[Megathread] Wildstar - Now F2P

[Yriel]

it seems like the developers seriously misjudged the current mmo player-base's preferences

Actually no, they catered specifically to a minority. They seemed to have believed all the forum hardcore MMO talk completely and may have thought that there were more hardcore gamer and that they would be stay longer with a game.
You hear it all the time... "the casuals leave as soon as the next game is out but the hardcores are your audience, they stay no matter what. You should cater to them".

[Nosdrone]

Over what time period are those numbers collected?

Over the last week.

[Valeron]

Actually no, they catered specifically to a minority. They seemed to have believed all the forum hardcore MMO talk completely and may have thought that there were more hardcore gamer and that they would be stay longer with a game.
You hear it all the time... "the casuals leave as soon as the next game is out but the hardcores are your audience, they stay no matter what. You should cater to them".

well if they were to accept that their game would be a small niche then I suppose it is ok no?

[Deleted]

what did Wildstar get wrong? what may be wrong to me could be right for someone else. Unless it is specifically something that made the game function other than how it was supposed (i.e. bugs) then really it is just subjective

Well I found the questing to be terribly boring and grindy. Also I found the combat to be tiresome, demanding and becoming more of a chore than fun after a while.

[Deleted]

well if they were to accept that their game would be a small niche then I suppose it is ok no?

Not on a WOW forum

[Valeron]

I guess that depends on what NCSoft thinks is ok.

indeed. They tend to not like niche games

[Deleted]

indeed. They tend to not like niche games

Wildstar is a very niche game, with a total playerbase of 10 people. Most nichey game ever.

[Airlick]

well if they were to accept that their game would be a small niche then I suppose it is ok no?

Niche =/= dead. EVE is an example of a niche game, it has a strong base of devoted fans. Wildstar ATM is a failed attempt at creating (or rather, filling) a hardcore raiding niche. The problem is, this niche is somewhat filled by WoW with its HC raids already, and Wildstar is not doing a good job at challenging WoW in this aspect.

[Nosdrone]

EVE is also one of the most unique games on the market (and the only of it's style). There are plenty of other themeparks, so filling a niche is HARD.

[Yriel]

well if they were to accept that their game would be a small niche then I suppose it is ok no?

Yes, absolutely.
Actually i am quite amazed that everyone is so surprised that the game has shrunk to a small player number because it was designed and marketed that way. And there is nothing wrong with that.
I guess somehow people hoped that HARDCORE ! HARDCORE ! HARDCORE ! would be more popular.
To tell the truth i really hoped it would be more successful because then the hardcores would have had a place to go and enjoy a game made for them instead of going to all the casual games and whining that everything is too casual.

[Deleted]

Niche =/= dead. EVE is an example of a niche game, it has a strong base of devoted fans. Wildstar ATM is a failed attempt at creating (or rather, filling) a hardcore raiding niche. The problem is, this niche is somewhat filled by WoW with its HC raids already, and Wildstar is not doing a good job at challenging WoW in this aspect.

Only thing EVE has going for itself is the space-sim theme. With the release of the new Elite and Star Citizen, EVE's niche will be reduced to that of being an economy simulator.

[Graeham]

Not on a WOW forum

Even on the official Wildstar site there's a lot of players expressing their disappointment with the game. I'm not sure if people need an active subscription in order to be able to post there but if they do then it's not a great sign if there's such a huge amount of disappointment among those who still remain.

[Valeron]

Even on the official Wildstar site there's a lot of players expressing their disappointment with the game. I'm not sure if people need an active subscription in order to be able to post there but if they do then it's not a great sign if there's such a huge amount of disappointment among those who still remain.

not sure I'd take official forums as evidence. Every single official forum I've visited for any game has always been very negative

[Airlick]

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Indeed, there is that, but there's also the reality that I don't think NCSoft (or Carbine, for that matter) REALLY wanted to aim for a niche role right off the bat.

