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

Page 1, Page 2
== Content ==
			
Okay first off before anyone get's the wrong idea about this thread. I love Wildstar with a passion. I think it was THE BEST MMORPG to be released thus far. However mistakes were made which led to it's failure. Some of you are probably thinking "What do you mean wildstar has failed?!". 
 
Let me elaborate. There's two types of free to play MMORPG's out there. Those that are free to play from the start. Which wildstar isn't. And of course those that were originally pay to play and shifted to free to play because too few players. Which unfortunately is Wildstar. 
 
People who play MMORPG's think of the latter type of free to play as a failed game and before you all get upset and raging let me explain. Most people like to save money. That's a given however the cons of a free to play typically outweigh the pros. First off too many Free to plays eventually become pay to wins. (That means you pay real money for maybe a piece of gear or some tangible benefit that makes your character stronger that is either difficult to obtain just playing the game or even impossible to gain any other way. This isn't such a bad thing in a PVE environment but for PVP it's terrible.) 
 
There are also two types of people attracted to the free to play model. Good players that are just broke. (The minority roughly 15 to 20%) and the bum players, bad, selfish, rude, or just children too young to have access to a credit card. (The 85 to 80% Majority.) 
 
The quality of an MMORPG suffers very quickly once it goes free to play. Two things affect the quality of an MMORPG. First would be the game itself, the content the lack of bugs etc all stuff that is under the developer's control. The second would be the player community which is not within the developer's control. Moderation is heavily required to keep a decent watch of any free to play community which ironically requires more staff. In short more money, however because it's gone free to play money is obviously limited.
 
Pay to play typically reduces the types of players who get in to people who work and are mature enough to know how to behave. And the lil kids who managed to steal their parent's credit card while they weren't looking. Thankfully this set up makes the bad rude players the minority and the pleasant chaps the majority. 
 
 
 
So what was the mistakes Wildstar made. Well.... The first and BIGGEST mistake would be the timing of the launch. World of warcraft is the largest MMORPG out there. So in releasing so close to the expansion it was the MMORPG akin to building a mom and pop store directly next to the site where a Walmart Super center is about to open at the same exact time. 
 
Wow is too big to compete with directly. If any MMORPG is to compete successfully with Wow they need to hit Wow when it's weak. The Wow selfie Patch would have been a perfect time for launch. Hell even right now Wow is losing Subs at a rate of about a Million a Month. 
 
 
The second biggest mistake would be the lack of promotion and advertisements. I'll be frank. I've seen TV commercials for Wow. I've even seen TV commercials for Eve online. Even cheap cellphone garbage games have commercials. Word of Mouth promotion is cheap and sucks. People have only so many friends. And fewer that will try a video game they recommend. I haven't seen banner ads, commercials, etc. The people who know of Wildstar are those who were already MMORPG players and big into the Genre to begin with. 
 
Hell an decent ad campaign could have easily saved Wildstar so many times it wasn't funny. When people where complaining non stop about how much WOD was a rip off during talks of the Selfie patch a few commercials here and there could have won over a few million players easy. Or when players found out they were getting the same exact Garrison nonsense with the Port and ship features. You could  have gotten an easy 5 Million players. 
 
When wow players are excited about a new expansion that's when you should wait. Delay launch etc. Use the time to add in more content etc. When wow players are full of disgust and discontent that's when you should launch. That's when you should break out the ad campaign. Hell you could have simply said for a WS commercial. "No Selfie Cameras on Nexus!" 
 
Personally I thought the gameplay the races, classes and especially the player housing was all amazing. The content feels more hardcore then wow without being too difficult. The failure of Wildstar doesn't rely in the game itself but rather the timing of launch and the lack of promotion. 
 
 
For those of you who believe I'm just being a naysayer or don't know what I'm talking about. Watch. You'll see more players being jerks to you. More players attempting to cheat. More players asking you for game currency. ETC. I've seen it happen a million times. I watched SWTOR go from an amazing friendly community to 4chan with lightsabers. 	
----
			
I always thought the issues were pretty obvious.
 
Lack of casual level 50 content (now we have contracts and vet shiphands)
 
Hardcore in the wrong ways (attunement was too much, grinding was too much. Nerf to both of these aspects caused happy players today)
 
Bugs a plenty and poor optimization caused the game to run poorly on even high end gaming machines (optimization much better and bugs have by and large been fixed. Not perfect, but a million times better than launch)
 
Also 40 mans were just always a bad idea. Sorry not sorry (now all 20 man, A+ carbine)
 
That's it really. But I mean, what's the phrase, beating a dead horse? We all know what the problems were, and we've seen them fixed. It's unfortunate that it wasnt addressed in beta, but it is what it is.
 
Edit: grammars
			
				
	Edited June 17, 2015 by Kezra	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I always thought the issues were pretty obvious.
 
Lack of casual level 50 content (now we have contracts and vet shiphands)
Hardcore in the wrong ways (attunement was too much, grinding was too much. Nerf to both of these aspects caused happy players today)
Bugs a plenty and poor optimization caused the game to run poorly on even high end gaming machines (optimization much better and bugs have by and large been fixed. Not perfect, but a million times better than launch)
Also 40 mans were just always a bad idea. Sorry not sorry (now all 20 man, A+ carbine)
 
That's it really. But I mean, what's the phrase, beating a dead horse? We all know what the problems were, and we've seen them fixed. It's unfortunate that it wasnt addressed in beta, but it is what it is.
 
Edit: grammars
----
			This information is new and intriguing. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I always thought the issues were pretty obvious.
 
Lack of casual level 50 content (now we have contracts and vet shiphands)
Hardcore in the wrong ways (attunement was too much, grinding was too much. Nerf to both of these aspects caused happy players today)
Bugs a plenty and poor optimization caused the game to run poorly on even high end gaming machines (optimization much better and bugs have by and large been fixed. Not perfect, but a million times better than launch)
Also 40 mans were just always a bad idea. Sorry not sorry (now all 20 man, A+ carbine)
 
That's it really. But I mean, what's the phrase, beating a dead horse? We all know what the problems are, and we've seen them fixed. It's unfortunate that it wasn't addressed in beta, but it is what it is.
----
			
WildStar's problem is that it catered to the "we want old wow back" and "we want large scale content" crowd too hard.Thus we ended up with 40 player raids and no one to fill them.Ontop of that, god awful attunement design and nothing to do outside of raids.
Roster Boss+Carbine not understanding the market=WildStar had to revamp heavily.	
----
			
Merku, how should anyone not involved in the development of WoW could have know about the 6.1 patch content? Also, Wildstar released when there was no new content in WoW for ~1 year. And WoD was still several months away. I highly doubt that the lack of advertisement and launch date where the problems. I myself left after 2 months because my group was still on the attunement quest, but when we had no time to do it (because of work) I had exactly 2 daily areas as a solo player. Of course there is PvP and Housing, but if you are not interested in those and are interested in PvE, endgame solo content was practically non existant at launch. Group content was so hard you needed a premade group in order to get the attunement done. 
 
