WIldstar going free to play.

I've been bored for a good while; single player games just aren't doing it for me. So, today I was looking into MMO avenues I had previously overlooked/shunned and Wildstar came up.

Which is a pretty strange coincidence given today's announcement:

Wildstar will be going Free to Play in the Fall.

How much of the game is accessible to Free players?

We place no restrictions on any of the game’s content. Every zone, every dungeon, every raid, every battleground… they’re all available. All players will be able to create characters of every race, class, and path while choosing any tradeskills they like. Characters can achieve level 50 and path level 30, just as they can under the current system.

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It's an inferior WoW in most ways. Is that really what you're looking for?

I also heard its an inferior WoW, but it has got cute Bunny-girls to play with

Beside being two themeparks there isn't that much things in commons between Wildstar and WoW.

You need to like comic book humor because it is everywhere though and also get used to the game action combat which is so-so.

The combat template system, raiding (quality, not quantity) and player housing are all arguably superior to WoW. Everything else...eh, not so much. Though keep in mind I haven't played in months, they may have made some radical changes to improve the leveling grind or what have you.

Well, I've played a little, but I'm pretty disappointed thus far. It's all so easy and very linear; typical themepark style of contemporary MMOs.

Bleh. I'm just so bored by current MMOs.

There was a lot I liked about WildStar. What kept me from buying in (played in beta and got a refund on my purchase before release) was the whole CREDD thing. I simply won't pay to play games that include the free to play sleaze of facilitating buying game gold for cash (all of the systems like CREDD are just wrappers for selling gold to players). And games that include cheating just have no lasting appeal. RIFT is a great WoW clone and overall great game - it was underrated and great to play when it was sub-based, but once it went F2P I quickly lost interest (I also thought their first xpac was poorly orchestrated).

I also didn't like the AMP system - I don't ever like any character progression system that involves potentially buying upgrades thru player economy, especially when player economy also involves players buying gold for cash thru the host company. Earning gear thru content is enough - but don't tie in skills and skill upgrades/perks to content, especailly not to drops and the whims of other players, and especially don't do it in such a way that some factions/races/classes are screwed and others are not.

And as with most "modern" MMORPGs, way too much solo idiot mode. To me what made MMORPGs good to start with was their group-oriented stuff. Let the genre be niche - I'm fine with that. I don't need millions of players soloing around me to enjoy a game since I have nothing to do with those players - it adds nothing, and solo idiot mode content is nothing special in MMORPGs - you can do better in so many single player cRPGs.

Anyways - what I thought WildStar did well was challenging group content - even the first instance had great boss fights (way too much pointless trash though). Some of the other group content was good too - the pick your own objective style instanced stuff with rewards based on who well you did things.

It's a game that had the potential to be a decent game for grouping but as with most modern MMORPGs, tries too hard to be everything for everybody, and in doing so ends up being a game with a massive budget, massive corporate expectations for profits that aren't going to happen, and then it's F2P, and F2P might be a great business model for making money but it's a crap style of gaming for anybody serious about playing.

I have a bunch of friends who never tried WildStar who I would like to see experience the game - or would've, but since they're probably going to dumb down the whole thing (even more )it'll be even less worth checking out.

I agree with pretty much everything, the game tried to be WoW vanilla, current WoW and a bit of verything else. But the game had a very unique artistic direction and the OST was quite nice from what I remember.

OST is ok, reminds me of Firefly - which is a strange dichotomy with the agonizing quest hubs and WoW art style.

Looking at Darkfall Online now. Not much to pick from when what you're looking for is a decent sandbox MMO and not another WoW clone.

Scratch that - anyone ever try Wurm Online? Open World sandbox MMO spearheaded by Rolf Jansson and Notch (before Minecraft).

Drithius said:

Scratch that - anyone ever try Wurm Online? Open World sandbox MMO spearheaded by Rolf Jansson and Notch (before Minecraft).

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I read a lot about it, but I never bothered playing it. There is just something "off" about that game but I can't exactly put my finger on it. There is a limited free access for it though.

Wildstar is part of an Humble Bundle. In other word, you get the "paid accounts" perk for as low as $1 once it goes F2P and get 30 days of game time now.

DArtagnan said:

It's an inferior WoW in most ways. Is that really what you're looking for?

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It's among the better clones, IMO. It had a ton of features and some good group content at release. I didn't play at release due to CREDD (buy gold for cash in game) which I won't tolerate - but the game itself was enjoyable and way better than the average clone.

I had fun with WoW for 6.5 years but would never go back to it since I don't like how it's gone from being a pretty solid game of challenges and a decent hybrid of old school and new to being a parody of its original self and too much like its clones in generic simplicity in every aspect of the game.

