Wildstar Launch Thread - Server: Stormtalon | Faction: Dominion

Daidraco · Jul 18, 2022

Rezz said:
I thoroughly enjoyed the game (and the sense of humor) but the quest/info window UI felt like a first beta pass or something from SW:G; really not flashy at all for such an out there art style game. The difficulty of the first dungeon (maybe it was just the first dungeon for the "rebels" or whatever; the last boss was like a storm bird or something I think?) was pretty hilarious though. DPS couldn't be assed to have those interrupt shield destroying abilities, so bosses would just continuously murder people, and the deeps couldn't figure shit out. Plus healers were really bad about doing the healing part because (if I remember right) the majority of healing was AE/Cone based, and not tab target. So after failing to interrupt things, the healer was usually too far away to heal and it was just chain wipes. I distinctly remember having to respec as a warrior into something with as many interrupts as possible, gimping my threat and damage output a lot, just so groups could progress. So many newbs quit in frustration over that dungeon, I'm sure. Especially since I think it blocked progress in the game so you couldn't even get to other areas/systems in the game.

Would have been fun with a dedicated group/s, but pugs were just failfests most of the time. Not great for random player retention.

You talking about this shit?

I fucking hated that dungeon. There wasnt shit for people at max lvl when I got there, the first thing we went off to do (or shortly after?) was fucking Veteran for this dungeon. Not having a fucking clue how to do obvious shit in there. Barely doing interrupts, not knowing patterns, the whole 9 yards. To top it off, with as harsh as I am on myself for not knowing shit - people praised me for how well I did at the end of the night. I know we wiped and reset and done all kinds of shit for hours and hours till we beat it.

The next day, join up with some other guildies and and one or two people from the previous days group. And... we started wiping, and wiping and wiping all over again. Even knowing what to do the second time around, depending on the people to know wtf you're talking about when you say to do something was a pipe dream. After like an hour or two of wiping.. I just thought to myself "This shit isnt fun." I logged off and never touched this shit again. Yes, that dungeon is probably the biggest downfall in the whole game. All this game did was prepare me for the ass whipping that I got in WOW's WoD expansion with Mythic raiding.

Rezz · Jul 18, 2022

Chersk said:
Of all the shit MMO’s out there I find it weird that Wildstar couldn’t be kept on life support.

Yeah I found how quickly it got shut off kind of strange as well. It must have had absolutely horrible return even after F2P. I think I actually resubbed at one point and dicked around but it was a complete ghost town on whichever server I was on. People moved on from Wildstar with a quickness.

And yup, that was the dungeon. It was like literally the very first real group dungeon I think on the "Dominion" side (regular, not veteran) and it was just retarded how complex it was for the first dungeon. I ran it a bunch for people in chat in the area where there's like 40 things for settlers to do but you couldn't open up the quests/MSQ for the next zone without completing the Stormtalon dungeon. So many people complaining about wiping for hours and then not finishing, or wiping so much they had to leave to repair. Tons had no idea about the interrupt armor, which I thought was weird because it came up frequently during the "elite" quests before. I thought it was cool at first, but frustrating because every healer sucked, every DPS refused to get IA nuking shit, and when I'd play healer the tank would have less HP than me because he thought he was a DPS and didn't pick up any of the shielding or whatever gear. I played solo though so it's really on me, but it was pretty jarring coming from other games into a meatgrinder like that.

Xevy · Jul 18, 2022

Watching people fail because everyone had MAXXXXDPS WoW mentalitys in dungeons was great. Unless you were in that dungeon with them. Then it fucking sucked. I was a warrior and basically for the first ~3 months we couldn't tank raid bosses (due to threat, not tanking abilities) so I was basically the interrupter king. I had potentially 4 interrupts ready to go. I had to carry so many shitters through silver Dungeons to get flagged for the 20 man it was unbelievable. You'd finally, FINALLY get to the last boss then some one would die during the fight and that was it. 20 minutes of your time gone down the shitter, time to reset. We almost got the server first Gold on that Stormtalon dungeon too, but some one died with the last boss at like 15% or some shit.

Skullcano was the greatest test of a shitty MMO players coordination there ever was. It was great. You had people who could multitask all sorts of shit at a high level, but when it came to jumping lasers and switching directions at the same time, they couldn't fucking chew bubble gum while walking. It was infuriating and funny at the same time.

