I was an early supporter of Wildstar, played pre-release and then at release as well.
Wildstar was far too invested in the “hardkoar iz moar bettor 1111!!!” mentality, which their devs held like a religious belief until it was too late. They honestly thought that they could build an MMO around an ultra-hardcore niche (40-mans with attunements etc), and were proven to be quite wrong. It would have failed because of that regardless of when it was released, really. They did eventually adjust the game, but that was far too late to make a difference. Likely this would have been the case at any time other than now, when WoW is supposedly “dead”.
That’s true, but it’s also true that the current ultra-surge in FF14 is due to a mass exodus of most of WoW’s casual playerbase to FF14 due to Asmon.
You literally just described WoW too. Wildstar’s questing was far more enjoyable than WoW’s questing has ever been. In fact, I got to max level in Wildstar without feeling like I wanted to quit leveling. I never experienced that in WoW. Even now when it takes around 10 hours to get to the expansion.
This, stubborn devs is what killed the game. They waited too long to implement fixes, insisting that players wanted 40 man raids and dungeons that took forever.
Which is going to happen every time a streamer does a thing. These guys are the literal influencers of the internet, after all. The real question is whether these people stay in the new and shiny playground, and historically this hasn’t always been the case.
Also, as someone who’s never going to play any MMO besides WoW, I don’t really understand the doomsaying that happens whenever someone talks about FF gaining ground. Competition is a good thing that results in stronger products. You guys want player housing in WoW? Well, maybe we’ll get that once Blizz looks over at the massively popular MMO that actually does have player housing and is now threatening Blizz’s sub numbers.
I loved Wildstar at first. Its the only MMO that got me to stop playing Wow, for a time. One of the problems is that they never really released any new content after launch. I had the feeling the game was abandoned by the people who owned the studio and when the game wasn’t a wow-killer out of the gate they immediately wanted to cut their losses and move on to something else, never giving it the time and resources to find its place in the market.
All you can do now is open the launcher in Steam and see your characters on the player select screen, if I recall correctly. Forever waiting at attention, ready to dive back into action.
The doomsaying comes from people who want WoW to die, not from people who want WoW to improve. There are many people who just want WoW to die, because “no kin=g lasts forever” and so on. They are just sick of WoW, sick of the impact that its dominance has had on the MMO industry and so on. I am not one of these, I am a WoW player, but this is certainly at least one of the motivations that has been flying around in the dozens of threads over the past few weeks here, despite telling protestations to the contrary.
of all the mmos that have died, i miss wildstar the most. i had an esper that was the most funnest healer i have ever played. all these ballons popping all over the place. it was a great action combat style which i liked. the quests and humor were pretty good to.
oh and the housing, omg! it was better than SWG which was quite a shock. i took a basic house and made it three levels with everything a real house had, right down to washing machines. it had all custom walls, lights, and decorations. i also used to spend all day just looking at peoples housing plots. it was so awesome!
only reason i quit is because content dried up and 40 man raids SUCK. even then, if i had found a guild i probably would have played it longer. i hope they succeed with private servers.
You’re kidding, right? 90% of WoW’s casual playerbase has no idea who Asmon is, and another 9% wouldn’t give a dead mawrat for his opinion.
WoW is the only MMO that got me to stop playing WoW for a time, and that time was about half of WoD.
And then Legion came out and I was like “well, I guess I have no time for WildStar anymore”.
P.S. Another MMO I tried during that time was Blade & Soul, which is pretty and has a fun combat system, but when you get to the part where it’s going to teach you what a REAL grind looks like, that’s when I went back to WoW.
When a game, like Wildstar, dies… why do the devs decide to lock it away in some attic and let it stay there forever? Why do they never give the source code/rights away? I don’t pretend to know how the gaming industry works, but it’s currently making $0… so why not at least try to sell it to someone who can do something with it? Two birds, one stone.
i raided a lot in that game. plus i did all dungeons on hard too. i liked it a lot. only reason i quit is b/c my guild died due to swtor. oh and the one button macros was kinda dumb, it was so easy to automate game play with it. i am not sure if i liked or hated it lol!
If I could post images, I’d be posting one describing the insane attunement chain. I don’t think it mattered when Wildstar came out. WoW didn’t kill Wildstar, Wildstar killed Wildstar.
Ironically, the extensive player housing is very likely the reason the game died. Since so much time was spent on perfecting the housing system that pretty much every other part of the game was found lacking.
Had other areas of the game seen even half the love the player housing got, i think the game would still be alive and doing well to this day. It probably needed another year in the oven to iron out some of the kinks though. But alas, we shall never know unless someone invents a timemachine.
MoP would hit shelves less then a year after Wildstar was released - Suspicions were that a huge amount of money was injected into MoP to improve the final product in that 1 year push to entice Wildstar players and starve them out.
I wasn’t into that game based on its mission statement alone. Didn’t dig the art style either so I’ve likely never been so unenthused for a product. 14 on the other hand has hopes and dreams even if they aren’t realized yet. Still prefer this but 14 would be a close second and wildstar would be last.
