108381-stages-of-an-mmo

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disclaimer : I didn't write this i just thought it would be good to share;  (original post : http://www.reddit.com/r/WildStar/comments/2diz5t/why_im_not_giving_up_on_wildstar/)
 
I absolutely hated this game before launch. Funny how times have changed. I've been playing MMO's for 15+ years, so i understand a lot of things about them i feel.
 
For me this game has everything i could possibly want from a MMO, that doesn't mean it can't improve or add other things. But considering its a fresh out of the gate game, its got a lot of stuff.
 
Comparing to WoW launch, W*'s has been smooth, you have a lot of the features that Blizzard (Over 10 years) has made a staple part of the MMO experience (i.e. LFG, Arena's, Dailies etc) and its also added to them in the forms of housing and warplots.
 
What a lot of people have to realise is that you will NEVER have another WoW. That game arrived at exactly the right time and the chances of that happening again become more slim with every year and MMO released. There is far too much niche and diverse MMO's that appeal to people now then ever before.
 
What you have to try and remember is that W* is literally 3-4 months old with a development time of roughly 9 years, WoW took the same amount of time to get to its current stage. So 9 years of not experiencing the troubles WoW went through to get to its current stage for me is a good thing and i experienced the last 10 years or so of WoW.
 
While some features are broken, bugged or just not working due to what ever reason, you have to give a flower time to grow, if you don't it'll die. What that means for me is if the community gives up on a game, they pull the plug and I'm sure a lot of people do not want this to happen.
 
So lets get to the core of the problem.
 
Server population is a real issue at the moment (i.e. feeling empty, not able to form raids and groups) and its partly our fault as the community and Carbines fault.
 
Its Carbines fault because they caved into the pressures of the community and knee jerk reacted to the overwhelming launch. They added more and more servers to allow people to play but they didn't look at the MMO cycle and provided too many servers before the lull. WoW avoided this somewhat by adding 1 server every so often and generally they came on a couple of months after the lull phase.
 
Its also our fault because we screamed about queues and we screamed for more servers and we got them, but we did not fully understand the cycle MMO's go through.
 
*The hype, where players are stoked for the game, telling all their friends and playing it to death. Something new is always exciting.
 
*The lull, when players get burn out, when some realise its not the game for them, when more bugs are highlighted and external influences force us to change.
 
*The enlightenment, when people realise the game will change, that the people who didn't like it have left and content is being added. And we get a feeling that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
 
*The plateau, when people are happy with the content, happy things are being addressed, happy happy happy.
 
We are currently in the lull phase, but approaching the enlightenment phase.
 
Now this is also the worst point for W*, because i feel they made this game with a higher population of players in mind (As evidenced by the raids and warplot sizes) and because we are struggling with the phase adjustment it also highlights some possible short comings that can be addressed. To have eased this transition they could have implemented 10 man raids and PvP warplots, this would have allowed many guilds to continue to raiding and pvp'ing as they shed players, regardless of if they wanted to raid 10 man or not. They also should (And are doing) change the attunement process, this was another feature made for higher population, but with the decline of population becomes harder and harder. All they have to do here is to make the attunement require more solo aspects (Like removing the world boss stuff or changing the world bosses), this way as the population declines you can still do content.
 
Should they merge the servers, probably. But they can't because that is a sign of a dying MMO and it'll had fuel to the fire. So Carbine is stuck between a rock and a hard place and neither action is preferable on either side.
 
Bugs
 
This section is very simple to understand, every single game regardless of single player or MMO have bugs and will always have bugs. If you don't understand this aspect of computer gaming then i suggest you spend your time understanding this. MMO's just like sandbox single player games like Skyrim are riddled with bugs, because when you invite thousands of players to "Go wild" on your game, you are opening your self up to avenues you had no idea existed. While you may think 100s of people have walked the same path as you, the reality is probably only 1-2 people might have and that your path through the game is unique and somewhat completely outside the realms of what the developers predicted.
 
No developer wants bugs in there games, but bugs in games are like bugs in real life, you can't get rid of them, you just have to deal with them.
 
