[Megathread] Wildstar - Now F2P

[RoninaThorstone]

I forsee everyone in this thread posting in the, "Biggest game disappointments" thread before long, the way the tone of this thread is going!

Only if they are into hyperbole. This game is barely hyped and does a moderately good job at what they are aiming to accomplish. Is it the best game ever? No. Is it the worst? No. It's a somewhat enjoyable game.

[Valeron]

Aren't they revamping some stuff as well? hence the delay of the next beta and release date

I suspect they got some feedback that changed their thinking. It seems ever since that first stress test (where they cut it really short) that I've gotten that feeling from them.

[Kelimbror]

Aren't they revamping some stuff as well? hence the delay of the next beta and release date

I suspect they got some feedback that changed their thinking. It seems ever since that first stress test (where they cut it really short) that I've gotten that feeling from them.

First stress test literally broke the game. There was no testing going on in any capacity. This is what I hear anyways. But yes, from the next one on I think most of what they got was negative feedback for many traditional MMO elements. I don't know whether what they are doing will make the game more viable for a subscription or not.

They have to get people to end game in order to convince them to pay up and I have yet to see how they are going to do that right now. The paths and questing don't seem to have tickled enough people's fancy to motivate them to keep playing. I know someone that was in the beta. They were beyond pumped for the game. After the first couple of test windows they didn't even want to log on anymore because it wasn't compelling enough.

[RoninaThorstone]

First stress test literally broke the game. There was no testing going on in any capacity. This is what I hear anyways. But yes, from the next one on I think most of what they got was negative feedback for many traditional MMO elements. I don't know whether what they are doing will make the game more viable for a subscription or not.

They have to get people to end game in order to convince them to pay up and I have yet to see how they are going to do that right now. The paths and questing don't seem to have tickled enough people's fancy to motivate them to keep playing. I know someone that was in the beta. They were beyond pumped for the game. After the first couple of test windows they didn't even want to log on anymore because it wasn't compelling enough.

So much this. The combat is slightly more engaging then your average second generation MMO but the questing is Tera quality. It's really draining to be like "Those hobgoblins have captured people! kill 8 of them!" after playing MMOs for a decade. They didn't even bother doing partial voice acting for each quest like lotro does.

Why such a focus on making a long, arbitrary grind to max level in a game that is going to be focused on end-game? No idea. People are going to want to play this game for its raiding and end up having to push through some of the worst leveling content in order to get to it.

[RoninaThorstone]

I asked this same thing about MMOs in general the other day. It seems like many of them focus all their creativity, design, game-tuning, ideas, etc on the endgame stuff but focus all their actual development time on creating these huge worlds that only serve to present ways for you to fill an XP bar up before you can do any of that other stuff.

Seems weird to me. Imagine if a developer focused ALL their energy on creating an "Endgame Raiding" MMO.

I've posed similar questions before and usually people come up with incredible weak arguments like "learning your class" which is crap since leveling teaches you a bunch of things that you shouldn't do at end game.

Like, the way I tend to visualize it is this: WoW:TBC, you start with a level 70 character with level 68 greens. You have to quest to get 70 greens and then 5 man quest (except since every zone is 70, there would be enough 5 man quests to gear you in full blues). Then you dungeon for T0 dungeon gear. Then you start raiding Kara/gruuls... blah blah blah. Or whatever. Like, a minor gearing process followed by the content you are actually playing the game... TO PLAY.

[Viscoe]

I play games for the story. Questing is largely where the story is. Raiding can tell story, but it's usually ignored or backseated because... raiding is a bad place for lots of intricate story when your RL is yelling OKAY PHASE 2 IN 3%

[RoninaThorstone]

I play games for the story. Questing is largely where the story is. Raiding can tell story, but it's usually ignored or backseated because... raiding is a bad place for lots of intricate story when your RL is yelling OKAY PHASE 2 IN 3%

:I

You may be disappointed. I am not kidding when I say it's tera-eske questing. Lotro, swtor, GW2, and (from what I've heard) TSW all are great at story telling. Perhaps CTB4 will put some effort into story.

