[Megathread] Wildstar - Now F2P

[Chickat]

Do we have any idea of what WIldstars new ui will look like?

[DeadmanWalking]

Must be in a group, must have a person lower level then you, must scale to that level, must be near that person.

Sounds like CoH/CoV's sidekick system. I don't see a problem with that, whats the catch?

[mkultra55]

I'm not sure on the history of Eve's development, but it was in an entirely different time in the genre. Most games now require investment financially to get off the ground. While running an MMO isn't expensive anymore, getting it off the ground is. The type of exposure needed even for an indie MMO to get players to make it profitable requires a larger publisher than most of the studios who develop the games. This is why you see every new MMO being made by X studio, published by Y company. If you see an 'indie' MMO it's likely going to come from a kickstarter and even then I highly doubt it can achieve lift off.

This just naturally translates into requiring a much wider scope than a niche MMO. Archeage is probably the only thing that is aiming for a niche market, yet it has some pretty blockbuster features trying to grab people. Other than that, you're just going to see AAA titles coming down the pipes. All the <AA MMOs published are typically F2P games in the East or run by PWE, lol.

I agree EVE is different because it doesn't have the same kind of gameplay requirements of games like WOW. The Spreadsheet in Space is a pretty accurate description. That said I do see a move towards independent gaming in the MMO world. Independent doesn't have to mean under funded or solely reliant on Kickstarter.

WOW has just skewed most of the expectations of the money people and even gamers like yourself who can't seem to get beyond that singular business model. No matter when EVE came out or what type of game it is it shows that if you have a solid, loyal sub base and you cater to them and ignore everyone else you can make a lot of money while keeping your soul intact.

[Kelimbror]

*snip*

I'll ignore the weird snipe insinuating I don't understand gaming models because of WoW and instead suggest that you don't understand what it takes to get an MMO off the ground. You make it sound like we're going through the equivalent of music's grunge 'revolution'. People aren't going to be creating MMOs on pennies by having all night coding sleepovers with cheap computer equipment and servers they make out of spare bicycle parts. Just to take an MMO from planning, to creation, to publishing costs a looooooooooooooot of money. If we see AAA games hitting 100M - 200M fairly easily now, what do you think it would cost a smaller game? Even if it was 1/100 the cost, which is being overly generous, it would cost 1 million dollars.

1 Million Dollars. And that's not even remotely a realistic figure.

[DeadmanWalking]

I agree EVE is different because it doesn't have the same kind of gameplay requirements of games like WOW. The Spreadsheet in Space is a pretty accurate description. That said I do see a move towards independent gaming in the MMO world. Independent doesn't have to mean under funded or solely reliant on Kickstarter.

WOW has just skewed most of the expectations of the money people and even gamers like yourself who can't seem to get beyond that singular business model. No matter when EVE came out or what type of game it is it shows that if you have a solid, loyal sub base and you cater to them and ignore everyone else you can make a lot of money while keeping your soul intact.

I think you confuse 'niche independent playerbase' with 'Those we have managed to keep'.

[Golden]

Also I have to call BS on the "most players play solo" part, that's not my experience. Also I happen to agree w/his opinion--I play MMOs so I can play with other people, if I wanted to play a game solo I'd play a single player RPG which tends to give me a much better solo play experience. You're entitled to play solo if you wish but I think there is NOTHING wrong with an MMO encouraging group play.

I'm guessing many players in MMOs would actually prefer a single player game. However, they play a MMO because it gets updated regularly. A lot of RPGs are lucky to have 300 hours of game play in them. Then, you wait another 5 years for the sequel where all your progress and achievements in the original are forgotten. Plus, it's nice to go into town and chat with people after all the day's adventuring is done or sell stuff.

[mkultra55]

I'll ignore the weird snipe insinuating I don't understand gaming models because of WoW and instead suggest that you don't understand what it takes to get an MMO off the ground......

No snipe intended but it is odd that your idea of a revolution in music the grunge era when the current landscape in Music and Visual media is closer to what I was talking about for gaming. We're seeing a paradigm shifts in how artists create and distribute their work and it's slowly reaching the gaming world.

It was inconceivable 15 years ago to imagine artists not only creating their own content but being able to reach their audience directly but that's exactly what we have now in Music, Visual Media and even Books. Games are the next on the horizon. We're seeing it start small with independent publishers making a fortune with simple, easy to produce (relatively) games like Candy Crush and Angry Birds but that's equivalent to the early forays into independently created ventures in other entertainment.

