Carbine Studios' "Wildstar"

[Flood]

Wtf, they just gave me two more beta keys.      Why??  I have no idea.  Are they lurking this thread or something?   I'll give out one, and it's already spoken for to Rasix.  I need to verify my account isn't fubar or something.  If all is well, I may have two extra.

I wasn't fast enough on the draw in your last round of offerings, so if you have any more to give out after Rasix may I please ask for one?  Thanks.

[Sjofn]

Wtf, they just gave me two more beta keys.      Why??  I have no idea.  Are they lurking this thread or something?   I'll give out one, and it's already spoken for to Rasix.  I need to verify my account isn't fubar or something.  If all is well, I may have two extra.

Today was the round of "you logged in on these particular saturdays, have some friend invites for your trouble" invites.

[Nija]

I watched some of the streams. It looks like it's going to be another AOE spam fest game with no friendly fire and no real tactics other than bringing a zerg of equal or greater size than the other side has. Like GW2 PVP.

On top of that, it's ridiculous cartoon graphics and "don't step in the red shit" all over the place.

Passing on this one bigtime.

[Nebu]

I watched some of the streams. It looks like it's going to be another AOE spam fest game with no friendly fire and no real tactics other than bringing a zerg of equal or greater size than the other side has. Like GW2 PVP.

AOE spam was always wonderful for getting people to become pvp flagged so you could kill them. 

Might be fun after all!

[01101010]

People are still humping the dream of having PvP in an MMO and it NOT sucking ass? 

[Lakov_Sanite]

People are still humping the dream of having PvP in an MMO and it NOT sucking ass? 

There are people in wow right now that will jump down your throat if you say the pvp is bad in it.  It

[MediumHigh]

I watched some of the streams. It looks like it's going to be another AOE spam fest game with no friendly fire and no real tactics other than bringing a zerg of equal or greater size than the other side has. Like GW2 PVP.

Man I love to see the mmo where aoe spamming and zerging down objectives isn't the strategy of the day.

[Wizgar]

300k subs by the six month mark if they're lucky. Even WoW hasn't grown in years, the public just doesn't give a fuck about this sort of shit anymore.

[Lakov_Sanite]

300k subs by the six month mark if they're lucky. Even WoW hasn't grown in years, the public just doesn't give a fuck about this sort of shit anymore.

It's a bit naive to assume being sick of wow means being suck of a genre.

[Simond]

300k subs by the six month mark if they're lucky. Even WoW hasn't grown in years, the public just doesn't give a fuck about this sort of shit anymore.

It's a bit naive to assume being sick of wow means being suck of a genre.

Counterpoint: Every other MMO released in the last decade.

[Paelos]

I think when you get down to it, this game is the same as everything else with a different veneer. I can point to a slew of games that have tried this already.

[Nebu]

I think when you get down to it, this game is the same as everything else with a different veneer. I can point to a slew of games that have tried this already.

That's the rub.  10+ years and all we're seeing is streamlining of the same old thing.  While it will be new to somebody, you're not going to get traction with the already established audience for long.

[Threash]

With a 5 year + development time we are still getting games started when devs would look at wow and say "lets do that, let's do the fuck out of that".  In a few years we might start getting games started during the post wow clone failure era when devs might have started thinking "maybe lets not do that so hard".

[Paelos]

Look at a game like Chivalry. If you take that kind of combat already designed around multiplayer and put it into the MMOG world with an actual economy, pve, and AI?

That's something different. That's the innovation the genre needs, and it needs to be in a setting that doesn't piss everyone off. It needs to be updated from the very ground up, not tacked on to another old combat system that hasn't really changed since Baldur's Gate.

[Nebu]

I think the biggest hurdle is that in justifying large budgets, developers need to appease two MMO factions.  Those that want a time = power progression and those that want a skill = power progression.  Finding a happy medium while also advancing the genre seems an impossible task.  If you really want to innovate, you need to pick a nich and excel at it.  That's not the typical path to money hats and likely scares off investors.

[Hoax]

You make it sound as if they are attempting something difficult and failing. Something they would only attempt if they were aware and intelligent enough to understand what the various audience factions seem to think they want.

That seems highly unlikely.

[Nebu]

You make it sound as if they are attempting something difficult and failing.

That wasn't my intention.  I meant it more as an observation of the MMO industry as a whole.

[tmp]

It looks exactly like WoW but with 10 years of improvement.  If they made WoW 2 this is what it would look like,  minus the space shit.  Maybe with the space shit.

When I've watched the gameplay video they made for the medic class, gameplay-wise it struck me as some sort of Tera for five year olds. That is, it has the "don't stand in the fire" positioning as big part of the experience being more active, but they literally draw with crayons the range and timing of every single attack the NPCs do, rather than let player learn and memorize these things from animation cues and such.

Granted the other MMOs do that too, but it just felt ridiculously overdone in their case.

[Ginaz]

Thanks to Sjofn for the beta key.

[Sjofn]

You're welcome! 

