Wildstar

In 2014, Carbine Studios and NCSOFT launched Wildstar, a subscription based theme park MMORPG that offered a vibrant world filled with all the core offerings you’d expect, while promising a lot more to the hardcore end-game crowd. It’s production values were high befitting a AAA MMO which it was, It had an interesting combat system with its telegraph manual aiming, a compelling sci-fi fantasy setting inhabited by characters with attitude and let’s not forget it’s player housing system, which was probably one of the best around at the time.  The game while well received, never quite reached the level of popularity to justify its subscription fee, leading it to a free to play transition the following year in 2015. By then, senior figures at Carbine had already moved on, as did many of the players who all went back to where they came from. By 2018, Carbine was running Wildstar with a skeleton crew and basically no budget, and NCSOFT put it out of its misery in November 2018. This one hurt the most for, having followed the game from announcement all the way to the end, and I was there at the end when the lights went out. So what ended up killing it? Was it the lack of endgame diversity for all types of players and not just the hardcore raiders? Or that Carbine hung on to the subscription model for longer than they should have? Was it the slow updates between content drops? Honestly, it’s a combination of everything and then some, which is a shame because Wildstar will go down as one of the more recent MMORPGs that had one or more elements which players actually liked, to be taken away from them far too soon.

City of Heroes

This is a well-loved MMORPG and it is City of Heroes, taken away from its players far too soon. There was plenty to like about this super-hero MMORPG, from the gameplay, the customization, the community, and really, City of Heroes set the bar for subsequent superhero MMOs like Champions Online, DC Universe Online and the upcoming Ship of Heroes to match, but none actually have. Unfortunately in 2012 NCSOFT pulled the plug for reasons that are still being debated about in recent times, ignoring the massive pleas from its player base to reconsider, which only intensified the angst and distaste that many former players have towards NCSOFT today.  Developers Paragon even tried to buy the rights of the game from NCSOFT but to no avail. While devastating at the time and the few years that followed, thankfully the game is back thanks to the Homecoming private servers which I’m sure many of you know about, and if you didn’t, well, time to dust off that cape and jump back in.

Star Wars Galaxies

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, even before Star Wars: The Old Republic came into existence, there was one Star Wars MMORPG to rule them all, and it was Star Wars Galaxies. Launched in 2003 by Sony Online Entertainment known today as Daybreak Games, and published by LucasArts, by all accounts, this was the go to MMO to get your star wars RPG fix – it offered anything and everything under the sun thanks to its sandbox approach, with its player driven economy, legendary player events, interesting professions and the progression, which for example, doesn’t let you play as a Jedi right off the bat, you had to earn it. SWG’s trajectory towards the end of its live service wasn’t a smooth one, and the game went through some shaky times. The last expansion introduced the New Game Enhancements or NGE, which upset many subscribers at the time, and eventually the game shut down at the end of 2011, but not without a final in-game hoorah organized by players.

Warhammer Online

Warhammer Online Age of Reckoning  probably had the best PvP and RvR experience out of every game on the list. It had challenging PvP content, fun public quests and siege battle memories that will last forever. Games Workshop and Mythic Entertainment launched Warhammer Online or WAR for short in 2008,  and it was popular for a time, with peak sales being at over a million copies sold with 800,000 active subscriptions shortly after release. But towards the end of 2009, the subscription numbers started dropping, and the company reported a loss of over $1 billion dollars, and that reverberated around the MMO industry, with many questioning if the subscription model was still viable for the future. For WAR, they had to cut down operational costs, shut down servers to consolidate the population, but it was to no avail because their license agreement with Games Workshop who owns the Warhammer IP had come to an end in 2013, and that was it. It’s a real pity too because Mythic was working on a free to play transition for Warhammer Online. Would things be different if WAR had more time to complete its F2P move? Who knows. The good news is, private servers do exist today and if you’ve not played Warhammer Online and like RvR gameplay, you should definitely check it out, over at Warhammer Online Return of Reckoning.

EverQuest Next & Landmark

For EverQuest Next and EverQuest Landmark, where did all go wrong? For a brief summary, Everquest Next was announced in 2013 by Daybreak Games formerly Sony Online Entertainment, as the next gen EQ MMO that offered a parallel world of Norrath for fans of the franchise. Development went on for a couple of years, and during the midst of that, Daybreak announced another new game, Everquest Next Landmark, which will go on to be known as Landmark, and the purpose of Landmark was to give players a sandbox content creation tool for EverQuest Next, and said content will be imported over to EverQuest Next when it launched. If that wasn’t confusing enough, development focus was shifted between the two, and eventually, EverQuest Next was cancelled on 11 March 2016, having never launched. Landmark on the other hand, did launch on June 10 2016, but was only live for seven months before shutting down in February 2017. I’m summarizing events here but there was plenty of stuff happening behind the scenes that still leaves players confused and upset about the whole situation, considering time, effort and money was all spent to see these games through. Daybreak’s president at the time said of EverQuest Next’s closure that it was no longer fun putting the pieces together and that it didn’t meet expectations. Needless to say, I don’t think we’ll see another studio do something as insane as developing two MMOs in tandem, like we did here, ever again.

