134020-game-was-dead-before-f2p-why

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I'm new to the game. What were the reasons the game died before the F2P transition?
What are the hopes Wildstar will do better now?	
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who told you the game was dead? We had many people playing before.
Not as much as now, but content was being cleared and people ran around.	
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			Yea, I wouldn't say W* was dead. Maybe it wasn't supporting the numbers NCSOFT wanted, but there was a very active community and always stuff going on.	
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who told you the game was dead? We had many people playing before.
Not as much as now, but content was being cleared and people ran around.
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Stupid? It's true... It wasn't exactly FFXIV, but there was a solid population and a very active community. NCSOFT has done this with just about all of it's MMO's. They saw an opportunity to make more money (F2P) and they made it happen. 
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white knight ALERT! :P
 
Are you kidding me :D Yeah ppl was clearing content, but as i can see it you need 20 ppl for a raid, :P the servers was low and carbine didn't get enough money out of it. END of story. the game was dying slowly, why they needed to go f2p.
I Know you love this same, so do i. but get down from that white horse :P it just sounds stupid :P
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From perspective of someone who never played WS until it went f2p and just followed it on facebook, forum and youtube, here is what happened:
 
- game was announced with less promotion than expected
- launch had problem like it has now (even tough i think this is bareable)
- bugs appeared
- bugs got ppl to leave
- ppl started spreading stuff around social media about game being buggy
- game was subscription based
- ppl don't want to buy and subscribe to a buggy game
- fps problems showed up
- ppl started spreading words about bad optimization on social media
- ppl don't want to buy and subscribe to bad optimized game
- game owners realized they launched the game a year too early
- they Reloaded Wildstar
- they changed business model
- they will profit
 
Now even tough it might be a bit buggy (still no bugs for me), and bad optimized (I have no issues at all on my NON-GAMING rigg) it's FREE to try and play.
			
				
	Edited September 30, 2015 by Tomerant	
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If you want an honest answer: The game was unfinished. They released with pretty decent testing up through about level 30, but beyond that the game tended to drop off. Lots of bugs and tedious content that just got the better of most people. At that point, Wildstar went through the same launch issues it did now so THEN they spun up more servers to handle the load, which ultimately split the playerbase more then necessary when the dust settled. This meant pops were already low per server and when more people left, others either left as well or migrated to other servers. Eventually, most people wound up on the PvE server and many have been there since day one.
 
Part of the reason they call this a "relaunch" is because it's a much more fleshed out game now; probably closer to what it should have been then. They've stomped out bugs and added better content endgame as well as a host of stat and itemization changes. It's a significant change to what it was before. 
			
				
	Edited September 30, 2015 by Ratstomper	
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Are you kidding me :D ? REALLY?
 
This game i amazing, no doubt about that! BUT! . Lets face it, if the game wasn't going f2p, it would be dead really soon. they where not making the money they needed to keep it going. ppl though it was boring so they did then stream it etc.
 
It was just going down hill. 
 
 
You "white horse" people are so blind i the game you love that no matter what happens or did happen, it will always be 200% positive. 
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And you definitely know how the game was running....
I love how people make statements when they weren't even there when it all happened.
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			the game started off with a ton of players, little by little they left because of the bugs and tricky optimizations, broken pvp...it has issues, afterwards, there were too many servers and not enough people, so servers became a barren wasteland unless you knew where people migrated too, megaservers fixed this but it was too late, while there players around dominating content it wasn't enough to spark the interest of the people who left since everyone was crying "F2P or DIE!"....man i hated those guys...	
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The last 4 month, if you queued up for PVP or a instance, there was over 20min queue. pvp was over 40min some times, When you where leveling, you could be in a queue for over houres :P
 
Yeah i see it was going sooooo good for this game before :P	
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The last 4 month, if you queued up for PVP or a instance, there was over 20min queue. pvp was over 40min some times, 
 
When you where leveling, you could be in a queue for over houres :P
 
Yeah i see it was going sooooo good for this game before :P
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I really do. i have been in wildstar some month and some month off.
 
But how can you make the statement that the game was going okay? I Mean everyone in the news business even said that the reason why carbine has to go f2p was because they were slowly dying, i mean there wasn't new ppl coming to the game, only people leaving. SO how can you say it was fine ?
 
I make a statement from what i have seen and what people told me, i have been in and out of WS from the orginal Beta, so iknow how the servers have been.
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Are you kidding me :D ? REALLY?
 
This game i amazing, no doubt about that! BUT! . Lets face it, if the game wasn't going f2p, it would be dead really soon. they where not making the money they needed to keep it going. ppl though it was boring so they did then stream it etc.
 
It was just going down hill. 
 