[Lakov_Sanite]

People might be sick of diku mmo, a LOT of people might be. It's hard to say it's dead as a genre however because genre's don't really die that much. 

The question is not is the genre dying because that's silly, people still play RTS games and those have been around a lot longer and people have been playing diku since muds. 

[Simond]

With a 5 year + development time we are still getting games started when devs would look at wow and say "lets do that, let's do the fuck out of that".  In a few years we might start getting games started during the post wow clone failure era when devs might have started thinking "maybe lets not do that so hard".

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=17646.0

Seriously, when SOE is the voice of bloody reason you know something has gone very wrong.

[Goreschach]

I'll be honest, I kinda want to see this one bomb super hard just to put the final nail in the WoW clone coffin.

[Paelos]

I'll be honest, I kinda want to see this one bomb super hard just to put the final nail in the WoW clone coffin.

It won't on either count, I think.

[Threash]

I hope this and TESO put the nail in the coffin for the sub model.  WoW clones will probably still be around though.

[Paelos]

I think that's much more likely.

[Felmega]

Look at a game like Chivalry. If you take that kind of combat already designed around multiplayer and put it into the MMOG world with an actual economy, pve, and AI?

That's something different. That's the innovation the genre needs, and it needs to be in a setting that doesn't piss everyone off. It needs to be updated from the very ground up, not tacked on to another old combat system that hasn't really changed since Baldur's Gate.

I could not agree more with this.  Seeing as Chivalry is an indie group, I still bewildered that a pro studio hasnt created this very game you are talking about.  Chilvery combat+graphics in an MMO world that has PvE AI, PvP areas, and an open world would attract millions of players.

What gives?

[Paelos]

Proven formulas trump innovation until the market won't support them.

You have to think 5 years backwards and look at the economy. In this case decisions made in 2009 were still in the shitty economic mindset of proven models with no risk to investment. We still haven't seen enough of a climb in the economy for investors to take bigger risks even now. And thus they will lose money on things like Elder Scrolls which were born out of that bad mindset.

[Ginaz]

How long is this beya going on for?  Is it just for the weekend or longer than that?

[Threash]

Look at a game like Chivalry. If you take that kind of combat already designed around multiplayer and put it into the MMOG world with an actual economy, pve, and AI?

That's something different. That's the innovation the genre needs, and it needs to be in a setting that doesn't piss everyone off. It needs to be updated from the very ground up, not tacked on to another old combat system that hasn't really changed since Baldur's Gate.

I could not agree more with this.  Seeing as Chivalry is an indie group, I still bewildered that a pro studio hasnt created this very game you are talking about.  Chilvery combat+graphics in an MMO world that has PvE AI, PvP areas, and an open world would attract millions of players.

What gives?

We've been asking for a mount and blade MMO (almost the same thing basically) around here for ages.  For as many devs as we have hanging out around here its funny that nobody ever listens to us.

[MediumHigh]

We're not seeing the death of mmos, point and click combat, and diku mmo's in general. We are seeing the death of subscription mmos, we are seeing the death of epic level grinding, no fast travel, grouping or community based gameplay, lagging clusterfuck pvp. The modern mmo is required to be epic from day one, free, and lacking in soul crushing grind for the sake of retention at day one.

A mount and blade mmo would be funny but never top a 1000 players. If your bad at games there is no.forgiveness, just hilarious death. Adding the power levels will drop that number to 500 or lower cause on top.of being told you suck you have to deal with the gold plated armor assholes. Your talking about a complete rework.of how the typical mmo player thinkd followed by completely different game design.

[Senses]

I don't know why any of you think subs will ever go away.  Free 2 Plays started becoming popular not because people refused to pay monthly, but because people refused to pay monthly for an experience that was not WoW when they were already paying for WoW.  The MMO Decade may have started as an attempt to beat WoW, but it ended with a host of companies just vying for a close second to scoop up the crumbs.  A premium gaming experience, if such a thing exists, can still and always will be able to charge whatever they want.

[Paelos]

A premium gaming experience, if such a thing exists, can still and always will be able to charge whatever they want.

It doesn't exist. It's a marketing word meant to convince people to buy into derivative content.

[Venkman]

Free 2 Plays started becoming popular... because people refused to pay monthly for an experience that was not WoW when they were already paying for WoW.

F2P was not created in answer to WoW any more than the discussion can be just subs vs f2p. To make an MMO assuming either model affects many design, development and marketing decisions throughout development, launch and service. You won't normally see a freshly-launched f2p MMO with the same level of production details or content as an MMO designed for subs. It's not a "worse" game per se. The company just focused on a different set of priorities and the game feels different. And MMOs that started as subs but later became f2p ones don't count.

However you are right about "A premium gaming experience, if such a thing exists, can still and always will be able to charge whatever they want." But that only works when such a thing does exist. It's very rare, and usually for a single specific audience that has hteir own definition of "premium" that probably isn't universal

[Threash]

For a game to be successful with a sub it needs to be far and above everything that is currently out there right now.  Nobody but old school Blizzard has shown the capability to pull that off.