You can say what you want, but for many types of players WoD had more endgame. I went back to that but also left pretty soon (main reason for that was that my guild died during MoP). Even as boring as the Apexis dailies were compared to other dailies, it was still more fun and more content for solo players than what WS had at release. Now that has changed quite a bit, but it's been a year since launch.	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I always thought the issues were pretty obvious.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
But if you compare the WS end game content to the WOD endgame experience you'd notice. Yes WS is flawed. However WOD more so. WS felt like there was only a lil to outside of raids. While WOD had nothing, absolutely nothing.  
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Merku, how should anyone not involved in the development of WoW could have know about the 6.1 patch content? Also, Wildstar released when there was no new content in WoW for ~1 year. And WoD was still several months away. I highly doubt that the lack of advertisement and launch date where the problems. I myself left after 2 months because my group was still on the attunement quest, but when we had no time to do it (because of work) I had exactly 2 daily areas as a solo player. Of course there is PvP and Housing, but if you are not interested in those and are interested in PvE, endgame solo content was practically non existant at launch. Group content was so hard you needed a premade group in order to get the attunement done. 
 
You can say what you want, but for many types of players WoD had more endgame. I went back to that but also left pretty soon (main reason for that was that my guild died during MoP). Even as boring as the Apexis dailies were compared to other dailies, it was still more fun and more content for solo players than what WS had at release. Now that has changed quite a bit, but it's been a year since launch.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I will never not be bitter that all these things were improved and people still refused to acknowledge the game. :(
----
			
i like wildstar.
like i enjoy a B movie...
 
i know it aint going to be a big expansive thing with lots of hype like a blockbuster movie, i also know its not something deeper and more intricate/unique like a director's movie.
 
if you are ok with that, wildstar didn't "fail".
 
you just have to realize that wildstar is a smaller, yet very expensive game.
f2p is perfect for them. they can make a few buck and pump out small content updates once in a while. keep it low profile and have their lunch money.
 
i think expectations needs to be lowered. then you can realize that wildstar is fun even if it can't be a big thing. its fun for what it is.
but i honestly feel i've paid way too much (box+1y sub) for this game...
			
				
	Edited June 17, 2015 by Avatar111	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
i like wildstar.
like i enjoy a B movie...
 
i know it aint going to be a big expansive thing with lots of hype like a blockbuster movie, i also know its not something deeper and more intricate/unique like a director's movie.
 
if you are ok with that, wildstar didn't "fail".
 
you just have to realize that wildstar is a smaller, yet very expensive game.
f2p is perfect for them. they can make a few buck and pump out small content updates once in a while. keep it low profile and have their lunch money.
 
i think expectations needs to be lowered.
----
			
Said it long ago and will say it again...
 
Chua Warriors would've made all of this go away.	
----
			Just fyi, WoW announced their xpac launch date after Wildstar. They're the ones that did counter programming, and WS doesn't have any control over that. You can't change a launch date once you give it, that sends a far worse message.Besides, WS had plenty of people at launch. There were issues with PvP and raiding attunement that made it hard to keep them, but they were here.	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
i know it aint going to be a big expansive thing with lots of hype like a blockbuster movie, i also know its not something deeper and more intricate/unique like a director's movie.
 
if you are ok with that, wildstar didn't "fail".
----
			
I've always felt wildstar didn't advertise enough. They were largely a word of mouth thing. I even said in the original f2p feedback thread that a payment model change won't matter if the game doesn't have more visibility. But this also works in our favor. There are a LOT of gamers that have never heard of wildstar. A lot of wow players haven't either. Its never brought up anymore. It's why id love to see it on steam, although we haven't seen any confirmation of that.
 
Also, wildstar already launched during mists of pandaria's biggest downtime. It launched at like the 10month mark of the orgrimmar raid. That's still a great time to launch. But realistically wow players using other games while they wait for new wow content are unlikely to fully switch, so I would have expected to lose those people anyway when Warlorfs launched.
 
Edit to clarify:
 
I don't think advertising was ever the biggest issue. Especially because there were enough players at launch, but realistically they didn't advertise and need to now. People don't remember the game.
			
				
	Edited June 17, 2015 by Kezra	
----
			
Yeah, while your post is obviously passionate and well-conceived, as others have said, you missed the really important stuff.
 
1. The #Hardcore Mentality: As someone who has been here since early beta, I can safely say this is the NUMERO UNO cause of people being turned off of the game. Sure, a lot of people SAY they want hardcore, uber-challenging content, but the truth is "not so much." The dedication to 40 man content (PVP and PVE), the painful (and buggy) attunement process, the wacky ways runes and RNG worked at launch, the unspoken "if you're not planning to raid, then maybe this isn't for you" way they spoke to us. It all accumulated into a a mass exodus.
 
2. The Dearth of #Casual Content: Because of Point #1, the game launched with NOTHING for a non-dedicated PVE player to do. No Contracts, no daily zones to speak of, no vet shiphands. Nothing, unless you wanted to PVP (lol) or RP/Housing. Humorously enough, when the bottom fell out of the PVE scene, when the PVPers fled in droves, when the #hardcores ran away like roaches when the lights come on ... you know who stuck it out? Yeah. The RPers and Housing people. Funny how that panned out, innit?
 
3. Optimization. A LOT of people found their new, top-end rigs couldn't run this game, and because it was still new, there were too few solutions or work-arounds. Man of these issues still persist a year later. Seriously, check the Player or Tech Help forums, tons of "Why won't my PC run this game?" posts.
 
4. The Scattered Populace. This should probably be Point #2 since once people started bailing, the smaller servers quickly became a self-fulfilling prophecy of "Where is everyone? Oh well, I may as well leave this ghost town!"  Those days are the reason people TO THIS DAY say "the game is dead" ... because they were on servers with nothing but tumbleweeds. It took WAY WAY too long for the mega-merge and free transfers. By the time they got around to acknowledging the issues, everyone was already gone.
 
5. PR Missteps and Ignoring Parts of the Community: The Humble Bundle fiasco is just the latest in a long, trailing line of chances that Carbine blew. The Loyalty Reward debacle. Giving the RPers and RP-PVPers a big, fat finger at EVERY OPPORTUNITY. These things and more each caused a few people here, a few there, to just walk away in disgust.
 
I'd put advertising and competing with WoW *way way* down at the bottom of this list. Sure, they could have timed launch a little better, but kowtowing the competition is never (well, rarely) a good idea. That puts you in a submissive situation, where your smaller company is going to try to fit in between the cracks, instead of standing strong on your own merits.	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Just fyi, WoW announced their xpac launch date after Wildstar. They're the ones that did counter programming, and WS doesn't have any control over that. You can't change a launch date once you give it, that sends a far worse message.
 
