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State of the Game -- Drop 3 not releasing until November?!

erikthevikingeriktheviking Member Posts: 18

https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/114584-state-of-the-game

STATE OF THE GAME
 
It's been three hectic months since we launched WildStar to the world, and it’s taken us all on a wild ride. We've had our share of ups and downs and you've stuck with us through it all. First let me say, on behalf of the rest of the studio, thank you for joining us on Nexus. That said, I want to talk to you about our plans for WildStar moving forward.
 
On Megaservers…
 
At launch we were really excited by the surge of players trying to log into WildStar. If you were playing at the time, you'll remember that we had some pretty insane queue times. In order to mitigate the queue times, we opened more servers to accommodate the demand. And here we are three months later needing to balance capacity once more. If you ask me it’s no secret that MMOs are only as good as the communities that form around them and, while we have an AWESOME community, it’s spread out across our servers. We want to rectify that toot sweet.
 
Enter megaservers.
 
What do megaservers get us? Greater participation in PvP and PvE. More players for guild recruitment. You’ll see more player based trading and a busy auction house and commodity exchange. We want players playing together, so this strikes us as the best approach to address the sparsely populated realms.
 
On Drops...
 
An aggressive drop schedule was something we had planned from the beginning. Our goal was to get new content out there and into your hands as fast as possible. However, we soon learned a pretty painful lesson: the quicker we tried to get content out the door, the buggier it ended up.

The community has been both very forgiving, but very clear about their opinion on the matter:
 
Stop releasing buggy content. Period.
 
After Drop 2, we sat down and had a hard talk about the process so far. The result of this discussion: no more drops before their time. While we would still like to get content to our players as quickly as possible, we’re going to focus on quality. In the end, this will provide true value.
 
We feel we can accomplish this on a quarterly basis, with one caveat. If it's not ready, we'll hold it until it is. This doesn’t mean we won’t have other activities available to experience on a more regular basis, we’re just taking the necessary time to get the major drops right.
 
We’ve already released information on some of the content coming in the next drop (Mystery of the Genesis Prime and Journey to OMNIcore-1) at gamescom and PAX Prime. This content will entail solo and large public world story content that continues the story we’ve been telling through the game starting with the very first announcement trailer, published three years ago. We’re currently shooting for a release early November. Release timing really depends on how things go during internal and PTR testing. The additional polish time on the content will be worth the delay, no doubt.
 
Keeping WildStar great ...
 
We are committed to making WildStar the best MMO experience out there – and that means getting it right from the start. To demonstrate our commitment to this goal and our players, we are also focusing on addressing as many bugs as we can. To date we've managed to fix more than three thousand bugs, which equates to 61 pages of patch notes. That's pretty good. While the majority of the fixes were on the backend, we are also focusing efforts on making changes that matter the most. Here are a couple of the big ticket items that you’ve probably already seen, or will see, in the game:

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  • Attunement- The raid content was designed to have players actually play it. We adjusted the attunement process to help get players into raids, where the real challenge is. Getting in is one thing, being prepared is another. We are currently implementing a training dungeon that will help train and prepare players for the epic challenges that await them in our dungeons and raids. I want to stress that we’re not nerfing raids, we’re just giving you the tools to succeed when tackling them.
  • Elder Game Itemization – We got a ton of testing and feedback on the early leveling content in beta stages, as that is what gets tested the most. Since launch we’ve tried to respond as quickly as possible to the concerns about elder game items based on direct feedback from the thousands of players playing the live build, something that got little interaction before launch. We’ve been making positive changes related to rune slots and how desirable the hard content rewards are and we’re not close to finished yet.
  • PvP – Early PvP systems incentivized toxic behavior and play patterns. While updates to the gear and matchmaking system have gone a long way to mitigate this, expect further updates and adjustments in the future.

And this is just the beginning folks, the first step in building and maintaining regular, honest communication. We’re working on the next post that will detail the major features we’re tweaking and introducing into the game and howWildStar really does provide gaming experiences for all play styles – casual and hardcore.
 
And one last thing...
 