No, I'm sure they wanted to have as many players, not only hardcore raiders, as possible, at least at release. But the reality is they only sold 500k copies (at least until NCSoft's financial report, but I don't imagine they sold a lot more after that, considering how low activity the game has) which is terrible for a new AAA title, or at least aspiring to be AAA. It's even more terrible considering how few of these 500k players actually stayed in the game.

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Only thing EVE has going for itself is the space-sim theme. With the release of the new Elite and Star Citizen, EVE's niche will be reduced to that of being an economy simulator.

But it's still been filling this niche for 11 years, which is A LONG time. And it always had a stable ~400k subs. This is pretty much the best thing a niche title can hope for. Wildstar didn't achieve that and it never will, which is a disaster, seeing that EVE development (or even total costs, including developing new content and server upkeep) probably costed 10% of what NCSoft burned on Wildstar.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Only thing EVE has going for itself is the space-sim theme. With the release of the new Elite and Star Citizen, EVE's niche will be reduced to that of being an economy simulator.

EVE won't be hurt at all when Elite and SC release because EVE isn't even of the same genre as them; Elite and SC focus on first-person, twitch based gameplay while EVE focuses on large scale, RPG oriented gameplay. People who love EVE will still play EVE; just as people who want something fast paced and immersive will back Elite and SC.

[Tabbycat]

I had a feeling WildStar was doomed when the developers were proud of their game being called a WoW clone. WoW clones just don't survive these days.

But I'm sad to see that WildStar is not doing well at all.

It makes me wonder if there ever will be another big MMO or if the entire genre is just doomed to die off in a few years.

[Edge-]

It makes me wonder if there ever will be another big MMO or if the entire genre is just doomed to die off in a few years.

Another MMO the size of WoW? Likely never going to happen (unless we're counting some of the F2P Chinese games).

But the genre die off? I keep seeing people say this and have no clue why. All available data from research firms etc. shows that the size of the MMO genre is increasing. Every year the revenue it generates grows, as does the total playerbase. So I'm really curious as to why people keep repeating this.

[Holtzmann]

Another MMO the size of WoW? Likely never going to happen (unless we're counting some of the F2P Chinese games).

But the genre die off? I keep seeing people say this and have no clue why. All available data from research firms etc. shows that the size of the MMO genre is increasing. Every year the revenue it generates grows, as does the total playerbase. So I'm really curious as to why people keep repeating this.

C'mon, you know the answer already. :P

People see a single game losing subscriptions/active users and assume that it applies to the entire genre. They also either don't pay attention, just plainly ignore the multitude of games that could be considered MMOs nowadays, or assume MMO only means MMORPGs. For example, World of Tanks is an MMO, but not an MMORPG by any stretch of the imagination. So while the market share for traditional MMORPGs has probably shrunk somewhat, at least proportionally to the heyday of WoW, the entire MMO field is growing because F2P with microtransactions is such a good way to make money while still keeping your game accessible.

[Doomchicken]

Another MMO the size of WoW? Likely never going to happen (unless we're counting some of the F2P Chinese games).

But the genre die off? I keep seeing people say this and have no clue why. All available data from research firms etc. shows that the size of the MMO genre is increasing. Every year the revenue it generates grows, as does the total playerbase. So I'm really curious as to why people keep repeating this.

I think a lot of people don't realize that there are more and more MMO's coming out every year, and while obviously most of them don't reach the millions of players most of them still get a decent and loyal playerbase which divides the whole community. Things look far more grim when the bigger mmos have less than they use to than they really are simply for how much choice there is these days.

[Tabbycat]

Another MMO the size of WoW? Likely never going to happen (unless we're counting some of the F2P Chinese games).

But the genre die off? I keep seeing people say this and have no clue why. All available data from research firms etc. shows that the size of the MMO genre is increasing. Every year the revenue it generates grows, as does the total playerbase. So I'm really curious as to why people keep repeating this.

Mostly it's me having a moment of pessimism.