[Megathread] Wildstar - Now F2P

[ryanmahaffe]

Are you kidding me? They gave Carbine plenty of time and resources to develop the game ahead of launch. I wouldn't be surprised if, like GW2, WildStar saw multiple internal delays to give the team more time to work on the game (GW2 was delayed SO many times internally, and the initial launch date for WS was much earlier than it actually launched, if memory serves). They give their Western developers a huge amount of freedom in terms of funding and oversight, only really stepping in if things start shitting the bed.

Not to mention that they continued to fund the game strongly for what, nearly full two years before the first major layoffs came? They lost 60 (not including voluntary high level departures like Mocarski, Gaffney [for health reasons IIRC], and Frost) in October of 2014, a full 4 months post-launch and generally well after most "major" layoffs come from MMO's that struggled at launch.

The major layoffs came in March of this year, well after the game had spent nearly two full years of completely pathetic quarterly revenue and around around 6 months after the F2P relaunch which failed pretty spectacularly. That's when they finally started making deep cuts and axed half the studio. Did you want them to continue fully funding the game nearly 2 years after launch despite it doing literally in terms of revenue generation?

No, the failures are Carbine's. Not listening to tester feedback unless it was feedback they wanted to hear, acting like idiots publicly, clearly reading the MMO market painfully wrong with the initial direction they took the game, doing their own thing for a while after the failed launch rather than re-assessing what direction the game was going in and trying to quickly pivot to turn it into a success, the complete lack of effort they put into the Steam launch (which also falls a bit on NCsoft), I could go on.

No, NCsoft has done plenty of dumb and/or shitty things over the years, I won't argue that they're perfect or even a fantastic publisher (I think they're pretty alright, but that they suffer from most of the usual problems Korean companies with Western publishing arms face). But WildStar failing is almost purely on Carbine. You can only ask a publisher to dump so much money into a failing product before they decide to cut their losses and either shut it down or let it slowly peter out on its own.

I'm talking about release times in general, don't get defensive. I know carbine failed in a lot of ways, but it was mostly server hardware at launch and at f2p, but it e-waste rushed to release, the issues the game itself had, that's all on Carbine, but NC decided the release dates, and the game wasn't ready

Jesus people, I, adequate one comment that was yes, hyperbolic, I come back and there's like two more pages of people shitting and insulting each other, calm down please, it's new year

[Jtbrig7390]

but NC decided the release dates, and the game wasn't ready

The game was in development for 9 years..... If the game wasn't ready it was all on Carbine. At some point they have to put a product out because its already costing the parent company (NCsoft) a fuck ton of money. Another year wouldn't have changed anything (as we can clearly see).

You would have a point of the game was rushed to release. It wasn't, it was in development for 9 years. Carbine are just a shit company and clearly couldn't get the job done.

[Eleccybubb]

I'm talking about release times in general, don't get defensive. I know carbine failed in a lot of ways, but it was mostly server hardware at launch and at f2p, but it e-waste rushed to release, the issues the game itself had, that's all on Carbine, but NC decided the release dates, and the game wasn't ready

Jesus people, I, adequate one comment that was yes, hyperbolic, I come back and there's like two more pages of people shitting and insulting each other, calm down please, it's new year

Funny because above is a source posted that Carbine decided that. Not NCsoft.

"We’re releasing the game when we wanted to release the game. NCSoft didn’t force a gun down our throat and say, 'you’re releasing a game at this point in time.'" @Kelimbror posted it right above with a source attached.

[ryanmahaffe]

Here I come wandering into the Wildstar thread and you go say nasty things about that other MMO. All that therapy down the drain. tsk tsk.

I also think they've hit they've hit the "sweet spot" with Wild star's difficulty, however.

It's not nasty, it's a fact that the ttk is really long, saying one is more exciting isn't really nasty unless we go by 2016 offensive standards

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Funny because above is a source posted that Carbine decided that. Not NCsoft.

Huh
Welp
I stand corrected
BRB deleting account

[Eleccybubb]

It's not nasty, it's a fact that the ttk is really long, saying one is more exciting isn't really nasty unless we go by 2016 offensive standards

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Huh
Welp
I stand corrected
BRB deleting account

Yes you go think about what you did! While you are at it grab me a soda. <3

[theWocky]

It's not nasty, it's a fact that the ttk is really long, saying one is more exciting isn't really nasty unless we go by 2016 offensive standards

he he - I was being sarcastic - you can't say anything nasty about that other mmo - generally it's all truth - and the truth is nasty.