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Wildstar

In 2014, Carbine Studios and NCSOFT launched Wildstar, a subscription based theme park MMORPG that offered a vibrant world filled with all the core offerings you’d expect, while promising a lot more to the hardcore end-game crowd. It’s production values were high befitting a AAA MMO which it was, It had an interesting combat system with its telegraph manual aiming, a compelling sci-fi fantasy setting inhabited by characters with attitude and let’s not forget it’s player housing system, which was probably one of the best around at the time.  The game while well received, never quite reached the level of popularity to justify its subscription fee, leading it to a free to play transition the following year in 2015. By then, senior figures at Carbine had already moved on, as did many of the players who all went back to where they came from. By 2018, Carbine was running Wildstar with a skeleton crew and basically no budget, and NCSOFT put it out of its misery in November 2018. This one hurt the most for, having followed the game from announcement all the way to the end, and I was there at the end when the lights went out. So what ended up killing it? Was it the lack of endgame diversity for all types of players and not just the hardcore raiders? Or that Carbine hung on to the subscription model for longer than they should have? Was it the slow updates between content drops? Honestly, it’s a combination of everything and then some, which is a shame because Wildstar will go down as one of the more recent MMORPGs that had one or more elements which players actually liked, to be taken away from them far too soon.

City of Heroes

This is a well-loved MMORPG and it is City of Heroes, taken away from its players far too soon. There was plenty to like about this super-hero MMORPG, from the gameplay, the customization, the community, and really, City of Heroes set the bar for subsequent superhero MMOs like Champions Online, DC Universe Online and the upcoming Ship of Heroes to match, but none actually have. Unfortunately in 2012 NCSOFT pulled the plug for reasons that are still being debated about in recent times, ignoring the massive pleas from its player base to reconsider, which only intensified the angst and distaste that many former players have towards NCSOFT today.  Developers Paragon even tried to buy the rights of the game from NCSOFT but to no avail. While devastating at the time and the few years that followed, thankfully the game is back thanks to the Homecoming private servers which I’m sure many of you know about, and if you didn’t, well, time to dust off that cape and jump back in.

Star Wars Galaxies

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, even before Star Wars: The Old Republic came into existence, there was one Star Wars MMORPG to rule them all, and it was Star Wars Galaxies. Launched in 2003 by Sony Online Entertainment known today as Daybreak Games, and published by LucasArts, by all accounts, this was the go to MMO to get your star wars RPG fix – it offered anything and everything under the sun thanks to its sandbox approach, with its player driven economy, legendary player events, interesting professions and the progression, which for example, doesn’t let you play as a Jedi right off the bat, you had to earn it. SWG’s trajectory towards the end of its live service wasn’t a smooth one, and the game went through some shaky times. The last expansion introduced the New Game Enhancements or NGE, which upset many subscribers at the time, and eventually the game shut down at the end of 2011, but not without a final in-game hoorah organized by players.

Warhammer Online

Warhammer Online Age of Reckoning  probably had the best PvP and RvR experience out of every game on the list. It had challenging PvP content, fun public quests and siege battle memories that will last forever. Games Workshop and Mythic Entertainment launched Warhammer Online or WAR for short in 2008,  and it was popular for a time, with peak sales being at over a million copies sold with 800,000 active subscriptions shortly after release. But towards the end of 2009, the subscription numbers started dropping, and the company reported a loss of over $1 billion dollars, and that reverberated around the MMO industry, with many questioning if the subscription model was still viable for the future. For WAR, they had to cut down operational costs, shut down servers to consolidate the population, but it was to no avail because their license agreement with Games Workshop who owns the Warhammer IP had come to an end in 2013, and that was it. It’s a real pity too because Mythic was working on a free to play transition for Warhammer Online. Would things be different if WAR had more time to complete its F2P move? Who knows. The good news is, private servers do exist today and if you’ve not played Warhammer Online and like RvR gameplay, you should definitely check it out, over at Warhammer Online Return of Reckoning.

