Carbine Studios' "Wildstar"

[Lakov_Sanite]

League of Legends, Runes of Magic, and even Maple Story were effectively killing the sub based mmo market.

I hear that the increase of tablet sales is effectively killing the fig newton market as well.

[Samprimary]

The price point of tea in china remains rather consistent, however.

[Rendakor]

League of Legends, Runes of Magic, and even Maple Story were effectively killing the sub based mmo market.

I hear that the increase of tablet sales is effectively killing the fig newton market as well.

Just spit water all over my monitor. Thanks.

[Felmega]

Profit and glory await the first game company to make a GOOD open-world, sandboxy, PvP game with GOOD PvE.   Good meaning the combat is fun and addictive.  Good meaning graphics are well crafted and stylized by competent artists.  Finally, good means new tech, allowing for more players in one area at one time interacting with no server issues.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Profit and glory await the first game company to make a GOOD open-world, sandboxy, PvP game with GOOD PvE.   Good meaning the combat is fun and addictive.  Good meaning graphics are well crafted and stylized by competent artists.  Finally, good means new tech, allowing for more players in one area at one time interacting with no server issues.

Shine on you crazy diamond.

[luckton]

Profit and glory await the first game company to make a GOOD open-world, sandboxy, PvP game with GOOD PvE.   Good meaning the combat is fun and addictive.  Good meaning graphics are well crafted and stylized by competent artists.  Finally, good means new tech, allowing for more players in one area at one time interacting with no server issues.

What, Shadowbane wasn't good enough for you?   

[Nebu]

Profit and glory await the first game company to make a GOOD open-world, sandboxy, PvP game with GOOD PvE.   Good meaning the combat is fun and addictive.  Good meaning graphics are well crafted and stylized by competent artists.  Finally, good means new tech, allowing for more players in one area at one time interacting with no server issues.

They can't make a game with good PvP and progression.  Wanting the rest of the items on your list is like asking for a Yeti riding a unicorn to deliver a time machine to your home.

[Lakov_Sanite]

The majority of people who enjoy player vs player combat in games do no play mmo's.  The play shooters and fighters where pvp is the central game mechanic and all other things are balanced around it.  The myth that there are these huge numbers of people wanting a pvp mmo is ridiculous.  Yes they exist but not nearly in great enough numbers for the game to be anything but niche. 

Games like wildstar and all the wow clone got it wrong when they went with factions and pvp just cause wow did it because the majority of wow players did not pvp and only for a small portion was pvp more than an afterthought.  Except of course wow did it, so everyone thinks they should too.

[Threash]

Actually i think there are tons of people who think they want a pvp game until they face the reality that they don't get to be the super badass that kicks everyone elses ass, blame it on the game sucking and quit.  A pvp game has to be completely inconsequential like team fortress 2 or street fighter because people don't like losing when it matters.

[Pennilenko]

Shine on you crazy diamond.

We need to be nicer to new people, they all get eaten too quickly to see if they are a good fit here.

[Paelos]

New guy is right, that game would be fun.

The problem lies only in the PvP in his suggestion. MMO PvP has been proven to be for people that are terrible at PvP games where skill trumps investment.

[Ghambit]

Passive-aggressive pvp is the only pvp that really works in a diku MMO sense.  Dominating leaderboards, being "the first," cornering markets, acquiring the most lootz and turritory, etc.  Pvp is not all about headshots; matter of fact.... as has been said, it's an extremely small part of the picture - even with games like WW2O, wherein the majority of the real game lies beneath the drones doing the shooting.

[UnSub]

Profit and glory await the first game company to make a GOOD open-world, sandboxy, PvP game with GOOD PvE.   Good meaning the combat is fun and addictive.  Good meaning graphics are well crafted and stylized by competent artists.  Finally, good means new tech, allowing for more players in one area at one time interacting with no server issues.

The other half of that particular prophecy is, "Fail to acheive this quest, and all that awaits you is... DEATH."



"Or, maybe worse than that: INDIFFERENCE."

[Goreschach]

Passive-aggressive pvp is the only pvp that really works in a diku MMO sense.  Dominating leaderboards, being "the first," cornering markets, acquiring the most lootz and turritory, etc.  Pvp is not all about headshots; matter of fact.... as has been said, it's an extremely small part of the picture - even with games like WW2O, wherein the majority of the real game lies beneath the drones doing the shooting.

Yeah, but people don't need to bother with playing an MMO to find passive agressive online pvp.

[Venkman]

You could say the same thing about sub games though.

Have we had a AAA MMO that was F2P from the very beginning?  Keep in mind that GW2 and TSW had a box cost.

No, we have not. Because typically "AAA" is related to the budget invested to create and market a game. By and large a company will not spend $75mm on a game where 5-10% of the players will pay anything at all and 1-3% will be from where they get the vast majority of their money.

What we have gotten is AAA MMOs that made the choice between f2p or closure, or f2p MMO-like games that were imported from Eastern markets that had limited appeal in the West due to game balancing and/or themes that hadn't translated well.

Someone could take from this that "AAA f2p is a white space!!/1". But it's not. It's possible to pull off. But the only companies that would try it would be those that are designing themselves to be bought out. Or are ponzi schemes 

[Kitsune]

Sony's trying for it with EQ Next, and unlike most they actually have the money to produce such a game instead of crashing and burning 10% into development.  Problem being, it's Sony, and the likelihood of their completely botching it despite a giant pile of money is somewhat high.

[calapine]

Wildstar Customisation video

Feels very well done. Some MMO Devs that don't seem to have their pants on their head. Strange.

[Sjofn]

Don't, um ... don't get too excited about the character customization. Or the dye system.

[Threash]

That's ominous.

