148802-your-wildstar-experience

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I thought this would be a good place to share your story for wildstar so far. It can be positive, negative, neutral.. but it would really help the devs see what kind of shortfalls/positives decisions they are making. So, I shall begin :) (Spoiler tagged to make sure noone has broken eyesockets from my rant) 
I first started playing the day after launch day (I skipped headstart and launch day because I knew it would be busy as hell) and decided to roll on one of the overflow servers named Contagion. It was a pvp server on EU, and was packed to the brim within one day, including queues! I levelled up super speedily and had a guild running pretty quickly. By the time my friends had got to max level, we decided to gear for pvp and then do some arenas. Unfortunately we were a day or two too slow and started getting rolled over by people who had already got their 1800 gear already, win traders and various other things. So half my friends quit, and the other half of us decided to carry on trying to recruit for RBGs and a pvp guild. Within a month we had garnered a good, active base to our guild but noticed guilds moving off the server one by one (to at the time Hazak), leaving the server more and more unpopulated. Contagion was primarily a dominion server with 4-5 good raiding guilds, a couple had got good progress but were struggling recruiting vs the roster boss and were the first to move. Within a few months, Contagion was empty. We complained to the devs, left feedback tickets, enquired about merges, tried to get people more interested in joining the server... but none of it worked. A month or so later, after a lot of people had already moved to Hazak, my guild decided to buy transfers to Hazak. And then it was round 2, on Hazak we started again and the server was PACKED! Within a month or two we had built the guild to be even more fantastic, boasting two RBG teams, lots of arena players and lots of friends. It was at this time that wildstar was doing okay, but the arena and rbg queues were slowly starting to dry up. At this time the Megaserver merges were announced (much to my guildie's annoyance that we'd actually paid for tfers for our toons...) which was exciting for the smaller servers and meant we could recruit more people! Or so we thought... On the day of the merge Lumi was absolutely full to the brim and full of positivity. There were 3 or 4 big raiding guilds on the server who were actually doing 40man DS, and plenty of smaller raiding guilds, PvP guilds, lots of duelling, lots of activity. Even cougar dropped into Illium to say hi on the day of the merge and to check how everyone was, I remember thanking cougar for making this decision... I think the population of Luminai and Jabbit at this time was actually quite even. Then carbine did the biggest poop ever, and said that there would be free transfers... to PvE servers ONLY. This killed the server. The raiding guilds moved first, then the lesser raiding guilds, then the people who preferred more people around... and within 2 months, Luminai was barren. For 6 months, my guild and a couple on the Exile side battled to keep Luminai alive, events running, warplots going, arenas popping and various other things. But it was no use, the server was officially dead. Again our guildies paid to move to a new server. It was needed to save the guild and the sanity of our guildmembers. Yes, that's right we paid... On Jabbit it seemed a lot better but we suffered at the hands of bullies in the community, people were rude to us, told us to go back to our dead servers etc etc (not your finest moment Jabbit community) but we quickly ignored those idiots and became friends with social guilds, made a good pvp circle, ran some warplots, rbgs and wrecked bgs. Then free transfers opened up and the rest of our members jumped across from the old guild on Lumi. It was not long after this that F2P was announced and the game's population on Jabbit slowly died. Due to irl issues I'd taken a short break and the guild had broken apart. At this time, I'd had enough of being on a pve server and decided I would move back to the pvp server for f2p.  On the day of f2p launch Luminai was PACKED TO THE BRIM! It was fantastic, there was OPvP, lots of duels, rbgs popping, arenas popping... everything was so fun! My guild got a second lease of life back on Luminai, never to be as great as in p2p, but I met some great friends! Unfortunately, carbine made some bad decisions regarding pvp, and a lot of people expressed their anger at this and left the game. PvE guilds on Lumi slowly disintegrated or moved to Jabbit to be able to recruit people, everything slowly died... It was like deja vu But now... Lumi has suffered the same fate. I am stuck on a dead server, with no people. The only way off is to pay AGAIN. All of my guild mates have either quit, moved to Jabbit, or are on hiatus until carbine do something (aka hiatus for ever). There are bots in pvp at level 50, there are no arena queues, noone is around anywhere, you can't do ANYTHING (and this was before christmas, I haven't logged on since then because I've been too depressed with WS to play at the moment :/, but I'd imagine it's worse now)
 
