Wildstar To Launch On June 3

So I need to know now? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-03-12 10:51 · Score: 0

Or can it wait until June 2?

Re:So I need to know now? by MrBigInThePants · 2014-03-12 12:02 · Score: 1

In this case you need to know that you can safely ignore the announcement on June 2nd.

I love how the author desperately attempts to explain the lack of originality as a strength and a very brave thing to do and the biggest selling point of the game.

"Boldly going where everyone and his dog has gone before!"
*weeeooo oooo weee ooo oo oo oooooooo* (etc)

I guess that is how they get invited back for more pampering at PR events. Its good to be an embedded journalist.
Re:So I need to know now? by NotDrWho · 2014-03-13 00:49 · Score: 1

They're letting us know early so we can begin collecting wolf pelts in advance.

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SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.

Horrbile theme park theme by Anonymous Coward · 2014-03-12 10:54 · Score: 0

Made for little kids and girls.

Re:Horrbile theme park theme by sandytaru · 2014-03-12 16:00 · Score: 1

Naw, it's made for people who liked WoW's art style but are getting tired of WoW's out dated graphical engine.

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Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Re:Horrbile theme park theme by NotDrWho · 2014-03-13 00:52 · Score: 1

From the description, it sounds more like it was designed for WoW users who actually want MORE grinding. Good news for all you autistics and obsessive compulsive types out there.

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SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.

To summarize by Stickerboy · 2014-03-12 11:01 · Score: 4, Insightful

This is a game where you're constantly presented with a legion of things to do, numbers to increase, boxes to tick, things to collect, factions to impress, points to earn, monsters air-dropped in to battle without warning and/or preferably all of the above simultaneously.

So this is the most job-like game on the internet?? Awesome! Sign me up.

Less facetiously, I didn't think the answer to the common complaint of, "We're sick of killing 10 generic monsters to collect 5 generic trophies to advance a quest" was, "Here's more stuff to grind!"

--
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

Re:To summarize by Anonymous Coward · 2014-03-12 11:16 · Score: 0

Its a subscription-based MMO. $15 a month. In today's market, that is a recipe for fail.
They have a way you can grind for gold and pay to pay for your next month's subscription that way...there is no way one month's of grinding will cover the cost of one month's play though. Its just there to get attention.
When it goes free to play I will try it out.
It does look cool, though.
Re:To summarize by Anonymous Coward · 2014-03-12 11:18 · Score: 0

Except instead of a job where these things are tedious, it's all about the immediate enjoyment, they throw more stuff at you, give you rewards and you go after the next fix.
Depending on how they ramp it anyway.
Re:To summarize by PopeRatzo · 2014-03-12 11:54 · Score: 4, Insightful

Its a subscription-based MMO. $15 a month. In today's market, that is a recipe for fail.
On the other hand, I only play games that I pay for. I don't want anything for free, and most definitely not a game. Every single F2P game gives me a creepy feeling.
And I figure, since I'm not exceptional in any way, there are probably other people like me, who are happy to pay for a game that provides value. In fact, if the game was good enough, and provided enough value, I'd pay even more than the current price-tag for an AAA game.
I'm not much on MMO's or really, multiplayer anything, but by charging for their work, at least Blizzard has placed Wildstar in the category of games that I will consider playing.

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You are welcome on my lawn.
Re:To summarize by Anonymous Coward · 2014-03-12 12:38 · Score: 1

Buy to play games, like Guild Wars 2, work well. It is a high quality game that you pay for...once. Then, if you want some boosters or cosmetic upgrades, you can pay a little more.
In theory, the subscription allows subscription-based MMOs to continue to deliver new content, thus justifying the subscription. In practice, you could by a brand-new game every 4 months that you play a subscription based MMO, and the new content they deliver doesn't even come close to this level of variety. Further, with many subscription based MMOs, you also have to pay again for expansions (WoW does this, as did Everquest), and on top of that there is special in-game content which requires a fee on top of your subscription (WoW did this too, dunno about others). They just suck your money away like vampires, and don't deliver nearly enough content to justify the cost.
And anyway, that market is saturated. Another subscription-based game won't pull new players into the market, so it has to be awesome enough to justify making existing players quit their existing subscriptions (or pick up an additional subscription game)...good luck with THAT!
Re:To summarize by Ceriel+Nosforit · 2014-03-12 15:56 · Score: 1

It does look cool, though.
Really? At a glance I thought it looked simplistic and trite.

