Is Wildstar worth $20? Elder Scrolls Online on sale?

[Craig234]

Wildstar is on sale for $20 now. Worth it?

I missed ESO on sale, but it sounds like they're improving it - watch for a sale?

I missed the D&D Online and LOTRO sales also, not that I need them but would have been tempting.

Not sure about other MMO's to watch, Rift didn't have much of a sale.

 

[Rhezuss]

Wlidstar I don't know but ESO is really good. I bought in a couple weeks after release and had a lot of fun with it. I left because I monstly played solo and it got boring quickly.

I think i'm gonna resub soon to give this a try.

 

[Wardawg1001]

I can't speak to Wildstar, never tried it out.

For ESO, I guess it depends on what you're looking for. The quests are interesting enough for an MMO, so if solo or small group PvE is what you are interested in, its actually a very polished and enjoyable experience. I don't know what the state of the end game experience is any more, it has changed considerably since I last played.

PvP not so much though. It can be fun at times, but they still haven't figured out how to make large group battles playable (massive lag, stuttering, de-syncs, etc), and class/skill imbalances are still rampant. Every time they fix something, they break something else just as bad or worse. It's been a few months since my sub ran out so maybe it isn't quite as bad as it used to be, but I keep tabs on the major updates and I watch the forums, and its literally the same issues being complained about as it was when I played. Feels like deja vu every time I check those forums.

 

[nurturedhate]

Wildstar was an amazing idea that had a lot of bugs in it that basically killed the population. If you get a free month with that $20 purchase then it isn't a bad deal, but the game overall does not have a long shelf life. Far too many mistakes made by the dev team. I used to raid with Diplomacy, currently 5th in the world, and as I mentioned earlier the combat was amazing. If Blizzard would implement Wildstar combat it would be the best MMO ever. They recently had a semi large patch called Drop 3 that changed some of the gearing options but I also heard it introduced a lot of new bugs. That really seems to be the sticking point with Carbine, the devs of Wildstar, they patch one thing and break three new things in the process.

As for ESO, I played it on release and at the time co-op questing was completely broken. If we tried to do the same quest in a group only one person would be able to complete it and the other person would have to drop the quest and restart it to be able to finish it. As a single player Elder Scrolls game it works well. We did the first two dungeons and it felt a lot doing a GW2 dungeon, as in everyone is a dps and you just blitz through mobs instead of any actual strategy. Honestly ESO reminded me a lot of GW2 as in everyone was a dps, no tanks or healers, and it is basically a solo play MMO wrapped in an Elder scrolls skin. Honestly, the bugs and issues were too much to tolerate that I did not resub after my second month.

 

[SunnyD]

From what I understand, Wildstar is dead in the water. They've cancelled all the upcoming ingame events and cut the staff down to a skeleton crew. Best hope for the game would be if another publisher picks it up and puts money into it, but that probably won't happen.

What I've head about ESO - it's not an MMORPG in anything but name. Basically it's Skyrim with a chat window. Yes, there's MMORPG functionality in it, but for all intents it's a single player game. Anything "multiplayer" about it is pretty much broken. Odds are it will eventually get fixed with time, but it won't be anything in terms of community like it should have been in the first place.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Does anyone even play ESO anymore? An MMO without a big fanbase takes away a lot from the experience, especially if they're asking you to pay a monthly fee to access that experience. It doesn't even show up in the list of top 100 games on Steam right now, but I don't know if it gets counted like the others (although Skyrim is currently number 5). So I'd be really skeptical about ESO at this point.

 

[DaveSimmons]

You could always give Star Wars and Star Trek a (another?) try.

Star Trek re-worked the first "season" of Federation and Klingon story episodes, and added the Romulan faction with its own story arc. You can play all of the PVE content without spending any money. Having the "best" ships is only required for PVP. Today they're starting the winter event where you can earn a top-class carrier ship if you grind one of the events (a ground ice race) for 25 days.

Star Wars lets you do most everything except some endgame content without paying, and they've just revised the power/ability skill trees to clean them up. I haven't tried it yet since I've been having fun flying spaceships in Trek.