In conclusion I've moved several times, and paid for it most times just because the devs did not try and fix population waning before it was an actual gamebreaking issue. If they had implemented free transfers each time things got a bit lower on each side, we wouldn't be in this sticky situation.  So, my wildstar experience as you can see has been a mixture of the best game of my life, with the best pvp fun I've had in a long time, the best dungeons ever (both challenging and fun!), I made some amazing friends I hope to keep for a long time; and the worst game of my life. If any other game had given me this experience I would have quit a long time ago, so I think it's just testament to how much faith I put on the devs and the game. The Devs seemed like such down to earth people in beta and launch, something that was so heartwarming to me, they seem to really care about their game (even now I see this!) and the whole game was just 100% a game that I had dreamt of playing. I love sci-fi, quirky humour, bright colours, the races, the lore... everything about wildstar is so endearing.
 
My only message is to the Devs. I love your game, and I loved you. You brought an amazing game to the table but you just have not been communicating enough with the pvp side of the game. I feel you should cut your losses now and merge the pvp server into the pve server. If you want to renew pvp servers, you need to create a zone especially for it, or introduce the ability to use housing plots as a pvp flagged area. The pve in this game is fabulous, and even though I haven't experienced it all, I loved every single part I played. 
 
I was a HUGE carbine fan. But not anymore.
 
Thank you if you read this rant, much appreciated.
 
 
 
I'm looking forward to reading your stories!
 
 	
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			pretty sure I'm going to exceed the body limit of a post as well as some forum rules when I write my story...	
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I've talked about my first year with Wildstar a few times, so I'm just gonna focus on my current experience. Which can be summed up as: watching the forums and PR turn to a sewer again. :P
 
Focusing more on the game itself, an overview: Wildstar's patching and updating seems to have slowed considerably, while the amount of content released has increased from last year when we had a 4 month stretch with nothing at all between drops but disappointing holiday cancels. Comparatively, between drops this time we've had Shades Eve, Winterfest, Space Chase, Sim Chase, several booster weekends, and this Monster Hunter whatever-you-wanna-call-it. All of these events have brought something free to benefit the players, though the cash shop aspects have varied from great to garbage and communication with the playerbase has been weak via text, but IMO decent when we see them in streams and stuff (I actually quite enjoyed the F2P launch stream). Along the way we've had a few bones thrown in response to critical backlash, like the BOA compromise (decent not great) and the 30% Winterfest sale (I thought that was nice considering it was a blanket sale that affected decor too). Recently we've seen an intensification of RNG tactics via exclusive loot boxes and now the Madame Fay reload, which I don't like, but I think has been ~mostly~ balanced because of the cool reward types (excluding Monster Hunter), the BOE status for most items, and the fairly cheap cost of the RNG ($8 for 9 Madame Fay or Space Chase cases got me a bunch of cool stuff and even without liking the RNG, I was happy with the results).
 
Drop 7 can't come soon enough and while I'm looking forward to it as a player, I'm dreading it as a forum-dweller because I'm certain there are going to be *cupcake*-ups and the negativity trend will continue. I don't think Carbine can win with PR anymore.
 
 
 
Some of my thoughts about the future for CRBs: 
1. Careful how you continue releasing events. Right now what we have is Winterfest leading into Monster Hunter leading into Madame Fay Reload leading into Sim Chase. All of this in about a month's time... it's overwhelming. It ~could~ be a good thing because it gives players frequent activity and different options for spending, rather than feeling let down because they don't like stuff in the current event or don't like the style of the event. But it could also be bad if the advertisement is poor or the RNG is too high or we get boombox rewards from cash shop keys. I also don't want to review my finances 3-4 times a month so it'd be nice if we could settle on more consistent pricing? :P
 
2. I also suggest trying a different form of exclusivity, where ~some~ items are sold as part of RNG up front but then later sold directly on the cash shop, as plenty of people have asked for. So looking at Space Chase's design, launch the cases just as you did, but say a week or two after the event put the most demanded items up on the store for purchase— like the music unlocks— but keep a few things elusive so you can put them up again later— like the Marauder / Exile ship decor or Space Cadets.
 