EverQuest Next & Landmark

For EverQuest Next and EverQuest Landmark, where did all go wrong? For a brief summary, Everquest Next was announced in 2013 by Daybreak Games formerly Sony Online Entertainment, as the next gen EQ MMO that offered a parallel world of Norrath for fans of the franchise. Development went on for a couple of years, and during the midst of that, Daybreak announced another new game, Everquest Next Landmark, which will go on to be known as Landmark, and the purpose of Landmark was to give players a sandbox content creation tool for EverQuest Next, and said content will be imported over to EverQuest Next when it launched. If that wasn’t confusing enough, development focus was shifted between the two, and eventually, EverQuest Next was cancelled on 11 March 2016, having never launched. Landmark on the other hand, did launch on June 10 2016, but was only live for seven months before shutting down in February 2017. I’m summarizing events here but there was plenty of stuff happening behind the scenes that still leaves players confused and upset about the whole situation, considering time, effort and money was all spent to see these games through. Daybreak’s president at the time said of EverQuest Next’s closure that it was no longer fun putting the pieces together and that it didn’t meet expectations. Needless to say, I don’t think we’ll see another studio do something as insane as developing two MMOs in tandem, like we did here, ever again.

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5. Wildstar

Wildstar is gone forever. This free to play (wasn’t when launched) MMORPG gave us the bright, colorful and unique world of Nexus that showed bags of promise. Two factions, the Exiles and the Dominion vying for survival and ownership of this foreign world was just the tip of the iceberg. The game’s combat was fresh, its dungeons and raids at end-game hard for those that dare to do it. Overall, Wildstar offered many high points, like its amazing housing system and movement mechanics amid a wave of carbon copy MMORPGs. Unfortunately, lack of content and players over four years since release mean NCSOFT, its publishers, ran out of patience. Wildstar was officially shut down in November 2018.

4. Cloud Pirates

Only a few months since its release, the plug was pulled on Cloud Pirates. The aerial PvP arena MMO did see some life during its run. The game utilized clever progression systems while keeping the focus on the fun team-based combat and air ship classes. Developers  My.com still have not come out with any explanation or reasoning for sunsetting the game. For us inquisitive folks, its easy to see why. The PvP ship battle game just isn’t popular enough to gain the traction and playerbase it needs. According to game data tracking site SteamSpy, the average peak concurrent players on Steam isn’t great. It averages 200 players online at any one time, which is not at all healthy for an MMO of any kind.

3. Bless Online

Neowiz announced in June 2019 that Bless Online will shut down in September. This brings to a close, one of the most notorious Korean MMORPG in recent history. What made Bless infamous you ask? Well, it failed in two of its native region launches for starters, then decided it was going to launch globally on Steam, it promised plenty of improvements both to quality of life and gameplay, and none of them were fulfilled at launch, and even the performance of the game was worst than ever before. They charged a buy to play fee at early access then made it go free to play, all the while, funding a new Bless game for the Xbox One called Bless: Unleashed, out later in 2019. The warning signs were there when players called them out, but the hype train was too strong, and the backlash came like a tsunami. Don’t think this is the last we’ve seen of Bless though, the IP is like a roach.

2. Paragon

We see a theme here. If you’re going to make a brand new MOBA game, it needs to be bloody brilliant or no one’s going to be playing it. In Paragon’s case, this isn’t why the game shut down for good this April. Paragon was a decent MOBA that had all the right ingredients, but lacked the manpower to maintain. Epic Games – you know them as the creators of Fortnite – was simply swamped with the game that is making them rich. That’s Fortnite if you haven’t already guessed. Therefore, they announced that Paragon was difficult to maintain, and would rather focus their energies on a game that actually brings in the money. Makes sense.

1. Marvel Heroes

At top spot is Marvel Heroes, yet another superhero MMORPG game that lost to the bad guys. The bad guys here are the developers themselves. Marvel Heroes started off very well. Its blend of ARPG gameplay meets Iron Man and co worked pretty well on the PC. It’s the game that Marvel fans flocked to, to play as all the newly released Heros that came out with each MCU release. Where it all went wrong however, was with a greedy, hastily designed console port. The Omega launch alienated a majority of the core player-base. In addition to that, bad mismanagement at the top of Gazillion Entertainment didn’t help the developers’ cause. This resulted in Disney pulling the license. Marvel Heroes officially went dark in November 2017. We’re still wondering if we’ll truly see a proper Marvel MMO.

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If there’s one thing us MMO players enjoy, it’s that of a good MMO crossover between franchises. To-date, many have tried them on a minor scale, such as promo purchase rewards for skins and other trivial goodies. But in 2019 and beyond, some studios have set the bar incredibly high, with tangible crossovers that players can experience either through PvE or more. So here are our favorite and best MMO crossovers we’ve seen so far.

Final Fantasy XIV and Final Fantasy XIV

This is one of those mash ups that franchise fans have been drooling over. This month, the FFXIV x FFXV crossover event is going on, and it’s great to see Prince Noctis in Eorzea. Players were able to partake in a few adventures alongside Noctis. He’s arrived mysteriously in the Regalia, and needs to find a way home. But not before some shenanigans, as we slowly figure out plot details. The entire chain features a couple of duty fights which had awesome mechanics. In the end, this was a touching tale and if you have the MGP, you could even grab the Regalia in the Gold Saucer. For 200,000 MPG you can have FFXIV’s very first 4-seater mount thanks to FFXV.