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All rites reversed 2010
Re:To summarize by sandytaru · 2014-03-12 15:59 · Score: 1

TESO is also a pay to play. XIV:ARR is pay to play and they're approaching a population of two million since launch last fall, which is kind of crazy.

F2P games have their place, but so do P2P games. If Wildstar thinks it can compete with the big boys, then more power to it.

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Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Re:To summarize by Anonymous Coward · 2014-03-12 18:11 · Score: 0

XIV:ARR is pay to play and they're approaching a population of two million since launch last fall, which is kind of crazy.
Where does this bullshit number keep coming from? They're possibly approaching 2 million SALES, which is not the same thing as SUBSCRIBERS, which is certainly not the same thing as ACTIVE PLAYERS.
The one time they've released actual numbers to their investors, they revealed that the game met sales figures of something like 300,000 in the first month. That was it. I have no idea where this "nearly 2 million" figure comes from, but I somehow doubt it's grounded in reality. Unless they're doing something shady like counting "number of characters created."
Re:To summarize by Anonymous Coward · 2014-03-12 18:34 · Score: 0

Where does this bullshit number keep coming from? They're possibly approaching 2 million SALES, which is not the same thing as SUBSCRIBERS, which is certainly not the same thing as ACTIVE PLAYERS.
1.8 million players, 6.7 million characters. According to this polygon article, which is according to Square Enix
Re:To summarize by Anonymous Coward · 2014-03-12 18:47 · Score: 0

Or, in other words, SALES, not subscribers. Which would be more impressive if you weren't aware that the game had been on sale for less than a month's subscription constantly since December. (What, Square Enix desperate for cash? Who'd ever see that coming.)
In the context of this discussion, what we really want to know if how many subscriptions there are, which they haven't told us and almost certainly won't reveal. The reality is subscription-based MMOs are dead, no matter how much you try and fudge the numbers.
Re:To summarize by sandytaru · 2014-03-13 00:56 · Score: 1

At least 100,000 players of the original game didn't have to buy the new version. They got a copy of the client handed to them for free. Are they counted among the "sale" numbers? I'm pretty sure the source quoted below uses the phrase "accounts" which is not the same as sold copies of the game. (Whether those accounts are active or not is up for debate.)

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Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Re:To summarize by Talderas · 2014-03-13 03:48 · Score: 1

There's just three motivating factors for creating multiple characters per account. The first is to grant the player multiple "lockouts" regarding raiding content. The second is to play on multiple servers. The third is to experiment with character creation IF you want to see how the character looks in game, since you can save character creations without actually creating the character.
The majority of characters created are undoubtedly gil sellers. The fact that it's 6.7m players for 400m hows just a month ago (when the game has been out for 4 months) making it just shy of 60hours per character is pretty indicative of that fact.

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"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Re:To summarize by Anonymous Coward · 2014-03-13 07:01 · Score: 0

Someone else already pointed this out: the majority of those "1.8 million accounts" are gold sellers. It makes sense when you remember that the game has been on a near constant "sale" for less than the cost of a month's subscription since the end of November, and that a "new" copy of the game comes with a month's subscription...
Not exactly an indication of the revival of subscription-based MMOs!
Re:To summarize by Luckyo · 2014-03-13 08:18 · Score: 1

Actually it's a recipe for success. FF14 is doing quite well now after they fixed the idiocy of the first attempt of launching a crappy game and made a decent one. WoW is moving along with subscriber numbers that are a wet dream for any publisher.
If you can provide quality, people will happily pay. The issue is that few can match the quality of WoW, and that's what you're going against. FF14 is a good example - they have their own thing, and when they did it wrong, it wasn't enough to pull people off WoW. But when they did it right, they got the subscribers to stay.
On the other hand, free to play market is utterly oversaturated. You have to go against everything from juggernaughts like SWTOR to smaller and more niche titles like Firefall.
Re:To summarize by Luckyo · 2014-03-13 08:27 · Score: 2