Content
 
Content or lack thereof is something that takes time. For a fresh game it has a lot of content and they have already added 2 new pieces of content within the first 3 months. While you may not like it or enjoy it, i can guarantee there is just as many who do enjoy it. And regardless of your personal preference, its still content.
 
WoW started with so little content at launch its embarrassing, but over the years has added the content at a slower rate then what we are getting now. So let me restate that, WoW has added its 10 years of content at a slower rate then what we are currently getting our content in W*. If Carbine continue to produce content at this rate, it will surpass WoW's content pretty quickly.
 
And this brings me to the next point, the level of consumption of the content. People now consume the content faster and faster every day and its nearly impossible for a developer to keep up with the demands and yet we don't realise this and demand more and more to feed our hunger. There are 8 million people playing WoW and they haven't added any new content in over a year, yet people stick around and this is because they know content is coming. But we know content is coming that is only months away, not years and we are not happy with this?
 
There is this mentality that has developed over the years that you need to burn through the content as fast as possible, to get to max level for bragging rights, then use your higher level power to impose superiority over the people who haven't got there. Not taking in the journey and the world that has been made for you. I appreciate some people enjoy this, but when people ignore Sonder, they ultimately loose out. But its like eating the dinner your wife/mum made you as fast as possible, then strumming your fingers while everyone else catches up and you've got stitch from eating too fast.
 
Free to Play
 
I keep seeing this being thrown around like its going to be the saviour of the game, but you have to comprehend the damage that free to play brings.
 
Developers devolve from developing content to revenue developers, they need to make fluff content to at least get people to spend $5 on their cash shop and they lock the cool looking items behind a paywall. Then the meaty content like raids, dungeons, pvp, zones and new classes are left behind because you can't afford to risk the capital in adding those features. Then you are left with expansion packs for your meaty content and they come with increased cost and infrequency.
 
Free to play adds another level of toxicity to the game, people treat the game in a disposable way. Their commitment is all but gone and they take to doing unsavoury behaviour to achieve their goals. For example exploiting, scamming, trolling and other attitudes that they can get away with and all of this can be attributed to the disposability of F2P. For example, Dave creates 2 accounts, he exploits, scams and acts like a moron on 1 account and sends his ill gotten rewards to his other account, which he masquerades as a nice guy. While on one hand he is acting responsible, on the other he is hurting the community with his moronic account.
 
All this is aside to the obvious pay to win situation that generally quickly arises and changing of the game mechanics to be resold to you as boosts. For example XP boosts are generally sold under the impression they boost your XP, when in fact the developers lower the XP you get and then sell the boosts to you to inflate your XP gain back to the original amount. Same can be said for trade skill boosts, gold boosts and so on.
 
So with all of the above identified why am i sticking around? Its simple, no one wants to fail, especially when your family and livelihood rely upon the success of your product. And to even begin to think Carbine doesn't care is narrow minded.
 
This game is providing me with (IMO) the best MMO combat I've experienced, an enjoyable world, fun dungeons, challenging raids and content faster then i can consume, it will get better, because things very rarely get worse (Except SWTOR) and the more we support our game of enjoyment the more that game will flourish.
 
Thanks for reading.
 
 
 	
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As much as I wanted to like this post the moment you started using W* instead of WS or you know, Wildstar. I lost focus.
 
Can we please stop using this asinine asterisk to denote a word.  It's an asterisk, not a star.
 
As for your points, I think you should realize that even if we are in a lull phase the fact we have non existent customer support from ncsoft for any issue is going to act as a catalyst for every other issue. 	
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Thats my post and i already posted it here:
 
https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/108365-why-im-not-giving-up-on-wildstar/	
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This made me giggle...
It's a repost of a post that was reposted by the original poster. Repostception!	
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			What's the TLDR? The line spacing and formatting is too hardcore for my eyes.	
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Hey Folks, since this thread is already posted here, I'm locking the duplicate. Best to keep all information in one spot. :) 
 
- Team WildStar 	
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