Carbine Studios' "Wildstar"

[Fordel]

It's a cute little style they have going.

[luckton]

Did I mention playable robots?  Like, what SWTOR would never let you do?  Actual.  Playable.  Customizable.  Robots?

 

[Lucas]

And new official website:

http://www.wildstar-online.com/uk/#page1

[Zetor]

Kind of weird to have an obviously evil moustache-twirling faction (dominion) and a sorta-neutral one (exiles). Maybe the last race will change things, but otherwise the game may suffer from the usual "kool doods go for the evil side" problem.

[Nebu]

The web site doesn't really seem to provide much more than fluff.  Is there any place where I can get some depth?

[Zetor]

The massively articles (from last page) are decent-ish since the writer had some hands-on experience with the game, especially this one:
http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/02/06/the-biggest-game-on-the-planet-wildstars-boundless-ambition/

[Nebu]

Thanks Z!

[Fordel]

Kind of weird to have an obviously evil moustache-twirling faction (dominion) and a sorta-neutral one (exiles). Maybe the last race will change things, but otherwise the game may suffer from the usual "kool doods go for the evil side" problem.

The Exiles have the cat/bunny people race. It'll even out 

[Stormwaltz]

I'm dubious about this game (for reasons), but if they're doing these faction trailers in-house, they have God's own team of character animators.

[PalmTrees]

The trailers remind me of Ratchet and Clank. Cartoony style, broad iconic characters.  We had country girl and now aristocratic bad guy.

[luckton]

Ratchet and Clank, with a dash of Don Bluth   

[UnSub]

I'm dubious about this game (for reasons), but if they're doing these faction trailers in-house, they have God's own team of character animators.

This is NCsoft West's next important project to launch, so they probably aren't short of resources in that area right now.

[Draegan]

I played the pink rabbit psychic character back at PAX Prime 2011.  It felt really smooth and extremely well animated back then.  It looked like a simple game though, and they weren't sharing much.  It was just a WOW clone at that point.  Looks like they added a bunch of stuff.

[Ragnoros]

Looks really well done. Shame it's a wow clone though. Tried GW2, SWTOR, TSW, and MoP a while ago. Turns out the Diku is dead to me. I have just played too many incarnations.

[Ghambit]

Regardless of it being a WoW clone, it'll be the first AAA pulp sci-fi MMO made.  Which pretty much means, to me, it has to be played.

[Riggswolfe]

I'm watching this one closely. I have mixed feelings about the anime style graphics but the ideas are great. And housing this in-depth is something I love in my gaming. I'm a bit 'bleh' that raids are such a major part of their endgame but whatever. I think that's a mistake, especially if they go for BIG raids because the industry is moving away from that for a reason.

[Reborne]

I've just started looking at this.
I'm a sucker for MMOs, as a lot of you would probably have noticed by now.

I like the housing idea and being able to move to join your friends.
My friends have a problem in LotRO at the moment where our kinship house is in one instance and our personal houses are in others.
Would be great to be able to merge and have our own little neighborhood going.
Lets hope they don't screw it up by going with servers that mean your friends are all over the place and can't meet up.

Other fun thing that I've just seen is that unlike LotRO, the interior of houses have no slot restrictions.
Add stuff as you will.

I also like the sound of the paths.
I've got 2 friends looking at playing explorers and I'm going scientist.
I'm hoping that these things will cross over so that they can find ruins (when not jumping all over mountains) and I can research the things in there so that we can have cool things to play with.

[SurfD]

Anyone know if this is going to be a Sub based game, or more likely to use something similar to the Freemium model of paying to unlock perks / extras that they had in COH before they shut it down?

[Lantyssa]

I don't think they've said, but I'm really hoping it's not a sub since I'll give it a pass then.

[luckton]

I don't think they've said, but I'm really hoping it's not a sub since I'll give it a pass then.

+1.  I've resolved myself to living in co-existence with cash shops.  If they can pull off AAA stuff for free, more power to them.  Otherwise, they're not bumping squat off the current MMO market.

[Nebu]

I don't think they've said, but I'm really hoping it's not a sub since I'll give it a pass then.

I've become the complete opposite.  I can't stomach the free-to-play audience any more.  Granted, the wow crowd wasn't much better... but there's something about spending $15 a month that seems to filter a lot of idiocy. 

[Ghambit]

If I were them I'd blaze a new trail and start as a boxed-sale with microtrans, then once the playerbase was fairly set move to subscription.

[Lantyssa]

I've become the complete opposite.  I can't stomach the free-to-play audience any more.  Granted, the wow crowd wasn't much better... but there's something about spending $15 a month that seems to filter a lot of idiocy. 

Maybe immaturity.  Idiots can scrounge up $15, too.  For example, several of my friends still play WoW.

