Wildstar: Humor, telegraphed attacks, and two factions in spaaaace

So I’ve been following Carbine Stuido’s upcoming MMORPG, Wildstar for a bit now – I even wrote a blog post about this – so I’m fairly interested for it to come out already so that I can keep playing and playing. To me, it’s almost like a reinvention of World of Warcraft (in space) except, of course, it’s extremely modern and not WoW at all. The cartoony-look should keep it alive and working well for quite some time, and the telegraphed attacks with fighting-on-the-move should make it fit gamers who prefer action-styled combat.

Wildstar: The Hype and the Glory | Free MMORPG Blog

However, what makes me really look forward to it is the huge expanse of varied content they intend to introduce and how “paths†will change how different players experience the same content. Even the “settler†path has an interesting gimmick.

Only problem? NCSoft. Still very angry at them over City of Heroes.

I have a feeling I’ll be playing the emo-undead race the entire time.
I’m wondering, has anyone else taken a gander at this game and what are your thoughts?

 

It's going to be damn-hard to supplant WoW. It's been around for so long and so strong now that it's got that sense of veteran-of-the-genre. So, like thou sound here, I'm always on the lookout for games that'll give me fun.

New fun, I think, is the killer app of the MMO market.

 

Mordesh! That's the team that's the race I was thinking of.

 

Aaaand, crap, Wildstar is a box-priced subscription game.

$60 price tag on the box; $15/mo subscription (with bulk pricing.) In short, this will mean that I won't have anyone to play with, although I'll probably buy in for a little while just to explore the game and get a lay of the land.

The hybrid portion of the model is that they intend to go with a PLEX-like model similar to EVE Online and TERA. This means that players who make enough money in game can buy game time with in-game currency from other players...

So, anyone laying bets in how long Wildstar will take to shift to a much more free-to-play model?

 

It certainly seems this way. If anything, it might even promote a core seed community who show that they're willing to pay for the product and become veterans through sunk costs. As a strategy this could be used to build up a community they KNOW will spend money and stick around and then later unveil free-to-play (in a year) as if to draw in a wider audience.

In this era where the free-to-play market is becoming saturated and AAA games are still doing insanely well even after transition, the different companies are probably wondering if they can manage to build up that seed audience and keep them in place while they cultivate a community.

Personally, even though I make money on MMO games, I don't keep many subscriptions and unless Wildstar makes mass popularity I won't be there.