Final Fantasy XIV and Monster Hunter: World

We had to start off with this one. Final Fantasy XIV and Monster Hunter: World – two Japenese MMOs that couldn’t be any different from each other. On the one hand, the former is a globally beloved JRPG franchise. The MMORPG is thriving and continues to offer hours of fun for players. The latter while new to the scene, is steadily becoming the most popular – probably already is – monster hunting game in the genre’s history. So what does Capcom and Square Enix decide to do? Well a crossover of course. FFXIV players can now hunt a popular MHW boss in-game for appropriately themed rewards. Frankly, we’d be disappointed if we don’t see more of this happening in the future.

World of Warcraft and Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm

Anyone surprised to see this here? This is Blizzard doing what Blizzard does best – offering a platter of fan service to loyal players who’ve been part of Blizzard’s roster of games forever. Both Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm features popular characters from the World of Warcraft lore. And before you snicker, you’d be surprised to know just how much pulling power this has for both games. Sure, Hearthstone may be a filthy casual card game that even non Warcraft fans can get into. But don’t underestimate the power of a Warcraft themed crossover. Imagine the hype if Deathwing was announced as a Heroes of the Storm character. In fact, just this year, Blizzard added the popular Alterac Valley as a battleground to the pleasure of WoW heads everywhere.

Defiance 2050 and RIFT

RIFT was given a new berth as it launched a brand new fresh start progression server RIFT Prime in February last year year. Not content with one reboot, the studio also relaunched its 2013 FPSMMO Defiance – which had a TV show crossover in the past – with an updated graphics version called Defiance 2050. Both launches were pretty successful and to celebrate at the time, and the studio had a crossover event. For a few weeks, monsters from Defiance would appear randomly from world events in the MMORPG RIFT. Players could hunt these down for rewards and boast that “they were there” when the unlikeliest of crossovers took place in the MMO world.

Wildstar, Blade and Soul, Guild Wars 2 and Master X Master

Perhaps the one that flew under the radar was the epic collaboration of characters within NCsoft’s MMO universe. 2017’s Master X Master – a hybrid MOBA game – turned heads when its hero roster featured popular characters from all of NCsoft’s games. This included Rytlock from Guild Wars 1/2, Mondo Zax from Wildstar and many more. Unfortunately for MXM, the game didn’t last the year, and was eventually shut down in late December 2017. But for as long as it was live, by all accounts, players had a fun time using their favorite MMO characters to duke it out in small arena maps with fun abilities.

Monster Hunter: World and The Witcher

You know MHW just got a whole lot better when Geralt of Rivia himself appears in-game. The crossover content revolved around a new, original quest line available to all Monster Hunter: World players who reached Hunter Rank 16 or above. Starring legendary monster slayer Geralt of Rivia, once again voiced by Doug Cockle in the English version of the game, ‘Contract: Trouble in the Ancient Forest’ tasks the witcher with tracking down and dealing with a powerful force known as the Leshen. Defeating this mysterious creature will require the skills befitting a seasoned professional, and gamers will have at their disposal the White Wolf’s arsenal and abilities, including his silver sword and combat magic. Players will also engage in dialogues with other characters, influencing how the story unfolds through choices they make — a hallmark of The Witcher series.

The post The Best 2019 MMO Crossovers We’ve Seen So Far appeared first on Mmos World.

1. Alienating A Wider Audience By Being ‘Hardcore’

One of the values that Wildstar as an MMORPG sold to players prior to launch was that it wanted to make MMOs hardcore again. That meant harder raids and end-game content. While this for the most part is true about the higher, harder tiers of the end-game content post launch, it also pretty much killed it for everyone else. With where the MMO community is today, one could argue a more casual and accessible approach with the optional hardcore end-game would be more preferable. The playerbase have ‘aged’ since vanilla WoW. The once upon a time youths of hardcore MMOs have grown up to start families and work jobs, and that’s a possible result for the low demand for hardcore MMOs these days. As a result, this shunned many potential players away from the game or for sticking around longer than necessary.

That’s not to say Wildstar is all hardcore. In fact, it does have some of the most fluff stuff an MMO can have, with its excellent housing system and generic questing content. The cartoon art style is a great draw for the unknowing player, but the tedious requirements to get to end-game on top of the challenging end-game itself was perhaps, a step too far in hindsight.

2. Mismanagement Within Carbine Studios

What’s the trendy thing to do when an NCSOFT game shuts down? It’s to blame the publishers themselves. Not this time cupcakes. Many within the game’s community and the industry have suspected for a long time, that Carbine Studios wasn’t running the game efficiently. As a former developer pointed out, the studio had issues even before launch, as management had to reboot the IP, and missed deadline after deadline. Intriguingly, this former developer of the studio shed revealing insights about how Wildstar never turned a profit and NCSOFT never made a return of investment from the game after launch, yet still showing patience with the studio. They also mentioned the constant layoffs of employees to keep the bills manageable.

