The AAA MMO That Died - WildStar in 2024

[@sawmanUK]

For more info, see my guide here: dogwatergaming.com/how-to-play-wildstar-in-2024/ Also leave a like for more dead mmo reviews

[@buuhuuimklo3810]

Will you grant me a kiss?

[@2nd3rd1st]

Just the fact that you decided to use a video of the r4pist and proud s3x trafficker Andrew Tate just to be funny, shows me that you don't deserve a like. 👎 You gotta have at least a tiny bit of common sense and human decency to earn likes.

[@katsmaintanklive]

Furries, action combat, over-monetization... WildStar was ahead of the industry

[@SebiShef]

no over monetization in wildstar

[@Giliver]

Debatable ​@@SebiShef

[@Purriah]

@@SebiShefyou could buy gold from the in-game shop on launch. Definitely over monetized

[@diamondhamster4320]

@@Purriah like in EVE like in WoW like in many others.

[@Rohtara]

Game was launched as a subscription based game, the ingame shop was added 1 year after release when the game was already half doomed.

[@Asin24]

Wildstar was such a great game that was just killed by poor direction. They were so hard on the 'hardcore player' hype train that they neglected the casual player and trying to build them up into that sort of environment. It's a shame really since with better direction and some polish Wildstar I feel could of easily been an MMO that was still around today. It's combat and gameplay was so fun to mess around with and IMO a large step up from GW2's combat yet it got abandoned far too quickly rather then giving it a rebirth it deserved.

[@yummychips_]

I think it was a okay game. If felt like it was really bad when I first tried it on release, but after sometime I realized the game wasn't bad it's just had a bad labeling. They expected that they could take the MMO players from WOW and others. They didn't offer anything relevant to change peoples minds, and the ones who did try didn't have a reason to stay. (Like me). Honestly the gameplay was not fun, the characters were boring, and it felt like it should have been a MOBA like Smite or something. Switching focus on the pvp was a bad idea. They somehow believed that PVP was a main staple for MMOs, when PVE is king for MMOs. Nothing ever felt deep, just a dash of this or that. They had a lot of great ideas, but they just made terrible choices. They were reacting in emergency to stuff, and listening to the wrong people in the community. The community was full of PVP idiots, and low experience MMO players.

[@SetariM]

I don't really understand why devs focus on "the hard-core player". That is a very small slice of the MMORPG community, and also hella toxic and vocal about ANY changes to the game. Casuals are where the money is at, PvE casuals.

[@Asin24]

@@SetariM You want to have that hard-core end of the player as something for people to strive to reach, but it can't be the main focus just a small part of the game. I would say as far as toxic goes, I'd argue against it ebing all Hardcore players being toxic, there are plenty of toxic casual players. Most toxicity though I'd say isn't at the high end as much as the midcore. The amount of toxicity you see with certain people complaining about others when they are the problem holding the group back is crazy.

[@roningai4791]

This, just this.

[@dangerousdays2052]

@@yummychips_ Yeah, nah. Wildstar's fast-paced real action gameplay was amazing. So much better than the tab targeting other MMOs were using at the time.

[@JaysonBucy]

I actually loved Wildstar, I played it when it first came out with a bunch of buddies. It ran into the problem where there wasn't much endgame content when it launched and all the players that rushed ahead and weren't interested in story had very little to do. I think I played right up until it closed completely.

[@sawmanUK]

sounds like new worlds launch 😹👍

[@kredonystus7768]

​@@sawmanUK the difference with New World is that Wildstar was fun to play, NW the idea of playing was way better than the actual playing.

[@grigorecosmin]

I remember a reddit discussion about this game a very long time ago where an (allegedly) actual developer made a post about how toxic the work environment was at the company. I remember him saying that they had mandatory crunch, how artists learned to code to fix the game and how one of his colleague, an animator, made the hover board in his free time and added it in the game without support from the team or leads. The hoverboard was the most popular mount in the game

[@nevernerevarine8071]

Its been 2 months, I know, but Timothy Cain (creator of Fallout) worked at Carbine on WildStar and talks about his time there on a video here on KZbin! He confirms that several upper managers were basically competing to be in charge. That toxicity worked its way down and made it hard to *do* anything, apparently.

