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Wildstar To Launch On June 3
An anonymous reader writes "Carbine Studios, a game company founded by former Blizzard developers, has been working on a new sci-fi MMORPG called Wildstar. The game has now gotten a release date: June 3rd. Rock, Paper, Shotgun's preview described the game thus: 'it's trying to out-MMO every other MMO. Not with big talk of moving narratives or ever-changing worlds, but by ramping up the unreal theme pack nature of its peers and predecessors. 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. It might even be too much, too overwhelming in its parade of sideshows.'"
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.
In other words: Welcome to the grind fest, where if it doesn't consume your entire life then you lose.
no money. Thanks for playing...
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
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.
"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.
I can't argue against magic and fairy dust. You win.
Mean what you say...say what you mean.
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.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Naw, it's made for people who liked WoW's art style but are getting tired of WoW's out dated graphical engine.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
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.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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.
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.
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.
-Styopa
They're letting us know early so we can begin collecting wolf pelts in advance.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
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.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
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.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
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.
So is it a good game to roleplay in?
Or is LoTRO _still_ sadly best for that aspect?