[waddlez]

First stress test literally broke the game. There was no testing going on in any capacity. This is what I hear anyways. But yes, from the next one on I think most of what they got was negative feedback for many traditional MMO elements. I don't know whether what they are doing will make the game more viable for a subscription or not.

They have to get people to end game in order to convince them to pay up and I have yet to see how they are going to do that right now. The paths and questing don't seem to have tickled enough people's fancy to motivate them to keep playing. I know someone that was in the beta. They were beyond pumped for the game. After the first couple of test windows they didn't even want to log on anymore because it wasn't compelling enough.

Betas can be weird in that people who have no interest in the game or style of game can get in and then complain about "traditional MMO elements". Maybe the target audience is traditional MMO players.

They need to just give like a 15 dollar preorder that converts to a CRED upon game purchase that allows you into CB. That way you get people who want to test and fix/change the game for the better instead of people who assume Beta is a demo to get in to test, and hey it is working for all those Early Release people on Steam (Prison Architect Alpha has saved Introversion).

:I

You may be disappointed. I am not kidding when I say it's tera-eske questing. Lotro, swtor, GW2, and (from what I've heard) TSW all are great at story telling. Perhaps CTB4 will put some effort into story.

GW2 tells a story but not necessarily a good one. Why are we fighting for the castle? Why is Traherne so lame of a Thrall-clone? Why would Kryta citizens go over and help the Iron legion kill Ascalonians? And how does that boys mother keep getting held hostage by bandits, seriously move to the city.

[RoninaThorstone]

GW2 tells a story but not necessarily a good one. Why are we fighting for the castle? Why is Traherne so lame of a Thrall-clone? Why would Kryta citizens go over and help the Iron legion kill Ascalonians?

Since the guy plays game for the story... A game that tells a story (even if it's meh) is probably better for him then a game that isn't even trying.

[Valeron]

if you play games for story, an mmo is the last type of games you should play

[Viscoe]

I haven't played TERA, and if WildStar disappoints me, then I'll just drop it. 60 bucks or whatever the box price will be isn't a big deal - I have plenty of console games I've spent money on and then stopped playing because they didn't actually interest me as much as I thought it would.

I didn't like GW2's quest system, so I dropped that. I can't even remember what level my ranger was. 42? 45? Somewhere around there... anyways, I paid my money, played the game a bit, didn't like it, dropped it. DIdn't feel like a waste to me, so I don't think W* will feel like a waste, either, if it ends up the same.

But if WildStar is as much a WoW clone as everyone says it is, I will probably like it a lot. I didn't quit WoW because I hated traditional MMO elements or the class system, I quit because of the cash shop. I'm still reading lore-related shit every day, because I love the story - and that doesn't just mean the main story either, I enjoy the little things like when you went to SoS and helped ease that orc's path to death, or any other countless number of little things like that.

A breathing world is why I play MMOs. And I chose "breathing" and not "living" because I like a STATIC world. Changes like holidays or dynamic events are fine, but shit like "Well the Barrens quest was around for one patch and it'll never be here again" I dislike. That's also why I gave up on GW2 - I missed some shit that wasn't coming back so I was like "Well story disconnect so fuck this!"

So, yeah. If Wildstar behaves like, say WotLK? I'll love that game. I'm okay if the quests are the usual "oO kill 8 boars" as long as the reason is explained and unique to that little quest zone. If that makes sense.

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if you play games for story, an mmo is the last type of games you should play

MMORPG

Your statement is silly.

[Kelimbror]

I didn't like GW2's quest system, so I dropped that.

Uhh...W* is going to be the exact same thing now except you pick up the quests before completing them the same way.

MMORPG

Your statement is silly.

Slapping an acronym on something doesn't magically make it functional. The last MMO to actually focus on a story in a convincing manner was SWTOR and everyone got very tired of it. The gameplay and endgame for MMOs do not coalign with story telling in pretty much all capacities.

[Valeron]

Your statement is silly.

single player games shit on mmorpgs for story

[Viscoe]

single player games shit on mmorpgs for story

But I prefer MMOs, and you can have story in them. I won't say single players can't do it better, but if you want an MMO, there is zero reason you can't have story alongside it.

Look at FFXIV. The whole game is driven by story. Its only quest-related fault is that there aren't enough quests to level every class on a single player.

