119431-want-wildstar-to-have-population-growth-click-here

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I read post after post complaining about population problems. I'm starting to see a pattern. "Wildstar is so awesome, seems dead though.... how can this be??? Is this game dead? Where is everyone??"
 
The truth is Wildstar has got a lot of really bad press. Word of mouth advertising is the best form of advertising. I'm not trying to sugar coat anything. Its been a bumpy ride but lets be honest. Even though the ride has been bumpy, Wildstar is still the best game ever! Needs some work but even in its current state the game is #1 hands down. Most MMO's are in a constant state of change anyway.
 
So what can you do about it? Keep reading...
 
Word of mouth advertising is the most powerful and effective advertising. So I am asking everyone that reads this that wants to do something --- anything to promote the game and give it some good press to counter the bad press it has got.
 
Some ideas are: Post on social networking sites some good press to counter act the bad press. Be honest though. Dont dismiss the game has had a bumpy ride because it has. Talk about how fun the game is and just be honest. Its got some quirks but a lot of them are either fixed or going to be fixed soon. Tell friends/family/strangers about how awesome the game is.
 
I realize some people arent happy with the game in its current state and they are vocal on the forums. We all know who they are. I'm personally happy enough with the game the way it is right now and I have faith in Carbine still. PvP needs some serious attention but its still the best game on the market in my opinion -- even with its quirks. All I do is PvP, dailies, and farm materials. I have yet to do a dungeon or a raid. I absolutely love this game!
 
I dont even think the population is that bad to be honest. But even if the population is healthy why wouldnt you want to share this awesome game with others? And on a side note to those who think this game is "Dead" because low level zones and even major cities seem "empty" you have to consider the fact that this game has a lot of instanced content, player housing, dailies and material farming that needs to be done. Also its extremely easy to level quickly if you choose to. You wont be in low level zones for long... Hence they seem to be "empty" but I see people everytime I level my alts in those zones. I used to sit in town on my lvl 50 but I wont be wasting my time in town anymore. I realize if I sit in town I'm going to be broke. There is money to be made in my house and out in the world doing dailies and farming materials while I'm in que for PvP :D
 
I dont think major city population and population in low level zones is an accurate reflection of the population in this game.
 
So dead or not get this game some good press on social media, word of mouth advertising etc... The best way to get more people in here is to let them know about how much fun you are having in Wildstar. :D I found out about Wildstar while talking in general channel in SWTOR... I never have seen an advertisement for Wildstar before.	
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			You don't even have to believe that the population is bad for this to be a good idea.  If you like the game, and you want it to succeed, the best thing you can do is tell your friends why you like it.	
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			NCSoft really needs to step it up. It really does boggle my mind how hard they dropped the ball on this front. We need free trials, promo weekends, recruitment perks, actual advertising etc ASAP. It's tough to sell an underdog MMO to friends when they have to pay box price to see anything.	
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NCSoft really needs to step it up. It really does boggle my mind how hard they dropped the ball on this front. We need free trials, promo weekends, recruitment perks, actual advertising etc ASAP. It's tough to sell an underdog MMO to friends when they have to pay box price to see anything.
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			Look at it this way, they want the game to be in great shape before they push a full blown advertising campaign is my guess (whatever they can manage that is). With things important to the state of the game pushed back to drop 4 and more balance changes needed for PvP, I can't blame them if they have done nothing huge yet. My thought process is they need to at least make some kinda program that pushes you to get a friend in and level together for bonuses no matter what though and as soon as possible.	
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			Agreed. And one thing I've REFUSED to do is hop on the other server and poach, like they did aggressively to us prior to drop 3 when transfers went only one way.The reason why I've refused to do so is it's bad for the game and bad for the community. You're eating the population from within as a quick fix, instead of trying to bring in new people.My approach for population growth has been through the Warhound Events LEVELING circle (we crank out fresh 50's a lot lately) and that's received an influx of new players from the recent 50% off sale. Something I hope they do again around Christmas... but yeah, I've discovered these new players would try W* and many would leave after having limited player interactions. And this isn't just Warhound, I've had a few people reroll from Entity to Warhound, simply because they saw my leveling circle adverts on Reddit and the forums, and wanted to actually play/chat with people.I'm not saying this as a jab at Entity, I'm saying this as a every server needs a strong/prominent leveling circle that encourages/helps new players and is maintained daily ASAP. There ARE a lot of new players trying Wildstar, but you have to reach out to them before they leave. 	
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Look at it this way, they want the game to be in great shape before they push a full blown advertising campaign is my guess (whatever they can manage that is). With things important to the state of the game pushed back to drop 4 and more balance changes needed for PvP, I can't blame them if they have done nothing huge yet. My thought process is they need to at least make some kinda program that pushes you to get a friend in and level together for bonuses no matter what though and as soon as possible.
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			I clicked.  Did it work?	
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From the way I look at it (could be and probably am wrong) NCshoft as mentioned by Naix, is wanting WS to be as bug free and stable as it possibly can be. 
 
