Why Wildstar Died and World of Warcraft Remains Around

One of the biggest hyped games in 2014 was the coming of Wildstar. As usual, the MMORPG community predicted the death of World of Warcraft as another johnny-come-lately made its appearance with a whole set of features that would destroy the perennial MMORPG. And of course, those predictions were wrong. Here’s my thoughts on why Wildstar had failed.

Much of the hype surrounding Wildstar centered around its combat system. The company emphasized that as the primary reason that would make game play incredibly compelling. From that the game, from the minute you entered, would train you on dealing with mechanics so that by the time you reached end game content, you would be set.

Various (hardcore) gamers swooned at this new combat system because in reality World of Warcraft’s interface and engine have become pretty outdated. The challenging mechanics of dungeons right from the start would make World of Warcraft Cataclysm heroics seem like n00b mode paralyzed boss fights.

However, one of the smarter (albeit arrogant) hardcore gamers/streamers, Kripparian, admitted after giving Wildstar a test run that, despite enjoying the mechanics, he realized early on that the game would fail because it did not cater to n00bz. And when a game starts up you need a LOT of n00bz to succeed.

Bingo.

Wildstar seemed to have picked up a dream team in coming up with this new game. Former World of Warcraft designers/developers, whom, I heard were responsible for the earlier designs of World of Warcraft that made the game “hardcore.” However, this is a horribly flawed philosophy in product design because if you ever want to gain any traction as a product, you have to set the barriers to entry very low. I think Wildstar failed to accomplish this from what I had seen from various streamers and videos.

The first comment I heard about Wildstar was how grindy and boring the leveling was. Some people mentioned it was very reminiscent of Vanilla World of Warcraft (again, this harkens back to my comment about former Blizzard designers/developers). That seemed to have turned a lot of people away. World of Warcraft has streamlined the leveling process quite a bit, even providing the ability to purchase instant 90s. Hardcore gamers scoff at p2win but the truth is that level grinding is just a waste of time unless you provide meaningful, compelling content.

Without having seen Wildstar’s leveling process first hand, from what I can gather, the game has done virtually nothing different than what other MMORPGs have provide as a leveling experience. Since combat was stated to be one of the major features in the game, the emphasis eventually would go towards dungeons and raids as where players want to be. So why even bother providing a leveling experience that takes forever if the real game play is in groups and raiding?

Even if the environment and game play looked and felt good the reality is that the game offered substantially nothing new in the MMORPG genre. The game also catered towards a very specific audience of people who see themselves as hardcore players. A lot of so-called hardcore players in my view are pretty selfish people who want a specific experience for themselves and belittle anyone who disagrees. And those who try to give it a shot and fail are verbally tormented by these people, which leads to this cycle of having a very narrow group who probably can’t even stand each other.

World of Warcraft manages to sustain itself not because the game engine is great but because no other game in this genre thus far has made an attempt to change the patterns in the MMORPG standard. World of Warcraft instead has a solid enough foundation with the largest player base, a great back story and history, good game play and continues to open itself up so that all types of players can enjoy the game. Because this foundation is so incredibly solid, Blizzard can afford to work on expanding the base feature set as they borrow from these other 1-offs that may have a good idea or two but never get off the ground because they lack a larger vision.

The truth is that the nostalgic experience from Vanilla World of Warcraft isn’t going to amass a huge community even though it’s what these game makers think is true based on reading posts on some forums. Most players, in my estimate, simply don’t give enough of a shit to go on these forums to voice their opinions. They voice their opinions only with their dollars and time. Obviously, that voice was resoundingly heard as Wildstar’s hype slow diminished into a faint whisper.

Comments

comments