110940-state-of-wildstar-thread

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Warning, extremely long post.
 
I love(d) this game.  I really did.  When it released, it was top 5 games streamed, had to wait hours in server queue, insta-pops for everything, players EVERYWHERE.  After 3 months, I am sad to say that this game is borderline dead.  Not dead, borderline dead.  Bottom line, if you're reading this right now we are unified when I say that we want this game to re-emerge.
 
Regardless of what you say Carbine, every player here knows what's really going on so lets try and get straight to the point here.
 
After a month, the game died down a little bit to a normal pop, which was more than expected.  
 
After the 1-2 months mark, there were still active parties constantly going after bosses such as Scorchwing, however,many things began to suddenly decline....severely.   RBG's during oceanic primetime were taking absurdly long (in the hours).  Practice grounds began to take 10-15 minutes as well.  NA primetime these queue times were about /2 or /3 of the Oceanic primetime.  Based off of only the NA primetime numbers, this is still not horrible...but the bear minimum.  PVE wise, it was still active in both primetimes, however solo queuing as a dps could take while to find group.  Considering ALL queues are cross realm...this starting to become the spawn of a serious problem.
 
After about 3 months now, in this current state, the game is extremely unhealthy in terms of population.  After paying close attention to the population and market of my server vs the most populated one (Pergo), it's safe to say Pergo is about a 50% increase from my current server (Widow).  Still, ALL queues are cross realm (this being the most important factor of all).  Currently in our server i saw a total of 0 people by the auction houses in Illium (dominion side), 0 people in Blighthaven, 0 people in Auroria, 0 guilds spamming zone chat for recruitment, 0 conversations/messages in zone chat.  Scorchwing, just a month ago, had like 40 people there from both factions trying to take down the boss, now there isn't a single person in the vicinity (yes, Scorchwing and his "food" is just chilling there).  The game feels like I Am Legend.  Lets just put the cross realm issue to the side for now, this is a serious problem.  Even in gw2 before they dropped the mega server patch, it was NEVER this bad and that was a full year and a half after the game launched.  For this game to drop off this bad, this quick...is a serious issue.
 
You say switch servers?  50% of people don't play on Pergo which means even if you DO switch it isn't going to be instantly like month 1.  Dead towns CAN be deceiving depending on what time you log and the current state of your server.  The only thing really effected by the server population is pve non-instanced groups, guilds, and auction house (which btw, all 3 of those are lacking, i mean you can't even find an Adventus medium coat on the auction house right now...like really?).  
 
What solidifies this game as "dead" is the following: (note: this is all cross realm)
NA primetime practice grounds queue time: 5-20 minutes (5 at absolute best)
Oceanic primetime practice grounds queue time: 20-40 minutes 
NA primetime practice arena 2s queue time: 2-15 minutes (sometimes it insta queues, sometimes you're sitting there forever)
Oceanic primetime practice arena 2s queue time: unknown (literally..it' says unknown, i haven't had one pop in the past week so 1h+ if i had to write a number for it)
NA/Oceanic primetime practice arena 3/5s: They might as well remove this and no one would notice
Rated 3s & 5s: If you exclude rematches (meaning exluding the people you are constantly matched with b/c they are the only ones in queue), then this too would be the "unknown" value
Warplots: lol, 99% of the people that have played this game haven't done or seen a warplot yet (which is very sad considering it may never even be seen)
PVE: dps solo qing could insta pop if you're lucky, but if you literally average the time in queue with Oceanic AND NA primetime then it'd easily be at least 30 minutes
Simply stated, even with server merges, it will not change the time in queue.  It will not change the population of the entire game.  There are two problems right now.  1st being that the servers are empty, 2nd being that the game's overall population is dangerously low.
 
Why did it go wrong?  Well first of all, this is a game that is based off of big numbers.  End-game all the things that you look foward to do all require 20+ people which you simply can not do with a low mmo population.  Aside from all the bugs and issues that has risen, there is simply NOTHING to do at end game other than the following: getting attuned.  You may argue saying blah blah blah that's not true, but here is why it is:
 