GW2 is not a pay once game. It's "microtransaction hell free to play model if you want to play the game with any comfort, but we'll charge you AAA price up front because we have good brand name" game. That's one of the reasons why so many people dropped it - after all the empty promises, they ended up making even legendaries puchasable from auction house with in game money, and in game money purchasable with real money strait from the developer. After spending months telling everyone they won't sell in game money for real money.
On the other hand as FF14 showed, people are fully willing to pay if you have a good game worth paying for. Problem was and still is that most people only pay for one sub at a time, so you need to produce enough quality to make people want to switch from WoW, or FF14, or whatever sub game they're playing. And quality level there is much higher than F2P.
That's the main reason why so many MMORPGs nowadays went F2P. Not that the model is great, but because bad and average games simply could not compete with WoW. F2P let's you release anything from average to shovelware and finance it at least for some time, as long as it's not completely awful.
But great F2P MMORPGs are essentially all P2P nowadays, and will likely remain this way for a while, simply because to compete in that market you need to provide people with consistent influx of high quality content. F2P budgets are simply not sufficient for that sort of thing, as SWTOR showed. When they went F2P, they had to drop the constant new content updates.
Re:To summarize by Brulath · 2014-03-13 19:46 · Score: 1

On the other hand, I only play games that I pay for. I don't want anything for free, and most definitely not a game. Every single F2P game gives me a creepy feeling.
Games funded by microtransactions, like F2P games, tend to activate a defensive mode for me; I'm constantly on the look-out for mechanics that try to make me spend money, to avoid them, which distracts me from focusing my full attention on the fun portion of the game. The money mechanics are going to be presented in a way which is tempting, so it's not easy to let my guard down. I'd take a game that costs money up-front and doesn't require me to guard myself over one with a microtransaction system any day.

So . . . by Traciatim · 2014-03-12 11:04 · Score: 5, Insightful

In other words: Welcome to the grind fest, where if it doesn't consume your entire life then you lose.

Re:So . . . by ackthpt · 2014-03-12 11:16 · Score: 5, Insightful

In other words: Welcome to the grind fest, where if it doesn't consume your entire life then you lose.
Or, by losing you win, but feel you didn't win, so keep trying and keep losing, until you are good enough to win and thus lose.

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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Re:So . . . by Anonymous Coward · 2014-03-13 02:18 · Score: 0

Beer, Whiskey, Cigarettes, Pot, Ecstasy, Blow, LSD,Soma,PCP,Oxycontin,Crank, Heroine and now Krokodil. Where will it stop ?

No Linux client by future+assassin · 2014-03-12 11:09 · Score: 3, Insightful

no money. Thanks for playing...

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by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*

Re:No Linux client by Anonymous Coward · 2014-03-12 21:36 · Score: 0

no money. Thanks for playing...
Damm man, Stop beating that dead horse. Linux makes up less than 5% of the market. At best.
Even mac beats it. And while it's a 'form' of nix. You're still not running their shit either.
You want game companys to seriously spend double the money to support 5% more people? That's fucking stupid. Nobody who doesn't have other motives will ever do that.
Really expect it to change? Help people migrate to linux. No. Not by being snarky fuckwads telling people with questions to "RTFM".
By actually helping! Making it easy for the average braindead windows user to switch.
Do that. And you might.... MIGHT... reach a percentage that game companys will care about.
Until then.. STFU about linux support in mainstream titles. It's just not going to happen no matter how much you wish it.
Re:No Linux client by Anonymous Coward · 2014-03-13 00:07 · Score: 0

You want game companys to seriously spend double the money to support 5% more people?
It does not take double money to support two platforms instead of one. First, a large percentage of the work to develop a game needs to be done on OS independent assets (textures, models, sounds, maps, etc.). Second, even the engine code does not need to be duplicated, only the parts that interface with platform specific APIs. If code is designed and written to be portable from the beginning, then supporting multiple operating systems is relatively easy compared to the total amount of effort that is needed to make the game.

STFU about linux support in mainstream titles. It's just not going to happen no matter how much you wish it.
So, why do you care about Linux users stating that they will not buy something that does not work on their OS, and just STFU yourself ? If the market is really insignificant, then it does not matter anyway, and you can just ignore such comments.
Re:No Linux client by Type44Q · 2014-03-13 02:04 · Score: 1

no money. Thanks for playing...
Damn straight.
Re:No Linux client by thunderbird32 · 2014-03-13 03:37 · Score: 1

STFU about linux support in mainstream titles. It's just not going to happen no matter how much you wish it.
Now that CryEngine, Source, and Unity are all on Linux, it just might happen. Anything that lowers the barrier to entry for the developers is a good thing, and increases the possibility for AAA games on Linux. We already have one AAA title on Linux, Metro Last Light.
Re:No Linux client by Mirar · 2014-03-16 08:07 · Score: 1

Ah, that's actually annoying. A Linux client would have been a complete win.

Eve Online Buying More Time with Ingame Currency by Anonymous Coward · 2014-03-12 12:17 · Score: 1

"They have a way you can grind for gold and pay to pay for your next month's subscription that way...there is no way one month's of grinding will cover the cost of one month's play though. Its just there to get attention."