I'm dinking with WildStar now that it's free and may be able to finally get some friends to try it but right now they're having some tech issues (which to me is pretty sad considering the game has been out a while) like delays/failures when creating new characters and it's pretty laggy in game for certain things like dialogs or quest turn ins. Got disconnected and can't get back in so I guess I'll just try later...days later.

Ultimately F2P is rubbish and I doubt I'll stick with it all that long but I understand why these games fail to retain subs - single player games with a smidge of group content aren't worth a sub - and that's the failing of all modern MMORPGs that try to be WoW (and never will since WoW's blend of bliz magic and right place, right time, and player entrenchment, will never be duplicated) You'll never get the strong community or strong guilds for solid progression in F2P - nobody takes those games seriously enough or cares enough.

MMORPGs need to go back to being niche - group based games with challenge and danger, and stop trying to be everything to everyone, and especially need to stop catering to casuals and soloists - when there's already a bazillion games for casuals or soloists and no other genre provides the same type of group play. All the instanced fake PvP can go too (done better in other games/genres), the housing nonsense (play sims if you wanna play barbie doll house), and all the other side junk. If MMORPG devs focused on what the genre does best and didn't spend millions and years making content to try to please everyone (especially soloists who blow thru their content in days and bail) and aimed a bit more realistically for sub numbers, they'd have a better chance at success.

Voqar said:

It's among the better clones, IMO. It had a ton of features and some good group content at release. I didn't play at release due to CREDD (buy gold for cash in game) which I won't tolerate - but the game itself was enjoyable and way better than the average clone.

I had fun with WoW for 6.5 years but would never go back to it since I don't like how it's gone from being a pretty solid game of challenges and a decent hybrid of old school and new to being a parody of its original self and too much like its clones in generic simplicity in every aspect of the game.

I'm dinking with WildStar now that it's free and may be able to finally get some friends to try it but right now they're having some tech issues (which to me is pretty sad considering the game has been out a while) like delays/failures when creating new characters and it's pretty laggy in game for certain things like dialogs or quest turn ins. Got disconnected and can't get back in so I guess I'll just try later…days later.

Ultimately F2P is rubbish and I doubt I'll stick with it all that long but I understand why these games fail to retain subs - single player games with a smidge of group content aren't worth a sub - and that's the failing of all modern MMORPGs that try to be WoW (and never will since WoW's blend of bliz magic and right place, right time, and player entrenchment, will never be duplicated) You'll never get the strong community or strong guilds for solid progression in F2P - nobody takes those games seriously enough or cares enough.

MMORPGs need to go back to being niche - group based games with challenge and danger, and stop trying to be everything to everyone, and especially need to stop catering to casuals and soloists - when there's already a bazillion games for casuals or soloists and no other genre provides the same type of group play. All the instanced fake PvP can go too (done better in other games/genres), the housing nonsense (play sims if you wanna play barbie doll house), and all the other side junk. If MMORPG devs focused on what the genre does best and didn't spend millions and years making content to try to please everyone (especially soloists who blow thru their content in days and bail) and aimed a bit more realistically for sub numbers, they'd have a better chance at success.

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Well, I've more or less accepted that I'm no longer into MMOs. There's just not enough innovation and vision there.

ESO is currently my overall favorite - but it's still very short of what I want a proper MMO to be.

LotR is also a favorite of mine, but I've never liked the combat - and it hasn't aged too well.

Star Citizen is just about the only game that might turn me around on the genre, and that's still far off - if it ever gets there

As for Wildstar, I guess it's ok if you're looking for another cartoon themepark full of raids and stuff, but that's not really what I want.

I enjoy raids and hard group instances since what I enjoy most about MMORPGs going back to EQ is grouping. I also prefer group-based leveling that takes longer ala original EQ or DAoC as well. The solo idiot mode hub questing is so devoid of challenge and is so routine now that it's pretty boring. The fact that so many just want to get it over to "get to the real game" shows how old this idea has got.

In the old days you could've said that camp and grind boring, and it was after a few games worth of it, and it sucked for leveling alts - seeing group-based games come up with alternatives to that would've been good innovation. But now with the hub based questing and quest overload in general, it's like you grind hundreds of mindless quests to speed level and it's even more boring. And devs spend years/millions making this content so that people can obliterate it in hours to get to cap stupidly fast.

I do wish MMORPGs companies innovated more, but probably not in the way some think. I wish instead of screwing around with fake PvP battlegrounds, side fluff like housing, and especially the solo content, that they had been focused on group-based content ideas all this time.