Besides, WS had plenty of people at launch. There were issues with PvP and raiding attunement that made it hard to keep them, but they were here.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
5. PR Missteps and Ignoring Parts of the Community: The Humble Bundle fiasco is just the latest in a long, trailing line of chances that Carbine blew.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
 Getting trolling and teasing replies. 
 
----
			I think if launch had vet shiphands, current gear itemization, and the current rune system, the game would not be going F2P right now.	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Okay first off before anyone get's the wrong idea about this thread. I love Wildstar with a passion. I think it was THE BEST MMORPG to be released thus far. However mistakes were made which led to it's failure. Some of you are probably thinking "What do you mean wildstar has failed?!". 
 
Let me elaborate. There's two types of free to play MMORPG's out there. Those that are free to play from the start. Which wildstar isn't. And of course those that were originally pay to play and shifted to free to play because too few players. Which unfortunately is Wildstar. 
 
People who play MMORPG's think of the latter type of free to play as a failed game and before you all get upset and raging let me explain. Most people like to save money. That's a given however the cons of a free to play typically outweigh the pros. First off too many Free to plays eventually become pay to wins. (That means you pay real money for maybe a piece of gear or some tangible benefit that makes your character stronger that is either difficult to obtain just playing the game or even impossible to gain any other way. This isn't such a bad thing in a PVE environment but for PVP it's terrible.) 
 
There are also two types of people attracted to the free to play model. Good players that are just broke. (The minority roughly 15 to 20%) and the bum players, bad, selfish, rude, or just children too young to have access to a credit card. (The 85 to 80% Majority.) 
 
The quality of an MMORPG suffers very quickly once it goes free to play. Two things affect the quality of an MMORPG. First would be the game itself, the content the lack of bugs etc all stuff that is under the developer's control. The second would be the player community which is not within the developer's control. Moderation is heavily required to keep a decent watch of any free to play community which ironically requires more staff. In short more money, however because it's gone free to play money is obviously limited.
 
Pay to play typically reduces the types of players who get in to people who work and are mature enough to know how to behave. And the lil kids who managed to steal their parent's credit card while they weren't looking. Thankfully this set up makes the bad rude players the minority and the pleasant chaps the majority. 
 
 
 
So what was the mistakes Wildstar made. Well.... The first and BIGGEST mistake would be the timing of the launch. World of warcraft is the largest MMORPG out there. So in releasing so close to the expansion it was the MMORPG akin to building a mom and pop store directly next to the site where a Walmart Super center is about to open at the same exact time. 
 
Wow is too big to compete with directly. If any MMORPG is to compete successfully with Wow they need to hit Wow when it's weak. The Wow selfie Patch would have been a perfect time for launch. Hell even right now Wow is losing Subs at a rate of about a Million a Month. 
 
 
The second biggest mistake would be the lack of promotion and advertisements. I'll be frank. I've seen TV commercials for Wow. I've even seen TV commercials for Eve online. Even cheap cellphone garbage games have commercials. Word of Mouth promotion is cheap and sucks. People have only so many friends. And fewer that will try a video game they recommend. I haven't seen banner ads, commercials, etc. The people who know of Wildstar are those who were already MMORPG players and big into the Genre to begin with. 
 
Hell an decent ad campaign could have easily saved Wildstar so many times it wasn't funny. When people where complaining non stop about how much WOD was a rip off during talks of the Selfie patch a few commercials here and there could have won over a few million players easy. Or when players found out they were getting the same exact Garrison nonsense with the Port and ship features. You could  have gotten an easy 5 Million players. 
 
When wow players are excited about a new expansion that's when you should wait. Delay launch etc. Use the time to add in more content etc. When wow players are full of disgust and discontent that's when you should launch. That's when you should break out the ad campaign. Hell you could have simply said for a WS commercial. "No Selfie Cameras on Nexus!" 
 
Personally I thought the gameplay the races, classes and especially the player housing was all amazing. The content feels more hardcore then wow without being too difficult. The failure of Wildstar doesn't rely in the game itself but rather the timing of launch and the lack of promotion. 
 
 
For those of you who believe I'm just being a naysayer or don't know what I'm talking about. Watch. You'll see more players being jerks to you. More players attempting to cheat. More players asking you for game currency. ETC. I've seen it happen a million times. I watched SWTOR go from an amazing friendly community to 4chan with lightsabers. 
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I think if launch had vet shiphands, current gear itemization, and the current rune system, the game would not be going F2P right now.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
The amount of times I think "imagine if wildstar launched in drop 5 condition"
 
/swoon
----
			Realistically, delayed launch probably wouldn't have given drop 5 results. We'd probably be at drop 3's status if anything. They'd also still try pushing out content once a month which would have gone badly.
			
				
	Edited June 17, 2015 by Naix	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
 Though honestly I think they could have gotten away with delay. 
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Realistically, delayed launch probably wouldn't have given drop 5 results. We'd probably be at drop 3's status if anything. They'd also still try pushing out content once a month which would have gone badly.
----
			
I don't think you'd have ever had a drop 5 with more time. They needed the feedback to adjust the game and make sure it was fun, and you just can't test that without putting it out there.
 
Now Vet Shiphands were something they'd have put in with more time (they were clearly intended fro the beginning), but the itemization, runes, 40 man raid- while people may have said these things weren't going to work, it's hard to know from a limited number of voices whether they would or not. They had to get the volumes of feedback. This is the way games like this work- it's just near impossible to nail right out of the gate.
 
And I'm a casualty of that- not for this game, but SWTOR. I didn't make it past the first month. What kept me in WS was that the things that I care about most they nailed (combat and group content). I totally see why other people left, though.	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Let me ask you something. How did you hear of WS? How many WS commercials or Ads do you recall seeing? Did you first hear of WS from a commercial or did you just stumble upon the really old youtube video or talk about it on some website about MMORPGs? When I talk to my co-workers. People know of Wow. They know of Elder scrolls online. The moment I say Wildstar they look at me and ask. "What console is that for?" 
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Let me ask you something. How did you hear of WS? How many WS commercials or Ads do you recall seeing? Did you first hear of WS from a commercial or did you just stumble upon the really old youtube video or talk about it on some website about MMORPGs? When I talk to my co-workers. People know of Wow. They know of Elder scrolls online. The moment I say Wildstar they look at me and ask. "What console is that for?" 
----
			I heard about WS the exact same way I heard about WoW- my sister told me about it.	
----
			
Anyone who says this game didn't have enough people at launch obviously wasn't here to see it, and thus, we can discount their input.
 
This game was PACKED at launch. Servers were filling up, queues were in the HOURS at peak times and hardware was crashing under the strain.
 