[@Ms_Cheesecake]

@@nevernerevarine8071 The Carbine area of the NCWest office was called "the salt mine," and there were literally canisters of Morton salt just abandoned in the empty cubicles where the Carbine employees had been following Wildstar's closure. :( Hella toxic culture.

[@jonathancoker1432]

Wild Star was a good game just didn’t have a robust endgame and they thought people missed the 40 man raids from WoW. The housing was great, mounts were fun (furry had a hamster like wheel bubble mount), and the action combat was decent. Also the regular dungeons were overturned for new players.

[@sawmanUK]

Damn I didn’t get to see the hamster wheel! I feel like I missed out now 😹

[@AzureRoxe]

People DID miss the 40 man raids, as proven by WoW Classic and the multiple times they did special version of some raids like Molten Core. Issue is that the way they did them sucked and hyperfocused on them WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too much.

[@genemorris3rd]

I played the game at launch. I couldn't agree with you more @jonathancoker1432 on every point.

[@silver_crone]

I played it on launch and until it stonewalled me with the hardcore levels. I loved the character creation, housing, the combat system even. But I’m a casual, so yeah it wasn’t really for me. Shame, I really liked bits of it.

[@poplaysgames6540]

Queuing for 3 hours to get into that first dungeon, and then finding it was an open area with no directions where you're supposed to be going, like Old Hillsbrad in Wow, but on heroic, so every trash pack you accidentally pull causes a wipe, because neither your tank or healer have tanking or healing gear, because all the quests you've been doing give you the choice between damage gear, or support gear, and NO-ONE is going to be picking support gear if they're going to be spending the next 3 hours questing, while waiting on a queue. I bet a lot of people went back to WoW, where at least the dungeon difficulty scales from a sensible starting point, and the recent simplification of gear stats meant you could pretty much use your DPS set and be a passable tank or healer, because /both/ mainly used either Str, Agi or Int. When you have a game mode like group dungeons/raiding or team PvP, and your game is new, you absolutely cannot afford long queues, or put obstacles in the way of people taking part when they get to the end of them, because NOTHING kills a multiplayer game faster than empty multi-hour queues. Hardcore players, stampeding towards the cli... endgame in their guilds and premade groups, aren't going to keep the game funded, because they'll be the first to quit, when they run out of things to do.

[@Itory1337]

What went wrong? NCSoft! It was just one of the other mmos out there and in the times we have now, when we old mmo schoolers are starving and the Sun is low even the smallest dwarfs cast the biggest shadow

[@Shiirow]

old schoolers are a niche, and that was one of the main reasons for its demise. they wanted to be massively successful, but you cant be massively successful by catering to a niche.

[@lionelwhiskerknot]

Definitely NCSoft. They killed City of Heroes to despite the fact that the servers were always full of people.

[@leandrodmsi]

Nc$oft

[@xephthetamagochi4046]

literally this. they where trying to impprove it and NC was like "NAH PULL THE PLUG!"

[@Wellshem]

NCSoft also tried to kill GW2 multiple time but arenanet managed to protect it

[@irishsage2459]

Wildstar suffered from a "raid or die" mentally. There wasnt much worth doing aside from questing and then raiding. They did try adding more casual features once the writing was on the wall that players were unhappy with the content, and the devs refused to listen... but by then it was far too late. They took all the bad, grindy features of classic WoW that no one really cared for, then were unbending when players said thats not what they liked about old time WoW. And the aesthetic wasn't really appealing to those who were looking for a classic style of World of Warcraft.

[@tonic316]

the raiding wasnt even good compared to wow.