I'm not trying to snipe at you as you say but you seem fixated on MMO's that need to compete with WOW when a better way to grasp things is to look at the changes we've seen in creating and finishing Visual projects. An independent artist can shoot, edit, design and finish their own project for pennies compared to how much it would have cost even 5 years ago. Those changes have opened up the creative process to countless people and has freed them for the need to bow to the money people. We're just starting to see that shift in gaming.

So try and look beyond the current landscape. I can see your post being made by someone in Media 10 years ago while talking about the dream project of a young film maker.

[Acidbaron]

Do we have any idea of what WIldstars new ui will look like?

Yep pictures and explanation here http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/ne...s_is_more.php/

[mkultra55]

I think you confuse 'niche independent playerbase' with 'Those we have managed to keep'.

What's your issue with EVE? Is it because they refuse to cater to a casual demographic yet are successful? Their subs are still going up so it's odd that you make that comment.

[RoninaThorstone]

I think you confuse 'niche independent playerbase' with 'Those we have managed to keep' adding year after year

fixed
+10charmanders

[Sharuko]

What's your issue with EVE? Is it because they refuse to cater to a casual demographic yet are successful? Their subs are still going up so it's odd that you make that comment.

I think you can target a niche if your development costs are low. Eve cost something like $2.5 million to make and develop? DAoC also cost $2.5 million back in 2001. If you are targeting a niche you need to have low development costs and you will be fine. But games with $100+ million dollar development costs have to go after the masses.

[Kelimbror]

I'm not trying to snipe at you as you say but you seem fixated on MMO's that need to compete with WOW

See...it's polarizing words like 'fixated' that make me think you are taking pot shots. Not to mention I've never said anything that should remotely give you this impression. In fact, you can dig through this thread's history to see me defending this game and all game's against being compared, related, and ultimately labeled in regards to WoW. With that being said, you have an incredibly unrealistic view of MMO development, publishing, and operation and it's something we'll have to agree to disagree on. There's a reason why we don't have an indie MMO. We have games that can qualify if we break down our accepted meaning of that term, which would include things like Minecraft, Terarria, etc...but that's not what we're referring to and I guess it's irrelevant to continue discussing. It was an interesting discussion nonetheless.

[DeadmanWalking]

What's your issue with EVE? Is it because they refuse to cater to a casual demographic yet are successful? Their subs are still going up so it's odd that you make that comment.

I don't have an issue with Eve, I don't play Eve, never have and really don't care to. My criticism is not of the game but rather your mindset. You seem to think great MMO's are made in garages like garage bands and that if you make a business decision to open your player base up for the betterment of the company and the product you are selling your soul. How capable is Eve at any time to take the resouces generated by EVE and produce other AAA games? If EVE is so great wouldn't you want to see them create a dozen other games? You know why they can't? Niche Market.

[mkultra55]

I think you can target a niche if your development costs are low. Eve cost something like $2.5 million to make and develop? DAoC also cost $2.5 million back in 2001. If you are targeting a niche you need to have low development costs and you will be fine. But games with $100+ million dollar development costs have to go after the masses.

That was my point. Someone could make a game with simplistic graphics but hardcore gameplay that had to be played with other people and it would still be considered an MMO and using my example above that design is very similar to the poor quality indy film projects we saw 10 years ago that were shot on DV.

[Acidbaron]

'garage' games are often romanticized but it is true that their creativity and their being more daring than other products produced with over hanging big budgets with plenty of strings. Where you used to only have 5 people working at it later it exploded and turned into something "nasty" so i can agree with the sentiment that games that come from large companies are often disappointments.

I do find that the best games come from a world of both, CD red projekt with their witcher games, the first game they took out didn't do all too well but they sticked with it and on return made enough money to produce a much better game that had a large funding but still had the creativity and appeal of the first.

There are also indi games that completely don't hit their mark and don't do well at all so it's not an universal truth that their development background makes it either a good or bad game, there's simply an easier time now for people to produce games again what is a good thing for the game industry at the end of the day.

[mkultra55]

I don't have an issue with Eve, I don't play Eve, never have and really don't care to. My criticism is not of the game but rather your mindset. You seem to think great MMO's are made in garages like garage bands and that if you make a business decision to open your player base up for the betterment of the company and the product you are selling your soul. How capable is Eve at any time to take the resouces generated by EVE and produce other AAA games? If EVE is so great wouldn't you want to see them create a dozen other games? You know why they can't? Niche Market.