Interesting, Eve Online has a similar mechanism where you can buy Pilot License Extensions ("PLEX") which is a 30 day subscription with in game currency (ISK), going for about 674 million ISK. It's hard, but by no means impossible, to earn that kind of income per month. Some income streams are passive, in fact I'm training my alternate characters to generate income for me through various means, etc., as well, to build up PLEXes.

Re:How to Falsify Evolution by Ol+Olsoc · 2014-03-12 13:45 · Score: 0

Example; if someone said a watermelon is blue on the inside, but turns red when you cut it open, how could you prove them wrong?

You can't explain that! Bill O'Reilly has come to slashdot.

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The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.

Re:How to Falsify Evolution by Ol+Olsoc · 2014-03-12 13:46 · Score: 0

Dude is probably flummoxed on whether the Refrigerator light is on when the door is closed too.

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The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.

NCSOFT Killed City of Heroes by Anonymous Coward · 2014-03-12 13:48 · Score: 0

They won't get one single penny from me.
Never Again.

Re:How to Falsify Evolution by TheRecklessWanderer · 2014-03-12 15:51 · Score: 2, Funny

I can't argue against magic and fairy dust. You win.

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Mean what you say...say what you mean.

Re:Eve Online Buying More Time with Ingame Currenc by sandytaru · 2014-03-12 15:56 · Score: 1

Yep, they took EVE's model, as a means of trying to keep out RMT. I'm sure there are still some entrepreneurial gold farmers that are going to try it, anyway.

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Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.

Re:NCSOFT Killed City of Heroes by Chas · 2014-03-12 17:02 · Score: 1

I'm in this camp as well.

NCSoft has a nasty habit of killing off properties on short notice and then squatting the IP pretty much forever.

Now, I'm realistic enough to understand that all these games are going to close at some point. It doesn't change the fact that NCSoft killed the game that kept their US division afloat, then reformulated the division after stripping the coffers bare.

And there WERE efforts made to purchase the game outright. NCSoft didn't meet with them and decide the deal wouldn't work. They just ignored it. Flat out.

A company that tone-deaf to their player base is a company I simply refuse to give my money to. Sure, it sucks for the studios that built these other games. But they're the ones who sold their souls to this publisher.

I still think that NCSoft is somehow convinced that a bunch of ex-WoW guys are going to build a WoW-killer.
If so, they're nuts.

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Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!

Re:NCSOFT Killed City of Heroes by Ihlosi · 2014-03-12 21:59 · Score: 1

I still think that NCSoft is somehow convinced that a bunch of ex-WoW guys are going to build a WoW-killer.

I'd be happy if they build something that has some of the spirit of CoH/CoV. Weird, colorful, etc.

I'd be even happier if they don't kill it after two years.

CoH/CoV was fun. The right thing to relax for an hour or two after work. That's not enough to see most of the "content" of WoW, and unlike WoW, combat in CoH/CoV was actually fun even if you were just beating up trash mobs on the streets.

Wildstar is awesome by Kokuyo · 2014-03-12 22:10 · Score: 1

Not as a game, mind you... I got bored out of my skull way before level 10... but the marketing videos were super. I enjoyed those. Had they made this franchise into a 3D cartoon instead of an MMO, I think they might have hit a veritable gold vein.

But as an MMO? No thanks. I have better things to do... such as staring at my wallpaper.

My experience by argStyopa · 2014-03-12 23:57 · Score: 2

Granted this was beta, but here's what I found:

- a slavish determination to mimic World of Warcraft's aesthetic. Unsurprising, since the dev team AFAIK largely came from Blizzard. IMO this is a little too slavish, coming off like "WoW sci fi with guns". To me it's jarring that you have nicely-detailed characters with hi-rez textures, but you're running around a world with a klunky geometry that screams "this is all computers can handle in 2004". TF2 showed that you could adhere to a non-representational, 'cartoony' theme without necessarily deliberately going so far as to mimic the design compromises of a decade ago.

- Obviously this is entirely subjective, but there's a very fine line between quirky/kitschy and cheesy. The "bad guys" n00b island story line in Wildstar is cheesy; the good guys story is cheesy AND sappy. WoW had a certain sort of self-referential humor to a lot of what it did (at its best), and that has seemed to dominate latter releases *cough* *cough* Pandas *cough*. Wildstar continues this unfortunate narrative/editorial choice, with everything from animations to storyline being so "over the top" that it has to be self-mocking (with the 'good guy' side adding a further drippy saccharine layer of narrative - the tutorial quest has you saving a guy's pregnant wife...)