 
You "white horse" people are so blind i the game you love that no matter what happens or did happen, it will always be 200% positive. 
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Because you're basing your statement on PvP queue's
I'm basing my statement on seeing guilds and my own guild progress.
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I base my statement on the sOcial aspect on the game where new people get to know all. PVE or PVP None of the thing, pop
 
Yeah carbine can run there game from your guilds subs. WAY TO GO :P
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Some people had problems with PvP Queues? I got enough to get three full PvP sets (Medic, Stalker, Engie) in a week and a half. before the F2P beta. Yea it took between 5 and 20 minutes to get a pop, sometimes maybe even a little longer... but it wasn't "never"...
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Some people had problems with PvP Queues? I got enough to get three full PvP sets (Medic, Stalker, Engie) in a week and a half. before the F2P beta. Yea it took between 5 and 20 minutes to get a pop, sometimes maybe even a little longer... but it wasn't "never"...
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			Glad the game went F2P. I had thought about playing it but I wasn't going to spend the money on it plus a subscription fee without trying it first. I tried Final Fantasy and wound up disliking it and I wouldn't have even bothered with it if there wasn't a free trial.	
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Olivar (white knight of Carbine) - this time I try to stay serious and not being (too) offensive towards you (which is kinda hard if I have to read all your brainless stuff in every thread).
 
Why do you think that they went F2P? The truth: Because the game WAS basically dead. This was the reason I left after 3 month sub - because the PvP servers were empty (if you were lucky then on EU primetime there were 40 people in Thayd)! So dunno on which moon you are living...	
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Olivar (white knight of Carbine) - this time I try to stay serious and not being (too) offensive towards you (which is kinda hard if I have to read all your brainless stuff in every thread).
 
Why do you think that they went F2P? The truth: Because the game WAS basically dead. This was the reason I left after 3 month sub - because the PvP servers were empty (if you were lucky then on EU primetime there were 40 people in Thayd)! So dunno on which moon you are living...
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1.  It was launched in an unfinished state about a year too early
2.  Lack of marketing	
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Olivar (white knight of Carbine) - this time I try to stay serious and not being (too) offensive towards you (which is kinda hard if I have to read all your brainless stuff in every thread).
 
Why do you think that they went F2P? The truth: Because the game WAS basically dead. This was the reason I left after 3 month sub - because the PvP servers were empty (if you were lucky then on EU primetime there were 40 people in Thayd)! So dunno on which moon you are living...
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Or, because NCSOFT converts all of it's games to F2P once they think it will produce a larger profit margin. 
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I'm new to the game. What were the reasons the game died before the F2P transition?
What are the hopes Wildstar will do better now?
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Olivar (white knight of Carbine) - this time I try to stay serious and not being (too) offensive towards you (which is kinda hard if I have to read all your brainless stuff in every thread).
 
Why do you think that they went F2P? The truth: Because the game WAS basically dead. This was the reason I left after 3 month sub - because the PvP servers were empty (if you were lucky then on EU primetime there were 40 people in Thayd)! So dunno on which moon you are living...
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The last time I checked W* was putting some decent numbers into NCSOFTS pocket. But like any large publisher with various investments and projects they did what they thought would make them the most money (which they've done with pretty much all of their MMO's).
 
 
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Ah, get used to Olivar... kind of the public face of the EU Dominion, and really doesn't do it a favor by constantly spewing his aggressive fanboyism at even constructive criticism when it happens. Oh yeah I know, he'll just answer that he doesn't need to give a good image. "The dominion hates you, because you suck."
 
The heart of the problem is people like that don't think about why they went F2P. They don't think about anything else than how perfect their little niche they carved out in an unsustainable model that 1% of the gaming population might enjoy IF everything went smoothly according to plans elaborated by competent devs that don't go on some ego-trip illusion of superiority because they have their little fluffers to entertain some measure of confidence when numbers and charts clearly state otherwise. They don't think period, in fact. No surprise they kicked it off so good with Carbine.
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			I played Wildstar in December last year, when the game was available for £10 and even at that price, and in a holiday period when many people would be off work, the game was pretty quiet.  I could run around and see possibly 3 or 4 players per hour.  I'm seeing more players around now, of course, but I wouldn't say the game had been all that successful based on what I saw last year.	
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Ah, get used to Olivar... kind of the public face of the EU Dominion, and really doesn't do it a favor by constantly spewing his aggressive fanboyism at even constructive criticism when it happens. Oh yeah I know, he'll just answer that he doesn't need to give a good image. "The dominion hates you, because you suck."
 
The heart of the problem is people like that don't think about why they went F2P. They don't think about anything else than how perfect their little niche they carved out in an unsustainable model that 1% of the gaming population might enjoy IF everything went smoothly according to plans elaborated by competent devs that don't go on some ego-trip illusion of superiority because they have their little fluffers to entertain some measure of confidence when numbers and charts clearly state otherwise. They don't think period, in fact. No surprise they kicked it off so good with Carbine.
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You make it sound like Olivar designed and developed the game on his own, in a vacuum, then gave it to Carbine to release when it had his features in it.
 
There were hundreds of developers and 9 years of development agreeing to the design direction of the game, because there is an audience out there for it. It's not a 1% audience.
 
