[Megathread] Wildstar - Now F2P

[Katchii]

Quests are great, it's just that most of the time they are presented so boring and plain that after you do like 10 it's just ugh

Questing is great if it's paced well. Wildstar just threw a bajillion quests at you and called it a day. Based on how most other MMOs worked you (I know I did at least) felt like you had to do everything to be leveled enough or even slightly over the content in the next area. The fact that you could skip almost everything except the main story missions and still be fine goes against everything we've ever experience in an MMO and is beyond stupid IMO. Why waste time with 100000000 quests when 100 story quests are fine? Those 100 quests were great and would have benefited greatly if the time they spent on the zillion other pointless quests were spent expanding and bolstering the storytelling experience...or y'know fixing the stuff that's broken.

[Deleted]

Quests are great, it's just that most of the time they are presented so boring and plain that after you do like 10 it's just ugh

Only MMORPG I have EVER player that didn't have pointless quests was Runescape. Seriously, why do games keep making "leveling experience" instead of just focusing on stuff people actually want to do? So many resources are wasted on stuff that 95% of ppl call "grind" and "pointless"

[Lane]

Seriously, why do games keep making "leveling experience" instead of just focusing on stuff people actually want to do? So many resources are wasted on stuff that 95% of ppl call "grind" and "pointless"

I've never considering it a "leveling experience", questing is supposed to be the RPG element of an MMORPG. Granted, some MMOs do it better than others.

I do wish a game as you're suggesting would be developed though because I'm sincerely curious how well it would perform, but it would not be something I would play.

[Graeham]

I actually enjoy completing quests and exploring the game world in MMO's. Seeing my character become stronger over time is very satisfying. I think the main issue is that a lot of quests simply end up being forgettable filler and then once you hit the level cap most quests are replaced with daily quests which tend to be even more tedious.

[Nosdrone]

I love questing. Some people see it as a means to an end, I view it as a journey. WS made my journey feel like a long, boring, terrible ride. Had almost zero 'flow' to it. Just "HEY YOU'RE IN THIS AREA?" *drops 40 quests on your head* "HAVE AT IT, CUPCAKE! While you're at it, enjoy this minuscule amount of XP for completing them!"

If you're going to have quests for the sake of simply having quests... don't do it.

[Deleted]

I don't mind the levelling in MMO's at all, you always get good and bad quests, Wildstar got a great diversity in the ways you can level!
What the game does not do is explain that diversity very well to a new player, hell on my first 50 I just clicked accept on everything and it overwhelmed me. Now I'm sorted and chilled out on my alts

[Nosdrone]

Wildstar got a great diversity in the ways you can level!

At launch they did. I've heard that sub-50 BGs don't even pop anymore, and sub-50 dungeons are almost as bad. Have to resort to questing the entire time.

[Keyboard Champion]

Is the economy still broken to the point people are vendoring ores?

There are not enough people playing the game to have an economy.

Checkout Rift. F2p. Apparently "lots" of people playing it but if you check the AH it's almost empty and the low level mats and gear are non existing.

[Acidbaron]

a lot of it depend on dependencies, in WoW you'll also have a hard time making money on several things especially since themepark mmo's have become so self sufficient in terms of the player needing nobody else to get things.

It's even worse that people still don't know that if they undercut they lose money and some folks really undercut with rates as high as 15%-10% and 5%.

[Nosdrone]

By the way, gotta give our own Ministabber props for posting this on the WS forums (I know she talked about it earlier but it's good to see the responses from other players):

https://forums.wildstar-online.com/f...o-nothingness/

Other folks seem to agree and one poster hit it on the head:
"Wildstar definitely deserves the title of 'least exciting mmo of all time'. Now that the game has released and the PR gits have been sacked/moved on to greener pastures; there is almost no interest in the game outside of these forums."

People laugh at Twitch and say it's not a good measure, but in reality, we aren't talking about a game needing WoW/LoL/Hearthstone numbers. Just a quick peek shows us ~300 people watching GW2 (with two dozen streamers), around the same for TERA and FFXIV. 230ish for ArcheAge. 100 for TOR, 52 for ESO.

