128107-why-wildstar-failed-a-tough-love-opinion-from-a-fan

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Heard about it before it even had a name and was just a new MMO from a new studio, and NCSoft was making an announcement. I do my best to follow the industry, and when something catches my eye I keep track of it. Ad campaigns are the very last thing to tell me about a new game, since I have ads blocked on my browser and don't watch much live broadcast TV. People love to say TV ads would suck more people into games as a way to condemn the work a developer has done for their promotion. The truth is the opposite. There's simply no way any company can sell a brand new game that needs explanation in a 30 second TV spot. You do it by working the game show circuit, you do it by winning awards, and you do it by putting out good demos that the game journalism sites can get behind. Wildstar did all of that, and had just the right amount of buzz. Comparing Wildstar to games from two series that have been around for decades and have built a fanbase is not going to make your point for you.


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I have to disagree hard with this one. For one, "Leveling" I wouldn't count as casual content. You level through the content once, at least. But what after? You are done, there is nothing, so you leave. Definitly not what a sub MMO wants. I also wouldn't count shiphands. Yes, they were there, but there was not reason to run them at max level. Why would you run a level 10 shiphand, even if you were downscaled you had more AMPs, more Skilltiers, more skillslots. And you also didn't get any worthwhile rewards. So what was there? Housing, I agree. But if you really want to do housing, you had to farm gold quite a bit in order to buy what you needed. Or had to farm challenges, which isn't that hard, but also luck based. Veteran Adventures were pretty hard at release, imo. Also, have fun finding a group with the "gold or bust" mentality that was there at release. So we still have Crimson Badlands and PvP. Wow, so much. Just take me for example. I really wanted to raid in this game. Leveled to max level, formed a guild group and we farmed gold adventures until our eyes bled out. All of us had pretty much all adventures items that dropped. So, what's next? Dungeons. Pretty hard, but doable. We managed to get Stormtalon silver after a few days of trying (I think our 3rd or 4th kill of Stormtalon got us silver) and then we went to Kel'Voreth. Beeeeeep, bugged second boss, dropping aggro pretty much every pull from the tank and twoshotting DPS. We tried that for some days and went of to Skullcano and wanted to wait for a fix. We got to the endboss and died again, time and time again. Now, remember, by this point in time, we were roughly 1 1/2+ months into the game. No more holidays, people had to start working again, so we weren't even able to run the dungeon each day. So, what was there if we didn't run the dungeon? PvP (which didn't interest me), Housing (which didn't interest me as much) and... Crimson Badlands and Northern Wastes. 2 Daily zones, each taking ~30 minutes to do. And that's boring as hell. I had so much fun when Blighthaven was released, at least for the ~3-4 hours it took me to quest through it. After that? Back to dailies and standing in Thayd, waiting for people to enter a dungeon. Sorry, but at that point in time, when I had barely anything to do (2 daily zones, basically), I didn't want to pay money for the game, so I canceled my sub. And this lack of solo PvE endgame content I think killed the game for many, especially since Carbine told everyone before the game even released, that most MMO players are solo players.


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I agree with this part...

But I disagree with this part.

And I partially agree but also partially disagree with this part. Because yes every game has WoW-tourists, but people over-estimate this factor too much. These days even WoW has WoW-tourists that just show up for a bit and then leave... So... As I see it, Carbine entered this development cycle when WoW was relatively new and people still remembered Everquest One's model... semi-fondly. But launched after WoW had pulled the rug out from under the industry. WoW didn't hit easy-mode and 'here is a shiny for doing the massively difficult task of making a character and bothering to log in' until the Wrath expansion. 2008 or so. Carbine's staff didn't pay enough attention to how the post Wrath era fundamentally changed the MMO dynamic. They DID pay attention to giving lots of shiny achievements for doing jack-all-nothing. I get achievements just for salvaging my own gear in this game... But they didn't pay attention to the 'everybody gets to do all the content and will be carried through the end - even when half the team is AFK - model of MMO design. Or rather... they paid attention to the part where every 3 months after an expansion, everybody quits WoW... and misread why. - They assumed it was because people got bored of easy. I think it was really that people got bored of... dull repetitive content. Now... I think Carbine is RIGHT that a lot of people don't want easy. Guild Wars 2 has succeeded with harder content than WoW's - in the open world and dungeons at least. While also not even bothering to provide raids... So people want some of the content to be harder. But apparently not the raids. What people want out of raids is content that is just as hard as standing in your garrison and beating up the birds that land on posts... but with more flashing lights on the screen. Where people want more difficulty... is in the open world, questing, and dungeons... the smaller scale content. Sure dedicated raiders want harder raids. But there are not many of those left because... most people age out of the time commitments of that, and won't age back in for another 40+ years... - So when it comes to raids... all they wanted was the same difficulty and time needs of... solo questing. But with bigger voice overs, enemies you can crotch-watch, and flashing lights... Bemoan it all you want... but WoW's LFR... is probably its most successful content... Watch all the crotches of giant cartoons you want, while half AFK, and get a shiny reward for it. People sign up for that, literally, by the millions. - But then they leave 3 months later because the rest of the content is either repeating that but while needing effort... or so easy even by that standard... and repetitive... it bores them. MMOs audience changed, thanks to the beast in the room changing it... I think today we have a flipped dynamic where people want harder regular PvE (open world, dungeons, etc...), but easier raids. Raiding is no longer seen as the pinnacle of 'work hard to get kicked in the face and like it'... these days every MMO player expects to get to go to the 'BFF Party' and see all the shiny lights and giant crotches...

Edited June 19, 2015 by Kichwas


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