Advertising, regardless of format, costs money. It can even run up to the millions if done on a wide scale. NCsoft arent going to want to shell out this kind of money until they know its ready. They did say (if you believe it) that they fully back Carbine and Wildstar. This tells me that they are saying "looks, wwe think this game can be great, we're gonna give you time to short it out before we invest more. If you mess it up though we'll pull the plug"
 
Thats my views anyways. 
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Because, in the grand scheme of things WS is a small game in size and population. The cost of advertising to the standard of WoW costs in the tens of millions.
 
The game has its issues right now - everyone knows this. Would you want to hand over 10 million £/$/Euro with the game in its current state?
 
True player loss snowballing is a factor, but advertising on a massive scale for a game which isn't up to spec 100% is just asking more people to join > get angry > disapointed > Spread bad press then no one will want to play.
 
The game does need advertising and more players, but if you start branding the game as perfect with adverts, promotions, magazine covers etc then when the truth comes out *cupcake* will hit the fan. Look what happened to Swtor. They spent hundreds of millions on advertising. The game wasn't ready and they lost like a million subscribers almost over night. 	
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			Once Drop 4 is stable, it will be the perfect time for an advertising push because the item progression will be fixed and people will actually want to run dungeons again.	
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I clicked.  Did it work?
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I'd love to support the game I've been playing for six months. Here's what I'd have to tell my friends, who I'm always honest with:
 
1. The leveling isn't special. It's linear, standard fare, although the combat is more fun and there are a few puzzles... do you like math and memory tests? No? Ok then.
2. Dungeons and PVP won't happen reliably while you level
3. The art and music are cool, but what does that matter when there are plenty of other cool games that have the same qualities?
4. Housing is excellent and will blow your mind, but requires a lot of time and gold
5. RP is cool because the world is immersive and has a lot of lore eggs
 
For endgame:
 
1. Veteran dungeons are inaccessible and the rewards are not worth the punishment
2. PVP is mostly dead, a little spammy at times (visually in particular), and there are only three BGs
3. Raiding requires 10+ hours a week, there is no casual raiding currently in Wildstar (that I know of)
4. Endgame dailies/EG grind leads to little of benefit. If you want to play a game where maxing your skillset continues into endgame with EG grinding for AMPs/AP, then this is the game for you
5. Housing is excellent and will blow your mind, but requires even more time and gold
6. RP is fun at endgame because of the communities and housing
 
Considering housing and RP are niche activities that have little to do with gameplay (the predominant reason almost everyone I know games), I don't think honest word of mouth will help this game much, so far as population goes. I can't rave about the combat because combat is almost entirely dependent on the context in which you fight; combat in PVP, combat in dungeons, combat while leveling, etc. While telegraphs are a neat concept and have been well-implemented, I can't exactly divorce that positive from the reality that combat is only as fun as the situation you're fighting in and purpose you're fighting for. And I don't see those as being in a good state right now (see my criticisms of dungeon, PVP, and raid situation).
 
I think the OP is absolutely right in theory— we need to get the word out. But I don't see how I could speak honestly with my friends and still leave them with the impression that this is a game worth their time and sub investment, in its current condition.	
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3. Raiding requires 10+ hours a week, there is no casual raiding currently in Wildstar (that I know of)
 
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No it doesn't.  My guild raids 9 hours a week total and has 6/6 GA.  We just cleared GA in its entirety this week in 5 hours.
 
Also, there is a pug GA raid on Entity that I see running every week.  I know they've gotten up to at least Kuralak but I don't know if that's all.
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I don't make recommendations for pug raiding in any game. :P  If it works, great for those involved. It's not something I would send my friends into and it's certainly not reliable.
 
As to raiding 9 hours a week, I assume you're running on a 3 day schedule, correct? So you're spending 9 hours in GA itself... how many hours do you spend researching and getting repair/rune gold, or any other raid-related activity? Pretty sure you're sinking at least 10 hours into raids.
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This game would have better word of mouth advertising if it was in a good place.
 
