WildStar COULD Have Been AMAZING..

A moment of silence…

I know what you’re thinking. “Stix, WildStar shut down back in 2018.. why’re you forcing me on this rollercoaster of emotions all over again?”
And the answer is simple: I was thinking about really good MMORPGs – games that were really unique, that were different, but that never took off. WildStar crossed my mind – not because it never took off, but instead because it was taken from us too soon.
Whenever I read about WildStar, whenever I asked people about WildStar, they never have anything other than positive things to say about the game. Why is that? If you ask people about Bless – you get nothing but hate, loathing and utter disgust.
But WildStar? People loved WildStar. So why did WildStar shut down, and is there any chance of it ever relaunching? That’s kinda what I wanna talk about today.

If you’re new to the genre, or just never played WildStar, then allow me to give you a little backstory. WildStar was an MMORPG developed by Carbine Studios and published by NCSoft.
It was NCSoft’s answer to the titan that is World of Warcraft. It released back in June 2014 as a pay-to-play title, and changed to a free-to-play model a year later in September 2015.
You might be wondering how a game that had the funding that WildStar had, the backing of a studio like Carbine and NCSoft could fall to such a point that it could warrant the complete shut down of the game, right? Well.. there were several reasons for the that.
The game’s launch was a critical failure. Sure, plenty of MMOs mess up their launches, that isn’t too uncommon. But when you’re charging people for either a physical or digital copy of the game, and then requiring they also pay money to log in and the game is in a heavily incomplete state, it leaves a bad first impression.
The game was designed for raiders. You might contest this opinion, but be real for a moment: While the game was pretty casual for the most part, upon reaching endgame, you were forced to either raid, or… that was it. You would raid.
If you look at games like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIV – which both have very active raiding scenes, raiding is only done by a minority percentage of players. There are several times more non-raiders than those that actively raid.
The game had multiple re-launches. This not only showed the lack of faith that Carbine and NCSoft had in their title, but also showed the community that they had no idea what they were doing.

Honestly I could go on. There were multiple instances of poor management of the game, but I don’t really want to linger on this any longer.

WildStar started off as a pretty limiting game. However, over time it grew into something much better – something much more unique.
The WildStar community can attest to this. I played it back in 2017 through 2018 for the channel, and enjoyed my time in it over the course of my time playing.
Yes, the game was a little confusing at times, but the humor, the action combat, the setting, the characters.. if this was the game we received when it first launched, I feel as though it would’ve seen much greater success.
Maybe it would’ve even survived a business model change to a buy-to-play game or something instead of failing as a free-to-play MMO.

I miss exploring the world, I miss the PvP that I got to participate in, I miss the PvE content.. but most of all I miss the combat.
I remember when I did my first video on WildStar, I was just so surprised by how good it looked and played. I wanted to play as the Spellslinger but ended up going Warrior because I wanted to tank through dungeons.
The world was so large, it was incredibly detailed, there were constantly things to do while leveling – and there were several methods you could actually employ to level, the quests – the story, was completely voice acted.
The game had an actual story, an actual narrative, a focus behind merely leveling for the sake of leveling.

WildStar had such potential to be an incredible MMORPG. It really did. If only they’d taken the time to really perfect it instead of rushing the release, they would’ve had something that likely would’ve stood the test of time.
Alas, what we got was a broken mess for the entire first year, and an even larger mess when they tried changing business model to a free-to-play title.
The WildStar subreddit community is still active, and people still chat there from time to time, hoping that private servers for the game open up and allow for players to relive what was – at the end of its life, a very good game.

I’ve seen people ask the question: Should they relaunch WildStar? The answer is no. It’s clear they don’t know what worked for the game, and what ruined it. Even if I’d love to see it come back, it’d fail under the pressure, just as it did the first time. And the second. And.. yeah.
But when don’t NCSoft screw up their games?