- - - Updated - - -

Uhh...W* is going to be the exact same thing now except you pick up the quests before completing them the same way.

You and I already went through this a while back. The discussion ended up being that W*'s questing was fine. my problem, if you recall, was GW2 hearts didn't make you pick them up first.

Slapping an acronym on something doesn't magically make it functional. The last MMO to actually focus on a story in a convincing manner was SWTOR and everyone got very tired of it. The gameplay and endgame for MMOs do not coalign with story telling in pretty much all capacities.

See FFXIV. The game plays like every FF game I remember (sans party) story-wise, with MMO elements for your character like leveling up and the gear treadmill. FFXIV did it very convincingly. I haven't had the opportunity to play its end-game yet 'cause I'm only level 47 and grinding FATEs is boring, but, up until 47 when they locked my next main story quest behind 49, questing was great! (They should have added another settlement or zone to ease the FATE grind from 47 to 49, though. THAT is a huge problem for me.)

[Edge-]

MMORPG

Your statement is silly.

Story hasn't fit prominently into MMORPG's until SWTOR, TSW, and GW2. LOTRO did a decent job of it (not great) and Blizzard did a pretty decent job in LK, but it's never really been an important part of gameplay until the recent batch of MMO's.

[Viscoe]

Story hasn't fit prominently into MMORPG's until SWTOR, TSW, and GW2. LOTRO did a decent job of it (not great) and Blizzard did a pretty decent job in LK, but it's never really been an important part of gameplay until the recent batch of MMO's.

WildStar will be a recent MMO when it comes out, so are you saying they'll focus on story? :P

Anyways, WoW's story telling was perfect for me. I didn't have to play endgame if I didn't want to (though it didn't stop me) and the story wrapped up nicely in end game content but it wasn't 100% required if you wanted to know what happened. There was a huge world focused on story - again, it didn't all focus on one overarching story, which is fine and great! They never had events (well, hardly) related to story telling that were one-time-only and never came back. (The only ones I can think of are the AQ Gates and Battlefield Barrens.)

So... why exactly is any of that hard to do in WildStar? It's pretty run-of-the-mill questing from what I've seen.

[Toffie]

Why would anyone play a mmorpg and not follow the story? That has been most exciting for me in games like WoW, Realm Reborn & GW2. A MMORPG without any decent packed story will surely not have my attention.

[zito]

WildStar will be a recent MMO when it comes out, so are you saying they'll focus on story? :P

Anyways, WoW's story telling was perfect for me. I didn't have to play endgame if I didn't want to (though it didn't stop me) and the story wrapped up nicely in end game content but it wasn't 100% required if you wanted to know what happened. There was a huge world focused on story - again, it didn't all focus on one overarching story, which is fine and great! They never had events (well, hardly) related to story telling that were one-time-only and never came back. (The only ones I can think of are the AQ Gates and Battlefield Barrens.)

So... why exactly is any of that hard to do in WildStar? It's pretty run-of-the-mill questing from what I've seen.

WoW's story is gated behind books you have to buy. Actually translating the story in the game is piss poor and if you didn't read the books there are tons of holes which you can fill by going to a wiki.

[Viscoe]

WoW's story is gated behind books you have to buy. Actually translating the story in the game is piss poor and if you didn't read the books there are tons of holes which you can fill by going to a wiki.

I haven't bought a single one of the books and I'm perfectly happy and quite knowledgeable on the lore of WoW (barring 5.4+, I haven't played any of the quests on the Timeless Isle. Still waiting to know who the Bronze Dragonflight traitor is from my friends who play the game.)

How many times am I going to have to reiterate - it's not the over-arching story? Part of the story of MMORPGs is in the townsfolk. "My son went out to hunt crocodiles, and he hasn't returned. Can you maybe search for him?" and then you kill a croc and there's his shoe in the croc's belly.

And obviously I don't think the story telling in WoW is piss poor if I'm sitting here saying I like it. Aaaand I'm not alone, either.

As for there being a wiki... thanks for proving my point! The game wouldn't even have an ENTIRE WIKI RELATED TO LORE if it wasn't driven by story.

[Valeron]

before SWTOR (and TSW) came around, I thought the best story delivery was done by Guild Wars (the first game)