Devs make game not suck
Players tell friends and increase population
 
 
it doesn't work the other way around, lmao	
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Guild bank provides consumables. In fact the guild bank has more money than we need for consumables so we're cashing out to guildies and might turn on guild repairs at some point.
 
Researching doesn't take very long, and it's no different from researching a dungeon, or researching farm spots, or researching drop tables for potential upgrades, or researching the market for money making opportunities, or researching what décor items are available and planning a house.  The point is, raiding is not the exclusive domain of research and planning in an MMO.
 
I don't take any longer to rune than anyone else because they're not reserved for raiding either.
 
Outside of those 9 hours I usually just do other stuff to cap my EG for the week, which in addition to gold from bosses, is more than enough money to more than cover any repair/incidental costs.
 
TL;DR version is that I don't have to go out of my way to do anything extra above and beyond what non-raiders are doing.
 
I guess by casual raiding you meant LFR raiding (which I would be against if it meant creating a noob difficulty level for each raid), because it's perfectly possible to raid less than 9 hours a week with the right guild.
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I never made the argument that research was exclusive to raids so I'm not sure why you're making the point as though it undermines my position. It's irrelevant to the dialogue between us.
 
If you're spending even 5-10 minutes most days of the week (including showing up 10 minutes early to raids, which is common), that will add up to about an hour spent on raiding, outside of actual raid gameplay. However, thank you for allowing me a moment to clarify: the issue isn't really the difference between 9 and 10 hours, it's that you're on a schedule for 3 days a week. That's half the week, roughly, and it's something that most people I know have no interest in at this point in their "MMO careers". In most MMOs I've played 3-4+ days is considered hardcore semi-hardcore, while 1-2 days is considered casual. I've seen one guild that raids two days a week in Wildstar and their progression over time is not good.
 
So no, by casual raiding I did not mean lower difficulty, I meant accessibility. I meant not having to give half of my days to a raid schedule. I meant raiding that my 30+ year old friends will be able and willing to do, since this is a discussion about spreading the word.
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Alright, given your caveats as follows:
 
- 1-2 days raiding is a casual schedule
- a raid schedule is created by the guild/group
- existing guilds that use a 1-2 days schedule have poor progression
 
My question is this then:  If nothing is stopping guilds from having a shorter raid schedule already, but that schedule results in slower progress, then how do you expect to make raiding more accessible without nerfing raids, and still make acceptable progress?
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Advertisement is big, but honestly, I don't recall much advertisement for most of the past mmos.  Only commercials I ever saw was WoW and ToR.  I don't remember seeing many posters, ads, billboards, radio commercials, etc. for any of AoC, Aion, Warhammer, CoH, TSW, STO, LotR, Tera, Rift, MxO, ESO to name most.  Maybe some of you saw stuff for these, but I don't.  I am not talking about the web ads either because all it takes is for you to go to their site and then you will start seeing their ads on a lot of other websites that do pay-per-click type banners.
 
I think the word gets out more to gamers via websites like mmo-champions, ign, and sites like those along with forums like reddit etc.  If they want to help this happen then they should do another week or 2 weeks for free to those who cancelled subs and try it again.  If they like it and stay then they will start spreading the word, but to get tons more brand new subs now, I don't see something like that as happening as much as they target those who left imo.	
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As an aside, Gungan, I don't think the problem has to do with Carbine's raids. I haven't experienced them myself, so my argument is not based on empirical evidence, and is thus a pretty weak one. But I will say that, in my opinion, only three things hurt raiding in this game right now (other than the itemization changes that I believe are incoming):
 
1. Attunement. My brain is still trying to grasp what exactly Carbine was thinking with this content gate, other than expanding the life of their pre-raid endgame. I personally hate attunements in MMOs, hate it more in this game given how long it is, but I will acknowledge that this personal opinion has nothing to do with whether it's actually a good game design decision.
 
2. Difficulty. Although I've read some raiders' opinions that raiding is not significantly harder than veteran dungeons (on some bosses, easier?) the assumption I think most MMO endgame players have is that difficulty scales up from dungeons to raids. And because dungeons are quite hard/challenging in this game, as well as having a somewhat toxic environment combined with lack of significant rewards, I think a lot of players just said "Hell no" to raids. "If it's this bad in vets, what's raiding like? Do I want to join a guild with people like the ones I'm meeting in veterans?"  So it's not the actual difficulty of the raid, it's the perceived difficulty and trials to get into the raid that is a problem (again, IMO).
 
