference one way or another, whether the game is F2P or not, the whole subs thing was not Wildstars problem.
The problems that likely caused the game to lack popularity, are in all likelihood relatively unchanged, and by that i mean the overly cartoonified graphics, some people might like them, but i contend that its really not that popular, also, and for some perhaps the biggest issue anyway, was the raiding, the attunement system, changes to the attunement system that made things worse. etc. Whole Guilds were destroyed as players just simply gave up on it, maybe thats why WoW is making end game so accessible for casual players, wouldn't surprise me tbh, but i can see that kind of change being needed to make the game content accessible without such extensive or perhaps exhaustive measures, being required, which destroyed the game for so many, never mind all the problems with the PVP. As it is, there are 2 servers, and the PVP one is empty, but with all the complaints about the pvp, that probably isn't too surprising.
In short, F2P might encourage people to try it, but, unless they fix the game overall, which, short of doing a 'do over' on the scale Square Enix did with FFXIV;ARR, i don't really see anything changing.
Be fair, that's like 7 people, max.