It did not go free to play because it's a bad game - it's better than every theme park out there.
 
The problem, again, is the players... like you. The entitled, instant gratification generation of gamers who do not understand where the value in gaming or fun comes from. Not willing to invest yourself... not willing to accept any effort v reward ratio beyond guaranteed... optimizing your experience and removing gameplay along the way. YOU are the reason for the decline of the genre.
 
To make it clear - you don't have a clue.
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I really do. i have been in wildstar some month and some month off.
 
But how can you make the statement that the game was going okay? I Mean everyone in the news business even said that the reason why carbine has to go f2p was because they were slowly dying, i mean there wasn't new ppl coming to the game, only people leaving. SO how can you say it was fine ?
 
I make a statement from what i have seen and what people told me, i have been in and out of WS from the orginal Beta, so iknow how the servers have been.
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Okay let me correct you know because it's pissing me off
 sense drop 4 in February, Carbine was actually growing in subs, they were gaining more subs then they were losing. These aren't my words, they said this stuff for months, they just weren't growing fast enough, Entity always had hundreds of people walking around in just the capital city, the game was not dead, gimme a break. It is much better now though
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Too many people don't want to pay for their entertainment.  They'd rather others do it for them.  I have to rant.  I've read too many "this game is awesome now that it's F2P'.  Sorry people, it was awesome before it went F2P, you just don't want to pay for it.
 
Now back to the OP, 1) People want things for free; 2) It was a diifficult game; 3) Balance issues but they are fixing those; and 4) My pet peeve, too restrictive on housing.
 
All of which have been rectified by Carbine.	
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I played Wildstar in December last year, when the game was available for £10 and even at that price, and in a holiday period when many people would be off work, the game was pretty quiet.  I could run around and see possibly 3 or 4 players per hour.  I'm seeing more players around now, of course, but I wouldn't say the game had been all that successful based on what I saw last year.
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The last 4 month, if you queued up for PVP or a instance, there was over 20min queue. pvp was over 40min some times, 
 
When you where leveling, you could be in a queue for over houres :P
 
Yeah i see it was going sooooo good for this game before :P
 
this , i signed back up about a month ago. i purchased 4 boxed editions for sub.
 
my character is in his early 20s and pvp ques were 2 hours plus even the day b4 the f2p downtime went down.
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			I can only speak for myself, but I stopped playing because I was spending too much money on games and Wildstar was the one I had invested the least time in. That was also the reason a lot of my friends left. I remember a general confusion that there would be a box price AND a sub. A lot of people assumed it would be like GW2 and go b2p.
			
				
	Edited September 30, 2015 by Boxilot	
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You make it sound like Olivar designed and developed the game on his own, in a vacuum, then gave it to Carbine to release when it had his features in it.
 
There were hundreds of developers and 9 years of development agreeing to the design direction of the game, because there is an audience out there for it. It's not a 1% audience.
 
It did not go free to play because it's a bad game - it's better than every theme park out there.
 
The problem, again, is the players... like you. The entitled, instant gratification generation of gamers who do not understand where the value in gaming or fun comes from. Not willing to invest yourself... not willing to accept any effort v reward ratio beyond guaranteed... optimizing your experience and removing gameplay along the way. YOU are the reason for the decline of the genre.
 
To make it clear - you don't have a clue.
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Because you're basing your statement on PvP queue's
I'm basing my statement on seeing guilds and my own guild progress.
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Could you link me that infomation :)? Or just some of your own statements ?
 
Another thing, i must admit i have no idea how the US side was, as im from the EU so my view is 100% EU.
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now my take on why it went F2P:- problems didn't get addressed fast enough. People were exploiting arena ranks for example and when developers did stop them, they didn't take their gear, making further arena matches almost unwinnable. - launch was very buggy. Even more buggy than this. Unable to switch skills. Unable to do certain quests. Needing to /reloadui for everything. It took them like 3 weeks to sort out release bugs, then drop 1 came and it went all buggy again. People didn't deem that kind of product to be good enough to pay for. - drops centered around end game dailies. The game was simply very grindy. New content? More dailies! Have fun spending 4 hours a day doing dailies! But if you don't do dailies how will you ever have money to raid having in mind how expensive the repairs were?- one way transfers PvP -> PVE meant that the PvP servers were slowly being drained. Right before megaservers Carbine announced that there's 2 days of free transfers left PVP -> PVE only and then they're closed for life. Panic migration drained the server until only 3-4 guilds were left. After that we fought for transfers both ways, but it was already too late. The current content was 20 man dailies, we had no ecconomy and we could only organize such numbers every week, instead of many times a day. Most of the PvPers outright quit. - gear imbalance. Due to no iLvl matching to the instance, if you had raid gear, dungeons were a cake walk.
- very little casual content. End game is a clear progression of adventures -> dungeons -> raids. If you're not part of that then there was very little to do.- when free trials opened, people were still allowed to trial on Luminai. The server that literally had no guilds, no ecconomy and no more than 20 people online at the same time. It really put people off.
			
