[Megathread] Wildstar - Now F2P

[Arbs]

It's worth a try. If they simply dropped the subscription model, and pulled two-three guys from the art department to start selling mounts and pets, they might be able to save the ship. A transition to B2P can be done within two weeks or less. Going F2P won't gather any new paying players and will take too long to develop.

He don't actually know if Greg was "laid off"; from what it sounds like he just wanted to move on to something else.

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She was a group PvP designer. More like a second in command of that team.

He didn't get laid off, he wanted a fresh view on something else & it was a opportunity he couldn't pass up.

[Lane]

Played Wildstar at launch which lasted few weeks afterwards when I eventually got "exhausted" at level 14. It seems the more I progress the longer it takes to complete quests which became less rewarding in the end. (I even stopped doing challenges)

Yeah, burnout in Wildstar kicked in insanely early for me. I was really shocked.

[Shambala]

Yeah, burnout in Wildstar kicked in insanely early for me. I was really shocked.

It took six weeks for me to burn out. I lasted longer than most, apparently, but I wasn't playing all that intensely, because MMOs are not about intensity for me. Never have been, and never will be.

[Nanaboostme]

The studio apparently cut a large amount of their team. Expected or a bad sign? Their reason being to approach a different strategy.

[shoc]

The studio apparently cut a large amount of their team. Expected or a bad sign? Their reason being to approach a different strategy.

"approach to a different strategy" is the opaquest answer they could have given in this situation. NCSoft has a history of shutting down MMO's that don't perform financially, just look at Tabula Rasa, City of Heroes and the North American Lineage.

Personally, I don't think the "different strategy" is an F2P or B2P conversion. I think NCSoft is going to straight up kill it. 9 years of development and 7 years of NCsoft investment cumulated to what is basically less than 1 WoW servers worth of players.

60 'actually-somewhat-important' people getting laid off is a massive indication of this. Important 'in-the-know' developers leaving shortly before the layoffs is an indication of this. The freaking president leaving for 'family reasons' before even all of this is indication of this.

Carbine knows that they totally fucked their game. And what would be the only way to save it? To spend the next 6 months taking the game F2P? And who is going to pay for that process, and how will they guarantee that an F2P WildStar is going to be financially successful? And if there isn't a guarantee, then why would NCSoft, who is a publicly traded company so its prime directive is to make as much dollar as possible, take such a big risk? Not to mention the less than stellar reputation the game has right now.

NCSoft basically just gutted Carbine of all of their non-essential staff, and there is no prospects at all of any new hires. The game is practically on life support right now, and NCSoft is just waiting for the right time to pull the plug, and I think it might come sooner than we think.

tl;dr if NCSoft is willing to take the risk of converting WildStar to F2P then it may live on. If NCSoft doesn't think it is going to get it's money back on WildStar despite a F2P conversion, then WildStar is dead, joining Tabula Rasa, The Matrix Online, City of Heroes and WAR in the dead MMO graveyard pile.


EDIT: When NCSoft shut down City of Heroes, they called it "realignment of company focus and publishing support". This is just more of the same.

[Edge-]

Personally, I don't think the "different strategy" is an F2P or B2P conversion. I think NCSoft is going to straight up kill it. 9 years of development and 7 years of NCsoft investment cumulated to what is basically less than 1 WoW servers worth of players.

This would be stupid as all hell and not in line with their recent decisions in terms of transitioning their properties away from P2P (Aion/L2/CoH) and to F2P.

EDIT: When NCSoft shut down City of Heroes, they called it "realignment of company focus and publishing support". This is just more of the same.

When any company shuts down anything or fires anyone they say this. It's corporate speak, little more or less.

[Coldkil]

With that many lay offs, that feels very much like a sharp shift in company direction. Mobile games are very easily profitable, they may decide that keeping a team working on Wildstar isn't efficient enough to pursue.

Really bummed for Carbine, I feel like Wildstar had all the building blocks to make a majestic pyramid but for some reason, they decided to shape all the blocks like balls and the whole thing crumbled.

Strange analogy, but it's how I feel.

I couldn't have said this better. It's EXACTLY my feeling - also the reason for me to keep the game installed on my pc even if i'm not playing; i'm still waiting for a big change in the game structure that makes it more enjoyable for me, though i don't really know if it will ever happen.

[Dilbon]

At least the early cinematic trailer was awesome.

[Lane]

I assumed it was just me hating MMOs now, but I guess a lot of people felt that way about the game.

I was quite baffled by the amount of "it's not Wildstar, it's me" sentiment expressed in this thread at one time. It appears that has died down for the most part now.

It took six weeks for me to burn out. I lasted longer than most, apparently, but I wasn't playing all that intensely, because MMOs are not about intensity for me.

I didn't play Wildstar with any more intensity than any other MMO. In fact, I probably put in significantly less hours due to not being able to stomach playing for any length of time in one sitting.

[Ryme]

I don't think that is even worth making the game F2P or B2P over.

I feel like they have a window to get the transition done and they're missing it. The longer these cuts and delays go on, the longer people are going to panic on public forums and the more other players are going to be put off investing their time.

To be blunt, it's becoming embarrassing. They need to stage a big PR stunt and push a new model out there.

[Yriel]

Auto Assault was offensively bad. GameStop was giving away copies with purchases just to get rid of stock.