“Teams and personnel were constantly shuffled around at random without any real concern for if this was creating useable content. The economy team, which is, you know, the core of an MMO and literally the most important component to player retention and monetization, was a skeleton crew where staff were just flung at it when a producer didn’t like them but wouldn’t actually fire them. By the time someone went ‘Hey wait, isn’t the economy important?’ and reorganized the team, it was far too late to catch up on those systems… which included our end game content.” Source

3. Lack of Marketing and Promotion

Two key tenants of running a successful MMORPG involves making sure players have heard of you, and for those that are already with you, making sure they have things to do in-game. Wildstar failed to manage both. The game did have a big promotional push just before release and the studio’s clever usage of social media to highlight key aspects of the game was commendable. The Dev Speak videos are still my favorite things to watch, personally. But after the game was shipped, nothing else came out on the larger scale. We now know why – they never made enough revenue in return to push to marketing – but they could have found other ways to spread the word, like using players themselves for guerilla marketing campaigns. Today, MMORPGs include YouTubers, Twitch streamers and other influencers into a ‘Partner Program’ to create content about their game in return for rewards and privileges. Wildstar didn’t have that. And for a self-touted hardcore MMO, when hardcore raiders have never heard about your game, that’s a sign of terrible marketing.

4. Subscription Model Dragged On Way Longer Than It Should Have

Would have dropping the sub early on once the studio realized it was making literally no money stabilized the ship sooner? Perhaps. One wonders if they let the sub model drag on for another year was done to milk as much from the paying player-base as much as possible, when there should have been a Plan B in place.

What’s Plan B? Go buy to play/free to play, include scummy monetization options and as a last resort go Pay To Win? I loath typing the next few words, but unfortunately, it works. Neverwinter. Black Desert Online. Even RIFT for pete’s sake. What do all of them have in common? They and they’re studios and games, are alive and making money. Wildstar should have done something sooner, but they jumped straight to free to play without any contingency plan but it was too little too late. Changing payment models when done for the right reasons at the right time works. You only need to look at The Elder Scrolls Online, Guild Wars 2 and Secret World Legends to see how they’ve capitalized on that decision.

5. Lack of Substantial Content

What about content? Allegedly, Wildstar was supposed to ship with more than the vanilla zones, but because of mismanagement, no one knew how to do it or what the content scope post launch was supposed to be.

“The scope of the game was never realistic – we were supposed to ship with tons of extra zones, all of which got cut when they were well into production, because nobody actually knew what a pipeline was. But the higher ups would literally start screaming at the line designers for so much as laughing during work because obviously if we had time to laugh, we were wasting time that could have been used meeting these impossible deadlines.” Source

Players ended up waiting for ages for any new substantial content to drop. So there was no expansions adding beefy content, no ‘questpacks’, just events and holiday fluff for a very long time. And when you offer that as a subscription-only MMORPG, you’re destined to get buried alive.

The post Wildstar: 5 Key Issues That Led To Its Shutdown appeared first on Mmos World.

5. Wildstar

It’s hard to believe that Wildstar is no longer with is. This free to play (wasn’t when launched) MMORPG gave us the bright, colorful and unique world of Nexus that showed bags of promise. Two factions, the Exiles and the Dominion vying for survival and ownership of this foreign world was just the tip of the iceberg. The game’s combat was fresh, its dungeons and raids at end-game hard for those that dare to do it. Overall, Wildstar offered many high points, like its amazing housing system and movement mechanics amid a wave of carbon copy MMORPGs. Unfortunately, lack of content and players over four years since release mean NCSOFT, its publishers, ran out of patience. Wildstar was officially shut down in November 2018.

4. Cloud Pirates

Only a few months since its release, the plug was pulled on Cloud Pirates. The aerial PvP arena MMO did see some life during its run. The game utilized clever progression systems while keeping the focus on the fun team-based combat and air ship classes. Developers  My.com still have not come out with any explanation or reasoning for sunsetting the game. For us inquisitive folks, its easy to see why. The PvP ship battle game just isn’t popular enough to gain the traction and playerbase it needs. According to game data tracking site SteamSpy, the average peak concurrent players on Steam isn’t great. It averages 200 players online at any one time, which is not at all healthy for an MMO of any kind.

3. MXM (Master X Master)

NCSOFT is no stranger to shutting down games, and MXM is one of its latest titles to be axed. Released out of open beta and into the wilderness almost a year ago, MXM was considered by many, us included, to be a fresh take on the MOBA genre. The game’s roster of heroes includes fan-favorite characters from NCSOFT’s other games. This includes the likes of Guild Wars 2, Blade and Soul and Wildstar. However, for a game that was made to attract MOBA players, it didn’t hit whatever internal goal the company had set. As a result, MXM shut down on January 31st 2018. The good news is, the game did inspire a host of other similar games, like Battlerite.