The sentiment about the "dodging red is bad game design" isn't wrong, but that's just the thing about this game. It wasn't THE mechanic, it was always ONE of the mechanics. You had to do that WHILE doing a bunch of shit (matching colors, kiting mobs with abilities, interrupting shit, changing beam shit, CCing adds) that made this game the hardest MMO without artificial "BOSS HAS 1000% MORE HP" type mods. That was like, one of 4 parts of the fight but it was nearly always present. I played Lost Ark and almost all those fights are just telegraph reads and preparing for "the mechanic". Wildstar really did try to ramp everything up in difficulty and ultimately for people who don't poop in socks and used to be good at games 20 years ago, this wasn't the dream they thought they wanted. Ultimately the boomer base who grew up on EQ and UO and early WoW want SOME difficulty in fights at the highest end if they choose to try it, not just constantly ass pounding for every step of the way.

So anytime you see some one say "I want a HARD MMO", just point them to this game and say "No you fucking don't."

And anyone who quit leveling before the hallucination mission missed out. There's literally a mission where you're in a space ship and the oxygen levels start running low and you start to hallucinate. You start fighting Vending Machines and shit and it's pretty funny. It was on like level 30-35ish, too. Some of their quests were really well done, others completely uninspired scan and bear asses, but sometimes you need those to fill the leveling process or you get shit like New World where it's slayin' skellies nonstop until your eyes bleed.

Voldeth · Jul 18, 2022

Xevy said:
Watching people fail because everyone had MAXXXXDPS WoW mentalitys in dungeons was great. Unless you were in that dungeon with them. Then it fucking sucked. I was a warrior and basically for the first ~3 months we couldn't tank raid bosses (due to threat, not tanking abilities) so I was basically the interrupter king. I had potentially 4 interrupts ready to go. I had to carry so many shitters through silver Dungeons to get flagged for the 20 man it was unbelievable. You'd finally, FINALLY get to the last boss then some one would die during the fight and that was it. 20 minutes of your time gone down the shitter, time to reset. We almost got the server first Gold on that Stormtalon dungeon too, but some one died with the last boss at like 15% or some shit.

Skullcano was the greatest test of a shitty MMO players coordination there ever was. It was great. You had people who could multitask all sorts of shit at a high level, but when it came to jumping lasers and switching directions at the same time, they couldn't fucking chew bubble gum while walking. It was infuriating and funny at the same time.

The sentiment about the "dodging red is bad game design" isn't wrong, but that's just the thing about this game. It wasn't THE mechanic, it was always ONE of the mechanics. You had to do that WHILE doing a bunch of shit (matching colors, kiting mobs with abilities, interrupting shit, changing beam shit, CCing adds) that made this game the hardest MMO without artificial "BOSS HAS 1000% MORE HP" type mods. That was like, one of 4 parts of the fight but it was nearly always present. I played Lost Ark and almost all those fights are just telegraph reads and preparing for "the mechanic". Wildstar really did try to ramp everything up in difficulty and ultimately for people who don't poop in socks and used to be good at games 20 years ago, this wasn't the dream they thought they wanted. Ultimately the boomer base who grew up on EQ and UO and early WoW want SOME difficulty in fights at the highest end if they choose to try it, not just constantly ass pounding for every step of the way.

So anytime you see some one say "I want a HARD MMO", just point them to this game and say "No you fucking don't."

And anyone who quit leveling before the hallucination mission missed out. There's literally a mission where you're in a space ship and the oxygen levels start running low and you start to hallucinate. You start fighting Vending Machines and shit and it's pretty funny. It was on like level 30-35ish, too. Some of their quests were really well done, others completely uninspired scan and bear asses, but sometimes you need those to fill the leveling process or you get shit like New World where it's slayin' skellies nonstop until your eyes bleed.

I gold medal'd all dungeons in Wildstar, which was a thrill to do and learn as a group, requiring pretty flawless play all around. It's okay to want a hard MMO -- there are ways to cater to this without making the game tedious as Wildstar did. Wildstar's content was purposefully aimed at a type of individual which was pretty prevalent at the time: MMO gamers who complained that WoW had become 'easy' and that they wanted real difficulty. Catering and creating content around these people will never be successful.