[ryanmahaffe]

The game was in development for 9 years..... If the game wasn't ready it was all on Carbine. At some point they have to put a product out because its already costing the parent company (NCsoft) a fuck ton of money. Another year wouldn't have changed anything (as we can clearly see).

You would have a point of the game was rushed to release. It wasn't, it was in development for 9 years. Carbine are just a shit company and clearly couldn't get the job done.

Iwasn't wildstar like, completely re,adequate a few years in though? Like it was a completely different product called some shit name like influx online

Not sure if that's true, thought I heard it on one of the old school streams

[Zandalarian Paladin]

I don't get what the fuss is about.

Wildstar was a game made with something very specific in mind, with a very niche community, yet developed as if it would be the next WoW killer.

That's the sole and unique reason it failed. It's a very polished game overall.

[ryanmahaffe]

Yes you go think about what you did! While you are at it grab me a soda. <3

I don't have soda in my house. How's tea?

[Eleccybubb]

I don't have soda in my house. How's tea?

Sure. Milk and 2 and a half sugars please <3

[Jtbrig7390]

Iwasn't wildstar like, completely re,adequate a few years in though? Like it was a completely different product called some shit name like influx online

Not sure if that's true, thought I heard it on one of the old school streams

As fair as I have know its always been called Wildstar. If true that still means they didn't deliver on a product they worked on for ages.

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I don't get what the fuss is about.

Wildstar was a game made with something very specific in mind, with a very niche community, yet developed as if it would be the next WoW killer.

That's the sole and unique reason it failed. It's a very polished game overall.

Ummmm it was far from a polished game. Yes the "Its for the Hardcores" attitude was one of the core reasons its in the state its in. The other was broken content,lack of new content and just had much of a pain it was to do anything endgame. Wildstar has some great idea's but that's all it had was idea's.

The housing system from what I have seen (never messed with it) was solid tho. Its a polished game now but that's well after its release and many many changes. Its still lacking in any real content updates. Its also lacking in making money.

If Wildstar lasts all of 2017 ill be impressed.


Also....Fuck the UI whoever made it should be fired.

[Eleccybubb]

As fair as I have know its always been called Wildstar. If true that still means they didn't deliver on a product they worked on for ages.

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Ummmm it was far from a polished game. Yes the "Its for the Hardcores" attitude was one of the core reasons its in the state its in. The other was broken content and lack of new content. Wildstar has some great idea's but that's all it had was idea's.

The housing system from what I have seen (never messed with it) was solid tho. Its a polished game now but that's well after its release and many many changes. Its still lacking in any real content updates. Its also lacking in making money.

If Wildstar lasts all of 2017 ill be impressed.


Also....Fuck the UI whoever made it should be fired.

I've said it loads of times. Wildstar can easily last through 2017 if it doesn't fuck up. But right now it has work to do.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

Ummmm it was far from a polished game. Yes the "Its for the Hardcores" attitude was one of the core reasons its in the state its in. The other was broken content,lack of new content and just had much of a pain it was to do anything endgame. Wildstar has some great idea's but that's all it had was idea's.

The housing system from what I have seen (never messed with it) was solid tho. Its a polished game now but that's well after its release and many many changes. Its still lacking in any real content updates. Its also lacking in making money.

If Wildstar lasts all of 2017 ill be impressed.


Also....Fuck the UI whoever made it should be fired.

Polished =/= bug free. I consider Witcher 3 to have been an extremely polished game. Yet, it was filled with game-breaking bugs, visual glitches and crashed when it launched. These things always happen. Polished mean that the combat is visceral, the visuals are top-notch and the story interesting.

As for everything else, you're confounding "Polished" with "Target Audience". There was a lack of content not because they didn't have the assets, but because they decided to focus sorely on a single aspect of it.

[niirb]

Okay so I haven't played wild-star at lunch but jumped to it like 7 months after launch and recently started playing again but I read the last 1-2 pages on this thread and just wanted to ask a general question for you guys:
What would you consider an okay update scheduled for a game like wildstar that is apparently focused on "the hardcore" and what kind of updates - since looking at wildstar-progress.com shows us that less than 5 guilds fully cleared the latest raid that was out for quite some time now (I think?). I do understand that if the number of players would be higher the number of guilds that would have cleared it would be bigger but I do think that the % of players would stay relatively the same.