WS has two streamers with 18 viewers.

Once again, not talking about players, just interest in the game. There is none. No new posts on MMORPG.com since December 18th (no replies to threads since 12/29). This post has the same dozen people talking and usually it's not about the game itself.

For the players sake I hope they pull a FFXIV and Drop 4 + trial + possible F2P conversion fixes the game for them. I saw how some of my friends reacted to CoH being shutdown and I wouldn't wish that upon anyone, no matter how much I may disagree with a game company.

[Razael]

Thats the thing though. If Ministabber hadn't linked what Drop 4 contained i literally wouldn't know one was dropping soon-ish with so many goodies for Solo/Small group players. Not on Massively, not on MMORPG.com, not on Youtube, nowhere.

I usually think of myself as someone informed, heck in the spawn of 2 months i checked out WoD, Shadow of Revan expac on SWTOR, i got myself ESO at a cheap rate , waiting for the Justice/Champion patch in January, i checked out Module 4 and 5 in Neverwinter and i'm currently enjoying FF14 because i know they added Ninja class , so with the information stream about new expansion and 2.5 i had to catch up with my character.
I have on my "to do" list the TERA expansion Fate of Arun, Warframe and Firefall recent updates, Rifts Nightmare Tide expansion and surely lots of others i'm forgetting atm.

Wildstar is really a game that seems to forget they have to hype the game AFTER release aswell. At least on fansites, major related internet pages, etc. Just keep the word going. Not all is bleak for sure, they did some good things already like Megaservers and Rune changes and if Drop 4 is fixing alot of issues ALONG with delivering new content, then i'd surely check it out IF i knew it was even a thing.

- - - Updated - - -

And yes i hop MMOs alot. My attention span isn't as big as it used to be. Thanks Catalysm.

[Coldkil]

The biggest issue of the game is that right now it has gotten himself the tag of "MMO with the most potential and broken dreams of 2014".

From what i hear around people are not willing to try W* because all they have heard by now is "it was planned to be awesome and look where it's gotten to". It's not that people playing it right now are enjoying it, but they mined the flow of new people coming to the game with bad "marketing" decisions.

I'm still trying to follow it, but as Ministabber said, it's becoming harder and harder. Hype has gone downhill and even if Drop 4 becaomes the best patch done ever making the game wonderful, the game itself won't have as much space as the beginning.

If someone/something is to blame, is not the game itself. It delivers to people willing to keep on pace with it - but it's becoming harder and harder and it isn't exactly a good thing.

[Nosdrone]

The biggest issue of the game is that right now it has gotten himself the tag of "MMO with the most potential and broken dreams of 2014".

You want to know how to help fix that image?

Free 14-30 days to anyone who purchased WildStar to go along with Drop 4 when it hits.

It may hurt the bottom line for a month -- maybe even a quarter -- but giving people a free time as a "our bad, this is really what our game should have looked like when it launched" would go a long way. Gestures like that get retweeted, talked about on forums, and can reignite a passion towards a game. Especially with the players who quit during the first month.

Whenever Blizz sends out free weeks to guildies who quit for whatever reason, I tend to see 10-20 people showing up on Battle.net friends list again. Usually half of them end up subbing for a while. The number has been twice that with Warlords -- an expansion that kind of says "my bad for MoP and Cata" to older players. That free week did wonders.

Free time might be one of the best marketing tools in the MMO landscape.

[Deleted]

I did get a response today on a earlier post, covering a similar theme posted in community from the English community manager.