The devs are listening. Your input, your feedback, your vision have already and will continue to help shape the future of WildStar. We want you to feel good about sharing your WildStar experiences with your friends and inviting them to play with you. We can and will do to this together, united...
 
Except for you tree hugging exiles. You I can do without ;)

 

Comments

  • Azaron_NightbladeAzaron_Nightblade Member EpicPosts: 4,829
    Doesn't sound their community is all that forgiving if you read the latest article that went live on this site less than an hour ago or so. All of their biggest raiding guilds have said adios and rode off into the sunset.

    My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)

    https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/

  • obocoboc Member UncommonPosts: 189

    What a mess.

    We'll either see 2 things by Nov.

    F2P

    Shut down. 

    Sucks things didn't work out for Carbine. 

  • BigdaddyxBigdaddyx Member UncommonPosts: 2,039
    Originally posted by oboc

    What a mess.

    We'll either see 2 things by Nov.

    F2P

    Shut down. 

    Sucks things didn't work out for Carbine. 

    Seeing NCSFOT past record i won't be surprised if they axe this game. They are not the one to keep less profitable games lingering on.

  • Azaron_NightbladeAzaron_Nightblade Member EpicPosts: 4,829
    Originally posted by Bigdaddyx
    Originally posted by oboc

    What a mess.

    We'll either see 2 things by Nov.

    F2P

    Shut down. 

    Sucks things didn't work out for Carbine. 

    Seeing NCSFOT past record i won't be surprised if they axe this game. They are not the one to keep less profitable games lingering on.

    I suspect they'll try F2P first with this one.

    Though if that doesn't work out well...

    My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)

    https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/

  • obocoboc Member UncommonPosts: 189

    I also agree they should give F2P a shot. I don't think it hurt anymore then it's current state. 

    I'm also curious about the actually current player base count. My guess would be around 20,000-40,000. Just a guess. 

  • Shatter30Shatter30 Member UncommonPosts: 487
    Training dungeon = LOL...wtf
  • doodphacedoodphace Member UncommonPosts: 1,858
    Originally posted by Shatter30
    Training dungeon = LOL...wtf

    It depends how they implement it.

    WoW used to gate heroic dungeons behind item levels, but a system like that pretty much hurts really good players who wanna start doing the harder content. To combat that in the upcoming xpac, they are gating the entrance of the heroics behind their performance in proving grounds. Proving grounds are essentially solo gauntlets for each role (tank, DPS, healer) that get progressivly harder as time goes on. If you progress to a certain level, u'll unlock the instances.

    Skill > Gear any day. If W* implements something similar, that is a HUGE step in the right direction. Attunements dont get you ready or judge your skill, they just gate the content behind tedium.

  • cyandkcyandk Member UncommonPosts: 142

    Ummm.

    So, the state of the game is:

    • Less content, less often.
    • Longer delays on content.
    • Longer delays on any incentive to do anything.
    • Uncertainty over what will be done in the now 3 month pushed back date?

    So what are we getting for our premium sub money exactly? Like, what are you delivering? Where the *cupcake*is the value proposition.

    And your other drops sucked. They were clearly held back content that no one cares about. And your future drops also look like shit.

    No one gives a *cupcake* about new zones. No one cares about more dailies or more loot pinatas like Scorchwing -- especially because the loot itself is godawful and still can't compare to crafted things, because your item team sucks. Stop trying to be good at zones. You aren't. Shift resources. Term/repurpose the zone team to work on more dungeons/content that people who stick with the game are interested in.

    People who stick with the game are interested in dungeons and raiding. They aren't just "logging on for 15-30 minutes" -- that describes people who are quitting the game or don't care about it.

    But the state of the game is awful. You delivered no good news, lots of bad news, and I'm pretty upset.

    Who knows when we will receive real content instead of the shoveled shit that is Blighthaven. The defile looks like more of the same "okay to good" concepts with horrible execution.

    Your raids are good. Just work on more of those. Work on ignoring the *cupcake* out of the non dungeon/adventure/raid community, because you have no *cupcake*ing shot in hell at keeping them.

    Yes, I love my cupcakes.

    Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe.

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