Carbine Studios' "Wildstar"

[HaemishM]

Also bad in the "idiotic video game industry expects crunch time to supersede everything in my life including my health" sort of way.

[Venimor]

Purely from a personal perspective (and clinical insanity notwithstanding), nothing short of insurmountable violence would have prevented me from carrying on with MMORPG development.

[Miasma]

Totally not server merges, we're just going to use this new fangled megaserver idea.

[Fabricated]

Whoever came up with "megaserver" as a replacement for "server merger" should be paid millions.

[Father mike]

Has this been out long enough for folks to be attached to their names?  Because I need some good re-name drama to get me thru to Christmas.

[Signe]

But this game just happened!  Just wait until the megaserver mergers. 

[Surlyboi]

Nope. I just want to watch it burn.

[apocrypha]

But this game just happened!  Just wait until the megaserver mergers. 

Ultraservers? Supaservers? With a 1 month discount, the Supaserversava.

[Lucas]

Whoever came up with "megaserver" as a replacement for "server merger" should be paid millions.

[Nija]

I should try to dredge up the email I sent to the WAR team back when it was in early, early alpha. 6 people on the server at night alpha.

I proposed trying to find some kind of lore-approved way to instance the zones so that they could have a mega server. This was after I watched how it worked in Anarchy Online, of course, so it wasn't anything new. But I outlined how you wanted to have a unique ID that wasn't tied to an account name and all of that.

They thought it was unnecessary, of course.

Pretty much every single game absolutely needs this feature. Because you ramp up servers for launch, and promptly close all of those fuckers down. It's never good PR.

[Hutch]

Whoever came up with "megaserver" as a replacement for "server merger" should be paid millions.

"Connected realms" was taken 

[Nebu]

Does this mean that ESO is undergoing an employee merger to become a new megacompany?   

[Senses]

Maybe they should just merge ESO and Wildstar and call it Crappy MMO's of 2014 Online.

[rk47]

The Elder Star: Mega MMORPG.

[Morfiend]

GW2 use of "megaserver" is actually really good and an overall game improvement. IMO.

[Falconeer]

GW2 was a good game, I wish I could force myself to go back and play it again.

[Nebu]

GW2 use of "megaserver" is actually really good and an overall game improvement. IMO.

GW2 is in a whole different world compared to Wildstar and ESO.  GW2 is an outstanding game that brought some fantastic elements/enhancements to the MMORPG genre.  ESO and Wildstar... not so much.

[Draegan]

Wildstar brought us great marketing. I really enjoyed ESO's graphic style, it's probably my favorite artstyle of any MMO to date.

[Nebu]

Wildstar brought us great marketing. I really enjoyed ESO's graphic style, it's probably my favorite artstyle of any MMO to date.

Agree about Wildstar.  GREAT marketing videos.  It was almost a part of the downfall though.  The game really never lived up to the hype.

ESO... never liked the look of.  The NPC's looked terrible next to the richness of the world they were in.  The disconnect really threw me off.

[Venkman]

GW2 was a good game, I wish I could force myself to go back and play it again.

Totally feel the same way.

[Signe]

If Wildstar had been anything at all like that War-thingy trailer, I'd SO be playing that right now instead of posting in a Wildstar thread.

[Draegan]

The underlying problem with this game is that the classes sucked. Class design, class progression, class customization, class mechanics and overall character progression was absolute shit.

Combat was way too easy. They originally had combat that was pretty difficult where you could potentially die early on if you didn't play well enough, or at least pay attention. It made the game fun because there was a slight challenge to it each time. They just made it easy so you could just faceroll and level for the most part.

Then just tack on a shitty quest grind and you have a boring vanilla game.

[Nebu]

The underlying problem with this game is that the classes sucked. Class design, class progression, class customization, class mechanics and overall character progression was absolute shit.

Combat was way too easy. They originally had combat that was pretty difficult where you could potentially die early on if you didn't play well enough, or at least pay attention. It made the game fun because there was a slight challenge to it each time. They just made it easy so you could just faceroll and level for the most part.

Then just tack on a shitty quest grind and you have a boring vanilla game.

The other problem was that quest grinding in no way prepared you for adventures which didn't prepare you for dungeons.  The progression wasn't being used as an ability trainer, but as a time sink.  That was a lost opportunity. 

I'm not even going to talk about making large scale raids where you're constantly looking at your character's feet for ground effects.  The game was more like dance dance revolution than a combat MMORPG.  You spent more time dodging ground effects than you did doing any actual fighting.  Class balance and boring builds were the icing on the cake. 