3. The time commitment thing I've mentioned. This isn't Carbine's fault necessarily, but again, so long as there is no clear way for people who don't want to give 3 days to a schedule to access raid content, it's going to continue to suffer. This last reason is also my personal reason for not raiding; I hate the attunement but would suck it up if I found a good group of people raiding twice a week and actually making progress. I quit WoW  two years ago because I was sick of raiding 2-3 nights a week with poor progression, but also because that poor progression caused no-shows, drama, and doubt. So in the end it wasn't just "bah, I'm not getting the big kills and loot, screw this", it was "I could really be doing better things with my time than wasting it on this dysfunctional casual raid scene". If I were still playing WoW today though, I'd have premade LFG tools, which, last time I logged, looked great and were quite actively used. So that's a big bonus for current WoW... although not a toolset I think would work well with Wildstar, given the low population I perceive.	
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Agreed. And one thing I've REFUSED to do is hop on the other server and poach, like they did aggressively to us prior to drop 3 when transfers went only one way.
 
The reason why I've refused to do so is it's bad for the game and bad for the community. You're eating the population from within as a quick fix, instead of trying to bring in new people.
 
My approach for population growth has been through the Warhound Events LEVELING circle (we crank out fresh 50's a lot lately) and that's received an influx of new players from the recent 50% off sale. Something I hope they do again around Christmas... but yeah, I've discovered these new players would try W* and many would leave after having limited player interactions. And this isn't just Warhound, I've had a few people reroll from Entity to Warhound, simply because they saw my leveling circle adverts on Reddit and the forums, and wanted to actually play/chat with people.
 
I'm not saying this as a jab at Entity, I'm saying this as a every server needs a strong/prominent leveling circle that encourages/helps new players and is maintained daily ASAP. There ARE a lot of new players trying Wildstar, but you have to reach out to them before they leave.
 
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I need to make two corrections here, the first being that an existing guild, not guilds, is using a 2 day schedule, not 1, and has poor progression (IMO). This clarification is important because your statement makes it seem like there's actually a casual raiding community here involving more than one guild. As far as I've seen having spent time in the guild recruitment forum and asking around, there is no such community, just the one guild. I'm definitely open to correction myself on this last point though.
 
Second correction I'd like to make concerns your line of argument. Whereas I posted here explaining why I would not recommend this game to friends, and did not post here stating simply that I dislike things and they should be improved, there is currently no reason for me to have expectations or suggestions to Carbine or raiding guilds. That's not the point.
 
The point is, regardless of why, regardless of possible solutions or the lackthereof, the raiding scene in this game is not currently open to casual participation on a meaningful level (by meaningful here I mean in a gameplay/progression context, because people can still enjoy socializing and such, and that has meaning as well).
 
I realize that creating a list of problems I perceive in the game is going to make me a bit of a target for debate, but let's not forget the context of my posting here. ;)
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Advertisement is big, but honestly, I don't recall much advertisement for most of the past mmos.  Only commercials I ever saw was WoW and ToR.  I don't remember seeing many posters, ads, billboards, radio commercials, etc. for any of AoC, Aion, Warhammer, CoH, TSW, STO, LotR, Tera, Rift, MxO, ESO to name most.  Maybe some of you saw stuff for these, but I don't.  I am not talking about the web ads either because all it takes is for you to go to their site and then you will start seeing their ads on a lot of other websites that do pay-per-click type banners.
 
I think the word gets out more to gamers via websites like mmo-champions, ign, and sites like those along with forums like reddit etc.  If they want to help this happen then they should do another week or 2 weeks for free to those who cancelled subs and try it again.  If they like it and stay then they will start spreading the word, but to get tons more brand new subs now, I don't see something like that as happening as much as they target those who left imo.
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As an aside, Gungan, I don't think the problem has to do with Carbine's raids. I haven't experienced them myself, so my argument is not based on empirical evidence, and is thus a pretty weak one. But I will say that, in my opinion, only three things hurt raiding in this game right now (other than the itemization changes that I believe are incoming):
 
1. Attunement. My brain is still trying to grasp what exactly Carbine was thinking with this content gate, other than expanding the life of their pre-raid endgame. I personally hate attunements in MMOs, hate it more in this game given how long it is, but I will acknowledge that this personal opinion has nothing to do with whether it's actually a good game design decision.
 