				
	Edited September 30, 2015 by mirta000	
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Everything was broken or buggy on release.  There also was not much content endgame.  Questing was ok, but nothing great.
 
The devs hyped the game up like crazy but failed to deliver on most things.
			
				
	Edited September 30, 2015 by Lunatika	
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2/4 servers were completely dead (less than 20 people on Luminai and Warhaund at a time). Entity and Jabbit only reminded of medium pop servers in other games. Earning reports were reporting numbers below Lineage and Lineage II. They shut down games like these. So yes, for all intents and purposes, for an MMO, Wildstar died before F2P.
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Died implies shut down silly, It was not dead because it was still online. And had a stable community with plenty of people to do content with.
 
If you look at numbers, it was very poor, If you look at it from an in game viewpoint, it was not near dead. Unless you were on a pvp server but that was more a stupid CRB mistake then a pop issue.
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 Why it failed, I could quote gameplay, the combat system, graphics but in truth a lot of people play games that are popular...
 
 Well Duh you say....     People want to play games others play, games that are seen as good, games that are highly regarded, games with HYPE.. games with street cred
 
 The arrogant devs, incompetent techs, generic gameplay , WOW- graphics  are all secondary..	
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"plenty" of people, yet not enough to be profitable. Also plenty of people on 2/4 servers. PVE only. Which is pretty low. Meaning from an MMO point of view, the game was on its death bed and without F2P it would have simply been shut down. 
It doesn't matter if an MMO has enough people to sustain a server or two if it doesn't have enough to be raking in a profit.
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			Lawl, so nice to see all the "game is dead" crowd have returned. I have an idea, if you don't like it, play something else. Why are you here trolling a board for a game you don't like? Oh that's right I forgot that is what you live for, enjoy your negative little lives.	
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It's been over 6 months and you're still on this pathetic "Bitter Stalker Ex-Girlfriend" shtick over Wildstar. This time, on the forums and not on Youtube, where you post under the same name. "Yes", we get it. You love Blade and Soul and instead of just sticking with that and ignoring what you patently dislike (Wildstar) like a mentally healthy person does, you vent your pent up angst over it, with a transparent veneer of "truth telling."
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			Obviously W* never stopped being profitable. If it did NCSOFT would have cut it off faster than Lorena Bobbit. What almost assuredly happened was that NCSOFT decided it would be more profitable as F2P (as it usually does). Things in life are generally not pure dichotomy. W* was not dead, nor was it raking in mad dough. It lie somewhere between, in the relm of profitable but also in the relm of NCSOFT's "it would make us more with a cash shop" zone.  	
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It's been over 6 months and you're still on this pathetic "Bitter Stalker Ex-Girlfriend" shtick over Wildstar. This time, on the forums and not on Youtube, where you post under the same name. "Yes", we get it. You love Blade and Soul and instead of just sticking with that and ignoring what you patently dislike (Wildstar) like a mentally healthy person does, you vent your pent up angst over it, with a transparent veneer of "truth telling."
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Lawl, so nice to see all the "game is dead" crowd have returned. I have an idea, if you don't like it, play something else. Why are you here trolling a board for a game you don't like? Oh that's right I forgot that is what you live for, enjoy your negative little lives.
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Well the dude asked why the game failed. Weather it failed or not was not even the question. And the problem is that people are are bitter liked and still like Wildstar. They're bitter because of all of the mistakes that the devs are making. You want a product to succeed, yet it's a mess. Heck even right now, 9 server restarts, tech guys working 72 hours without sleep. But no communication from community managers, no eta's, no nothing. This is not how you save your game.
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And now *MY* take one why it went Free to Play!
 
Oh wait.
 
No one cares.
 
 :(	
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Obviously W* never stopped being profitable. If it did NCSOFT would have cut it off faster than Lorena Bobbit. What almost assuredly happened was that NCSOFT decided it would be more profitable as F2P (as it usually does). Things in life are generally not pure dichotomy. W* was not dead, nor was it raking in mad dough. It lie somewhere between, in the relm of profitable but also in the relm of NCSOFT's "it would make us more with a cash shop" zone.  
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What do you mean "no" communication? As usual, you're wrong. You people are so laughably pedantic that you can't even see straight.
 
https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/133856-at-least-acknowledge-the-problem-and-tell-us-youre-working-on-the-lag/?p=1379236
 
Oh wait..."facts". Now I'm a white knight.
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The truth and its really simple,
 