2. Paragon

We see a theme here. If you’re going to make a brand new MOBA game, it needs to be bloody brilliant or no one’s going to be playing it. In Paragon’s case, this isn’t why the game shut down for good this April. Paragon was a decent MOBA that had all the right ingredients, but lacked the manpower to maintain. Epic Games – you know them as the creators of Fortnite – was simply swamped with the game that is making them rich. That’s Fortnite if you haven’t already guessed. Therefore, they announced that Paragon was difficult to maintain, and would rather focus their energies on a game that actually brings in the money. Makes sense.

1. Marvel Heroes

At top spot is Marvel Heroes, yet another superhero MMO game that lost to the bad guys. The bad guys here are the developers themselves. Marvel Heroes started off very well. Its blend of ARPG gameplay meets Iron Man and co worked pretty well on the PC. It’s the game that Marvel fans flocked to, to play as all the newly released Heros that came out with each MCU release. Where it all went wrong however, was with a greedy, hastily designed console port. The Omega launch alienated a majority of the core player-base. In addition to that, bad mismanagement at the top of Gazillion Entertainment didn’t help the developers’ cause. This resulted in Disney pulling the license. Marvel Heroes officially went dark in November 2017. We’re still wondering if we’ll truly see a proper Marvel MMO.

The post Top 5 MMO Games That Have Been Shut Down Recently appeared first on Mmos World.

1. Alienating A Wider Audience By Being ‘Hardcore’

One of the values that Wildstar as an MMORPG sold to players prior to launch was that it wanted to make MMOs hardcore again. That meant harder raids and end-game content. While this for the most part is true about the higher, harder tiers of the end-game content post launch, it also pretty much killed it for everyone else. With where the MMO community is today, one could argue a more casual and accessible approach with the optional hardcore end-game would be more preferable. The playerbase have ‘aged’ since vanilla WoW. The once upon a time youths of hardcore MMOs have grown up to start families and work jobs, and that’s a possible result for the low demand for hardcore MMOs these days. As a result, this shunned many potential players away from the game or for sticking around longer than necessary.

That’s not to say Wildstar is all hardcore. In fact, it does have some of the most fluff stuff an MMO can have, with its excellent housing system and generic questing content. The cartoon art style is a great draw for the unknowing player, but the tedious requirements to get to end-game on top of the challenging end-game itself was perhaps, a step too far in hindsight.

2. Mismanagement Within Carbine Studios

What’s the trendy thing to do when an NCSOFT game shuts down? It’s to blame the publishers themselves. Not this time cupcakes. Many within the game’s community and the industry have suspected for a long time, that Carbine Studios wasn’t running the game efficiently. As a former developer pointed out, the studio had issues even before launch, as management had to reboot the IP, and missed deadline after deadline. Intriguingly, this former developer of the studio shed revealing insights about how Wildstar never turned a profit and NCSOFT never made a return of investment from the game after launch, yet still showing patience with the studio. They also mentioned the constant layoffs of employees to keep the bills manageable.

“Teams and personnel were constantly shuffled around at random without any real concern for if this was creating useable content. The economy team, which is, you know, the core of an MMO and literally the most important component to player retention and monetization, was a skeleton crew where staff were just flung at it when a producer didn’t like them but wouldn’t actually fire them. By the time someone went ‘Hey wait, isn’t the economy important?’ and reorganized the team, it was far too late to catch up on those systems… which included our end game content.” Source

3. Lack of Marketing and Promotion

Two key tenants of running a successful MMORPG involves making sure players have heard of you, and for those that are already with you, making sure they have things to do in-game. Wildstar failed to manage both. The game did have a big promotional push just before release and the studio’s clever usage of social media to highlight key aspects of the game was commendable. The Dev Speak videos are still my favorite things to watch, personally. But after the game was shipped, nothing else came out on the larger scale. We now know why – they never made enough revenue in return to push to marketing – but they could have found other ways to spread the word, like using players themselves for guerilla marketing campaigns. Today, MMORPGs include YouTubers, Twitch streamers and other influencers into a ‘Partner Program’ to create content about their game in return for rewards and privileges. Wildstar didn’t have that. And for a self-touted hardcore MMO, when hardcore raiders have never heard about your game, that’s a sign of terrible marketing.

4. Subscription Model Dragged On Way Longer Than It Should Have

Would have dropping the sub early on once the studio realized it was making literally no money stabilized the ship sooner? Perhaps. One wonders if they let the sub model drag on for another year was done to milk as much from the paying player-base as much as possible, when there should have been a Plan B in place.