3. Please, for the love of all that is holy, don't release cash shop stuff with Drop 7. Or at least, no RNG. And don't soil the advertisements and info sharing about the drop by focusing on cash shop type stuff. This is just my subjective approach but right now I'm viewing the situation as 'drops are for the players, events are for the funding'. And I'm OK with that. But I think if you cash shop your drops like certain other games cash shop expansions, your subscribers will be pissed and you stand to lose a lot of persistent revenue.
 
4. If resources permit, try to connect more. A lot of familiar faces from your staff are gone now and I find 'Carbine' is becoming increasingly abstract and faceless in my mind, which makes you a bigger target for hostile criticism. This is partly to do with familiar people leaving like Chillia and Tony, as well as the cancellation of promotional shows like 0 to 50 and even (IMO) the way you schedule and release streams. This may be an unpopular idea but I'd love to see a Contract Board type media pop-up on my login screen that has all of the recent media releases— like a calendar that includes events, streams, drop updates, lore articles, all of that stuff. Basically I guess, put your twitter on the login page, but cut out all of the redundant commentary and player links. :P
 
5. Quality is becoming an issue again, I'd say. I think F2P has been the buggiest drop in a while, and few of the bugs I've noticed are fixed (housing has like 3-4 annoying bugs that affect me regularly). Various tooltips have been sticking to my screen for months now, including the addition of your "Signature" bar; that tooltip frequently gets stuck on my cursor. Every time this happens, and it can happen ~many~ times a session, I have to reloadui. Reskinning is part of this problem as well, along with the statue space cadets, giant lines in the Winterfest sky, Monster Hunter NPC fails, etc. That said I do understand you're juggling more content releases in a likely more fragmented way than in the past, so I'm not super upset, just... I think the ship needs to be righted again, soon.
 
 
I would say that pretty much covers my thoughts on the state of the game and how I'm experiencing it. Obviously F2P is having a big affect on how I think/feel about the game so it's my biggest source of complaints, but I'm also hoping that better PR/marketing will get the population positive again.
			
				
	Edited January 9, 2016 by EsperXIV	
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For me my experience can be summed up in the old western phrase of The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
 
The Good
 
Combat is fantastic I love the combat in Wildstar and with the telegraph system it makes it easy enough to get into. Despite the fact some people still don't know that red is bad. 
 
Housing....I used to play SWG and this is probably the closest ive come to the housing in that game. Alot of others have fell short but the customization you can do in this is brilliant.
 
Story/Questing - I kind of rolled these into one because you work on both as your leveling up and I loved the story and reading all the little bits of lore that are scattered around the place. If one thing stands out, its never to loan Dorian Walker or any of the Walker family any stuff as they leave them lying at there backside j/k. Questing wise although its not anything special the amount you get means I never felt like I was grinding when leveling and as im working up my alts im still having fun. 
 
Exploring - This is the first game in a while ive felt the need to go look over there. The amount of little hidden places or little things you find just by wandering throughout Nexus and venturing off the beaten path is fantastic and im constantly jumping up on stuff or venturing over to places just to see what else I can find or what else ive missed. 
 
Ability Bar/Amps/Skills - Limited action bar is great for me as im a keypresser it makes it easier for using my skills rather than having to do finger olympics like I need to do in other mmo's that give you 3 toolbars full of them. I love the having to decide what im taking and although like any MMO it boils down to you only need specific ones to be optimal I still like experimenting out in the wild to see what they are like. 
 
Humor/Voice Acting - Again I have rolled this into one as without good voice acting alot of the humorous moments would be lost. I think the voice acting and the music in Wildstar is fantastic and they do a brilliant job of it.
 