 The Devs can't dev
 
 The Techs can't tech
 
 Its really that simple, incompetent people will NEVER make a competent product....	
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Stupid? It's true... It wasn't exactly FFXIV, but there was a solid population and a very active community. NCSOFT has done this with just about all of it's MMO's. They saw an opportunity to make more money (F2P) and they made it happen. 
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I actually missed that one. Now they could make that post a post in news and info as a standalone post and update it every time when they have updates, instead of updating twitter.
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Are you kidding me?  There was no solid population at all.  MMOs don't go to 1 Mega pve server in NA (the pvp one was DEAD) in under a year if there was a solid population.  I can't believe how dilusional people can be.  The rose color goggles are running strong here.
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			NCsoft makes way more money on a F2P game actually.  They know it.  Should have never tried the P2P in the first place.  There are good B2P games and F2P games in NCsoft's collection.  I can see offering both sub and f2p at launch but not strictly P2P. 	
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I'm new to the game. What were the reasons the game died before the F2P transition?
What are the hopes Wildstar will do better now?
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The truth and its really simple,
 
 The Devs can't dev
 
 The Techs can't tech
 
 Its really that simple, incompetent people will NEVER make a competent product....
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This is incredibly silly
 
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I wanna bet if i got a statment from carbine saying they where losing money on ws, you would keep saying it was going fine :P
 
Im 100% sure NCSOFT went to carbine and told them to go to f2p as a last hope to keep this game going, Pick f2p or we shut  you down. 
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who told you the game was dead? We had many people playing before.
Not as much as now, but content was being cleared and people ran around.
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The last time I checked W* was putting some decent numbers into NCSOFTS pocket. But like any large publisher with various investments and projects they did what they thought would make them the most money (which they've done with pretty much all of their MMO's).
 
Whether W* would be dead without F2P is an interesting debate, but not a clear one. I imagine it could easily have survived with a strong cult following like other games (e.g., EVE), but maybe it could not have too. Doesn't change the fact that till the very last day I played before F2P I had no trouble finding groups for content and there were plenty of active folks playing the game. Certainly didn't feel empty or dead to me.. YMMV, but I find people who accuse others of "white knighting" tend to have a lot of elongated wood in a certain orifice... 
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Whoaaa whoa whoa whoa. WS was a dying game. No P2P game goes F2P in a year if it's got a solid community. Streamers bailed on the game. Players kept leaving. It's just a lot of the vets are hardcore fan boys. The game was a failed launch. It had a failed growth and was a dying game. It was far from having enough people. City of Heroes had 30,000 people sign a petition to try and keep the game up and it still got shut down because 30k people isn't successful for an MMO. Wildstar had a very small community. Unless you were end game you had nobody to see, talk to or run with. I know, I got the box copy before F2P and nobody was ANYWHERE in any map of low/moderate level. I can understand wanting to defend a game you love, but a dying game is a dying game. You can't claim Wildstar is doing so great because you enjoyed it. Overall Wildstar was suffering greatly and the whole reason for F2P is to bring in the player base the game was lacking. Hell even the PvP servers DIED And PvP players moved to the PvE server with FREE TRANSFERS because player base was to low. So please don't white knight and be blind to the fact the game was in dire need of saving.
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Whoaaa whoa whoa whoa. WS was a dying game. No P2P game goes F2P in a year if it's got a solid community. Streamers bailed on the game. Players kept leaving. It's just a lot of the vets are hardcore fan boys. The game was a failed launch. It had a failed growth and was a dying game. It was far from having enough people. City of Heroes had 30,000 people sign a petition to try and keep the game up and it still got shut down because 30k people isn't successful for an MMO. Wildstar had a very small community. Unless you were end game you had nobody to see, talk to or run with. I know, I got the box copy before F2P and nobody was ANYWHERE in any map of low/moderate level. I can understand wanting to defend a game you love, but a dying game is a dying game. You can't claim Wildstar is doing so great because you enjoyed it. Overall Wildstar was suffering greatly and the whole reason for F2P is to bring in the player base the game was lacking. Hell even the PvP servers DIED And PvP players moved to the PvE server with FREE TRANSFERS because player base was to low. So please don't white knight and be blind to the fact the game was in dire need of saving.
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 Dharnell, bad Meme or not, the truth is the truth.
 
Considering your post history, and rampant white knighting the indefensible, you look like a company shill, not adding to your credibility mate...	
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Questing felt too static, too jumbled and all over the place, leading to people not making it to the endgame ( this is one of my most agreed upon reasons, although it didn't make me quit ) 
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You dont understand the word "trolling" dont use words you dont understand :P 
 
We are just saying how it is, carbine NEEDS to shape up !
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I played the game during the beta, and I absolutely -hated- questing.
I really disliked the quests and how they were set up and everything.
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 Dharnell, bad Meme or not, the truth is the truth.
 
Considering your post history, and rampant white knighting the indefensible, you look like a company shill, not adding to your credibility mate...
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			Because people thought they wanted a 'hardcore' Vanilla WoW esque MMO, but we saw how that turned out, and the bugs and FPS issues.
			
				
	Edited September 30, 2015 by Azzurri	
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Yup, I 100% agree with that. It felt a bit overwhelming, categorizing a bunch of different quests then sending you all over the place, including your Warrior/Explorer etc quests in as well was the nail in the coffin! You learn how it all works eventually and it actually flows slightly well once you have the understanding, it's just getting to that stage which is the hard part... 
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Yeah, there was a serious lack of gradual ramping up, and a lot of the quests felt, dare I say, kind of counter-intuitive.
I found myself extremely frustrated with Questing, and that is pretty much the entry into the game itself, so if that doesn't work, how can one expect that raiding and endgame would?
 