Seriously, it wasn't the awful launch that Archeage was, but it didn't miss it by much.	
----
			
I heard about wildstar because someone posted about it on the wow forums. 
 
The reason I even looked into it was because the name sounded so out there. Watched the cinematic trailer (was only 2013 when I heard of the game so, not too much info yet) and fell in love.	
----
			
If you think the main reasons for the game's 'failure' are just a poorly timed launch and a lack of promotion, then I'm afraid you're in denial of the other significant issues.
 
I've tried so hard to love the game since beta, there's so much about the game which appeals. I really wanted it to succeed and have tried to spread the word among friends. But those who tried it walked away pretty rapidly and I've had to take several extended breaks from the game myself when the flaws frustrated me more than the gameplay entertained. Flaws such as:
 
1) The hardcore or GTFO attitude of both the development team and the community. Group-oriented, hardcore content walled behind a lengthy attunement is fine if that's your thing. But not at the expense of / absence of more casual content. Hardcore players are not numerous enough to support a game alone, you must cater for everyone. This has improved, with content like Veteran Shiphands, but it's still too little too late. And more needs to be done if the new players that arrive with F2P are to be retained as the game still isn't really casual friendly.
 
2) Poorly conceived PvP. Too many issues to go into here, but class balance problems, poor battleground design and the general hardcore mentality are among them. End result, too many PvP'ers walked away.
 
3) Poor optimisation. The art and gameplay are wonderful, but for too much of the game's lifespan they have been hampered by poor performance even on decent spec machines. This has improved, but it's still sub par compared to other titles.
 
4) The UI. It's a mess. It's as if designed by some mad scientist, which might fit the game's lore, but it doesn't make the game very playable. The UI is capable of a lot and has a lot of features tucked away. But it's all so messy and the game really suffers from 'too much information' syndrome. Again, it's been improved but it's still not in the right place. It doesn't need to strip down to the level of ESO or dumb down to the simplicity of WoW, but it does need to be better organised, more polished, easier to customise.
 
5) The server / population fiasco. They should have launched with megaservers. All the chaos over name reservation, server mergers, renaming and then ghost PvP servers has been a disaster.
 
The game still has a future if they handle the F2P transition properly and start to make the game accessible for all types of players. This doesn't have to mean the dumbing down of the hardcore content, just a widening of the scope of the game to encompass more types of players in the future.	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
 
Wildstar didn't fail. Losing ~91% of their initial earnings was only a tactical business decision.
 
----
			
I thought this was going to be another WIldstar bashing post, turns out its another WoW bashing post.
 
they are both bad games no need to fight about it :P
 
MMO's in general are not great, innovative nests of gaming creativity.
			
				
	Edited June 17, 2015 by Galactic007	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
oh! yes i think Wildstar failed at being a "blockbuster". i also said i think it cost me too much to play it and that it was overly expensive for what it is.
 
i just swallowed the pill since then, lowered my expectation, and see it as a small/fun f2p game, which i think suits it more.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Said it long ago and will say it again...
 
Chua Warriors would've made all of this go away.
----
			
OK just my opinions
 
At launch Wildstar had the players it had the hype, it never had a finished game! Wildstar was nothing more than a beta till drop 4, poor design and a broken game lead to most players leaving in the first 2 months.
 
Carbine have a really poor PR and community team once any sort of negative feedback starts rolling in, they just shut up shop, this in turn lead to more players leaving. By shutting up shop they staved the players of information, so players searched the internet only to be greeted with dead game, and the less Carbine said the more the problem grew resulting in even more players leaving.
 
 
All we can do now is look to the future and hope, fingers crossed Carbine don't mess this up! If they don't change their ways and generate constant interest F2P will follow the same trend, mass influx then mass departures.
 
My strange thought of the day
 
Wildstar failed because of very poor management, blame Carbine or blame NCSOFT guess we will never know? Or did it fail ? Maybe F2P was always the target and NCSOFT just used us to generate some income till the game and model was ready? That may sound daft till you look into NCSOFTS history of not supporting loss making games.  	
----
			
There are also two types of people attracted to the free to play model. Good players that are just broke. (The minority roughly 15 to 20%) and the bum players, bad, selfish, rude, or just children too young to have access to a credit card. (The 85 to 80% Majority.)
 
^ im sorry but those numbers are made up on the spot
 
Pay to play typically reduces the types of players who get in to people who work and are mature enough to know how to behave. And the lil kids who managed to steal their parent's credit card while they weren't looking. Thankfully this set up makes the bad rude players the minority and the pleasant chaps the majority.
 
^ lol wut you ever seen the WoW comunity ?	
----
			
Sigh.
 
Here's the reason -- and the only reason -- WildStar and every other game since WoW failed to meet expectations: Players have equity in other games (namely WoW) that they are unwilling to give up.
 
No matter how much better the new game is, it still doesn't have their equity in progress and achievements and friends. Same reason Facebook will never be over-taken by better services like Google+ - people simply won't leave even something terrible if their equity can't come with them.	
----
			
(my tough love fan opinion I guess)
 
Earliest point I heard of this game, I fell in love with it. The very IDEA is what made me excited, the advertisements made me want to love the game!
 
When played during the beta weekend however... 
 
It was a mess of conflicting emotions. To really love the game I would have to basically admit to myself "I really wanna spend hours of frustration dealing with possible gamebreaking bugs and terrible UI"
 
I didn't want to. So I played ESO instead.
 
ESO by all means is amazing in how it just lends itself to playability (story based quest lines that tour you accross the enviroment, shared bank, free-form character development with specific classes that can dip into all of the MMO 'trinity', simple and rewarding crafting that can be done by any character, a UI that was beautifully elegant from the start). 
 
That is my most positive thought about it though, ESO was great because it was a playable MMO experience without all the boring 'paperwork' that MMOs tend to have.
 
Wildstar scared me away because it at first glance gave me that 'Uh oh, paperwork MMO' Which I hoped it wasn't given the advertisements for the game. 
 
I left ESO mainly because 1. Boredom. 2. Frustration with the aesthetics. (Something is wrong when Heavy armor appears tighter and less bulky upon the character than the light armor does)
 
I rejoined Wildstar later on because 1. PSO2 is never coming stateside. 2. I had someone to play with. 3. the Chua
 
At my most cynical, I am playing this game because I want to 'enjoy it while it lasts' in a sort of 'close enuff of the game I want' kind of thing. 
 
At my most positive, I am playing this game because I believe this game has HUUUGE potential. The game itself is like the best kept secret of the PC gaming world. Like that secret spot at the beach nobody goes to and has a great view. I want to share it with others.
 
Unfortunately at a certain point it seems like given everything from launch till now, that 'beach' seems riddled with junk washed up on shore and trying to extols the virtues of said 'beach' makes me look like a crazy person.
 