- They've already very much adopted the modern-mmo paradigm of "go to quest hub, get a bunch of quests, complete those quests, move to next hub". There's almost never (at least in the first 12-15 levels) a point where you go backward, for any reason. Everything is very conveniently placed; when you hit a place where you level up, there's a new-skill trainer already waiting for you.

- Some clever design ideas in UI, communicating what enemies are doing and what you're doing (and the area effects) clearly and intuitively.

It's WoW40k, nothing more, nothing less. Personally, I don't find the modern design choices in MMOs for 'everything to be easy' to be interesting or engaging, but that's not Wildstar's fault at all. They're very solidly in the current mainstream.

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-Styopa

Re:My experience by B33rNinj4 · 2014-03-14 14:42 · Score: 1

You pretty much nailed it.

Re:NCSOFT Killed City of Heroes by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2014-03-13 02:31 · Score: 1

I don't think these asshats realize what they're doing when they close something. I had about 200 hours of base construction with well over 4000 pieces placed (which is somewhat clumsy in their method).

Let's just shut down Minecraft, taking everybody's painstaking lands along with it.

It was making a small profit along with regular ongoing updates and releases. This was not some money pit.

It's nothing but spite on their part. Supposedly they re-used the servers to help with. guild wars ii to help the initial bulge without buying more, which would be redundant in a few months.

Again, thanks asshats.

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(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.

Scientific vs historical conclusions by Anonymous Coward · 2014-03-13 04:36 · Score: 0, Informative

Any theory that does not provide a method to falsify and validate its claims is a useless theory.

You equivocate!

The scientific method includes the falsifiability requirement for hypothesis, yes. When dealing with historical claims, falsifiability cannot logically apply. For example, I posit that Hitler actually existed and actually led during World War 2, which actually happened. We cannot rewind the universe to prove this. We cannot put Hitler's historical reality in a test tube. There is no test we could construct today to falsify this claim.

Instead, we must operate under a preponderance of historical evidence. We gather documents or geological data (bomb impact sites, etc.) to compile a list of indicators that this claim is probably true. With enough indicators, you can say "this happened," even though you have not proven it in a scientific sense.

So, claims like "natural selection produces change in the phenotype of a species" are falsifiable. Experiments that demonstrate this have been done, and can be done again, with animals that have short life spans. It is falsifiable, provable, and proven.

The claim "all life on this planet got here, and attained its current form, by means of evolution (powered by natural selection)." That is actually a historical claim. It is not "historical" in that it is not a claim specifically about human actions. But it is "historical" in that it is a claim about what happened on this planet in the past. You cannot rewind the universe, nor can you put such a claim in a test tube. But you can gain evidence, such as fossil records and such, to create enough support for the claim to accept it as true. This, also, has been done.

Your argument is bogus.

Re:How to Falsify Evolution by s13g3 · 2014-03-13 05:50 · Score: 0

Stop feeding the troll, kids.

Seriously, this is being reposted to multiple threads with no intent other than disrupting normal discussion, no different from the GNAA trolls of years past. Just move along and ignore it, nothing to see here.

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"Inveniemus Viam Aut Faciemus" 'We will find a way... Or we will make one!' --Hannibal of Carthage

Trollolololol! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-03-13 06:44 · Score: 0

Here troll, have some food.

Complaints, and presentation of opinion, are primary purposes for this forum. This is exactly the place where people should say things like that. Telling them to shut up will have no effect, and shows that you lack understanding of these forums.

Too late. by B33rNinj4 · 2014-03-14 14:41 · Score: 1

I played the beta, and I was not very impressed. If this had come out five or six years ago, I'd be much more excited about it. I played each class, and brought them out of the starting area, but I never really felt like there was any conflict, and it never really kept my attention. The game has some interesting mechanics, but I feel like they attempted to not "be WoW" to the extent that the enjoyment was watered down. Plus, there's the subscription. As it stands, after playing Guild Wars 2, I've seen how the F2P model can work. Sure, I can earn game time by playing, but I can't see myself really playing this enough.

roleplay? by Mirar · 2014-03-16 08:07 · Score: 1

So is it a good game to roleplay in?

Or is LoTRO _still_ sadly best for that aspect?

jordans shoes http://www.shoesctv.com by kvcnmoui · 2014-03-19 02:06 · Score: 0

64 comments