CCP is developing other games. Dust and Valkyrie come to mind so again I don't know what you're talking about.

Please don't tell me what I'm thinking since you're really off base. Great games and great game companies usually start in the garage equivalent these days...someone's dorm room or crappy apartment. They start out making games THEY want to play and cater to people like themselves. How do you think Blizzard began and how do you think Blizzard was up until WOW?

There is a bit of Soul Selling when you need to open up your game to every type of player whether you like it or not. That holds true whenever artists need to bend their art to appease the money people. I see it every day.

I'd also argue that it's wrong to think that every time a developer opens up their game to a wider audience that the game gets better. I'd say the opposite is true just as often. WOW may seem better than it was in Vanilla to someone who wants to just log on for some quick gameplay but the old school 5 night a week Vanilla Raider may think the game is horrible now. It's all perspective.

[Acidbaron]

Blizzard was rather large even before they started with WoW, they had two successful game types and 3 succesful IP's they had more than one building they owned long before WoW and even had different departments such as blizzard North, they could make WoW due to the funding WC, SC and Diablo made for them

The games they made before those big IP's can be seen as garage games but the rest was hardly a garage game anymore and that basically happend to them since orcs vs humans as their race game and that other game didn't do too bad but wasn't a hit and we all know the rest.

[mkultra55]

See...it's polarizing words like 'fixated' that make me think you are taking pot shots. Not to mention I've never said anything that should remotely give you this impression. In fact, you can dig through this thread's history to see me defending this game and all game's against being compared, related, and ultimately labeled in regards to WoW. With that being said, you have an incredibly unrealistic view of MMO development, publishing, and operation and it's something we'll have to agree to disagree on. There's a reason why we don't have an indie MMO. We have games that can qualify if we break down our accepted meaning of that term, which would include things like Minecraft, Terarria, etc...but that's not what we're referring to and I guess it's irrelevant to continue discussing. It was an interesting discussion nonetheless.

Bad choice of words on my part then so I apologize. I just think we're going to see changes in the creation and distribution of multiplayer games that echo what we've seen in other media. MMO's are arguably the most complex games and would logically be the very last type of entertainment to be able to work under a new paradigm.

Back Wildstar.

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Blizzard was rather large even before they started with WoW, they had two successful game types and 3 succesful IP's they had more than one building they owned long before WoW and even had different departments such as blizzard North, they could make WoW due to the funding WC, SC and Diablo made for them

The games they made before those big IP's can be seen as garage games but the rest was hardly a garage game anymore and that basically happend to them since orcs vs humans as their race game and that other game didn't do too bad but wasn't a hit and we all know the rest.

Of course they were big but they were still an independent studio run by gamers before Activision acquired them. Size doesn't negate independent thinking.

Now we have someone running the parent company who publicly said

"The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games."

That's the difference.

[Moropo]

where could I get a beta key?

[Kelimbror]

MMO's are arguably the most complex games and would logically be the very last type of entertainment to be able to work under a new paradigm.

Back Wildstar.

No wait, but you said something interesting and I agree. I touched on it in that post, but I think what you are referencing will likely not be present in the traditional format we see as an MMO. In fact, the game most likely to achieve MMO like features on a small scale budget sounds like Terraria 2. Reading the creator talk about having infinite worlds to explore in a more organic way sounds like taking the principles of Eve with more compelling (to most people) gameplay and having a low entry fee and wide distribution via Steam. I don't think we will see something like Wildstar minus the wide ranging features targeted at a specific group of people.

Consider the discussion Bard touches on a lot where he questions why MMOs even have leveling in the first place. I mean there's really no point. Sure some people (myself included) like it, but objectively what does it accomplish that can't be accomplished by transitioning that style of content into meaningful end game from the get go? Why even have levels? An MMO could easily forsake that limited development ideal and come out with an MMO that is all end game from day 1 you log in.

Unfortunately the idea of MMO evolution really doesn't apply to Wildstar even though it sounded like it would. It is firmly in the AAA safe zone in regards to features and ideology save the exclusionary and limited end game development it appears to have....which may change.

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Now we have someone running the parent company who publicly said

I have no love for Kotick, but he clarified the very next day exactly what those words mean and it certainly is better in an understandable and proper context. He's not a moron. http://kotaku.com/5474949/bobby-koti...fun-statements