 

[SunnyD]

Hmm, they're giving away carriers this year? I wonder which one?

 

[ShintaiDK]

Played Wildstar, not worth it.

ESO, it may be worth it, but not for the long term gaming.

Both are dead games with skeleton crew.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Hmm, they're giving away carriers this year? I wonder which one?

http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/9008423-q's-winter-wonderland-carrier

Breen, a "tier 6" (highest level).

You can also get the other 2 Breen ships from the 2012 and 2013 winter events.

 

[StinkyPinky]

I really enjoyed ESO. Didn't get what the hate was about. I played it solo and it felt very elder scrolls to me. I also enjoyed playing in an entirely different era. I also enjoyed the PvP zones.

 

[bystander36]

I tried ESO at the start and the game play was fun, and solo wasn't bad. The problem with it, at least in my opinion, was they made getting into groups a simple matter of pressing a button and waiting to be put in a group with others, who may not even be on your server (not sure on that last part). While this is the direction many games have gone, including WoW, this pretty much kills social, multiplayer interaction. So even if you are playing with others, you never talk to people, you don't have to interact with people to get groups, you don't care to friend people who play like you do, because everyone just hit the queue and waits to be put together with random strangers.

Like WoW did with WotLK, social dungeon crawling was killed, and caused me to leave both games. It might be nice for those who liked to solo before, and always complained about needing a group in EQ, DAoC, EQ2, vanilla WoW and just about every MMO before WoW's expansion WotLK, but it has killed the social aspect of MMO's and the reason they used to have such a following.

Note: I haven't played MMO's since the instant gratification changes. They just don't interest me any longer. If I wanted to solo, I'd much rather play a game like Dragon Age: Inquisition and predecessors. I wish one day, they'd return to the old group concept and slower combat, but I doubt it will ever happen again.

 

[asteldian]

As someone who still plays ESO, I figured I should give some more accurate updates:

PvP - unfortunately Wardawg is right. PvP is still suffering serious issues. It goes through stages of being better, but then worse again, and currently it is in a poor state with excess lag. In reality, I don't see big improvements until update 7 with the Imperial City release.

Dungeons - only the early dungeons are a 'role free' envioment. Mainly due to the fact a lot of players are new to MMOs so coordination and tactics are not abundant. At higher lvl a tank, healer and 2 DPS is your standard set up. With the added Dungeon Scaling the Vet dungeons especially you would not want to be running round without a dedicated tank and healer.

The only aspect of multiplayer which is broken (aside from PvP) is questing, and only if trying to randomly group with people at different stages than you. A lot of this has been improved (especially later in the game, you can help people out on quests you are not on/on a differnt phase to others), but phasing can be a problem. I personally haven't ever had an issue, but then when doing the normal quests I game with the wife so we are never on different quest phases as we did it all together.
While it is an issue, it in no way has an impact on the community because in reality, just like almost all MMOs, the lvling experience is easy, so aside from dungeons ther is no actual need to group up so most do not anyway. The era of FFXI and EQ1 is long gone.

ESO certainly is not a skeleton crew, 5 major updates this year, update 6 comes out January and brings with it the Justice system and the Champion system (which is a major rework of the end game due to the current system beng unpopular). Between the updates and the 2 weekly ESO Live, it is pretty clear it is far from dead on the development side.

No idea how many play the game, but the megaserver technology means there is only ever going to be US server and EU server, as a result population will always seem good even if the gme were to be dying.

There is irony in bystanders comment as the LFG tool sucks and no one actually uses it, instead interacting the old fashioned way of asking in zone or your guildies when putting a group together. I agree with the sentiment though, I am not a fan of the modern MMO style of LFG tools. But most like them. Incidently, anyone you are put in a group with is in your faction and your server.

All in all, ESO has vastly improved since launch and continues to get better, it certainly is not without its faults - depending on your playstyle these faults can be game breaking (especially PvP lovers) meanwhile for others the faults aren't even noticed due to their playstyle.

Is it worth buying? Well, pointless me answering that - I have it and play it, so of course I would say yes, trying to be more unbiased I would say - don't buy it full price, but many sites sell the game for $15-$20 anyway, so just look around, no need to wait for another Steam sale.