I played my engineer to level... 15 I think, and just stopped playing.
Never bothered to buy the game.
 
Now that it's F2P I am giving it another try to see if they got that better.
 
...if I ever manage to actually log in, that is.
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Well, I can see that...I got introduced to the time-limited quests, that come out of nowhere.
That is... not making me happy.
 
I'm questing about, suddenly I'm on a time clock without warning?
The hell!
 
Usually I tend to play MMOs to relax and just hang out and such, so it's a bit on the annoying side.
 
This is the "escort quest" of MMOs, as far as I am concerned.
 
Supposed to shake the gameplay up, but everyone hates to do them!
			
				
	Edited September 30, 2015 by Samael Morningstar	
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{| class="blockquote"
Well, I can see that...I got introduced to the time-limited quests, that come out of nowhere.
That is... not making me happy.
 
I'm questing about, suddenly I'm on a time clock without warning?
The hell!
 
Usually I tend to play MMOs to relax and just hang out and such, so it's a bit on the annoying side.
 
This is the "escort quest" of MMOs, as far as I am concerned.
 
Supposed to shake the gameplay up, but everyone hates to do them!
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{| class="blockquote"
Well, I can see that...I got introduced to the time-limited quests, that come out of nowhere.
That is... not making me happy.
 
I'm questing about, suddenly I'm on a time clock without warning?
The hell!
 
Usually I tend to play MMOs to relax and just hang out and such, so it's a bit on the annoying side.
 
This is the "escort quest" of MMOs, as far as I am concerned.
 
Supposed to shake the gameplay up, but everyone hates to do them!
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{| class="blockquote"
 
Read my post just above yours. Sales figures / reports are here http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/earnings.aspx
 
W* was the poorest performing of their lineup for Q1 and Q2 2015; and even then it was bringing in 1-2 million USD / Quarter.
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{| class="blockquote"
You are very poor at putting things into context. This right here proves your fanboyism. You take the facts but dismiss it like it's no big deal. Wildstar wasn't just the poorest performing. The other big games in NCsoft libary was making many times more than Wildstar. There's a difference when you're last but only a few spaces behind the next guy, to being lapped several times. Wildstar wasn't even in the race anymore.
 
Also saying "well it made 1-2 million" is naive. Firstly most of NCsoft's library makes 10x more. And second, large businesses look at trends. Wildstar's already awful numbers has been steadily decreasing since last year.
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			I quit due to terrible optimization, and the extremely tedious attunement quest. Not to mention FFXIV was simply a better game at the time. 	
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I'm new to the game. What were the reasons the game died before the F2P transition?
What are the hopes Wildstar will do better now?
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Clearly you didn't read what I actually said. Let me spell it out:
 
"WILDSTAR WAS THE POOREST PERFORMING OF NCSOFTS LINEUP"
 
but
 
"WILDSTAR WAS STILL BRINGING IN 1-2 MILLION (USD) IN SALES PER QUARTER"
 
I explicitly stated that compared to NCSOFTS other titles, which are all available in the regional market they dominate except Wildstar (East Asia), which all had their own ups and downs before they reached present, Wildstar was the poorest. I also correctly stated that even so, they were bringing in 1-2 million per quarter, thats 4-10 million per year in 2015. And that is NOT a dead game by a long shot. That's a game with 100-200k subs at its lowest. Also you neglect that every other NCSOFT MMO has a cash shop and until literally just now had a completely different monetization scheme compared to W*
 
W*'s "numbers" haven't changed by a statistically significant magnitude this year (Q1 & Q2 2015). They have dropped by an order of magnitude from 2014. I'm not a white knight, you're not a black knight. I'm some one who didn't fail basic maths.
 
TLDR: 100-200k subs and 1-2 million per quarter not counting royalties IS a profitable game, but not a massive money maker. It is also NOT a dead game.
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Do you think the fact that you respond to everything, and get so heated might mean that emotionally you're not as unbiased as you think you are? There is a word for people who blindly and furiously defends games like that.
 
I'll say it again, large business look at trends. To you it seemed sustainable, but for most companies products that continually decline quarter after quarter is a worrying sign.
 
http://www.readycheck.org/images/misc/ncsoft_earnings.png
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Wow you know me better then I know myself.
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The game wasn't dead. But to say it was in bad shape is pretty fair. 
 
Reason why: they pushed it out too fast. They needed another 6 months to finish working out bugs and optimization. We reported tons of bugs that still made it into live. It didn't help that most of the casual playerbase couldn't complete the attunement process since it was not designed for pug groups to be able to do. 
 
