Wildstar MMO cancels holiday events; Announces mass layoffs

[Bateluer]

http://www.pcgamer.com/wildstar-cancels-christmas-and-halloween-events/

The seasonal event cycle is a big part of any MMO's calendar. We are now able to escape the Halloween and Christmas holidays through their various oddball incarnations around any number of digital worlds. But one world won't be joining in the festivities: Nexus, the world of Wildstar.
Wildstar appears to be in a difficult phase of its life. The announcement of a switch to a smaller pool of "megaservers" has come pretty early—although Carbine claims it's "a goal we've always had for our servers". The studio has also slowed its content release schedule, aiming for less frequent, but also less buggy updates.

Haven't seen much positive come out of Wildstar since its release. Just a lot of pre-release hype, then a collective 'meh' from everyone.

Update: Saw this over at Reddit.

http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Ca...246.htm?sort.sortType=RD&sort.ascending=false

Mass layoffs at the studio and many ex-employees taking to Glassdoor and other sites to criticize management.

 

[sushicide]

My friends got caught up in the hype and nagged me to buy it, they didn't even last two weeks. I had low expectations going in (ain't no more ways to invent the wheel), but turned out to be decent entertainment for the free month.

 

[TidusZ]

I felt it had potential but the attunement to start raiding was not even possible for most guilds and all that was left to do was farm adventures over and over or wipe in dungeons (not very doable with a random group). I gave up on it pretty quickly

 

[nurturedhate]

Fantastic combat and really great raid content but completely lacking in anything else. I have heard that the game was built backwards, the raids came first and they worked their way back to the starting zone combat. Not sure if it is true but it definitely does feel that way. Was in one of the top guilds in the world until last week basically. There's just not a lot to do other than raid and the population that is left is not a nice one. Felt like the LoL community. I wish Carbine luck and hope the game rebuilds its player base. There were a LOT of bugs early on and they just couldn't keep in front of it all.

What I really wish is for the story/settings/financial backing/competence/polish of WoW with the combat and difficulty of wildstar.

 

[lupi]

I laughed when people said this would be a mega hit cause it brought back the difficulty feeling from the beginning of wow. looks like I was correct.

 

[Anteaus]

I really enjoyed the whimsy and overall tone of Wildstar but yeah it was pretty shallow and ultimately boring. I didn't mind the similarities with other MMOs. In spite of it's been there done that gameplay, they could have really done something special. The lore was unique enough to push the game along. Oh well.

 

[nurturedhate]

I really enjoyed the whimsy and overall tone of Wildstar but yeah it was pretty shallow and ultimately boring. I didn't mind the similarities with other MMOs. In spite of it's been there done that gameplay, they could have really done something special. The lore was unique enough to push the game along. Oh well.

There was a LOT of potential with this game. Should really be studied for how NOT to execute an MMO launch and subsequent months.

 

[Subyman]

I had a friend that was excited about it. I tried the beta and didn't like it at all. If I wanted to pick up quests and click on mobs, I'd resub to wow. I don't know why these games keep copying the same formula and then tank at launch. You'd think they'd learn.

 

[Franz316]

I wasted 60 bucks plus a month fee on this one. It just doesn't have "it."

 

[Dankk]

I have a couple friends who were really into Wildstar when it released. I think it only lasted for a month or two, and they haven't played it since.

 

[Bateluer]

If the only thing an MMO can offer is raiding, then its doomed to failure. And probably very fast. I did a few raids in EQ2, but never really liked it. Ended up avoiding them altogether and joining smaller groups for Heritage Quests and the like.

I've no statistics for it, but I'd be willing to wager that the majority of MMO players don't care much for raiding in massive groups.

 

[Craig234]

I laughed when people said this would be a mega hit cause it brought back the difficulty feeling from the beginning of wow. looks like I was correct.

Back when I was playing vanilla EQ, I felt that players would flock to an easier game, and competition would force it, and that then EQ would have to change to match.

That's what happened. I felt at the time 'there will never be going back to the hard. There will be some nostalgia, but not enough to support such a game probably.'

And that's pretty much what's happened. Vanguard tried. Brad McQuaid's new game will try, and maybe it'll get enough. But most players don't really seem to want that.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I laughed when people said this would be a mega hit cause it brought back the difficulty feeling from the beginning of wow. looks like I was correct.

I had a similar thought from the beta, yes its more challenging than most mmo's but certainly not difficult and like all others no death penalty. Simply respawn and charge right in if you lose do it again!
I did have some fun in the beta it just wasn't something I was going to spend $60 then monthly sub on.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

I actually loved doing the dungeon content and if you had that in your pocket the rest was a good compliment. I didn't touch raiding since despite having enormous amounts of freetime, I can't maintain a schedule The combat was the most satisfying of any mmo I've played.

Their support was pretty grievous even two months after release (I gave them tons of slack in the initial month). I got screwed out of half a months of crafting supplies and quit after that...

 

[nurturedhate]

The combat was the most satisfying of any mmo I've played.

I cannot agree more. I really hope someone takes that combat and does something fantastic with it.

