122452-the-great-unplayed-game

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Thanks for posting that, Evade. It was a great read. ^_^


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I logged into Entity today, at 1PM EST US time and it was a ghost town in leveling zones. I played for a time on a level 5, level 10, 15, and 20, and doubt I saw more than 20 players. Even the cities were barren of players. The most I saw in one place was 7 around crafting tables in the city. Are the only active zones the ones for level 50s? I am really enjoying this game and am glad I've come back, however, it's lonely. I'm just hoping it was empty on a weekend afternoon because everyone was out with their Valentine?


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I'm going to call BS on that statement (Bold) I was in Thayd at 1 PM EST and it was wall to wall people. Stop telling lies you F2P leech.


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This is pure ridiculousness. I call MAJOR BS on this, because that's my starting time for play everyday. And Thayd tends to be very populated. Even outside of the Academy Corner, I've seen people congregating. Not to mention the large amount of low levels I've seen whizzing by today alone on those blue tour quest mounts.

LOL! No. Just...no. If you mean 20% at best, then you'd have a point.


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I'm sorry, I have to take issue with this. I was just playing this afternoon and there were at least 30 or 40ish players (according to the "nearby players" counter) in Spaceport Alpha and the crafting areas. If Illium was getting those numbers, Thayd almost certainly was as well (if not, significantly more).


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Dude PvP'ers have become the minority so even though we've been dealing with these issues since launch and only recently had the gear score removed so we could queue up for PBG the PvE majority sees PvP as, "fine in its current state" when all evidence points otherwise. To them it's fine because it's a mini-game of some sort, they don't see it as end game content, or even game content in general (Some of these guys wanna do away with factions as a whole due to the lack of population, effectively killing every PvP server for good.) Anyways we'll see how things go later in the year. Soon™


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{| style="width: 100%;" Terrible logic... this thread is filled with it.

Yes, it's certainly being played.. by very few people. Quarterly reports don't lie, and before you ask, yes, revenue from subs is included in the quarterly report.

Perfect example of someone who is more concerned with retaining their favored payment model, rather than actually seeing their favored game have a chance to succeed.

One of the few people with common sense right here.

You know what's worse than a "bad"(matter of opinion) game? A dead and/or cancelled one.

I'm sorry, but do you not understand basic capitalism? How, exactly, do you think companies measure the success of a business model? Don't worry, I'll tell you: how successful (profitable) it is. Guess what kind of business model has proven to be most profitable? B2P/F2P. Notice how a game, such as GW2, brings in much more revenue than Wildstar, even though Wildstar has a subscription model. Whether you think the model is exploitative is irrelevant; it's proven to work, and that is all businesses care about. Gaming companies are a business, and games are their source of revenue. So, sorry to burst your bubble, but F2P is in fact a successful business model.


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You're completely missing the point. It's not the fact that people are leaving the game because there's a subscription fee, it's the fact that pretty much no one is coming to the game BECAUSE there's a subscription fee. Get it? Want proof? See: latest quarterly report.

Another person who actually gets it.

If Wildstar's business model were so perfect, they'd be bringing in much more revenue and subscribers. However, they haven't. Whether the model is best FOR YOU, the customer, is irrelevant. The success of the model is dependent upon the success that the actual business is having, which in this case, is very little.

Yes, keep telling people to go away, which is exactly what people like you have done since the game was released. How's that working out for you? Oh yeah, there's only one server in the U.S. right now, that's how well it has worked out for you.

Except, that's not the same thing as B2P. The game is still 1) advertised as a subscription model, 2) requires a subscription when you first start playing (when you can't afford CREDD), and 3) involves a business model (CREDD) that is completely unfamiliar to players from the outside looking in. People understand GW2's style of B2P. Wildstar's CREDD system is not nearly as obvious to those who don't already play.

Interesting. This game's PvP is terrible, and has a dwindling subscriber base. Yet you still seem to be one of those people who believes the PvP playerbase is trivial, despite evidence to the contrary.

Is Wildstar competing with the WoW from 10 years ago, or the WoW of today? Your argument is completely irrelevant. WoW also had 1) an established fan base due to their other games, and 2) released during a time where the MMO genre was stagnating.

No, you're looking at it the wrong way. It's the fact that the subscription model scares people from coming in, not the fact that it forces people out.