The Bad
 
UI - I am constantly fighting with this UI and wither it be trying to use the AH UI or something else I feel the UI at times can be a hindrance rather than a help. It's a sorry state when the most ive typed into chat since my time in Wildstar is /reloadui because either my quest tracker has suddenly decided to not show my quests anymore even though they are selected to be tracked. Or because of some other issue that can only be resolved by doing a /reloadUI but thank god for addons and a fantastic addon community which should really be added to the good section.  As those who have created addons have at least made it bearable to work with the UI by papering over the cracks but they shouldn't have to fix the inadequacies of the UI that should be the developers job. 
 
Patching - There is not alot of patches coming around and for a game that still needs a bit of polish, I am not seeing a whole lot on the patch front and when there is you tend to find it breaks something else. Maybe thats why they do not patch as often. 
 
Grouping - I play with my fiancee and she pretty much plays all mmo's I play and when we group up and play in Wildstar I feel like im competing with her as there are many quests that do not count towards the group. I would also like to see a proper mentor system in place which encourages vets to group with new players and be rewarded for it.  
 
Adventures/Other lvl 50 content - Outwith raids and vet dungeons everything else is pretty much an urban legend to me as no one appears to be doing them. Again this maybe related to the above but give vets or players a reason for wanting to do them. As right now you have all this content that no-one really wants to run and thus a waste when it could be used to mix up end level and provide a good variety of things for people to do.
 
The Ugly
 
Server Lag - Although it is in most part gone the servers are still not great wither it be trying to beam out of housing only to find you still standing there nearly a minute later or quest information popping up as if it has to travel around the moon twice before reaching you as it takes ages to show.  The servers are still not right and its pretty evident that the megaserver technology in Wildstar is not one of the better ones ive experienced, GW2 has a great version but then I doubt they are limited by the awful engine Wildstar has. 
 
PVP Bots - I do not do PVP but having seen many many posts on it I can tell that they have ruined PVP in Wildstar and it feels like there is nothing being done. Occasionally waving the ban hammer is not going to resolve the underlying problem and there is no point shoving an umbrella up when your about to get hit by a tidal wave as that's not going to help. There needs to be more done to stop this from happening and I know its tough to get rid of bots but right now its unbearable and not alot seems to be getting done on the matter.
 
Cash Shop Mismanagement - I dont know who decides what happens in the cash shop but whoever is making the decisions on it really needs a stern word (polite version) but since my time in Wildstar it has been one thing after another regarding the shop. Account bound items, RNG boxes, Pricing, Winter White/Blue Dye and even recently the event involving keys from the cash shop to name a few. I understand you need to make money but some of the mistakes that have been going on are things you would hope common sense would prevail but they don't. You wait until there is a ruckus on the forums and then you decide to change it and alot of the flak could have been avoided if you stop treating us like we are fools.
 
The above is just what I can think of off the top of my head but overall I am having alot of fun in Wildstar and I hope they do learn from there mistakes and find some way to keep those at end level occupied long enough to allow for the game to grow.  A revolving door is not going to get anyone anywhere and im hoping f2p has been enough of a success that NCSoft can cut the game some slack.  
			
				
	Edited January 10, 2016 by Scarran	
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			Nothing's perfect, it just keeps me logging in. That's my experience.	
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			My initial reaction was one of intense joy, but that's now been replaced by a feeling of indequacy and gloom. It's not an experience I can see catching on. But neither is it one which I regret.	
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			A lot of people were hyped for f2p, created accounts, logged in, and left within the first month.  That's a microcosm of the macrocosm that's been my experience with Wildstar.  Oh, and now there are a bunch of no-name mods hassling me with warning points.	
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I'll give this a go I guess, I was honestly thinking about my time in Wildstar anyway so I might as well put it down in text hehe. Forgive me if things aren't understandable or comes off as dramatic.
 