2. Difficulty. Although I've read some raiders' opinions that raiding is not significantly harder than veteran dungeons (on some bosses, easier?) the assumption I think most MMO endgame players have is that difficulty scales up from dungeons to raids. And because dungeons are quite hard/challenging in this game, as well as having a somewhat toxic environment combined with lack of significant rewards, I think a lot of players just said "Hell no" to raids. "If it's this bad in vets, what's raiding like? Do I want to join a guild with people like the ones I'm meeting in veterans?"  So it's not the actual difficulty of the raid, it's the perceived difficulty and trials to get into the raid that is a problem (again, IMO).
 
3. The time commitment thing I've mentioned. This isn't Carbine's fault necessarily, but again, so long as there is no clear way for people who don't want to give 3 days to a schedule to access raid content, it's going to continue to suffer. This last reason is also my personal reason for not raiding; I hate the attunement but would suck it up if I found a good group of people raiding twice a week and actually making progress. I quit WoW  two years ago because I was sick of raiding 2-3 nights a week with poor progression, but also because that poor progression caused no-shows, drama, and doubt. So in the end it wasn't just "bah, I'm not getting the big kills and loot, screw this", it was "I could really be doing better things with my time than wasting it on this dysfunctional casual raid scene". If I were still playing WoW today though, I'd have premade LFG tools, which, last time I logged, looked great and were quite actively used. So that's a big bonus for current WoW... although not a toolset I think would work well with Wildstar, given the low population I perceive.
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There are a few casual raiding guilds EU and NA side, but the ones I know of do not really advertise much and get members via friends or just word of mouth as opposed to forums and the usual Zone chat recruitment. It sounds like you have an idea of what you want and people who might be on the same mindset as well. Have you attempted to gather said friends and approach the content in the casual manner that you feel is more to your liking?
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Alright, given your caveats as follows:
 
- 1-2 days raiding is a casual schedule
- a raid schedule is created by the guild/group
- existing guilds that use a 1-2 days schedule have poor progression
 
My question is this then:  If nothing is stopping guilds from having a shorter raid schedule already, but that schedule results in slower progress, then how do you expect to make raiding more accessible without nerfing raids, and still make acceptable progress?
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The attunement is not really anything you should be having to go out of your way to do though.  I think if they moved the rep requirement to the end, rather than the beginning, nobody would have even noticed they were doing an attunement as they progressed on the natural course at 50.  I do agree that silvers were too much back then (even though I pugged all my silvers), and it is good that they backed off of that.  The only thing really working against attunement right now is the lack of queues popping.  Here's hoping for Drop 4 fixes.
 
Rewards from raiding not being rewarding were at least 75% remedied with Drop 3's crafting and rune changes.
 
Otherwise your assessment is mostly fair.
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As someone who currently raids 3 days a week but would love the option for 2 day/week raids, there are two major things I would like to see changed: 
 
1. Trash density and quantity. Length of trash encounters in general. It's not a coincidence that even the hardcore progression guilds make extensive uses of stalker scientists to by pass trash. It's mindnumbingly dull and meaningless, there's too much of it, and the ratio of time spent on trash vs bosses is too high. 
 
2. Allowing extended lockouts. Right now if you don't finish in a week, your lockout resets and you have to reclear everything all over again, which combined with the extensive trash, is time consuming no matter what. For example, our guild currently takes one raid night of 3 hours to clear 4/6. If we only raided 2 nights a week, and that's half our time spent on farm content. And as encounters get not only more difficult but also longer, a guild that raids fewer nights and hours get fewer attempts on progression bosses to learn.
 
If guilds were given the option to save their progress and proceed with a full week of attempts on Ohmna instead, their rate of progression would be better without sacrificing encounter difficulty. Progress would still be slower, but the wall stopping them won't be due to lack of attempts.
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As someone who currently raids 3 days a week but would love the option for 2 day/week raids, there are two major things I would like to see changed: 
 
1. Trash density and quantity. Length of trash encounters in general. It's not a coincidence that even the hardcore progression guilds make extensive uses of stalker scientists to by pass trash. It's mindnumbingly dull and meaningless, there's too much of it, and the ratio of time spent on trash vs bosses is too high. 
 
2. Allowing extended lockouts. Right now if you don't finish in a week, your lockout resets and you have to reclear everything all over again, which combined with the extensive trash, is time consuming no matter what. For example, our guild currently takes one raid night of 3 hours to clear 4/6. If we only raided 2 nights a week, and that's half our time spent on farm content. And as encounters get not only more difficult but also longer, a guild that raids fewer nights and hours get fewer attempts on progression bosses to learn.
 