Now they have revamped the entire game making it more casual friendly and f2p so it will succeed. Even with the overloaded servers at the moment. Once the servers calm down and they get things in line it will work out.	
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Not really any point as the same topic will come up in a few hours or so.
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For the OP:
 
The game's poor performance at launch was due to a large number of factors. Some of them have been fixed (40 man raiding is gone; rated PvP for better PvP gear is gone; Veteran solo/small group content now exists; monthly sub fee was justified based on monthly content updates that were quickly abandoned); some of them have not (endgame still conflates difficulty with group size; game still relies heavily on third-party addons to overcome significant flaws in basic UI; non PvX game systems like AH/CX remain unpolished).
 
It remains unclear whether the problems that have been fixed are the right ones to retain enough players to keep the game healthy and productive, but the reality is that the game is far improved over what it was at launch by any measure and now also has a F2P system that--while it could definitely be improved in a few ways--has a pretty good balance of purchasing options and play options to keep people entertained and let them play, while still giving them things to want to spend cash on.
 
We will find out how well it's working in about 6 months, I expect.
 
As for everyone else, do you really want to keep popping an argument about revenues and subscription numbers and "Was Wildstar a ded game? Discuss!" up to the main page of the general discussion subforum during the F2P launch? Does it really matter that much? It's all water under the bridge, what actually matters at this point is whether the new model and the existing game will do well.	
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-snip-
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Yas has an excellent point. Let the thread die, discuss important things elsewhere.
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{| class="blockquote"
Clearly you didn't read what I actually said. Let me spell it out:
 
"WILDSTAR WAS THE POOREST PERFORMING OF NCSOFTS LINEUP"
 
but
 
"WILDSTAR WAS STILL BRINGING IN 1-2 MILLION (USD) IN SALES PER QUARTER"
 
I explicitly stated that compared to NCSOFTS other titles, which are all available in the regional market they dominate except Wildstar (East Asia), which all had their own ups and downs before they reached present, Wildstar was the poorest. I also correctly stated that even so, they were bringing in 1-2 million per quarter, thats 4-10 million per year in 2015. And that is NOT a dead game by a long shot. That's a game with 100-200k subs at its lowest. Also you neglect that every other NCSOFT MMO has a cash shop and until literally just now had a completely different monetization scheme compared to W*
 
W*'s "numbers" haven't changed by a statistically significant magnitude this year (Q1 & Q2 2015). They have dropped by an order of magnitude from 2014. I'm not a white knight, you're not a black knight. I'm some one who didn't fail basic maths.
 
TLDR: 100-200k subs and 1-2 million per quarter not counting royalties IS a profitable game, but not a massive money maker. It is also NOT a dead game.
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Not really any point as the same topic will come up in a few hours or so.
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			Let's just say the game wasn't ready at release as it is now. So players who are new joining this and seeing the awesomesness. Welcome to a proper version of Wild Star.
			
				
	Edited September 30, 2015 by Turbotailz86	
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I looked at those numbers which is why I called you on your BS. Add q1 and q2 of 2015 to that graph. And guess what you will find. The trend that I'm talking about. You're basically just spinning the facts like a politician. "What does it matter that every city in the state has ten times more jobs and income coming in. We're *still* doing okay! So what if every month it gets worst and worst... hey look, this quarter barely sucked as badly as the last one!"
 
I'll let the facts speak for themselves so I won't be arguing with you anymore. I know fanboys need to have the last words, so have at it.
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At least six more times.
 
Everyone needs their own Special Snowflake's Opinion on Why Wildstar Failed.
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I'm new to the game. What were the reasons the game died before the F2P transition?
What are the hopes Wildstar will do better now?
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As with all modern MMORPGs, the games try to be everything to everyone, and it doesn't work.  In particular they focus entirely too much dev time and money on solo ez mode content and gimmicks like housing to try to appeal to casuals and go for wider appeal.  The heart and soul of MMORPGs is group content and progressive group content - that's what people pay a sub for and what people stick around for.  Nobody is going to pay a sub for solo content, especially not when ALL of the solo content can be done in a few days (so millions of dollars and years of development are obliterated by players in a few days and those players then bail).
 
If you want to solo, play the many better single player games.  If you want casual game play, whip out your phone, tablet, console, or even PC - there's no lack of casual gaming opportunities.  If you want to PvP there are tons of great PvP games.  If you want to group...well, you're screwed because the genre that does it best - did it best - then shifted gears to chase big numbers that never happen.  If you want to play doll house/pseudo barbie, play the sims or play minecraft.
 
You might think that after how many freaking failed sub-based MMORPGs that devs and companies would finally get it - this model doesn't work - go back to doing what MMORPGs do best - group-based challenging content, slower leveling paces, and realize it's ok to be more of a niche genre and to have smaller sub numbers, especially if you focus on one thing (group-based content) and don't spend tons of time and money on the side rubbish that has never proven (except in the one case of WoW that won't be duplicated) to keep players around.
 
In the early days (the golden days of MMORPGs) they were niche games and at their heart (of grouping and challenging content they are not casual games for casual players .  Attempting to make them casual to chase big numbers has ruined the genre.
 