And that is a problem. It feels like you HAVE to be a crazy person to like this game. That should not be the case, ever. This game should lend itself to BE loved. It WANTS to be loved but the forces of the tide keep bringing back the garbage every time.
 
It was easy to love ESO because it took away the stress of playing an MMO while still playing one.
 
Wildstar in my mind should at least strive for something similar. There is so much competing for people's time these days. Why should Wildstar at any point take my time for granted?	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I always thought the issues were pretty obvious.
 
Lack of casual level 50 content (now we have contracts and vet shiphands)
 
Hardcore in the wrong ways (attunement was too much, grinding was too much. Nerf to both of these aspects caused happy players today)
 
Bugs a plenty and poor optimization caused the game to run poorly on even high end gaming machines (optimization much better and bugs have by and large been fixed. Not perfect, but a million times better than launch)
 
Also 40 mans were just always a bad idea. Sorry not sorry (now all 20 man, A+ carbine)
 
That's it really. But I mean, what's the phrase, beating a dead horse? We all know what the problems were, and we've seen them fixed. It's unfortunate that it wasnt addressed in beta, but it is what it is.
 
Edit: grammars
----
			
 Timing doesn't matter to much when it comes to wow launches.. they have a track record of releasing content on other mmo launch dates been that way for years. Which is probably why eso and ws waited till it was close to launch to actually announce the dates.. previous games announced it long before they launched giving blizzard plenty of time to create a competitive strategy. 
 
You know if you think about it wow probably holds the title for biggest launch fail as well.. since their expac lost close to 3 mill subs in just a few months.. I dont think very many mmos even started out with that many players when they crashed and burned yet alone lose that many subs in just 3 months.... :D
 
I think its safe to say the majority of us know why things turned out the way they did for this game.
			
				
	Edited June 18, 2015 by Rebel Angel	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
How is it less grindy now than it was then? I've only been back for a short amount of time, but it doesn't feel much better.
 
1. Amps/Ability Points still a grind. A variable grind thats shorter than 11 months but still not one I'd like to repeat on more than 1 toon.
2. Gold Medal Adventures still don't gurantee purples and to my knowledge still have the socket wonkiness (though to be fair I have yet to see another purple drop yet). I get that they were never "Required" but arent adventures the logical step between shiphands and dungeons? Did they forget to touch the itemization here? I ran a lowbie shiphand and even that dropped a purple from completion and it wasn't even vet or gold. It literally feels like they forgot to go back and address adventures?
3. PvP is just confusing. Medium + High level PvP gear uses same currency, so why would anyone bother getting the cheaper items rather than wait and be "carried" by players and get teh good gear right off the bat? This is less a "grind" problem, just an observation. 
----
			How was Wildstar close to WoWs expansion date? Unless I'm missing something wildstar launched in june and warlords was in November 	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Sigh.
 
Here's the reason -- and the only reason -- WildStar and every other game since WoW failed to meet expectations: Players have equity in other games (namely WoW) that they are unwilling to give up.
 
No matter how much better the new game is, it still doesn't have their equity in progress and achievements and friends. Same reason Facebook will never be over-taken by better services like Google+ - people simply won't leave even something terrible if their equity can't come with them.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
How was Wildstar close to WoWs expansion date? Unless I'm missing something wildstar launched in june and warlords was in November 
----
			
My only problem with this game is the Subscription model, where there are bunch of game like this that doesn't require you to pay monthly / do excessive grind to keep your account "alive". That's why i prefer Guild Wars 2 after trying this game for a month.
 
Also sad population count on Warhound server that require me to que for 3 hour plus teleporting & whispering to everyone for a decent veteran dungeon stroll.	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
My only problem with this game is the Subscription model, where there are bunch of game like this that doesn't require you to pay monthly / do excessive grind to keep your account "alive"
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Gah, sorry, I know it doesnt really matter. But credd was stupid cheap early on. I believe it was going for like 2 or 3 plat at one point? it was super easy to get a year of credd off the AH and go freesies.
 
And now (NA at least) its usually be tween 15-20p which is easy to grind ever since vet shiphands came out.
 
That said, I dont like having to think about that myself, and I have the money, so I just pay. But I find it weird when people call credd a grind :S
----
			
I'm going to buck trend here and ask...
 
Wildstar may have shrunk a lot, but has it failed?
 
All the people posting in here are, I assume, still here.
 
Even since switching to Dominion a week ago I'm still seeing zones full of people an a good number in the capital. And while slow, queues for dungeons while leveling do pop for me - though I am also willing to always queue in both specs.
 
The game isn't dead - its just smaller. But I see a lot of people announcing they are returning. I'm not sure if that is new or something that's always been there - as I am one of them who has returned recently.
			
				
	Edited June 18, 2015 by Kichwas	
----
			
     I can imagine a group of people discussing the development of a game sometime in the not too distant future.          "Ok, here's the game that I think will totally rock.  Remember that one game that we all played that had the huge raids, and the massive attument process that showed everyone who the most dedicated players were?  Just to get into the raids it was like a full time job!  Raiders were the ones who mattered in the game, 'raid or die' was the idea back then and we can make that sort of game again!  It'll be epic!'
     The speaker looks around the room for a reaction.  After a long pause one person leans forwards. 'So you totally want to 'Wildstar' our game?  Really?'	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Wildstar may have shrunk a lot, but has it failed?
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I'm going to buck trend here and ask...
 
Wildstar may have shrunk a lot, but has it failed?
 
All the people posting in here are, I assume, still here.
 
Even since switching to Dominion a week ago I'm still seeing zones full of people an a good number in the capital. And while slow, queues for dungeons while leveling do pop for me - though I am also willing to always queue in both specs.
 
The game isn't dead - its just smaller. But I see a lot of people announcing they are returning. I'm not sure if that is new or something that's always been there - as I am one of them who has returned recently.
----
			Freeebots, Tex. Freebots.	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Freeebots, Tex. Freebots.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
"Fail" is too strong a word, but it certainly didn't achieve the vision that Carbine went after. Not being able to sustain a sub model is an indicator of that.
 
Is F2P inevitable in today's market? Well, maybe. I'm not sure. It's hard to be "good enough" for a sub model right out of the gate. If WS had been drop 5 out of the gate, could a sub model have worked? I'd like to think so. But I also wanted to think that it was on the upswing in Q1 and clearly the financials didn't bear that out, so it's hard for me to be honest about the difference between how I think things should be and what is realistic :)
 
In terms of what "should" be, for my tastes WS was "good enough" right out of the gate. I would have been happy to play it as it was at launch (assuming some bug fixes along the way), but clearly I'm in the minority on that score :)
 
For me, launch was a great game, drop 4 pushed it into the upper echelon, and drop 5 put me over the moon.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Same with me. The game at launch was perfect as far as I'm concerned... it's what sold me and kept me sold.
 