Summary:
 
Wildstar since I heard of it at first as influx and the trickling pieces of concept art had me hooked from the start. I was exceited and always keeping an eye out for more updates as time went on. When beta signups started you could bet I signed up immediately and was so excited, but I never got an invite and just waited on the sidelines. My first time playing and seeing it right in front of me was at comic con 2013 and I had a blast not only getting to finally play the game for a bit, but also meeting Carbine staff themselves sand they were lovely. It wasn't until the winter black ops wave invites were sent out that I got in because the person who initially go it didn't even bother to get pass the tutorial and wrote the game off so they hadnded it off to me. The more I played the more I loved it and I had felt I could call the game home and for a long time that feeling stayed.
 
Even when Wildstar had its hiccup with name reservations, the bugs, Gaffney leaving, than frost leaving, change in department leads and the letting go of others; I still enjoyed myself and had a good time through most of it. Customer service at least to me has been quite good and when things didn't pan out it was a larger issue that was eventually solved. However despite my having fun, I couldn't shake the fact that I was worried about the state of Wildstar after Drop 2 and without going to much into a history lesson or details as to why I could simply say I felt that the game had been mismanaged into it's current state and was held together by what I'd dare say are the devs currently have now.
 
Wildstar is a game that has an immense amount of passion and love put into it's development and it hits so many aspects dead on like Visuals, Audio, Dungeons, Story, and immersion. I would literally just walk around the game in absolute awe and sit  around listening to the music and enjoying the environment and I can't say I've EVER felt I played a game where the world was so  interesting to immerse in that I'd do that. Hell I still remember one day I was playing with guildies and I said "ya know I just love the soundtrack for this area" and they replied "eh, i always have the game sound off" and I blew up on them telling them to turn it on and listen; IT was hilarious because next day they wouldn't shut up about it and we got into basically an "omg this is amazing you should go here, and try this area, etc". The instances and overall content were so fun and I have tons of memories of failures and successes that I'll keep with me forever too.
 
Yet overtime as much as I loved the Wildstar universe the technical side and execution of things like the UI, itemization, progression, attunement, and other specific mechanics started to eat away at the game to some degree or another. It's hard to really put into words my experience with Wildstar beyond saying that it's a game I desperately want to see really be successful and grow. I'd talk about it to friends and family all the time and even help new players as best I could; Yet it felt like every time Carbine kept making these really weird minor mistakes as if they didn't talk to each other and it trickled out to the player base. Eventually I felt like I couldn't be bothered recommending the game anymore, yet oddly I'd still try. I can't say I ever took a break from the game of my own will(usually medical or work related) and maybe that is a contributor to how I feel now, but I've gone from logging in almost everyday I could to barely even bothering to get pass the character select screen. I primarily stick around because Wildstar has an amazing community that to be blunt has gone above and beyond in trying to make the game experience the best possible for each other, but it can only do so much...
 
With that said, some final notes from me:
For the longest time I think that one major design flaw of Wildstar is that while it was lovely to give players different ways to play Adventures and dungeons by offerings different goals for different rewards.(specifically referencing the medal system) Carbine didn't take to the context of how these overlapping interests could harm the playerbase willing to PUG and as a community be more outgoing in doing the content with strangers out of their guilds/ciclres. An official LFG board in my opinion was the one thing missing that could ahv eprevented issues like gold or bust, silver medals, and the current issue of people speedrunning all the time as if it was the norm.
Communication is outright terrible in so many ways. Not just in simple mistakes like the promotion of events with misleading text, but also that important information is not given out properly. Players should not have to be looking to Reddit for information on things like the PC Gamer promotion not working out and the upcoming madam fey changes. This has been something we've talked numerous times about and we get that a lot of people use social media, but come on. Your forums, hell your website should be the primary source for that...
PvP started out amazing and still is amazing when it happens, but it needs some serious love and attention, I feel bad for Timetraveler having to take on so much and want him to be focused on what he does best. PvP feels like it has no intended direction or goal of what it wants to be good at right now and it seems to always suffer from a number of issues hurting not only the game play, but also its in participation. It's getting hard to even do Battlegrounds now and lord knows when the last time a Warplot happened...
Adventures need to have a look at to become run more
Customer service seems to be okay to me and when my issue could not be solved it was usually something larger that was more on the dev side.
Combat is lovely, don't touch it beyond balance.
Music: Jeff is the man and he knows it! Keep rockin Jeff you amazing cupcake.
Race/Class combination limtis honestly hurt my attachment to the characters I played. Many of my characters are just what they are because I have no choice, despite my enjoyment of the class.
The UI needs a look at as mentioned earlier. It has had many issues that shouldn't be there...
Crafting I haven't touched since it's overhaul. It is neither fun or worthwhile in my opinion...
 