What’s Plan B? Go buy to play/free to play, include scummy monetization options and as a last resort go Pay To Win? I loath typing the next few words, but unfortunately, it works. Neverwinter. Black Desert Online. Even RIFT for pete’s sake. What do all of them have in common? They and they’re studios and games, are alive and making money. Wildstar should have done something sooner, but they jumped straight to free to play without any contingency plan but it was too little too late. Changing payment models when done for the right reasons at the right time works. You only need to look at The Elder Scrolls Online, Guild Wars 2 and Secret World Legends to see how they’ve capitalized on that decision.

5. Lack of Substantial Content

What about content? Allegedly, Wildstar was supposed to ship with more than the vanilla zones, but because of mismanagement, no one knew how to do it or what the content scope post launch was supposed to be.

“The scope of the game was never realistic – we were supposed to ship with tons of extra zones, all of which got cut when they were well into production, because nobody actually knew what a pipeline was. But the higher ups would literally start screaming at the line designers for so much as laughing during work because obviously if we had time to laugh, we were wasting time that could have been used meeting these impossible deadlines.” Source

Players ended up waiting for ages for any new substantial content to drop. So there was no expansions adding beefy content, no ‘questpacks’, just events and holiday fluff for a very long time. And when you offer that as a subscription-only MMORPG, you’re destined to get buried alive.

The post Wildstar Is Shutting Down Today: Here’s Why Wildstar Won’t Make It To 2019 appeared first on Mmos World.

In addition to that, Carbine will also turn on in-game events until the closure. Players can participate in all festivals and other galas for rewards. For a full list of returning events, see below:

September 26–November 28

• Double XP, Glory Days, Power Prestige and PvP, and Blessing of Essence will be on from now until shutdown.

October 12–19

• Residential Renovation, with the Battle Chase reward set available during this occurrence.

October 19–November 2

• Jack Shade is back to fright and delight in Shade’s Eve.

November 9–23

• Protostar’s Gala Winterfest Extravaganza is back for one, last, shopping frenzy.

November 24–27

• Take to the skies (or at least a foot off the ground) in the zPrix Invitational!

November 28

• Join us in-game for the final few hours as we have some fun. More details to come!

To keep abreast of all the final happenings on Wildstar and about these events, visit the landing page here.

The post Wildstar Will Officially Shut Down On The 28th of November 2018 appeared first on Mmos World.

1. Alienating A Wider Audience By Being ‘Hardcore’

One of the values that Wildstar as an MMORPG sold to players prior to launch was that it wanted to make MMOs hardcore again. That meant harder raids and end-game content. While this for the most part is true about the higher, harder tiers of the end-game content post launch, it also pretty much killed it for everyone else. With where the MMO community is today, one could argue a more casual and accessible approach with the optional hardcore end-game would be more preferable. The playerbase have ‘aged’ since vanilla WoW. The once upon a time youths of hardcore MMOs have grown up to start families and work jobs, and that’s a possible result for the low demand for hardcore MMOs these days. As a result, this shunned many potential players away from the game or for sticking around longer than necessary.

That’s not to say Wildstar is all hardcore. In fact, it does have some of the most fluff stuff an MMO can have, with its excellent housing system and generic questing content. The cartoon art style is a great draw for the unknowing player, but the tedious requirements to get to end-game on top of the challenging end-game itself was perhaps, a step too far in hindsight.

2. Mismanagement Within Carbine Studios

What’s the trendy thing to do when an NCSOFT game shuts down? It’s to blame the publishers themselves. Not this time cupcakes. Many within the game’s community and the industry have suspected for a long time, that Carbine Studios wasn’t running the game efficiently. As a former developer pointed out, the studio had issues even before launch, as management had to reboot the IP, and missed deadline after deadline. Intriguingly, this former developer of the studio shed revealing insights about how Wildstar never turned a profit and NCSOFT never made a return of investment from the game after launch, yet still showing patience with the studio. They also mentioned the constant layoffs of employees to keep the bills manageable.

“Teams and personnel were constantly shuffled around at random without any real concern for if this was creating useable content. The economy team, which is, you know, the core of an MMO and literally the most important component to player retention and monetization, was a skeleton crew where staff were just flung at it when a producer didn’t like them but wouldn’t actually fire them. By the time someone went ‘Hey wait, isn’t the economy important?’ and reorganized the team, it was far too late to catch up on those systems… which included our end game content.” Source

3. Lack of Marketing and Promotion

Two key tenants of running a successful MMORPG involves making sure players have heard of you, and for those that are already with you, making sure they have things to do in-game. Wildstar failed to manage both. The game did have a big promotional push just before release and the studio’s clever usage of social media to highlight key aspects of the game was commendable. The Dev Speak videos are still my favorite things to watch, personally. But after the game was shipped, nothing else came out on the larger scale. We now know why – they never made enough revenue in return to push to marketing – but they could have found other ways to spread the word, like using players themselves for guerilla marketing campaigns. Today, MMORPGs include YouTubers, Twitch streamers and other influencers into a ‘Partner Program’ to create content about their game in return for rewards and privileges. Wildstar didn’t have that. And for a self-touted hardcore MMO, when hardcore raiders have never heard about your game, that’s a sign of terrible marketing.