It's pretty sad these days when games like ARK are better at MMORPG than actual MMORPGs.
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Anyone who says this game wasnt dead before F2P never played another MMO to see what population actually looks like.  I bought this game at launch and LOVED it, so did my brother, but we quit because there were no people.  I literally walked around in zone chat trying to get people to party up and play, and I saw a total of maybe 8 people in 30 days.  Now a huge reason for this was because at launch this game had a TON of servers, and with 2 factions, the chances of bumping into another person gets cut down considerably.  Me and many other people I talk too in GW2 (my main game) all had this same exact complaint.  It wasnt any dislike towards the game; yes it was buggy and such but we expected it from a freshly launched game.  
 
Sadly this game wasnt promoted enough and just did everything wrong at the beginning.  If you think this game wasnt dead, or near dead, I suggest you make a (now free) GW2 account and go onto ANY map, youll see what a real population looks like.  theres 30-150 people on every map minimum any time of day, and map (zone) chat is constant.  Now im not saying one game is better than the other, but dont white knight and act like this game was fine before f2p, because it wasnt, at all.  Ive been away a year but kept track on the forums forever.	
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			Why? The game was focused on a non-existent player base and failder to deliver for first 2 months i.e. failed expectations. That's all!
			
				
	Edited September 30, 2015 by Raged	
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white knight ALERT! :P
 
Are you kidding me :D Yeah ppl was clearing content, but as i can see it you need 20 ppl for a raid, :P the servers was low and carbine didn't get enough money out of it. END of story. the game was dying slowly, why they needed to go f2p.
I Know you love this same, so do i. but get down from that white horse :P it just sounds stupid :P
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{| class="blockquote"
 
 
I make a statement from what i have seen and what people told me
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First off, anyone saying the game wasn't dead is kidding themselves. IDK about any other regions, but the PvP servers on NA were EMPTY. Like literally I couldn't find anything on the auction house/trading post empty. Like I was the only one in the capitol city empty. When one of your megaservers has only a handful of players, your game isn't healthy. OKAY NOW THAT WE'VE CLEARED THAT UP
 
It was a perfect storm of poor design choices and bugs. I'll try to sum up so it's not an absurd wall of text.
 
1. Catering to a niche market on a AAA budget
Probably the biggest design mistake. Carbine built what is essentially a theme park hardcore MMO on a HUGE budget. As anyone knows, while a healthy hardcore player base is great, you need content to keep the non-hardcore player base around and spending money, because the hardcore MMO players are a tiny % of who is playing your game. 
 
2. Rose tinted glasses do not make bad design choices good
Attunements are fine. Long, difficult attunements that become harder as the population drops are not. Who on earth thought making world boss kills a requirement was a good idea? I literally had to put together a tank set for my dps stalker so I could solo some of those dumb bosses. And then requiring an additional attunement for 40 man? Because putting a 40 man together wasn't difficult enough. Speaking of...
 
3. 40 Mans
Again, rose tinted glasses. 40mans were like herding cats. Half the challenge is even finding 40 competent people to not screw up. Also, since the first raid was 20 man and the second was 40 man, it meant smaller guilds had to drum up 20 more people. Terrible. 
 
4. Bugs
Oh god, so many bugs. So many broken things. Datascape (the 40 man) was like, in a beta state. Not ready for people to raid it at all. So even if you managed to find 40 people to raid, have fun with the bugs!
 
5. Slow content releases
So basically you only have ultra hard PvE, structured PvP (which died quickly) and dailies to do. Again, nothing for casual players to do, and hardcore players fed up with the roster boss? GG no re.
 
6. Too many servers, and you couldn't go from PvE -> PvP
As people left the game for the above reasons, this just compounded the problems. And then, if you were raiding on a PvP server you couldn't recruit from people on the PvE server pool, because they couldn't transfer to you! This is why the PvP servers emptied out.
 
In the end, only a handful of PvE guilds were left doing serious progression of any kind, and PvP was pretty much decimated due to a whole other list of problems that I don't know well enough to comment on. iirc only ONE guild managed to get DS40 before the switchover to 20, and it took them over a year to do it.
 
I hope Carbine doesn't repeat these mistakes. As a hardcore player, the time spent on this game was some of the most fun content I've ever done, but I couldn't justify staying as my guild disbanded and everyone I knew and liked left (granted, I was on Rowsdower, which was probably the worst-off out of all the NA PvP servers, so I won't lie that it definitely magnified the game's problems).
 
TL;DR AAA MMO made for hardcore players only, but full of bugs and bad choices so even most hardcore players left.
			
				
	Edited September 30, 2015 by cakesphere	
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{| class="blockquote"
 
As for everyone else, do you really want to keep popping an argument about revenues and subscription numbers and "Was Wildstar a ded game? Discuss!" up to the main page of the general discussion subforum during the F2P launch? Does it really matter that much? It's all water under the bridge, what actually matters at this point is whether the new model and the existing game will do well.
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