I think it's more shitty free games filter out reasonable people because they realize they aren't having fun and have better things to do with their time.

[tazelbain]

Nothing but elitist bullshit, Nebu.  It's a simple function of us getting older and less tolerant vs the market getting bigger more LCD.

[Nebu]

Nothing but elitist bullshit, Nebu.  Simple function of us getting older and less tolerant vs the market getting bigger more LCD.

I disagree.  It's easy to watch a community change in real time when games convert from subscription to F2P.  There's a certain level of community built into games when you're paying a flat fee to belong.  It's self-selecting among those willing to invest rather than those willing to show up, shit on the floor, and leave.

[Lantyssa]

Nebu, do you stick with any game long enough to get past the first few days of "Oooh New Game" rush to see how the communities shakes out?  Especially a free to play one where you're already biased against most of the population getting to try it out?

[Nebu]

Nebu, do you stick with any game long enough to get past the first few days of "Oooh New Game" rush to see how the communities shakes out?  Especially a free to play one where you're already biased against most of the population getting to try it out?

We can agree to disagree you know.

[tazelbain]

Or we can stand around screaming "GET OFF MY LAWN" at the yunguns.

Honest I would love it if the age of niche MMOs dawned and we could all choose the MMO with the theme, rule sets and business model that best suits us. But the economics of just don't allow it.

[Nebu]

Or we can stand around screaming "GET OFF MY LAWN" at the yunguns.

Honest I would love it if the age of niche MMOs dawned and we could all choose the MMO with the theme, rule sets and business model that best suits us. But the economics of just don't allow it.

I think the economics allow it just fine.  The problem is that there are too many companies chasing after the mythical "next WoW" instead of building a simpler & less expensive game that caters to a niche.  I'm hopeful that kickstarter may bring back more niche games and then we all get to be happier.  Variety benefits us all, right?

[Lantyssa]

It's not so much disagreement as me trying to understand what's irking you about the people in these games.  I turn off global chats almost immediately, so I've had very few negative interactions.

But I've seen you chew through games with your hyper-efficient leveling, and I'm just wondering if maybe you're seeing a whole different segment of the populace than I do.  Ultra-achiever-world-first dickbags versus enh-whatever-I'm-easy stoners or something?  Kids versus people who take these things far more seriously?  I dunno.

[Nebu]

My biggest beef with F2P is that it encourages developers to focus as much, if not more on revenue streams than player retention.  While the two aren't mutually exclusive, there is a lot less emphasis on community building and more on extracting cash during periods of high churn.  I see the trade-offs and the cost benefits of being F2P, but they don't fit with the style of game that I prefer to play.  Remember that I prefer PvP games which already contain the more volatile members of the gaming community.  With F2P this already bile-filled bunch seems to get even more ridiculous in their behavior.  There's no reason for accountability since you can simply generate a new email account and start from scratch.  If F2P games were to be more rigorous about limiting the number of accounts per IP address, then I'm sure I'd find them more palatable. 

Please remember that the game I primarily play is a F2P game (World of Tanks).  I would much prefer that it were a subscription-based game for exactly the reasons above, but lacking a viable alternative, I'm stuck with it as it is.

[koro]

The "communities are shit" phenomenon is one I've only really noticed with MMOs that start out as box+sub and then later go F2P. With the few games I've tried that were built as F2P from the ground up (and aren't MOBAs), it feels like people are at least a little more civilized, beyond the newbie areas which will always be shittowns.

I imagine in the F2P conversion scenario it's a combination of a bunch of clueless new people, a bunch of bad apples in those new people, and a bunch of already-playing vets who are bitter at such a stark reminder that "their" game failed on some level just feeds into this big boiling pot of suck.

[Nebu]

The "communities are shit" phenomenon is one I've only really noticed with MMOs that start out as box+sub and then later go F2P. With the few games I've tried that were built as F2P from the ground up (and aren't MOBAs), it feels like people are at least a little more civilized.

I imagine in the F2P conversion scenario it's a combination of a bunch of clueless new people, a bunch of bad apples in those new people, and a bunch of already-playing vets who are bitter at such a stark reminder that "their" game failed on some level just feeds into this big boiling pot of suck.

I actually think that there's a lot of truth in this.  To be fair games like LoL fail to hold my attention precisely due to the community being a bunch of assholes.  Perhaps my age does color my opinion.  I'm more irritated by the cowardice of hiding behind internet anonymity than I probably should be.   

[koro]

Even LoL I hear's improving in that regard, since Riot's giving actual reward incentive to be, if not nice, at least tolerant  of other players.

[HaemishM]

Even LoL I hear's improving in that regard, since Riot's giving actual reward incentive to be, if not nice, at least tolerant  of other players.

I'm not sure where you heard that, but you heard wrong. LOL's community is still full of people I'd like to infect with smallpox.