4. Subscription Model Dragged On Way Longer Than It Should Have

Would have dropping the sub early on once the studio realized it was making literally no money stabilized the ship sooner? Perhaps. One wonders if they let the sub model drag on for another year was done to milk as much from the paying player-base as much as possible, when there should have been a Plan B in place.

What’s Plan B? Go buy to play/free to play, include scummy monetization options and as a last resort go Pay To Win? I loath typing the next few words, but unfortunately, it works. Neverwinter. Black Desert Online. Even RIFT for pete’s sake. What do all of them have in common? They and they’re studios and games, are alive and making money. Wildstar should have done something sooner, but they jumped straight to free to play without any contingency plan but it was too little too late. Changing payment models when done for the right reasons at the right time works. You only need to look at The Elder Scrolls Online, Guild Wars 2 and Secret World Legends to see how they’ve capitalized on that decision.

5. Lack of Substantial Content

What about content? Allegedly, Wildstar was supposed to ship with more than the vanilla zones, but because of mismanagement, no one knew how to do it or what the content scope post launch was supposed to be.

“The scope of the game was never realistic – we were supposed to ship with tons of extra zones, all of which got cut when they were well into production, because nobody actually knew what a pipeline was. But the higher ups would literally start screaming at the line designers for so much as laughing during work because obviously if we had time to laugh, we were wasting time that could have been used meeting these impossible deadlines.” Source

Players ended up waiting for ages for any new substantial content to drop. So there was no expansions adding beefy content, no ‘questpacks’, just events and holiday fluff for a very long time. And when you offer that as a subscription-only MMORPG, you’re destined to get buried alive.

The post 5 Reasons Why Wildstar Failed appeared first on Mmos World.

If there’s one thing us MMO players enjoy, it’s that of a good MMO crossover between franchises. To-date, many have tried them on a minor scale, such as promo purchase rewards for skins and other trivial goodies. But in 2018 and beyond, some studios have set the bar incredibly high, with tangible crossovers that players can experience either through PvE or more. So here are our favorite and best MMO crossovers we’ve seen so far.

Final Fantasy XIV and Monster Hunter: World

We had to start off with this one. Final Fantasy XIV and Monster Hunter: World – two Japenese MMOs that couldn’t be any different from each other. On the one hand, the former is a globally beloved JRPG franchise. The MMORPG is thriving and continues to offer hours of fun for players. The latter while new to the scene, is steadily becoming the most popular – probably already is – monster hunting game in the genre’s history. So what does Capcom and Square Enix decide to do? Well a crossover of course. FFXIV players can now hunt a popular MHW boss in-game for appropriately themed rewards. Frankly, we’d be disappointed if we don’t see more of this happening in the future.

World of Warcraft and Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm

Anyone surprised to see this here? This is Blizzard doing what Blizzard does best – offering a platter of fan service to loyal players who’ve been part of Blizzard’s roster of games forever. Both Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm features popular characters from the World of Warcraft lore. And before you snicker, you’d be surprised to know just how much pulling power this has for both games. Sure, Hearthstone may be a filthy casual card game that even non Warcraft fans can get into. But don’t underestimate the power of a Warcraft themed crossover. Imagine the hype if Deathwing was announced as a Heroes of the Storm character. In fact, just this year, Blizzard added the popular Alterac Valley as a battleground to the pleasure of WoW heads everywhere.

Defiance 2050 and RIFT

Trion Worlds have been busy this year with two of the studio’s flagship MMORPGs. RIFT was given a new berth as it launched a brand new fresh start progression server RIFT Prime in February this year. Not content with one reboot, the studio also relaunched its 2013 FPSMMO Defiance – which had a TV show crossover in the past – with an updated graphics version called Defiance 2050. Both launches were pretty successful and to celebrate, the studio had a crossover event. For a few weeks, monsters from Defiance would appear randomly from world events in the MMORPG RIFT. Players could hunt these down for rewards and boast that “they were there” when the unlikeliest of crossovers took place in the MMO world.

Wildstar, Blade and Soul, Guild Wars 2 and Master X Master

Perhaps the one that flew under the radar was the epic collaboration of characters within NCsoft’s MMO universe. 2017’s Master X Master – a hybrid MOBA game – turned heads when its hero roster featured popular characters from all of NCsoft’s games. This included Rytlock from Guild Wars 1/2, Mondo Zax from Wildstar and many more. Unfortunately for MXM, the game didn’t last the year, and was eventually shut down in late December 2017. But for as long as it was live, by all accounts, players had a fun time using their favorite MMO characters to duke it out in small arena maps with fun abilities.

The post The Best MMO Crossovers We’ve Seen So Far appeared first on Mmos World.