[Draegan]

Very true. I like what the did with telgraphs from a macro point of view, but in practice you just played against the ground effects and never looked up. TERA still has the best action combat because you had to watch the thing you were fighting for the telegraphs, not the ground.

[Nebu]

I still wonder why nobody has expanded on the combat mechanics in DAoC.  You had block reactionaries, parry reactionaries, and dodge reactionaries on top of attack chains.  It really made you pay attention to what was going on in combat if you wanted to maximize your damage output. 

Yes, I realize that DAoC was filled with stupid and broken stuff of old, but there were a few things worth emulating with incremental improvement.

[Merusk]

How did you keep track of that. Noise? Watching the chat window? Visual effect?

The first two are non starters. The audience likes streaming music or other entertainment rather than listening to game noise and who the hell wants to watch a chat window these days. That was the biggest complaint about games of that era, you didn't really NEED the graphics to play the game.

Visual effect? Be prepared to be told your game is boring because there's not enough flashy particle effects covering the screen. It's reached a point of nonsense overload these days with every ability needing to have a huge, flashy graphic.  Get 3-4 people on screen and all you're seeing are multi-colored flashes.

Playing Marvel Heroes and D3 there's so many times I just hit buttons because I have no idea WTF is going on onscreen. I just can't keep up visually.

[Rasix]

I still wonder why nobody has expanded on the combat mechanics in DAoC.  You had block reactionaries, parry reactionaries, and dodge reactionaries on top of attack chains.  It really made you pay attention to what was going on in combat if you wanted to maximize your damage output.  

Yes, I realize that DAoC was filled with stupid and broken stuff of old, but there were a few things worth emulating with incremental improvement.

I really dislike reactionaries.  There's only so many hotkeys I can memorize and reactionaries usually need them due to activation windows.  Makes me feel like I'm playing against the UI and not my opponent (PVE or PVP).

Hell, I never bothered to slot the on-crit reactionaries in Wildstar because I just didn't feel like keeping track of it.

[Draegan]

That's why you macro'd in your reactionarys to your spam key in Wildstar (or Rift).

I don't mind reactionaries, but more in the context of MOBAs where you only have 3 abilities + ULT + 2 Utilities + Clickies.

[Ingmar]

I had something like 7 hotbars worth of stuff that I had to shift between in order to play my thane in DAOC because of reactionary chains off of block and parry, positionals, etc. It's not really something I want to go back to. I don't mind having the single reactionary type thing that warriors in WoW or JK/SWs have in SWTOR, but the chains weren't really worth the space they took up in the interface in terms of adding fun to combat. Maybe there's a solution to that along the lines of GW2's auto-attack button changing icons depending on the stage you're at I guess.

[Nebu]

I wasn't suggesting a duplication of DAoC but a streamlined emulation.  When I do combat, I prefer it to be thoughtful and tactical rather than fast and twitchy.  I prefer WoT to PSII for this reason.  In Wot combat is based on knowledge and positioning as much or more than reaction.  The first MMO that can capture that feel will get my money.  Wildstar was too much about button mashing and too little about exploiting a weakness... other than the interrupt system.

[Riggswolfe]

GW2 use of "megaserver" is actually really good and an overall game improvement. IMO.

GW2 is in a whole different world compared to Wildstar and ESO.  GW2 is an outstanding game that brought some fantastic elements/enhancements to the MMORPG genre.  ESO and Wildstar... not so much.

I don't get the love for GW2. It's not a bad game but its shine wore off more quickly for me than any other MMO I can think of. I think in large part it was because character progression was more or less non-existent and it basically was just one big public quest in each zone.

[Nebu]

I don't get the love for GW2. It's not a bad game but its shine wore off more quickly for me than any other MMO I can think of. I think in large part it was because character progression was more or less non-existent and it basically was just one big public quest in each zone.

You got credit for everything you did.  You could make builds based on easily swappable weapon sets with a manageable number of hotkeys.  Sending crafting items to the bank to free bag slots was brilliant.  Lots of exploration, jump quests, and public quests everywhere.  A diverse world/landscape.  You had everything for the pokemon collector and the combat min/maxxer all in a single game... and NO SUB FEE!

[Threash]

Basically, you might get tired of playing GW2 and never come back but you won't walk away saying "what the fuck were this idiots thinking?".

[Nebu]

Basically, you might get tired of playing GW2 and never come back but you won't walk away saying "what the fuck were this idiots thinking?".

This^^^ 

I got tired of GW2 after 3 months, but never felt like it was a bad game or had missed opportunities.  GW2 was a well crafted game that improved the MMO landscape even if it wasn't to everyone's liking. 

[Draegan]

I always thought that they did classes well as in they were fun to play, but class builds/customization terribly.