[ryanmahaffe]

Okay so I haven't played wild-star at lunch but jumped to it like 7 months after launch and recently started playing again but I read the last 1-2 pages on this thread and just wanted to ask a general question for you guys:
What would you consider an okay update scheduled for a game like wildstar that is apparently focused on "the hardcore" and what kind of updates - since looking at wildstar-progress.com shows us that less than 5 guilds fully cleared the latest raid that was out for quite some time now (I think?). I do understand that if the number of players would be higher the number of guilds that would have cleared it would be bigger but I do think that the % of players would stay relatively the same.

Good base update to me would be

New contracts
New dungeon/expediton
Maybe a new zone and feature


Occasionally a raid would be nice

For the record it does not need all of these things as I found heroes evolved to be amazing update for the game overall

[Deleted]

[B]I'm currently playing Wildstar for a spell, but as someone who is admittedly fair to the game at all angles...let's get some 'sources' since people wan't to ignore some facts about the game and it's history. Let's start with these gems of broken promises:

Well you should all know my thoughts on game Dev's and promises by now, but just in case

It's all a load of BS, and while players keep buying into it they will just keep rolling it out.

[Eleccybubb]

Well you should all know my thoughts on game Dev's and promises by now, but just in case

It's all a load of BS, and while players keep buying into it they will just keep rolling it out.

Funny how people do a U-turn when linked sources.

[Deleted]

Funny how people do a U-turn when linked sources.

No U-turn, but what is actually funny ? Is you believe that they believed, and meant, any thing they said...Dev speak BS! Suddenly a Dev team that helped make wow and Guild wars became stupid ? I have no idea of the real story, nor does anyone else here.

All I really know is Wildstar was still beta for the first 6 months, they then spent the next 6 months putting most of it right!

[Edge-]

More rage than wisdom! I see no source I see no facts...all I see is your opinion.

Let's see here....

NCsoft giving Western developers a ton of leeway - firsthand experience when working with NCsoft and their Western developers (at the time Anet, Paragon, and every so briefly, Carbine). Each studio had an incredible amount of freedom and control over their budgets, development, and marketing for their respective games. NCsoft had input, but they left the studios alone to operate as they best saw fit (until they shut down Paragon/CoH to make room for GW2/WildStar in the Western market and redirect resources from CoH to those titles). I have no clue what budgets they were all working with as my information was never that granular, but it was painfully obvious that NCsoft was giving them an incredible amount of freedom for companies that are wholly owned subsidiaries of NCsoft.

They layoffs - Everything I cited about when they took place and how deep they were can easily be confirmed via a casual google search. For funsies, you can look at how quickly deep layoffs came for other major MMO releases in recent years like ESO and SWTOR. Both saw massive layoffs within months of launch (far more than the 60 Carbine lost 4 months out) as well as similar high-level voluntary departures.

WildStars post-launch and post-F2P struggles - Again, we have quarterly earnings reports to show how the game has tanked financially since launch and how the F2P relaunch and the Steam launch barely did shit for the game. We can similarly see issues that are squarely on Carbine as they transitioned away from their idiotic "monthly content updates!" plan and towards a quarterly update schedule (which isn't a thing anymore), without patches really getting too much bigger than the initial monthly patches were. And again, you can look back to their early updates to see how they largely missed why most folks left and were slow to start actually addressing the issues that were causing the game to tank financially.

If you disagree, I'd be curious to know why. Especially given some of the critiques you've leveled at Carbine over the past year or two.

I'm talking about release times in general, don't get defensive. I know carbine failed in a lot of ways, but it was mostly server hardware at launch and at f2p, but it e-waste rushed to release, the issues the game itself had, that's all on Carbine, but NC decided the release dates, and the game wasn't ready

See Eleccybubb's post about Carbine bragging about how they got to set release dates.

WildStar launching at the start of June (right before E3, one of the worst fucking times to launch a game) and then doing its Steam launch in that same window is on Carbine. NCsoft doesn't force release dates on their developers. Again, if people had any idea of how many times the GW2 launch date was pushed back (either by weeks or months, each time) they'd stop ever pretending that the, "GAME WAS FORCED OUT EARLY BY PUBLISHER!" argument has any merit whatsoever.