Short of any obvious bug fixes like you mention, there really weren't any gameplay tweaks needed. I was fine with the way itemization worked, for example. I was *really* fine with the way medals and attainment worked. I was quite fine with the 100 plat Strain board.
 
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Heh. Yeah. That makes two of you.
 
How'd that work out for y'all, anyway?
 
Oh yeah. Nevermind.  :lol: ;)
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
It's why I feel new players are the future, and returning players aren't of much value.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Pretty much how I feel about the type of player who believes that only they are right and that 100,000 other people are just wrong - but let's not get into that. We just started getting along. :lol:
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
The game at launch was perfect as far as I'm concerned... it's what sold me and kept me sold.
----
			
the game is too generic when it comes to the core design.
 
you can play eso or gw2 and hop in world pvp like "instantly".
in wildstar its a drag thru the group finder "if it ever happens" and its almost always the same experience because the maps are so small and boring and the objectives too simple and the builds too obvious and few.
 
gearing up ? its about 1 stat dude. "1" stat.
they could just put 3 stat in the game: attack, defence, heal
and it would be the same.
 
the pve? well.. in the end you only do the raids.
maybe repeat some dungeons once in a while for a contract.. but since there is only 5 dungeons and some take like 2 hours, it quickly becomes a chore.
 
alts? well... there is only 1 very linear story line after level 15ish.
game is on rail...
you might play a toon on the othe faction if you want different but then that screws you up because you can't mail stuff between each.
 
so really... aside from a 1 shot playthru. Wildstar's ONLY "fun" is the raids.
its a raider's game.
 
thats. it.
 
(or housing... yeah... they HAVE TO gamble on housing... make it super social, throw some gameplay for casual groups in there... i don't know but SOMETHING).
 
honestly though, i think it will just slowly wither as a f2p game with a niche community of raiders.
			
				
	Edited June 18, 2015 by Avatar111	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Yeaaaah, I pretty much disagree with everything you had to say here. (Well, except the "same story" bit)
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
the game is too generic when it comes to the core design.
 
you can play eso or gw2 and hop in world pvp like "instantly".
in wildstar its a drag thru the group finder "if it ever happens" and its almost always the same experience because the maps are so small and boring and the objectives too simple and the builds too obvious and few.
 
gearing up ? its about 1 stat dude. "1" stat.
they could just put 3 stat in the game: attack, defence, heal
and it would be the same.
 
the pve? well.. in the end you only do the raids.
maybe repeat some dungeons once in a while for a contract.. but since there is only 5 dungeons and some take like 2 hours, it quickly becomes a chore.
 
alts? well... there is only 1 very linear story line after level 15ish.
game is on rail...
you might play a toon on the othe faction if you want different but then that screws you up because you can't mail stuff between each.
 
so really... aside from a 1 shot playthru. Wildstar's ONLY "fun" is the raids.
its a raider's game.
 
thats. it.
 
(or housing... yeah... they HAVE TO gamble on housing... make it super social, throw some gameplay for casual groups in there... i don't know but SOMETHING).
 
honestly though, i think it will just slowly wither as a f2p game with a niche community of raiders.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
so really... aside from a 1 shot playthru. Wildstar's ONLY "fun" is the raids.
its a raider's game.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I don't think you'd have ever had a drop 5 with more time. They needed the feedback to adjust the game and make sure it was fun, and you just can't test that without putting it out there.
 
Now Vet Shiphands were something they'd have put in with more time (they were clearly intended fro the beginning), but the itemization, runes, 40 man raid- while people may have said these things weren't going to work, it's hard to know from a limited number of voices whether they would or not. They had to get the volumes of feedback. This is the way games like this work- it's just near impossible to nail right out of the gate.
----
			 Ive been through several mmo launches.. and bye far this was still one of the smoothest launches ive experienced. Gold sellers didnt last very long in this game.. sure there where bots but nothing even close to other games.. the worst was gw2 in 80 zones... tons of naked characters in groups just doing the same thing over and over..over all this game was pretty clean launch for an mmo. It was a series of little things that had stacked up to get me frustrated.	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Many many players with 40+ man experience told them exactly what was going to happen.  Very few of those supporting the 40-man format had any experience with the raid management side of the house (recruitment, class leads, raid leads, etc.) 
----
			
This game was unique, however like many before me pointed out why this game was a failure. Here are my reasons:
Poor optimization- this game launched with terrible optimization, unless you had a good computer you were bound to get no more than 30 fps. 
No casual content and the whole "HARDCORE" thing. Plus people who wanted hardcore, got it and cried about it and left.
PvP was a huge joke. Wintrading was rampant, and if you join PvP late in the game like how I did, it was almost impossible to get 1800 gear.
Runes- the rune system was terrible
Bad marketing, I didn't even know this game existed; until a friend told me.
Loot table/drops were bad at best. Getting random number of rune slots made getting gear even more brutal.
Attunement was bad
Bugs, BUGS, and MORE BUGS!
Release during WoW's so called "best expansion" they ever made. 
This game was littered with people who wanted to see it fail, everywhere you looked there's someone terrible this game a new butthole.
Even though I am giving myself a break from this game, I still think this game is amazing. There was so much potential, but we didn't get to see any of it till almost a year later. It was a little too late by then, and now it's going F2P. Hopefully when F2P comes we will see this game flourish like how Tera, Rift, Swotor, and Aion did.
 
The community in this game have always been tight-knit, but once that floodgate know as F2P opens it's going to change. There are going to be booby/dick jokes in chat, Aurin/Chua ERP, and straight up immature crap on the forums and zone chats. There are going to be pricks who will ABUSE the crap out of the shout addon in BGs, and out of the thousands of players coming in maybe only 10-15% of that population will not be buttholes. Braces ourselves F2P's coming.	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I dunno, remember WildStar made it through 8 years of development with 250 developers and continual publisher support from NCsoft. So the ideas were not bad nor crazy -- in fact they were good.
 
But during that time, players in their audience had been groomed and trained to expect free treats rather than embracing the satisfaction of earning them.
 
Again, my opinion is players that left because they had a tiny problem with a tiny aspect of the game were not players who were going to stick around and invest in the game anyway... they were looking for reasons to go back to WoW or their previous game.
 
It's why I feel new players are the future, and returning players aren't of much value.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
 
You do realise that part of fixing a problem is admitting there's a problem in the first place?
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
No casual content
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
 
Release during WoW's so called "best expansion" they ever made.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
There WAS casual content, and lots of it. It may have missed the mark, but clearly they tried. The following was all casual content in the game at launch:
Leveling (which is a HUGE amount of content)
Housing
Adventures/Vet Adventures
Shiphands
 
Hardcore Content at Launch:
Dungeons/Vet Dungeons
Raids
They may have made a lot of mistakes, but the oft mentioned idea that they weren't thinking about casuals or creating content for them is not one of them. Thinking of them WRONGLY might be a case, but they certainly weren't ignoring casuals.
 
