Wildstar To Launch On June 3 64
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.'"
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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: (Score:2)
They're letting us know early so we can begin collecting wolf pelts in advance.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
To summarize (Score:5, 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!"
Re:To summarize (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (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
Re: (Score:3)
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
Re: (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.
Eve Online Buying More Time with Ingame Currency (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
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It does look cool, though.
Really? At a glance I thought it looked simplistic and trite.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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. B
So . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So . . . (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.
No Linux client (Score:4, Insightful)
no money. Thanks for playing...
Re: (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: (Score:2)
no money. Thanks for playing...
Damn straight.
Re: (Score:1)
Ah, that's actually annoying. A Linux client would have been a complete win.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (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 init
Wildstar is awesome (Score:2)
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 (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:1)
Too late. (Score:1)
roleplay? (Score:1)
So is it a good game to roleplay in?
Or is LoTRO _still_ sadly best for that aspect?