There is no end game pvp: First of all, no one plays pvp.  All pvp gametimes are instanced mini-games. The only form of pvp progression is an inflated rating that has no more meaning anymore due to the fact that 75% of the players in this game already exploited.  You are 1800 rated?  Doesnt mean you're good.  <--- this is a serious problem, there is nothing to play for then.  There are no tournaments, there are no rankings, there is nothing.  There is no form of pvp that effects the world or players directly either such as world pvp.  There is simply a "techincally" rated instance pvp and ganking in world maps. In the end, the pvp in this game is like opening up CS to "pub" it out for a few minutes then log off.
Dungeons don't count as something "end game" because it's not.  The loot you get from dungeons are laughable for how difficult they are.  Elite players will think they are easy...and they are if you have 5 somewhat smart players that are, more importantly, geared.  If they are geared for it, they dont have any reason to run the dungeons.  If you ran got through the dungeons legit, then you've wiped hundreds of times learning them and running them AGAIN..especially for loot you don't even need, is not something MOST people would want to do.  If you're good enough to easily to get through them, you don't really need 99% of the gear that drops there.  If you aren't geared to get through them...you STILL dont' need to do them outside of getting your silver for attunement because crafted gear and half the stuff from adventures are superior to the junk in the dungeons.  
Eventually you'll silver your dungeons and realize you don't need to do dungeons ever again (b/c you never get an upgrade from the loot outside maybe like 2 pieces).  What is there to do then?  Pvp is dead so....20-40 man raids.  This means it's safe to say that raiding is the ONLY thing to do end-game.  And it is.  I've literally sat on my ass and have done nothing.  Those who are in smaller guilds or forced to even ring for a guild in a raid or join one of the 5 big guilds on their respective servers to get into raiding.  The problem with this is that there are more casuals that play this game than hardcores.  Regardless of this game being arguably designed for hardcores, more casuals play.  Casuals dont have the time to be able to commit to a raid.  It's VERY difficult for a guild to have the required "mats" to be able to field a 20 man raid (let alone 40) b/c the population is so low.  The 20-40 man raids being the ONLY thing to do at the end of this game is depressing.  You have a large amount of casuals that simply can not raid, then you have a large amount of players that are simply no interested in pve raids, then you've got the handfew that are so hardcore that they quit b/c the only way to field a 20 and 40 man raid is to find 20 to 40 hardcore players (you have to be hardcore to a point to have the time and dedication to commit to a 20/40 man raid because it literally takes hours a day....for weeks to complete) which you CANT because this game's population is SO low.  The population BEING low because that's the only thing TO do end-game. 
Farm elder gems? Why? To get non-raid attuned gear that is inferior to all the crafted gear you have? There are no plans on enhancing items that are dropped in dungeons other than an extra rune slot or two...seeing as the base stats on 90% of the gear that drops in dungeons are shit.  Base stat wise the elder gem gear is barely better than what's already best in slot...only you roll on rune slots when you buy them with the gems. Seeing as you can only make 140-150 elder gems a WEEK, it's never worth spending those gems on gear that you have to roll on rune slots for.  Okay so that rune system is being fixed...still the gear isn't worth getting over amp/skill points, the base stats just aren't there.  
 
Let me ask you, if you have gotten a couple good drops in the dungeons, you have fully runed out crafted gear, you've reached the raid part of attunement but have no interest in repeating the grueling silver dungeon phase only multiplied by 4-8....what are you going to do? Pvp queues don't pop and even if they did there is no real meaning or progression to it.  So what do you do? Work on pimping out your house? There is nothing end-game.  You have 2 things, pvp for no meaning and progession or raid.  Considering one out of those 2 things is not only meaningless with no progression, but there aren't any players doing it anyway.  So there is nothing but 20 man raids left.  What do you do if you have no time to do raiding? You quit.  What do you do if you have no interest in raiding? You quit.  That's what's happened here (outside of the countless number of people who have quit for bugs and changes to select systems within the game). 
 
If you want to keep this game pay to play you have to make MAJOR changes to the game that would literally change the way people play the game.  Add world pvp that effect like gw2 or eso maybe.  New forms of pve that casuals can play maybe.  Less emphasis on large raids, more emphasis on smaller group events maybe.  Regardless of what it is, it has to be more than just 20/40 man raids.  
 
Otherwise, the easier and more sure-fire fix for the population issue is to change this game to free-to-play.  I feel like this needs to be done fast.  The population of this game will ONLY get worse next month when Archeage comes out, then way more when WOD comes out in Nov.  I mean the population is LITERALLY hanging by a thread....imagine another month of nothingness then the start of new hyped games getting released.  It's not a question of whether or not this game can survive or not...its' more when will it die, October? November? Possibly get lucky and make it to December?
 
Guys at Carbine can't be blind to the simple fact that this game has a very low population of players playing it and it's only going to get hit 5 times as hard considering there is no ground-breaking expansion that is coming up to compete with two majorly hyped games.  There are more beta testers in AA than there is players playing WS...can you imagine when wod comes out?  The chances of this game surviving is very slim.  
 
I'm making this post as a warning and final plea of help.  It is not me threatening to leave seeing as i have enough plat (as should everyone else) to extend my play time another 30 days. 
 
 
NOTE: with the recent pvp patch the pvp queues ARE better for practice grounds and rated arena.  But they were also BRIEFLY better when the sabatoge drop came out.  I will also go out and say that the change was def a step in the right direction!
 
 
TLDR: End game PVP has no meaning/progession; only thing to do endgame is pve raiding; game is dead; not overreacting, the decline in population in just 3 months is overwhelming	
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Since we already have a thread going on server merges and population, I'm going to lock this one. 
https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/110601-okay-they-are-looking-into-server-pop-issue/
 
 
Edit: And here is OP's previous thread. https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/109284-your-opinons-of-the-state-of-the-gameand-its-future/	
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