I hope that was clear, understandable, and helpful for any Dev who may read it. After thinking long about it, I tink it's time I personally bow out for good though, I wish you all the best of luck and enjoyment.
See ya Space cowboys
			
				
	Edited January 11, 2016 by Typrop	
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Thank you everyone for your interesting replies! I'm really looking forward to more. 
 
I find it really interesting to compare our experiences, I'll reply in more detail when I'm not half asleep :p
 
Oh and Oli, post it :P	
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Started well, then at lvl 15 i got stuck at housing and stopped leveling for a day XD
Purchased my Grinder fell in love with it the first day
Reached level 18 i met my first douchbag group in an Adventure , just reported and left
 
Continued lvling smoothly ,enjoyed the story , especially the explorer path missions
Still confused if i should play as a tank or dps, ended up settling for dps
 
Reached max level, fell in love with Drusera and was hit with the attunement wall as well as gold medal or bust groups
Decided to do dailies got bored after a few weeks, made a lot of plat and left wildstar
 
Came back 2 months before f2p launch, finished attunement , got in a raiding group and cleared DS which was way easier than the dungeons i went through o_0 (Still haven't done Vet protostar academy), stopped raiding (wasn't interested anymore) and left again
 
Now came back for the winter event  and have been tagging along every since
 
This is my short and sweet experiance of the whole thing	
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Came back 2 months before f2p launch, finished attunement , got in a raiding group and cleared DS which was way easier than the dungeons i went through o_0 (Still haven't done Vet protostar academy), stopped raiding (wasn't interested anymore) and left again
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You know, I actually think the DS bit is kind of disappointing! Not sure if it was for you (I hope you enjoyed yourself!), but speed clearing like that because a guild capable of clearing swooped you up (not sure how you felt about it in terms of personal difficulty) and brought you to the end feels like a lot of missed fun times. There's a lot of the journey, enjoyment and atmosphere to working through the raids if raiding is the kind of thing you enjoy doing. Instead people are getting to skip right to the end boss as if someone cleared worlds 1-8 for your Super Mario game.
 
And let me clarify that it's not to rain on anyone's parade or call foul, but I've had a LOT of fun working through GA and DS with my guild for the last year. It's something I've always felt was integral to the raiding experience for less casual raiders (probably the ones aspiring to kill Avatus in the first place.)
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Thank you everyone for your interesting replies! I'm really looking forward to more. 
 
I find it really interesting to compare our experiences, I'll reply in more detail when I'm not half asleep :P
 
Oh and Oli, post it :P
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The PvP community knows the rough times we went through and I cba to write that out. I've uninstalled the game today, wich I was hesitant to do so as I've loved playing this game so much. 
& Met the most amazing friends and the love of my life here so that's where i'll leave it at.
 
<3 Thank you Potatoes for one of my most memorable and amazing gaming experiences.	
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Sad to see you leave as well tuff :(
Any chance to find you in B&S ?	
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Sad to see you leave as well tuff :(
Any chance to find you in B&S ?
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Ouch that screenie hurt my heart a little :'c
 
RIP best times, I will miss having fun with you guys so much!
 
Seeing as most of my friends are quitting one by one, I think I'll be the last to uninstall myself. I'm very close though, it's getting to a point where all carbine are interested in are lockboxes. I will hold out til the 13th for the announcement then make my mind up from there.
 
Black desert & crowfall I am looking forward to!
 
Also I may be tempted to try BnS but it's doubtful. MMOs have just left a bitter taste in my mouth recently :(	
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