 

[clok1966]

I laughed when people said this would be a mega hit cause it brought back the difficulty feeling from the beginning of wow. looks like I was correct.

cough, cough, difficulty of beginning of WoW? played beta and release for many years, I certainly missed the difficult part I guess. Even the Heroics where nothing compared to early EQ raids. But coming from UO, EQ, AC, heck even DAoC maybe I had learned a bit.

easy mode, WOW started in RPG's, Halo in FPS.. and its not going away look at the most popular games, all casual.

Ah well, us old guys can remember 3 lives an out, Castlevania, Metroid, UO gank squads, 3+ hour corpse runs in EQ, and (shudder) Battletoads! that's why I laugh when "Demons Souls" is considered hard. Hard if you don't pay attention and play careful maybe, maybe even challenging.. but nothing like that old stuff.

good or bad, eh.. who knows, but HARD don't sell so its not like we will ever know.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

I cannot agree more. I really hope someone takes that combat and does something fantastic with it.

The difficulty of the content was part of what made it satisfying. If the game wasn't always pushing you to use your skills right and pay attention then the whole system would be useless.

The game being difficult was only a quarter of why it is failing. They had good difficult dungeon content and almost good adventure content (that was more casual level), but they completely fucked up the reward systems for it the way they tied it in with keying and made it so every run was a tedious speed run.

I ran with people that could usually do them, but even so it was just a grind to know you could never take a moment break while running anything; it was basically a brick wall for other people. I think they were trying to roll out a fix as I quit, but it was already too late. Pretty much screwed them in regards to having a solid player base.

Games can be difficult, but they still need content for everyone. I think they were actually close to having it; they just tunnel visioned too hard at the end game and forgot that people could actually run the adventures/dungeons themselves and turned them into purely gates for raiding that everyone just got grinding in. It's not bad that they're part of attuning but they tied in the grading and rewards too much with the balls hard attunement that most people couldn't complete.

 

[smackababy]

If the Wildstar Halloween event was anything like the WoW events: good. They only served to piss me off because I could never get that stupid headless horseman mount to drop...

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

If the Wildstar Halloween event was anything like the WoW events: good. They only served to piss me off because I could never get that stupid headless horseman mount to drop...

Pretty sure I have it on my main death knight

 

[HumblePie]

Enjoyed the game mostly from a game perspective. I loved the harder content.

But I love HARD content, not tedious content. I HATE EFFING GRINDING!!!!!!! Wildstar wasn't much of grind until attunement and end game. Then that is what is all became. Ugh.

The game was full of horrible bugs upon release and really bad class balance. Speaking of which I hate bugs, and bad class balance, but what I really hate is incompetent devs that have no idea how to resolve the issues despite it being pretty damn clear to most of the community on what needs to be done to resolve some class balance issues. They just went back and forth on their own ideas most of the time which didn't resolve the issue until they finally went with what the community knew to be the real fix. When the devs implement the ral fix, viola! issue resolve. Fucking idiot project managers if not devs.

There was a lot of potential and it fell flat because of those main issues. They built a game around end game grinding and pvp. End game grinding is not what the majority of players out there want and bad class balance ruins pvp. Just ugh.

 

[Mandres]

Here's what I posted about Wildstar back in May after a couple of their beta weekends:

I agree with Rinuan. This game is exactly WoW with a slightly different setting (but not very different, the overall art style is very similar) and no lock-on targeting. There are no interesting new ideas here that haven't already been done somewhere else, and I think it'll be completely irrelevant a year from now just like SWTOR. If it came out around the same time as RIFT it might have been competitive, it feels like it's from that generation of games.

I really think Wildstar is going to be the tail end of the string of "Me too!" MMOs that were all green-lighted when WoW was making crazy stupid money and everyone wanted to get in on the party. It's long past time for the "solo-quest-grind to level cap and then run dungeons over and over again forever" kind of game to be replaced with a different kind of persistent world experience.

The Koreans and Chinese have been pushing the envelope in MMOs for a while and I think Everquest: Next has some interesting ideas too. But the WoW model is over and done, except for the people who still play WoW.

I've been playing Archeage for the last month and it's mostly fantastic. It has all the vibrancy and living-world that the recent AAA mmo flops have lacked. It's not perfect, but it feels like a 2014 mmo where Wildstar felt like a 2007 mmo.

 

[JumBie]

There is a certain type of person that likes MMORPG's, I am not one of them. I find them all to be boring money grabbers that resemble its previous dead partner. They never innovate, its the same crap rebranded in a different skin. Knew this was going to fail anyway.

 

[Bateluer]

Bump for update.

Not to harp on this too much, but I do recall Wildstar was immensely popular as the 'WoW killer' before its release. Now its crashing and burning almost fast enough to break records.

 

[futurefields]

Will play the game when it goes F2P. Always thought Wildstar looked cool but can't get onboard with a subscription model at this point in my life. Got too many different games to play.

 

[smackababy]

Bump for update.

Not to harp on this too much, but I do recall Wildstar was immensely popular as the 'WoW killer' before its release. Now its crashing and burning almost fast enough to break records.

Every MMO released since 2005 has been the "WoW killer" and they've all failed.