Not sure I really understand your take on Lost Ark from a difficulty standpoint though. Saying that it's all about 'reading telegraphs and preparing for the mechanic" while meeting DPS checks is like, what all MMOs do? Hell mode Brelshaza is infinitely more difficult than anything in Genetic Archives was even close to reaching. Just like WoW Mythic raiding is also infinitely harder than anything in the aforementioned zones (I can't comment on Datascape due to a limited amount of playing in there).

Daidraco · Jul 19, 2022

The fact any of you had a full static group puts you miles ahead of anyone else that played this game without one. I had a healer friend at the time that always grouped with me, but that was it. I should have played a tank in hindsight, but I was listening to this forums guild leader/officers for w/e reason. I dont think the game is a push over by any means, but the gist of what I was saying up a few replies is that Wildstar was a punishing nightmare for a PUG simply because the learning curve was much steeper, earlier, than any other MMO that was on the market at that time. But

Voldeth already knows I have little patience for bullshit after playing Lost Ark with him. lul

TJT · Jul 19, 2022

Xevy said:
Watching people fail because everyone had MAXXXXDPS WoW mentalitys in dungeons was great. Unless you were in that dungeon with them. Then it fucking sucked. I was a warrior and basically for the first ~3 months we couldn't tank raid bosses (due to threat, not tanking abilities) so I was basically the interrupter king. I had potentially 4 interrupts ready to go. I had to carry so many shitters through silver Dungeons to get flagged for the 20 man it was unbelievable. You'd finally, FINALLY get to the last boss then some one would die during the fight and that was it. 20 minutes of your time gone down the shitter, time to reset. We almost got the server first Gold on that Stormtalon dungeon too, but some one died with the last boss at like 15% or some shit.

Skullcano was the greatest test of a shitty MMO players coordination there ever was. It was great. You had people who could multitask all sorts of shit at a high level, but when it came to jumping lasers and switching directions at the same time, they couldn't fucking chew bubble gum while walking. It was infuriating and funny at the same time.

The sentiment about the "dodging red is bad game design" isn't wrong, but that's just the thing about this game. It wasn't THE mechanic, it was always ONE of the mechanics. You had to do that WHILE doing a bunch of shit (matching colors, kiting mobs with abilities, interrupting shit, changing beam shit, CCing adds) that made this game the hardest MMO without artificial "BOSS HAS 1000% MORE HP" type mods. That was like, one of 4 parts of the fight but it was nearly always present. I played Lost Ark and almost all those fights are just telegraph reads and preparing for "the mechanic". Wildstar really did try to ramp everything up in difficulty and ultimately for people who don't poop in socks and used to be good at games 20 years ago, this wasn't the dream they thought they wanted. Ultimately the boomer base who grew up on EQ and UO and early WoW want SOME difficulty in fights at the highest end if they choose to try it, not just constantly ass pounding for every step of the way.

So anytime you see some one say "I want a HARD MMO", just point them to this game and say "No you fucking don't."

And anyone who quit leveling before the hallucination mission missed out. There's literally a mission where you're in a space ship and the oxygen levels start running low and you start to hallucinate. You start fighting Vending Machines and shit and it's pretty funny. It was on like level 30-35ish, too. Some of their quests were really well done, others completely uninspired scan and bear asses, but sometimes you need those to fill the leveling process or you get shit like New World where it's slayin' skellies nonstop until your eyes bleed.

That mission was awesome.

I was playing a robot guy stalker and I realized quickly that as a tank you could drop a group and get another instantly so everyone was doing that. Getting the right gear also sucked because you wanted fire/fire or fire/logic or logic/logic gear for the defensive stats IIRC. But because of the randomness of the crafting system it was serious asspain to even get basic tanking items. Which made the game suck even more as even if you wanted to prepare properly you couldn't in any reasonable way.

That's before every other asshole who was phoning it in wondering why they died all the time. Skullcano had cool visuals but god damn.

I remember that even the poopsock guilds out there weren't able to beat the uber raid dungeon and quit the game because of it. That made me lol.

Tearofsoul · Jul 19, 2022

The group instance early on was overturned a bit for sure. But damn, the raiding was super fun.

Caliane · Jul 19, 2022

Izo said:
547 pages. Never heard of this game.

Missed out. Art design was amazing. Music was amazing. still have that main menu track in my head. Trailers, etc amazing. storyline good.
great missions etc..

World was an actual seamless unbroken world. (well continents) no loading. this was a time when every game had already turned to instanced zones everywhere.

Lots of cool ideas, like the housing. The "hardcore" target demographic proved poor as noted. The free to play aspects ehh as well. atm, I don't remember if it launched that way or just went f2p after like 3 months.