If guilds were given the option to save their progress and proceed with a full week of attempts on Ohmna instead, their rate of progression would be better without sacrificing encounter difficulty. Progress would still be slower, but the wall stopping them won't be due to lack of attempts.
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Writing this now makes me wonder if it would be a good thing for players to experience raids before attunement. Like, let us fight the first boss in a raid-style environment, let us feel what the mechanics and rewards are like, before asking us to invest a bunch of time doing the fights Carbine wants done in the order Carbine wants them done. Hard to implement but it could help.
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I hate, hate, hate trash in raids. I've been raiding off and on, casual and semi-hardcore, for about seven years. This is my number one dislike of this gameplay design. Although, WoW has really evolved the trash issue past its ugly beginnings (which it sounds like Carbine have replicated, sadly) by making the trash a bit more challenging, a bit less dense, slower to respawn, and, most recently, making trash abilities mirror boss mechanics so that trash is effectively a training obstacle and not a hoop we need to get through before the fun fights. That is wonderful game design, IMO, and reflects deep thought and acknowledgement of player criticism, as well as recognition that although we gamers like to spend ludicrous amounts of time on video games, we prefer to do so when it's FUN. :P
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I'll say that the attunement probably shouldn't be sequenced at all.  Each step should be a separate quest, whose completion adds to the checkbox of an overarching attunement quest.
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I don't know, I didn't think WoW really "fixed" the trash situation; it seems largely the same.  However, I always kind of liked trash encounters, even back in the old vanilla days.  I know clearing trash isn't always great for progression, but in a way it was theraputic to reliably kill things you weren't going to wipe on over and over again.  I actually like fighting trash in Wildstar because nothing yet has really been a total pushover.
 
That might be a minority opinion, though.  People seem to like to skip content in dungeons to make the timer, too, which kind of depresses me.  I'm the kind of guy that looked forward to the 50s in vanilla WoW so I could chain-full-clear BRD.  Still, to this day, my favorite instance in any MMORPG just due to sheer epic length and scale.  With changes to the zeitgeist of MMORPGs looking down on those sorts of encounters, that seems to be a permanent relic of the past.  Modern BRD is sliced into four pieces to fit the timeframes of their queues.
 
Still, I miss it.
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As a concept, I actually like attunements because they add a layer of lore and goal setting to the whole finding a new lair thing. 
 
Giant enemy fortress?  OK, what do we have to do to bypass the defenses and gain access to kick some bad guy ass? 
 
Versus
 
Giant enemy fortress?  OK, lets walk right in and kill stuff because there are no defenses preventing random people from walking into this evil dude's lair.	
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As a concept, I actually like attunements because they add a layer of lore and goal setting to the whole finding a new lair thing. 
 
Giant enemy fortress?  OK, what do we have to do to bypass the defenses and gain access to kick some bad guy ass? 
 
Versus
 
Giant enemy fortress?  OK, lets walk right in and kill stuff because there are no defenses preventing random people from walking into this evil dude's lair.
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Trash is still boring compared to raid bosses, but like I said, it spawns less, it's less brainless, and most important, it teaches boss mechanics. That last one itself is a big, BIG change from old trash, which was only thematically linked to the raid instance.
 
Funny enough, I also don't have a problem with dungeon trash. But I draw a clear line of distinction between dungeon and raid trash. Dungeon trash in the good WoW time (mostly BC heroics from my point of view) was a challenge itself, and could overwhelm you. Trash in early WoW, possibly excluding MC, always felt to me like a big repetitive slow-down. Especially when you had to reclear... my god, the complete backwards thinking that leads to trash respawns in a 20+ player raid environment...
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Well, yea, in theory, but what does the attunment have to do with entering GA/DS, aside from the actual quest portions? The grindy parts of dungeon, adventure, and world boss hunting... I don't see how they build up any kind of thematic or practical link. Particularly when you add in grinding primal patterns for the one raid. Shoot me now, please. :rolleyes:
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Trash is still boring compared to raid bosses, but like I said, it spawns less, it's less brainless, and most important, it teaches boss mechanics. That last one itself is a big, BIG change from old trash, which was only thematically linked to the raid instance.
 