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Straw man of peace. You're completely biased from your point of view as a consumer. B2P/F2P isn't about making just your experience "better", it's about ease of access and, ultimately, providing a company like Carbine the revenue they need to keep this game from shutting down. $5 million a quarter isn't going to cut it for a studio as large as Carbine, or for NCSoft.

F2P doesn't just attract people who don't want to pay, it attracts people who buy off of impulse. The entire F2P model is based off of impulse purchasing, rather than sales based on commitment (subscriptions). F2P is so successful because impulse purchases are a well-known and studied concept. People are naturally wary of commitment, which includes subscribing to a game. It's much easier to get money from a customer once you allow them into your game and allow them to make impulse purchases, where they don't care if they spend several dollars to boost their XP for that gaming session and whatnot. F2P is about Carbine's/Wildstar's future success, not your personal preference.

Honestly don't even know where to start with this.. a little critical thinking will take you a long way. Are you really comparing a game like Wildstar and Carbine, a relatively unknown IP and studio, to WoW (Blizzard) and FF (Square)? Take a step back and realize how foolish your reasoning is. Both of those games and both of those companies have a large, firmly established fanbase that draws from years of prior titles. The situations aren't comparable in the slightest. ESO had strong initial sales because.. guess what? Elder Scrolls is a well-recognized franchise with a large, established fanbase. Wildstar never even had "massive" initial sales, I believe they were somewhere around the 450k range, which is far from "massive". Decent, not massive. The belief that the issue doesn't at least partly stem from P2P is ridiculous at best. As was already said before, the problem with subscriptions isn't that it forces people out, the problem is the fact that it scares people from coming in, which is evidenced by this game's small subscriber base and quarterly report.

You know what else slows down content updates? Studios having to fire half of their staff due to unsustainable revenues. Notice how Carbine's update pace has continually slowed-down already. Slower content isn't inherent to the F2P model, the problem lies solely on the studio and their policies once F2P is enacted. If the studio can gain more revenue from F2P while putting in half as much work, why wouldn't they? That has nothing to do with F2P itself.

Any population improvements you've seen since the patch are trivial at best; you only notice an improvement because the population is extremely low in the first place. Very few people outside of those who already play know of Wildstar's drops in the first place.

The quarterly reports don't lie, no matter how much you wish to ignore them. It's simply a fact that, by the numbers, the P2P system is a complete failure in Wildstar's case. It doesn't matter if it's the system either you or Carbine prefers. The game is down to one U.S. server, because the other is completely dead. These forums move at a snail's pace because hardly anyone posts here anymore. The revenues are poor. The evidence is right in your face, so I don't understand how you fail to see it.

Oh, the sweet, sweet irony.

Yeah, because F2P only applies to mobile games. GW2, a B2P game owned by NCSoft, runs circles around Wildstar in terms of revenue. Rift, a game that was dead in the water before it went F2P, is much more successful as well. But yeah, I definitely have no proof. Nice job ignoring my other post by the way.

Edited February 16, 2015 by BusterCasey


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Quoted for truth.

As someone who played LotRO from shortly after launch up through the 4th expansion, I'm not sure it should be held up as a shining example of F2P. The quality of the game had already started going downhill a few months before the F2P conversion. After the conversion, the quality of the game simply nosedived. Even if you subscribe, the in-game's store's presence is plastered over everything in the game, and the past two expansions have been fairly abysmal, to the point where they released only a small portion of the dungeon content they'd initially promised. But don't worry, they did find time to make these nifty new mounts. They'll be in-store for only a limited time, so grab them while you can! F2P games are great for people with limited or no income. I personally much prefer the quality that comes with subscription model games, though.


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I come back here to check in every now and again while my CREDD sub is still going (one more month). Very true that other games which have been out for a while still have vibrant leveling zones. Guild Wars 2 has people running all over in most of the zones and that's been out for years now.


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Big diff though, awhile back GW2 made a big big big change and put in mega severs. After that you had people running around everywhere. Its great lol.Before they put it in trust me it felt empty in those starting area's just like every other game.Alot of games are going this route however just to make things easier. Now it took alot for them to do this but people have brought up mega sever tech before. It's not an easy thing to just pull out lol.


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Prior to launch, Carbine's own statistics indicated that about 60-70% of their prospective playerbase would have a preference for solo content. How is creating an instance for a significantly large group of players stupid?


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