Izo · Jul 19, 2022

Caliane said:
Missed out. Art design was amazing. Music was amazing. still have that main menu track in my head. Trailers, etc amazing. storyline good.
great missions etc..

World was an actual seamless unbroken world. (well continents) no loading. this was a time when every game had already turned to instanced zones everywhere.

Lots of cool ideas, like the housing. The "hardcore" target demographic proved poor as noted. The free to play aspects ehh as well. atm, I don't remember if it launched that way or just went f2p after like 3 months.

Gawd damnit. When was this? I played some EQ, WOW, Warhammer, whatnot. But never heard of this. Huh.

Daidraco · Jul 19, 2022

Caliane said:
Missed out. Art design was amazing. Music was amazing. still have that main menu track in my head. Trailers, etc amazing. storyline good.
great missions etc..

World was an actual seamless unbroken world. (well continents) no loading. this was a time when every game had already turned to instanced zones everywhere.

Lots of cool ideas, like the housing. The "hardcore" target demographic proved poor as noted. The free to play aspects ehh as well. atm, I don't remember if it launched that way or just went f2p after like 3 months.

September 29, 2015.

Izo said:
Gawd damnit. When was this? I played some EQ, WOW, Warhammer, whatnot. But never heard of this. Huh.

Release date was June 3, 2014. A big group of us from the forum hit the game up. Then, I saw just about all the same names when WoD dropped in November. But the early release and the first few weeks were pretty awesome.

Caliane · Jul 19, 2022

GuardianX said:
Well, wildstar didn't seem to have much overhead cost, they didn't have expansions in the works..ect

LOTRO still updates pretty regularly to this day, so I assume their overhead cost is more than 0.

I really don't know the numbers on LOTRO players or revenue though.

Thats kinda what I'm saying though, one game was out for a pretty short amount of time while the other has been running for a LONG time and basically, seemingly, on fumes.

There is definitely something to be learned here.

Turbine Studio's made Asherons call, Dungeons and dragons online, and Lord of the rings online.
Turbine was bought by WB in 2010.
2016 LotRo, and DnDo were split off to Standing stone games, and BOTH are still be maintained and supported to this day.

Is it the company's structure? the games architecture? The games social designed systems? what keeps these alive and profitable?

Rezz · Jul 19, 2022

People forgetting to cancel their subs would be my guess for any that have one. Most people don't keep tabs on their credit cards until it gets declined or they are making a big purchase. It is pretty easy to overlook $15 a month for a long time if you have a grip of revolving purchases always generating some reasonable balance. Not me personally because I keep tabs on all my money pretty closely, but the number of people I know who don't are definitely the majority.

Kuro · Jul 19, 2022

Caliane said:
There is definitely something to be learned here.

Turbine Studio's made Asherons call, Dungeons and dragons online, and Lord of the rings online.
Turbine was bought by WB in 2010.
2016 LotRo, and DnDo were split off to Standing stone games, and BOTH are still be maintained and supported to this day.

Is it the company's structure? the games architecture? The games social designed systems? what keeps these alive and profitable?

Way more people like Fantasy than SciFi

Chersk · Jul 19, 2022

That dungeon gameplay looked pretty solid. Wish I gave this game more time when it was around.

GuardianX · Jul 19, 2022

Chersk said:
That dungeon gameplay looked pretty solid. Wish I gave this game more time when it was around.

People are TRYING to make an emulator...but that shit is silly.

Honest to god, if an MMO craters it should be legal to release all the server files and clients for emulation, this is why I hate "as a service" style shit when it doesn't need to be. an MMO needs to be "as a service" but, just sayin.

WS had a ton of amazing concepts that were pretty well crafted. Housing was my favorite, you had places on your housing plot to plug in some cool interactables, you could create things AROUND that using your own creativity and then you had your house internals. Some of the interactables were things like jumping puzzles or teleports to areas or harvesting nodes...tons of things that were just FUN.