I disagree. Auto Assault was super fun, i'd still play it if it were around.
Their problem was that they had no content for the last 30 or so levels and more or less no endgame, the game just stopped around lv 40 iirc. It was half finished and that broke their back.
But the vehicle combat was really fun and the idea that the classes were different vehicles (tanks drove, well, tanks, healers drove trucks, the pet class drove sport cars, the sniper motorcycles) made really cool looking groups.

AA and CoH were two of the most fun MMOs i've played. I really seem to have bad luck with them.

[Geckoo]

It's usually normal to have a smaller team working on the game once it's already live, but when your game is basically a failed commercial beta? it's really a bad sign...

[Gaidax]

Holy crap, I thought it was the usual small fiddle like customer service and such getting nuked as usual, but they cut lead developers? No wonder we heard all the staff before jumping ship with "personal reasons", they wanted to get out themselves before they get nuked and have a "fired" tag attached to them.

At this point I can say clearly, Wildstar has no future unless it changes it's model massively - I know saying F2P gets eggs thrown at you, but I'd say at this point they need to do EVERYTHING to save the game, because NCSOFT is just brutal and proved once and again today and in past that they have no problem shutting down stuff that does not give them $$.

Carbine is basically NCSOFT slave, all this talk about NCSOFT not being involved in Carbine's design process and what not, is BS as is proved today, because the moment you fire lead dev people, you are pretty much involved in development!

[Graeham]

At this point even if it does go F2P I have to wonder if it'll even go in a direction that I'd enjoy. With so many developers having left for various reasons I can't help but fear that those left will be unable to capture the same atmosphere that drew people into the game in the first place.

[Deleted]

Holy crap, I thought it was the usual small fiddle like customer service and such getting nuked as usual, but they cut lead developers? No wonder we heard all the staff before jumping ship with "personal reasons", they wanted to get out themselves before they get nuked and have a "fired" tag attached to them.

At this point I can say clearly, Wildstar has no future unless it changes it's model massively - I know saying F2P gets eggs thrown at you, but I'd say at this point they need to do EVERYTHING to save the game, because NCSOFT is just brutal and proved once and again today and in past that they have no problem shutting down stuff that does not give them $$.

Carbine is basically NCSOFT slave, all this talk about NCSOFT not being involved in Carbine's design process and what not, is BS as is proved today, because the moment you fire lead dev people, you are pretty much involved in development!

They were pretty much done for the day they signed up with NCSOFT. It's tragic really. Perhaps with a different publisher, they might have had a better outcome.

[RoninaThorstone]

Thank

god

PvP is a mess

Even when someone isn't great at their job...

It's usually better than the next guy who probably doesn't know the game as well.

[Trix]

Thank

god

PvP is a mess

Not really his fault, what did you expect him to do with what he was given?

[Osmeric]

This would be stupid as all hell and not in line with their recent decisions in terms of transitioning their properties away from P2P (Aion/L2/CoH) and to F2P.

Why would shuttering the game be "stupid as hell"? If they don't think it can make a profit, shutting it down is the right thing to do, regardless of how much money has already been spent. Sunk costs are sunk.

What would be stupid as hell would be firing a bunch of lead developers, then trying to make major changes.

[DeadmanWalking]

I thought the game was great while leveling, then I got to end game and realized there was nothing there, all smoke and mirrors and bad design so I switched to PVP and I was leveling from level 10 to max level just on PVP and crafting my way through each tier. Then they nerfed dps and upped healing and it was at the point where you could not kill everyone on the enemy team to take the mask before the people you killed respawned and ran back to the mask. When you kill 5 players you should not have a problem killing the last 5 players with your 8-10 players by sheer numbers but the nerfs made the battles unending no matter how good one side was compared to the other.

Since I went through 6 guilds promising raiding and never got attuned and they screwed up pvp by upping healing by 20% and reducing damage by 10% so no one died in pvp before the dead could respawn and run back there really was no reason for me to continue playing this game.

For endgame if you didnt raid they chose the laziest endgame design in the form of non-changing dailies with no real rewards and one adventure with 7 different paths with gear locked behind each path but human nature states that groups will just take the path of least resistance and fuck you and the gear that you might need. How do we turn 1 dungeons into 7? Put different optional paths, but nobody wants to take the option you need, just get it done with.

If you were able to hop the attunement fence efficiently with a guild of people who did the things they promised they would do then you were fine, if you kept joining groups that members didn't live up to expectations then you were screwed every single time.

I've gone back to wow, where I can raid with my friends and have the experiences I am looking to have without having to worry about living up to an elitist benchmark that keeps getting moved back further and further so a few exclusivists can feel special about playing a video game.

At least we can finally stop hearing that games need to design themselves around the top 1-10% of the gaming community. This game will be a shining star in the history of MMO's of what not to do, don't ignore your casuals and don't think that games need to be based around a tiny loud minority.

[carnifex2005]

They were pretty much done for the day they signed up with NCSOFT. It's tragic really. Perhaps with a different publisher, they might have had a better outcome.

Bullshit. NCSoft gave them 7 years worth of money to release a good game and all Carbine gave them for their (allegedly) $100m + investment was a crap MMO. Carbine failed Wildstar, not NCSoft.