[Paelos]

That's ominous.

And probably true.

[Ingmar]

Don't even have to dance around the NDA on this one; character creation videos are out there on fansites etc all over the place. Based on those, there are like 7-8 options for hairstyles, skin color, faces, etc., on Wildstar races. The customization is really quite limited by today's standards if you're just talking about character looks.

By way of comparison I think SWTOR has 49 hairstyles for female humans and 30ish for males, significantly more skin and hair colors, and 4 body types instead of 1, and you still run into 'hey this guy standing next to me is my exact clone' issues all the time. Wildstar is a step backwards from there back to WoW-ish levels.

The customization stuff they showed for outfits, mounts, etc., in the video does seem to be more interesting, but don't get your hopes up for that special snowflake catgirl that looks unique.

[Sjofn]

Yeah, I meant the characters themselves are just ... there aren't a lot of options. Some race/gender combos have as few as 6 hairstyles to choose from. And while there are face sliders, there's really only 7-9 faces to choose from as your base, plus the face sliders are very uneven on how much they change things on a per-race basis, plus it has some weird-ass quirks, such as the "mouth" slider actually being a JAW slider, so if you don't want that gigantic, soul-devouring grin taking up half your aurin's face, TOO BAD, all you'll do is shrink the entire lower half of her head. Plus the whole One Body to Rule Them All thing.

Basically after you make your character, especially if you're not a human, if you manage to make it out of the tutorial area without running into three of your clones, you're either playing at a non-peak time or you picked one of the "ugly" options.

Is the dye system under NDA still? Because I could go off about that too.

[Sjofn]

To be more positive, though, the costume system is great and should be good for people who love playing dress up.

[Falconeer]

I have to say, for a kind of game I should have hated, I was pretty pumped about Wildstar. The videos they've been putting out regularly are really, really cool and this one is no different. Sadly, everything that looks amazing and ultra cool in the videos seems to be a thousand times more bland in the actual game.

Congratulations to the PR/video/marketing team.

[luckton]

I'll admit me, they got me at "Chua Ball"   

[Tannhauser]

I have to say, for a kind of game I should have hated, I was pretty pumped about Wildstar. The videos they've been putting out regularly are really, really cool and this one is no different. Sadly, everything that looks amazing and ultra cool in the videos seems to be a thousand times more bland in the actual game.

Congratulations to the PR/video/marketing team.

Yeah, good marketing.  I wasn't interested in this game, but now I am.  The DevSpeak is effective.

[Paelos]

Everything seems very familiar, which is either a good or bad thing depending on your POV.

[Nebu]

Everything seems very familiar, which is either a good or bad thing depending on your POV.

It looks like WoW to me too.

[Ghambit]

W/o the Star Wars brand, y'think SWTOR was a better "game" at release then Wildstar will be?

[Sjofn]

For me? Yes, but that would surprise absolutely no one here. There ARE things Wildstar has that SWTOR didn't that were/are more important to other people than they are to me, of course, and I wouldn't pretend otherwise. While I am fine with more action-oriented combat and such, I am not in love with it, nor do I hate quickbar combat, for example. The only super glaring thing SWTOR did not have at release that I think was a huge mistake not to have, and Wildstar is not making the same mistake, is a dungeon finder.

But for building a character that won't look exactly like someone I bump into within 10 minutes of making him or her? SWTOR beats Wildstar. Neverwinter beats Wildstar. The Secret World beats Wildstar. Basically any game made since WoW beats Wildstar on that front. Hell, as it is now? WoW beat Wildstar, because what it lacked in face sliders (the most pointless slider there is!), it made up for in a larger selection of hair and face options. And it's kind of shocking, really. It's your first impression of the game, and the first impression for anyone for whom chargen is important is going to be, "That's it?"

[Paelos]

W/o the Star Wars brand, y'think SWTOR was a better "game" at release then Wildstar will be?

Yes. The voice acting and decision trees along with playing with a friend? Absolutely some of the most fun I've ever had in an online game. I've actually laughed out loud playing SWTOR over vent while we busted each other on our horrible responses to things.

[Sjofn]

Yeah, I honestly think a lot of the stickiness of SWTOR for me and Ingmar, besides the whole "we-still-heart-Bioware" thing, is that duoing in that game is goddamn fantastic. It's ruined pretty much every other MMO out there for us in terms of "this is really, really fun together."

[Hoax]

SWTOR is terrible even now. Its ugly and many skills just look stupid or wrong when you use them in combat. Wildstar should blow it out of the water in terms of 4-8-12 month stickiness but it probably won't sell as many initial boxes because the market is a tiny bit smarter now after so many failures in a row. Also many more people have gotten over their fears of f2p compared to when SWTOR launched.

As for its great grouping. It bugged me a little that which response it picked was just based off a roll, so even if you are grouped with 4 and 3 guys pick response A you can still get some other response based on the roll. That and certain quests really didn't seem to be meant for anything but solo but they were inserted into progression all over so chunks of grouping were either waiting for someone to finish his class quests or just tagging along watching them do them. Oh and the dark and light side stuff was handled really poorly and awkwardly. That was a huge disappointment while grouping.

The dialogue in a group was the best part of the game hands down and I did have some laughs and fun with it. Sadly even Wildstar's very underwhelming combination of Neverwinter ground fire, WoW everything and GW skill decks will blow SWTOR's incredibly shitty combat out of the water both visually and I'd bet in terms of gameplay fun and combat is the thing that matters above all else despite all the other shit they cram into both titles.

[Signe]

Okay, I'm hooked.  Even if it's just on the customising so far.  I guess I'll have to sign up for beta now.  I  good character creation!!

[Sjofn]

You um. You didn't read my post, did you.