Funny enough, I also don't have a problem with dungeon trash. But I draw a clear line of distinction between dungeon and raid trash. Dungeon trash in the good WoW time (mostly BC heroics from my point of view) was a challenge itself, and could overwhelm you. Trash in early WoW, possibly excluding MC, always felt to me like a big repetitive slow-down. Especially when you had to reclear... my god, the complete backwards thinking that leads to trash respawns in a 20+ player raid environment...
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Trash in WS only respawns in raids like once a day (practically speaking... I've never seen it actually happen during a raid), and raids are set up in wings with shortcuts like Ikea, so if you clear the boss of one wing, you won't have to kill that wing's trash again or you can skip some trash to the next boss.
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While I'm not opposed to extending raid lockout timers, I find that making use of that feature isn't particularly helpful until you're salvaging the vast majority of the gear you would be getting from clearing the previous bosses again.  What I'm saying is that your entire raid needs a certain level of gear before using that feature would provide any benefit, and would therefore be sparsely used.  I believe when I raided in WoW, my guild used that feature once in 2 years.
 
I'm game for lower trash density, but to me there's already much less trash than I'm used to seeing in other games.  Maybe Datascape is different.
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This exact wording is how I feel about 95% of my gripes with Wildstar. And that makes me a sad panda.
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Could it have been handled better? Absolutely.  That's why so many people didn't like it or failed.  The idea of the attunement wasn't the problem, it was the implementation.
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			The problem with any word-of-mouth or advertising now is that nothing significant has changed since launch.  Yes, the game has improved and certainly looks to be moving in the right direction, but many core issues that caused people to leave are still present.  Most of my gaming friends already played Wildstar and left for various reasons (mostly no longer wanting to raid and pvp issues) and most of those reasons are still applicable today.  For example, what do I tell my friends who have already finished the attunement (doing the silver screening) but don't want to do Wildstar raiding?  "Hey come back to Wildstar, you can do daily quests to progress or run the same 4 dungeons you already ran for the attunement for the next several months." 	
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Well, yea, in theory, but what does the attunment have to do with entering GA/DS, aside from the actual quest portions? The grindy parts of dungeon, adventure, and world boss hunting... I don't see how they build up any kind of thematic or practical link. Particularly when you add in grinding primal patterns for the one raid. Shoot me now, please. :rolleyes:
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I don't know, I didn't think WoW really "fixed" the trash situation; it seems largely the same.  However, I always kind of liked trash encounters, even back in the old vanilla days.  I know clearing trash isn't always great for progression, but in a way it was theraputic to reliably kill things you weren't going to wipe on over and over again.  I actually like fighting trash in Wildstar because nothing yet has really been a total pushover.
 
That might be a minority opinion, though.  People seem to like to skip content in dungeons to make the timer, too, which kind of depresses me.  I'm the kind of guy that looked forward to the 50s in vanilla WoW so I could chain-full-clear BRD.  Still, to this day, my favorite instance in any MMORPG just due to sheer epic length and scale.  With changes to the zeitgeist of MMORPGs looking down on those sorts of encounters, that seems to be a permanent relic of the past.  Modern BRD is sliced into four pieces to fit the timeframes of their queues.
 