 

[sushicide]

Meh, MMOs are terrible for the industry - but every studio just has to have a piece of that WoW pie.

 

[clok1966]

I tried ESO at the start and the game play was fun, and solo wasn't bad. The problem with it, at least in my opinion, was they made getting into groups a simple matter of pressing a button and waiting to be put in a group with others, who may not even be on your server (not sure on that last part). While this is the direction many games have gone, including WoW, this pretty much kills social, multiplayer interaction.

Sorry the shitty attitude of the players has killed MMORPG's. Gearscores, elites attitudes, 'what can you do for me" are the real problems. I recently rejoined one of the old MMORPG's and did some groups, most fell apart when one user was slightly slower, was new so actually wanted to loot, etc.. The games are full of people who just rush alt's through content with no time to help new players who have never played the game. After this experience I tried a few of the others (EQ, WOW, EQ2, etc..) as they are all (well except one) free, pretty much the same in all of them. I watched people mad when a a run took 15 minutes. And yes any socializing was quickly nipped in the bud as it "slowed people down".

There simply is no place for people who want to actually play a game anymore, your ridiculed if you don't know how a fight works, you should have read it, watched it on Youtube and left any enjoyment out of seeing it first hand at the door. Since every MMORPG is the same game with NEW PAINT nobody has time for some talk, some help , etc.. MMORPG's are just full of the same people who where playing them 10 years ago, but they are much more JADED now, nothing is new, so there is no enjoyment even with new paint.

Just an opinion, and i can reinforce it with a quick trip into any game, get in a group doing a dungon/raid, say "I'm new to this instance so please let me know what i need to be doing" if you are not kicked, get no help at all, or get a few Noob comments, you got lucky.

 

[bystander36]

I tried ESO at the start and the game play was fun, and solo wasn't bad. The problem with it, at least in my opinion, was they made getting into groups a simple matter of pressing a button and waiting to be put in a group with others, who may not even be on your server (not sure on that last part). While this is the direction many games have gone, including WoW, this pretty much kills social, multiplayer interaction.

Sorry the shitty attitude of the players has killed MMORPG's. Gearscores, elites attitudes, 'what can you do for me" are the real problems. I recently rejoined one of the old MMORPG's and did some groups, most fell apart when one user was slightly slower, was new so actually wanted to loot, etc.. The games are full of people who just rush alt's through content with no time to help new players who have never played the game. After this experience I tried a few of the others (EQ, WOW, EQ2, etc..) as they are all (well except one) free, pretty much the same in all of them. I watched people mad when a a run took 15 minutes. And yes any socializing was quickly nipped in the bud as it "slowed people down".

There simply is no place for people who want to actually play a game anymore, your ridiculed if you don't know how a fight works, you should have read it, watched it on Youtube and left any enjoyment out of seeing it first hand at the door. Since every MMORPG is the same game with NEW PAINT nobody has time for some talk, some help , etc.. MMORPG's are just full of the same people who where playing them 10 years ago, but they are much more JADED now, nothing is new, so there is no enjoyment even with new paint.

Just an opinion, and i can reinforce it with a quick trip into any game, get in a group doing a dungon/raid, say "I'm new to this instance so please let me know what i need to be doing" if you are not kicked, get no help at all, or get a few Noob comments, you got lucky.

It seems to me we kind of agree, but have a different source to point to as the death of social interaction.

I do agree there is an elite crowd who thinks it is cool to ridicule the new, but not everyone fits into that category either.

However, if you followed the forums and all the constant fights between dev and player, it was always the solo player that seemed to be so loud and wanted everything changed to fit the solo player. Sadly, all these games, started catering to the solo player, and killed off the focus of MMO's, and that was group play. What stayed behind was the more solo, me, me crowd, and some who stuck to play with existing friends. You can't join in an MMO to see what it used to be like. They are too solo-centric and fast paced to socialize at all.

 

[futurefields]

cant wait to play Wildstar once it goes F2P, the combat, world and art design look very cool, but they are never going to get subscription money from me