Posted*24 December 2014 - 11:09 AM
I've picked up from stream chats over the last few weeks Carbines acknowledgement that they need to support the community more, now more than ever this has become critical!
Being honest most know that planet Nexus orbit shifted, it no longer resides in the goldilocks zone, life on Nexus is not dead...but because of the new orbit it's become more susceptible to troll radiation!
No matter how unfounded a comment is, if enough people say it then it just becomes accepted, the norm, the podcast stream and YouTube community are fighting an uphill battle, you have a great community, a great product.....now lets see some great support!
*
Also Carbine really needs to set-up some sort of daily blog giving players constant snips of information, 10 to 20 minutes of your time each day writing a few lines would go a long way, it would feed interest and help players feel they are part of things! It would also give community sites topics of conversation, always remember the golden rule....bad news is better than no news.
*
Please don't fall into the twitter face book forum trap! Most of the player base will only see information presented to them at the login screen, they will have absolutely no idea about the community events or great websites! Tucking them away in some dark corner of your sites? Hell, after 6 months I'm just finding some of them.
Advertising can be costly and company breaking! But your login screen presents you with “FREE” it needs to change, the blog and the community need to be seen front page, you must scout other MMO'S ? Realm Reborn is the perfect example of a great login screen filled with information! I honestly believe it helped turn that game around.
Word of mouth is still such a powerful tool.....but you still need the words.
*
just incase you don't**RR login * * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufd2CKYu768 100% sure your fantastic art & tech teams could come up with a much better login screen, giving the community a stage and the players a front row seat.

*
Oh, if only it was this easy.
*
Here's some insight in working on the non-dev side of the games industry. Nothing is ever 10-20 minutes. Any news post that needs to go out via the main website needs to be approved, checked, staged, and then published. The latter two are fairly easy, but the former's can take a lot of time.
*
If we're posting information on a new update, that's pretty big news. For press sites, for you guys, for everybody really. So that "little update" needs to be approved by Dev (it's correct), Marketing & Publishing (that it presents it in the right way/is on brand etc, and Community (that it's exciting and interesting for existing players).
*
I've written quite a lot of our preview content (the Deep Dives, other news posts etc) and for such simple articles they can take a lot more time than expected.
*
I say this so you guys have a better idea. I'd personally love to do more regular newsposts and content features.

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*
I 100% agree that we need to promote our community events, activities and game info better. Getting on the launcher requires a special type of newspost and as I discussed above, that's can be a bit tricky sometimes.

Same with supporting Streamers and YouTubers more.

No matter the hurdle or problem, they need to make it happen!

[Coldkil]

Problem is that WoW has still a 10 years background to live on, while W* has not. Finding people willing to invest on a game that has already demonstrated how easy is to fail is difficult; instead on WoW Blizzard can always play on the "i've spent so many hours on this char it feels bad to just abandon it". And i works wonders.

Personally, if they gave out 14-30 days free with drop 4, i would be one of the first to sign-up. that's the reason i've still the game on my HDD and update it - i'm waiting for Carbine to lure me in the game again.

[Vogyn]

I'm getting my 2nd hard drive tomorrow. This game is one of the first few I plan on reinstalling. I'll be ready if they hook us up with some free time. I sometimes just enjoyed listening to the login screen music for a few minutes. I miss moments like that.

[Kelimbror]

I sometimes just enjoyed listening to the login screen music for a few minutes. I miss moments like that.

In that case, no need to go through all that trouble: https://soundcloud.com/inhisgroove/s...r-mmo-ost-cues

You can thank me later.

[CrossNgen]

In that case, no need to go through all that trouble: https://soundcloud.com/inhisgroove/s...r-mmo-ost-cues

You can thank me later.

I don't know what it is, but listening to it in game just makes it better for me

[Deleted]

I don't know what it is, but listening to it in game just makes it better for me

Android https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...ll_listen_page

iPhone https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/soun...336353151?mt=8

free music app....search Jeff Kurtenacker, he has the full Wildstar sound track on his page, I often listen to it on my mobile while pottering about

[Deleted]

To this day, I still cannot fathom why Carbine thought it was a good idea for CREDD to expire, nor not to change their mind after the precipitous failure of successive major updates to Wildstar.

I can guarantee that regardless of the size and nature of future updates, a huge proportion of players will no longer even attempt to test the waters or return to Wildstar for that reason alone.

Given their almost non-existent communications, let alone marketing, as well as destroyed hype from Annus Horribilis 2014, throwing away that potential returner playerbase seems like madness...