(And I would debate if dungeons fit into the "Hardcore" category. In my mind, the only truly hardcore content at launch was DS, but that goes back to definitions of terms and we don't all agree on those).
----
			
you had some good points but i lost you at WS gaining 5 million subs because of a poor WoW patch.
 
simply never. if anything those who were angry invested far too muchg tine in wow, they arent going anywhere
second wow always drops subs after xpacks. people come back catch up and quit till the next. just how a lot play
 
would have loved more advertising but i think that would have been more harm. especially at the beginning
			
				
	Edited June 18, 2015 by DarkAngelz	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
you had some good points but i lost you at WS gaining 5 million subs because of a poor WoW patch.
 
simply never. if anything those who were angry invested far too muchg tine in wow, they arent going anywhere
second wow always drops subs after xpacks. people come back catch up and quit till the next. just how a lot play
 
would have loved more advertising but i think that would have been more harm. especially at the beginning
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
There WAS casual content, and lots of it. It may have missed the mark, but clearly they tried. The following was all casual content in the game at launch:
Leveling (which is a HUGE amount of content)
Housing
Adventures/Vet Adventures
Shiphands
 
Hardcore Content at Launch:
Dungeons/Vet Dungeons
Raids
They may have made a lot of mistakes, but the oft mentioned idea that they weren't thinking about casuals or creating content for them is not one of them. Thinking of them WRONGLY might be a case, but they certainly weren't ignoring casuals.
 
(And I would debate if dungeons fit into the "Hardcore" category. In my mind, the only truly hardcore content at launch was DS, but that goes back to definitions of terms and we don't all agree on those).
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I dunno, remember WildStar made it through 8 years of development
...
But during that time, players in their audience had been groomed and trained to expect free treats rather than embracing the satisfaction of earning them.
 
Again, my opinion is players that left because they had a tiny problem with a tiny aspect of the game were not players who were going to stick around and invest in the game anyway... they were looking for reasons to go back to WoW or their previous game.
----
			Another item is the complete lack of purpose/progress players feel from engaging in content. Dungeons, Public Events, the solo dungeon, and Shiphands are all there as something to do to pass the time, but you never feel any sense of purpose or progression from engaging in these activities. In every other game you have a purpose for engaging in content. I think the complete lack of character progression and steel horizontal gear based progression system just made all the PvE content unappealing besides raids. That led to hundreds and thousands of raid loggers, and raid loggers don't stick around too long. 	
----
			
Sadly it seems wildstar's time is up.  With f2p coming it seems like it's just going to turn into a casualfest. Some veteran players will leave when the community turns toxic because of f2p. Most raiders will probably end up leaving soon as there isn't going to be any new content for another +6 months. Even people just starting DS will probably have it on farm before the next raid comes out. Except for GA raiders I expect a lot of raiders to leave shortly after f2p.
 
A lot of the new players that come will leave because dungeons will still be to hard. Many players left the game because they couldn't adjust to the combat and movement. Many new players will face this same issue and just leave again. There isn't much carbine can do about this, just the nature of being an action combat style gameplay.
 
PvP is just done. The influx of new players will save queue times and keep battlegrounds active, but a true pvp community will never fully return. There are still too many problems with pvp right now and even though the issues are being pointed out nothing is being done. A complete overhaul to bg mechanics needs to be done to fully bring back any form of competitive pvp. If this ever does happen it will probably be too late because wildstar is a bit more focused on pve content right now.
 
This pretty much just leaves people who log on maybe 2 hours a day to do dungeons and shiphands, people who enjoy housing, and rpers. The cash shop will fit these people perfectly because of new housing items and costumes and such. For everyone else it's pretty much over.
 
Fixes to problems still come to slow. DS still changes drastically even after its been out for so long (cleave change being the latest). Raiding is still in beta testing for f2p. Problems are being pointed out and nothing is being done because all resources are being put towards f2p. This is good for all the new people that come, but for everyone else currently playing it feels really bad.
 
To responds to the initial point of this thread. Yes, wildstar did fail. More marketing would not have saved it though. There were too many problems at launch and there are still too many problems. There might have been a larger amount of players at launch, but I don't think it would have been much over 1 million. This would have resulted in more players now, but I still don't think it would be enough for wildstar to not go f2p.
 
TL;DR Wildstar failed. If you want hard raids try it for a bit then go find a new game. If you like housing, rping, or just logging in for a few hours this could be the game for you. Otherwise game ded.	
----
			
I have just started playing the game (bought the e3 digital ticket) and am going to probably play a bit during F2P as well. I was also in beta a couple times, so i saw how the game was to some extent back then.
 
This is an outsiders perspective on why it failed/went f2P using info i got from beta, ads, and people who played the game, etc:
 
- Some of the devs had apparently said they were making the game specifically to try and kill wow, and they honestly thought they had the chance to do so. this alone kills a game, as only an idiot would honestly believe WOW is killable. after 11 years on the market, MASSIVE, mostly loyal, fanbase, and have a million other mmos try and fail to "kill it", i would think people would learn from the past. FF14 ARR has succeeded as a P2P, in part, BECAUSE it accepts it will never beat WOW, and is the first MMO to do so since WOW's launch really, as the only other truly successful P2P games around besides ff14 and WOW are FF11 (2001) and EVE online(2003), both of which are older then WOW (2004)
 
- Vanilla wow fallacy - as said previously a couple times on this thread, this game tried to be like vanilla WOW, and thus get all the people who say vanilla wow was the best. the problem is, a lot of that is simply nostalgia. by today's MMO standards, vanilla wow is TERRIBLE and has very few things going for it. It succeeded back then because of lack of competition, Blizzard being a great company (which, overall, it still is, at least compared to 99% of other MMO companies} etc. Vanilla WOW would never succeed in today world as P2P, and wildstar proved it, and even then wildstar lacked a lot of the casual stuff WOW had in vanilla. Thus Wildstar was hoping to gather a crowd of people who either would realize that it was nostalgia, has simply accepted change and is still playing WOW/another mmo, do not have the time anymore, or are playing on a WOW private server. It was doomed to fail the moment it tried to go after that crowd and that crowd alone.
 
- IP was another issue that hurt Wildstar, or more accurately, LACK of an IP. WOW was not the first game in the warcraft series, it already had a MASSIVE following because of the warcraft RTS games and there were books and stuff, even back then. Wildstar had none of that, it was trying to leech off nostalgia of another IP, and nothing else. yeah, the game world is great and has great lore around it, but there was nothing pulling players to go to the game for it.
 