GitHub - NexusForever/NexusForever: An emulator for the defunct MMORPG WildStar which supports build 16042 (Final Patch)

An emulator for the defunct MMORPG WildStar which supports build 16042 (Final Patch) - NexusForever/NexusForever

github.com

Kuro · Jul 19, 2022

Their advertising seemed pretty ill-advised, like Warmachine. When you tell prospective buyers they aren't badass enough for your product, most will just shrug, say "okay, I guess I'm not" and do something else. The number of folks who get riled up and want to rise to a challenge is not a majority. It's why Fighting Games remain niche despite (sometimes) deep and rewarding gameplay, people walk face-first into the game and the community telling them they suck, stomping on them, and then acting surprised when only a tiny fraction go "well fuck you, I'm gonna GIT GUD and stomp you right back."

Kharzette · Jul 20, 2022

GuardianX said:
People are TRYING to make an emulator...but that shit is silly.

Honest to god, if an MMO craters it should be legal to release all the server files and clients for emulation, this is why I hate "as a service" style shit when it doesn't need to be. an MMO needs to be "as a service" but, just sayin.

WS had a ton of amazing concepts that were pretty well crafted. Housing was my favorite, you had places on your housing plot to plug in some cool interactables, you could create things AROUND that using your own creativity and then you had your house internals. Some of the interactables were things like jumping puzzles or teleports to areas or harvesting nodes...tons of things that were just FUN.

GitHub - NexusForever/NexusForever: An emulator for the defunct MMORPG WildStar which supports build 16042 (Final Patch)

An emulator for the defunct MMORPG WildStar which supports build 16042 (Final Patch) - NexusForever/NexusForever

github.com

Unless my mind has completely rotted away, I think Jeremy Gaffney was boss of that game. I worked with him at destination games. Really nice, down to earth dude. An exec but still a gamer. They should send him a mail and see if he has the code laying around.

Sylas · Jul 20, 2022

This was basically space WoW, made by a bunch of old blizz people right?

The only thing I remember about this game was it's surprisingly simple yet brilliant use of faction standings to aid in leaving shit.

What I mean is, at the time most games were WoW clones so story/quest based leveling. You go do the thing, collect the bear asses, beat the boss guy, and head back to the quest hub to turn in said quest. But of course due to being public zones with mob respawns, in most games at the time after you beat the bad and wiped out his army, due to respawns, you had to fight your way out of the dungeon area, even though story wise you just defeated the enemy forces and killed their leader.

In this game after beating the boss dude or whatever for the quest complete trigger, you automatically were given neutral/positive standing with the enemy faction you had just fought, so this allowed you to just stroll out of the base or dungeon or whatever and walk back unmolested by the enemy you had just crushed.

Of course other games like LOTRO simply used instancing to place you in a different instance where the bad guys weren't even there, and then WoW accidentally invented phasing so games like ESO just used that to make you not have to fight things after winning, and literally this game died in like 2 months so it was long forgotten.

Caliane · Jul 20, 2022

"WildStar development started in 2005, after 17 former members of Blizzard Entertainment founded Carbine Studios."

I mean WoW didn't accidently invent phasing. they intentionally invented Phasing for that exact purpose. state changes in a public area. so when you beat the area, new npcs come in for you, but the people still there fighting keep fighting.

yes, problems with this game. it was WoW in space. Themepark MMO to a TEE. people rushed through the leveling zone chains. hit the hard dungeons. and sucked at the ground targeting. (lock on, etc is one of those things everyone bitches about in Mmos.... but, between latency and players being shit, few people actually want active targeting)
And like most themepark mmo's when they ran out of leveling zones, they bailed out. 3--6m expiration date every MMO and AAA game has.

"WildStar initially gave players two methods of paying for the game's subscription: a monthly fee, or the purchase of an in-game item, C.R.E.D.D., with real money. C.R.E.D.D. granted 30 days of playtime and is tradable to other players for in-game currency.[34] This essentially enables the player-driven economy to set the in-game price for C.R.E.D.D., and thus an exchange rate between real money and in-game currency."
it did have the sub and in game currency ala Warframe.

Daidraco · Jul 20, 2022

First time I hit phasing was WOTLK-WoW around the Sons of Hodir area. I honestly didnt think it was as bad as people complaining about it said it was. I only ran into a few problems with it when people were at different levels of rep - but they could have just refined it better back then like they have now. But even today's version of phasing still has fucking annoying issues. Like seeing a crafting herb and as soon as you get to it, it phases out. But back then, it was more about PVP faggots that knew how to abuse phasing. Now its warmode and everyone with it on is in the same phase.

Ie. Yes, phasing was intentionally designed. Far before Wildstar.

Wildstar Launch Thread - Server: Stormtalon | Faction: Dominion

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