No U-turn, but what is actually funny ? Is you believe that they believed, and meant, any thing they said...Dev speak BS! Suddenly a Dev team that helped make wow and Guild wars became stupid ? I have no idea of the real story, nor does anyone else here.

Yes, actually. We've seen countless ex-Blizzard developers make completely terrible games. Working on WoW or another major, successful game doesn't inherently mean that everything you work on afterwards will be successful, or even good. Same goes for ex-ArenaNet staff (many of whom were also ex-Blizzard devs).

I mean, if you want to make the, "YOU CAN NEVER TRUST DEVELOPERS!" argument, that's fine and dandy. But that's a truly terrible argument to make if you want to attempt to remotely defend a game or its developers...

All I really know is Wildstar was still beta for the first 6 months, they then spent the next 6 months putting most of it right!

Sure, why not. If this argument makes you feel better, go for it. It's not remotely true, and it's the same argument every MMO's fanbase has made over the past decade when finding excuses for why "their" MMO tanked at launch, but /whatever.

[ryanmahaffe]

Let's see here....

NCsoft giving Western developers a ton of leeway - firsthand experience when working with NCsoft and their Western developers (at the time Anet, Paragon, and every so briefly, Carbine). Each studio had an incredible amount of freedom and control over their budgets, development, and marketing for their respective games. NCsoft had input, but they left the studios alone to operate as they best saw fit (until they shut down Paragon/CoH to make room for GW2/WildStar in the Western market and redirect resources from CoH to those titles). I have no clue what budgets they were all working with as my information was never that granular, but it was painfully obvious that NCsoft was giving them an incredible amount of freedom for companies that are wholly owned subsidiaries of NCsoft.

They layoffs - Everything I cited about when they took place and how deep they were can easily be confirmed via a casual google search. For funsies, you can look at how quickly deep layoffs came for other major MMO releases in recent years like ESO and SWTOR. Both saw massive layoffs within months of launch (far more than the 60 Carbine lost 4 months out) as well as similar high-level voluntary departures.

WildStars post-launch and post-F2P struggles - Again, we have quarterly earnings reports to show how the game has tanked financially since launch and how the F2P relaunch and the Steam launch barely did shit for the game. We can similarly see issues that are squarely on Carbine as they transitioned away from their idiotic "monthly content updates!" plan and towards a quarterly update schedule (which isn't a thing anymore), without patches really getting too much bigger than the initial monthly patches were. And again, you can look back to their early updates to see how they largely missed why most folks left and were slow to start actually addressing the issues that were causing the game to tank financially.

If you disagree, I'd be curious to know why. Especially given some of the critiques you've leveled at Carbine over the past year or two.



See Eleccybubb's post about Carbine bragging about how they got to set release dates.

WildStar launching at the start of June (right before E3, one of the worst fucking times to launch a game) and then doing its Steam launch in that same window is on Carbine. NCsoft doesn't force release dates on their developers. Again, if people had any idea of how many times the GW2 launch date was pushed back (either by weeks or months, each time) they'd stop ever pretending that the, "GAME WAS FORCED OUT EARLY BY PUBLISHER!" argument has any merit whatsoever.



Yes, actually. We've seen countless ex-Blizzard developers make completely terrible games. Working on WoW or another major, successful game doesn't inherently mean that everything you work on afterwards will be successful, or even good. Same goes for ex-ArenaNet staff (many of whom were also ex-Blizzard devs).

I mean, if you want to make the, "YOU CAN NEVER TRUST DEVELOPERS!" argument, that's fine and dandy. But that's a truly terrible argument to make if you want to attempt to remotely defend a game or its developers...



Sure, why not. If this argument makes you feel better, go for it. It's not remotely true, and it's the same argument every MMO's fanbase has made over the past decade when finding excuses for why "their" MMO tanked at launch, but /whatever.

Im going to ignore the previous quotes because it is nearly all resolved stuff.

The last one though, Mini didn't seem to be stating opinions or excuses, seemed to me like truth, Wildstar was in a shitty state at launch and for the first 6 months, it was slowly improving, it was basically a beta upon release with TONS of issues. Issues that have now been resolved, just a few pages ago we had issues at launch discussion, we all know the main points of Wildstars initial failures by now, I really dont see a reason to beat this rotting horse anymore.