-optimization has already been said several times, so not going to hound on that, though i have heard they still do not seem to care for AMD users, simple for using a different graphics card which is another stupid thing that ruined their chances
 
-finally, game/art style. for all their talk about wanting vanilla WOW players, why did they go for a sci-fi,dark fantasy setting with cartoony graphics that make WOW look realistic? It was not a bad choice, no, but they were completely relying on a VERY specific type of player. that type of player, might not have just played it for the hardcore stuff, as FF11 is even older, and is STILL pretty hardcore in a lot of ways, yet not all the hardcore players flocked to it. not only was the IP possibly important, but the heroic fantasy setting might have been important too. As a fan of sci-fi, and sci-fi fantasy, especially star wars, this setting works for many, but not all MMO players like all types of fantasy. then, even those who LIKE that kind of setting might get iff-putted by the craziness of the art-style. that level up sequence is WAY over the top, and that alone can be off-putting and annoying to some players, let alone the art-style in general. 
 
I am not saying they should have gone full-out WOW clone, or that WOW is perfect, but no matter WHAT you think about WOW, it is undeniable it is the king of MMO's, so trying to kill it is a VERY bad idea.
 
 after all these updates, is it a good game? yeah, probably, at least to some extent, doing better then ESO is at any rate, but it was never going to succeed as a P2P game, not ever.
			
				
	Edited June 19, 2015 by PKMN12	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
-finally, game/art style. for all their talk about wanting vanilla WOW players, why did they go for a sci-fi,dark fantasty setting with cartoony graphics that make WOW look realistic? It was not a bad choice, no, but they were completely relying on a VERY specific type of player. that type of player, might not have just played it for the hardcore stuff, as FF11 is even older, and is STILL pretty hardcore in a lot of ways, yet not all the hardcore players flocked to it. not only was the IP possibly important, but the heroic fantasy setting might have been important too. As a fan of sci-fi, and sci-fi fantasy, especially star wars, this setting works for many, but not all MMO players like all types of fantasy. then, even those who LIKE that kind of setting might get iff-putted by the insaness of the art-style. that level up sequence is WAY over the top, and that alone can be off-putting and annoying to some players, let alone the art-style in general.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
This will sound like hyperbole, but for every complaint like this about the art I've heard, I've heard 10 people who love it. The style is not a reason the game had trouble.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
but it IS part of it, because they NEEDED to get that vanilla wow hardcore group of players, and this is VERY different style to what wow is, which can put the VERY players they needed off of the game.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Maybe I am alone with this, but I think Wildstar's art style is pretty much the spiritual successor of WoW's artstyle in the MMO market.
----
			
A former WOW dev..."ghostcrawler" wrote something interesting about "wildstars failure to bring on the masses" on some forum (mmo champion have the link). He wrote somehing like: Companies trying to make a better WOW will fail. Only Blizzard can make a better wow. Other companies must make a different game if they want success. Wise words there. And we all know that WS was made to "make a better wow" mentality...that Carbine has struggled with ever since. I think they are trying to move away from that mentality...but...it seems hard.
 
And cartoony look. Yes..WS is even more cartoony than wow.....they might have made it a tad too much cartoony...meaning..its kinda hard to imerse with your "toons" if you want to play a human....And colors are slightly too vivid....but graphical quality itself it very good with WS (as you would expect from a resent game like that)...
 
But If you ask me...I generally like WOW cartoon style more than WS style, but I also generally think that you have too little body options (thin or fat) in wow. E.g I play a blood elf male in WOW, cause i think human male look like monsters there....
			
				
	Edited June 19, 2015 by styrm	
----
			
Well, they did make a better WoW. A MUCH better WoW. However, the challenge is getting players of the current WoW to let go of their equity. That, turns out, is nearly impossible no matter how good the new game is.
 
But the key to success is to *definitely* differentiate as well. That's why Carbine simply cannot go down the road of adding the same stuff WoW did, like easier raids. They need to add things that WoW doesn't have like meaningful solo and small group end game progression, and they are getting there.	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Well, they did make a better WoW. A MUCH better WoW. However, the challenge is getting players of the current WoW to let go of their equity. That, turns out, is nearly impossible no matter how good the new game is.
 
But the key to success is to *definitely* differentiate as well. That's why Carbine simply cannot go down the road of adding the same stuff WoW did, like easier raids. They need to add things that WoW doesn't have like meaningful solo and small group end game progression, and they are getting there.
----
			
Step 1: Go tell everyone you can to come try WS again or for the first time.
Step 2: Hope Carbine gets enough income to keep this thing going and giving us more updates and more awesome stuff like we know they can.
Step 3: ????
Step 4: Profit.	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
A good enough game WILL make players switch over
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Most raiders will probably end up leaving soon as there isn't going to be any new content for another +6 months. Even people just starting DS will probably have it on farm before the next raid comes out. Except for GA raiders I expect a lot of raiders to leave shortly after f2p.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
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. 
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
For YOU they did make a better wow yes..but not for the majority of mmo players...
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Also, I don't agree with the assessment of Shiphands as casual content. It's leveling content. It didn't become worthwhile to casually run it at 50 until they added Vet Shiphands.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
The game doesn't start at max level. Of COURSE leveling content is casual content, and you can do it multiple times with multiple characters.
 
It may not be FUN (a debatable question that is very important to answer), but it's there and it's primarily aimed at casual players (the devs know the hardcore folks are going to blast through it as efficiently and as quickly as possible).
 
There are many casual players who spent MONTHS going through leveling without hitting cap.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I would say that casual players who took months to get through leveling did it because they were focused on other activities like housing or roleplaying. If all you do when you're on is level, even slowly, it won't even take a month to do unless you RP walk between every quest hub. Now, if you're not playing the game very much period then yeah, it's gonna take a while, but for leveling to take months then you'd have to do something like an hour a week.
----
			
Dont mistake casuals for roleplayers and house-playing-sim gamers please! Casuals would like to raid too...as we see from wow:)
 
Problem is..WS failed to deliver for the casuals....casuals want almost the same as the hardcore...only..they dont need to be "realm first"...all other content they want to play:)
 
And the best game is the game that makes most money....you can talk day out and day in about WS is better than wow...it is not. It has aspects that Carbine did pretty good. The vet dungeon STL comes to mind. That dungeon is kick-ass fun. But other aspects is just sad....the messed up new basin thing e.g.....
 
Casuals spend along time leveling because it takes time...time might not be what casuals have...and NOT because they like it more than hardcores!...
 
Casuals want to get to end game too! Problem arise....if casuals cannot raid..what else is there to do in WS? except roleplay and playing the housing sims? And lackluster *cupcake* poor easy solo....sure they can run dungeons..but...how many dungeons do WS have?
			
				
	Edited June 19, 2015 by styrm	
----