Still, I miss it.
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Seems to me that they've kind of missed their shot at advertising and hyping the game.If they do that now or even wait until drop 4, interested people will google wildstar and see the massive flood of negative that is pretty much all over everywhere.And even the whole drop 4 thing with the item rebalancing. What will that really do to bring about change?Just about everyone still playing is a veteran and all the current gear isn't getting changed to the new gearSo all the old crafted gear that beats everything in dungeons and most everything in GA will still be what it is.Unless this item rework involves huge shifts like boosting GA gear to like halfway between where it currently is and where DS gear is, and boosting dungeon gear to where GA gear currently is. If that is in the cards then hell yeah dungeons are going to be crowdedI honestly don't see any other reasonable way they can do it either.We already have the low end and high end defined by what you can get in adventures and DSCan't really make either one worse because that would put adventure gear below even mediocre crafted items without the benefit of optimized statsOr that would make all the people already fully decked in DS gear to be even more ridiculously over the top powerful than they already areAs things currently are there are decisions like "If i take this challenge reward GA shield, reroll 3 of the slots, and add a fifth slot it will probably beat my 2 slot shield from adventures a little bit"And if they don't make available gear from dungeons and GA way better it still won't compete well with the outdated crafted items
and the power gap between GA and DS is gigantic, like even the absolute worst item for a slot in DS blows away the best in slot from GA by a mileSeems logical filling that gap would be the way to turn the gear progression from "a flat line into a molehill into a mountain" to a relatively smooth curve
If they did that I could see drop 4 reinvigorating the endgame greatly and then they need to immediately jump on that with free trials and promations and some advertising on gaming websites.Chances are the item rework everything is going to stay same power level and just be shuffled around stats though which means it won't really give any reason to go back to adventures and dungeons to any current players	
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I think the OP is absolutely right in theory— we need to get the word out. But I don't see how I could speak honestly with my friends and still leave them with the impression that this is a game worth their time and sub investment, in its current condition.
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You're not alone. I enjoy clearing what people call "trash" (i hate that word), it's a very predictible set of easy encounters and you can do fun stuff with it - like pulling 10+ mobs at once. It's indeed depressing to see that this "trash" isn't always on the gold/silver quest line, people just try to skip it and it's very frustrating. I really dislike the predatory attitude many people have towards content: it must be cleared asap and you must run from one loot pinata and ignore the rest as much as you can. Even after my 100th run of the same dungeons in Neverwinter I was always clearing the same groups on the way in the same order, at the same location. It was the shortest legit clear. Sometimes MMOs become a place in which you're just trying to achieve the perfect run and that's awesome.
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Path of least resistance is fairly normal, people flipped tables the moment someone pulled an extra pack in any WoW dungeon. That being said, STL is a good example of a dungeon where I don't feel my group skips more than 1-2 mobs total even while doing gold, KV/SC you skip some but it depends what you're doing challenge-wise, it was most likely intended that you don't have to kill everything obviously. SSM on the other hand had one of the biggest skips changed and other than the strain area everything seems about right. I don't really see skipping as an issue in dungeons anymore.
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You're not alone. I enjoy clearing what people call "trash" (i hate that word), it's a very predictible set of easy encounters and you can do fun stuff with it - like pulling 10+ mobs at once. It's indeed depressing to see that this "trash" isn't always on the gold/silver quest line, people just try to skip it and it's very frustrating. I really dislike the predatory attitude many people have towards content: it must be cleared asap and you must run from one loot pinata and ignore the rest as much as you can. Even after my 100th run of the same dungeons in Neverwinter I was always clearing the same groups on the way in the same order, at the same location. It was the shortest legit clear. Sometimes MMOs become a place in which you're just trying to achieve the perfect run and that's awesome.
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As a new player who's two days into his guest pass, I can confirm all the negative stuff makes it a much harder choice whether to invest my time into the game or not. And really, the choice should not be nearly as hard since I'm totally in love with the combat system - a breath of fresh air. 
 
The thing I'm mostly concerned with is the population issue. From what I see posted the queues are really long, and that's something I am not sure I could get over. Additionally, the state of pvp seems to be worrying. Not to mention the big layoffs at Carbine. 
 
I played RIFT before coming back to WoW and I'm utterly disappointed what the game has become. I'm not sure if WS is headed in that direction, it'd be a shame. 	
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Its sad to see this thread turned into something completely different than the intention of it -- word of mouth advertising for Wildstar and getting new players in this awesome game.
 
Forum moderators are nowhere to be seen when things are off topic. But always there when they ARENT needed for censorship, moving posts that dont need to be moved and locking threads because there is already one about it. I want to remake this thread because of how off topic it has become. There were about 4 replies out of the 40 something replies that actually were on topic!
 
FIRE THE FORUM MODS!!! HIRE DEV's!	
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Its sad to see this thread turned into something completely different than the intention of it -- word of mouth advertising for Wildstar and getting new players in this awesome game.
 
Forum moderators are nowhere to be seen when things are off topic. But always there when they ARENT needed for censorship, moving posts that dont need to be moved and locking threads because there is already one about it. I want to remake this thread because of how off topic it has become. There were about 4 replies out of the 40 something replies that actually were on topic!
 
FIRE THE FORUM MODS!!! HIRE DEV's!
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I set my standards higher, wildstar does not meet them and i won't promote something that fails to me my standards.
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But I thought you've somewhat recently admitted that you still play the game, "period"? So you're either not that bright for playing something that doesn't meet your standards, or you're just another wannabe self-important internet poster who (with their almost drug-like addiction) dresses up their need to "Poo-post" with phony concern trolling on the forums.
 
Or perhaps it's a little of column A and a little of column B?
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On topic, I agree that word of mouth is invaluable for game promotion.
 
However, I find the seeming lack of post-launch advertisement to be a little odd. I'm sure there are a decent number of people who don't really know much or anything at all about WS. Speaking for myself, despite the fact that it was announced back in 2011, the game flew completely under my radar until about a month before launch.	
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			I think they may be waiting till they fix more bugs, fix PvP and there isn't a new WoW expansion out to promote the game ;)	
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