WildStar added some decent group stuff to the mix (shiphands/expeditions are light and soloable but are ok grouped). The adventures (phased versons of leveling zones with objectives the group votes on so the content plays slightly differently each time you do it) are cool and not quite as hard as their real instances.

WildStars instances are tough - not so much for me as a vet who has done a lot of raiding but they're far more intricate starting with the first one than you typically find in today's idiot mode MMORPG content.

Heck, at lvl 10 in WildStar you can do the "protogames" instance which is a full on group thing that has a bunch of raidlike mechanics - it's a training instance that teaches people how to interrupt, move, deal with adds, and dps burn, and IMO it should be mandatory for getting past level 10 since you either learn or you die repeatedly (or die while others learn more likely).

I don't think there's a ton of room for massive innovation in MMORPGs since just like RPGs, or any other genre, there's only so much you can do in them without straying too far. But I do wish the early formula from the golden age of MMORPGs, the EQ/DAoC/FFXI type games, was expanded on, instead of it being mutilated into a casual/widespread appeal, chase big numbers thing where the games are full of soloists, pvpers, and SIMS players, and people who actually tend to want nothing to do with core MMORPG gameplay (and which has lead to fail after fail of sub based games not being able to retain those players, since none of them will pay a sub for the part of the game they like).

I don't think there's a ton of room for massive innovation in MMORPGs since just like RPGs, or any other genre, there's only so much you can do in them without straying too far. But I do wish the early formula from the golden age of MMORPGs, the EQ/DAoC/FFXI type games, was expanded on, instead of it being mutilated into a casual/widespread appeal, chase big numbers thing where the games are full of soloists, pvpers, and SIMS players, and people who actually tend to want nothing to do with core MMORPG gameplay (and which has lead to fail after fail of sub based games not being able to retain those players, since none of them will pay a sub for the part of the game they like).

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I can't agree.

Let's pretend the perfect MMO equals 100% potential.

If WoW/EQ represents 10% potential - then I can easily come up with a design that includes 50% potential if you give me a few months.

It would be ridiculously hard to realise - but not impossible.

Thankfully, I have faith in Star Citizen - and it looks like it will have something like 25-30% potential.

As for group versus solo content, there's no need to make solo unfeasible or needlessly hindered when you include challenging group content. That was the mistake of the ancient MMO designs.

The smart thing to do is provide challenging solo AND group content - with appropriate rewards and distinct gameplay as well as content. That means a lot more work, but there it is.

If anybody IS playing WildStar and reads this in the immediate future, you can get a free mount while keys last here:

http://www.mmorpg.com/giveaways.cfm/offer/639/Wildstar-Bandit-Carver-Mount-Giveaway.html

...but they're going fast (and apparently they're on their 2nd batch so there may be more at some point).


You are a person of deep faith if you have faith in Star Citizen. I don't even consider that to be an MMORPG even if they are claiming it will be very type of game on the market simultaneously. They're design is even more ambitious than a typical modern MMORPG, with less funding, and with possibly a lot of problems if the latest dirt is to believed (I personally don't care either way - if it comes out and is good I'll play it).

I don't think the old MMORPGs made a mistake with group content - it's how the genre existed. It was niche. It worked. It didn't have a bazillion players. And that was ok. There are some styles of games, like grand stragegy, that aren't for everybody. That doesn't mean you dumb them down and tweak them and ruin them to get bigger numbers.

There can be no challenging solo content in a game designed for the least common denominator. In an ideal class based/role based/group based MMORPG, there can be no challenging solo content because your healers and support have no chance - classes aren't equal for solo in a really good group-based game where the idea is to group and support each other. Instead you get the watered down for dummies MMORPGs we have now with tons of solo - and where every class can do everything and the roles are barely there.

The other thing is that the whole idea of having group based content is to NOT solo. Players and humans tend to take the easy way out and if solo is viable, they'll do that, which kind of kills the point. Extremely limited solo that's horrifically inefficient as something to do when you only have a few minutes to logon or need something to do while LFG - maybe. But I think for the health of such a game, and due to the fact that in a truly class-based/group/role-based game not all classes can solo equally, you need to prod people towards grouping.

People who want to group would have no problem with this. People who claim they don't have time shouldn't play MMORPGs (at least not end game or serious content), and those that want to solo over grouping or with optional grouping have no lack of crappy options.

So, I don't agree. I'm hoping, and expecting, that beyond Pantheon (I don't see any MMORPG working work a crap in Unity), some other dev with more oomph will make a stab at the older MMORPGs style, and it'll work, because there are so many more people online these days that it's far more possible now. Well, one can dream.