[@Xazamas]

Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen seems to have very similar mindset, just towards the Everquest instead of old time WoW. They appear to have intentionally replicated the "it is 1999 and you spawn in to kill rats" instead of any of the other things that made it worthwhile to persist through the rat gauntlet and kept people playing. Or the developers are just incompetent and/or scammers.

[@Xazamas]

@@tonic316 I did not personally raid in WIldstar, so this is all second-hand hearsay effectively: The developers weren't even happy when they players jumped all their hoops to get to the raid (level up to max, complete gold challenge which had its own problems*) And instead kept making the raids even harder. Supposedly their encounter designer didn't like the idea of his precious bosses going down, but this may have been a sarcastic joke in response to have the raids were tuned. *In the style of vanilla/TBC, you had to attune to the raids by gaining gold medal on challenge(s). Problem was... imagine you have something like a timed run and the group goofs up at the start, so they can clearly see they won't make it to the gold rating. This creates a conflict - assuming that the Silver rewards are still quite useful, or just for practice, some group members probably want to still run the thing through. But some people will just leave the group, wait the Group Finder cooldown, and try again. Eventually the Group Finder is by majority made of people rolling the dice on getting a party that carries them.

[@kaye507]

This. The game didn't even have a cash shop at launch IIRC, it was a subscription MMO with a box price. They just leaned way too hard into the "hardcore" thing and gambled on that being what people really wanted. And lost. They were trying to recreate classic WoW's success but they totally glossed over the fact that WoW didn't become popular because it was grindy and hardcore, it became popular because it was more accessible and casual-friendly than other MMOs at the time.

[@KichiMiangra]

​@@kaye507 I feel like that's something people forget/didn't know about the classic "hard core" Era of WoW; it was considered the CASUAL MMO of it's time

[@kiofea]

I was sad when I tried to play Wildstar back in the day and my personal computer couldn't handle it. I remember it many years later only to see the servers were shut down. I missed a truly great period, and that kicked off a summer of me trying every massively multiplayer game I could find.

[@kilowolf5488]

It's funny that you mentioned the graphical style. Because that's one of the biggest things people cried about from the start. I remember even in the Beta people were upset about the "Cartoony art style". I personally loved it, it was different.

[@double_joseph327]

How is the cartoony art style different? That’s literally what wow is LMAOO

[@dangerousdays2052]

I would have played Wildstar just for the housing 100%. It was crazy what you could build with it. 🤤🤤

[@MaterAranea]

I miss my 5 level magical/fantasy library. Housing in Wildstar was everything to me.

[@Asin24]

The cash shop came later after the game fell off in subs being originally a subscription based game. The game itself was far less obnoxious with that angle when it first came out where it wouldn't be in your face the whole time.

[@thewatchdog3803]

Man I miss WIldStar. It was actually unironically my favorite MMO alongside TERA, which also closed. RIP good MMOs.

[@DIscoverForex]

tera was so good!

[@thewatchdog3803]

@@DIscoverForex Dude it was. I wish they'd bring it back. There's been nothing to really fill the hole WildStar and Tera left.

[@Navi_xoo]

Wildstar was an incredible MMO. It did not deserve to die. The competition was too heavy and it launched pay to play which was a terrible idea. Then they just stopped launching content and Nexus wanted it to be gone to save money. If only they would actually help people run a private server. RIP Wildstar.

[@TheNeoVid]

I played WS from beta to shutdown. I'm normally a fanatic raid grinder in MMOs, but just qualifying to get into WS's raids was such a nightmare that I didn't bother until they dropped most of the requirements a year later. WS was specifically designed for those people who constantly complain that MMOs these days aren't punishing enough, but then none of those guys spent money playing it. Though I'd give pretty much anything to have WildStar's player housing system back as a standalone. Oh, and it also had some of the only MMO PvP I've ever enjoyed, with the Warplot mode. That was an objective-based mode with some features from housing, where both sides had custom-designed bases that the other team's goal was to bust into and destroy. It was awesome. Of course, Warplot matches only happened once a month, since it was 40v40 and WS rarely had that many players online, much less queueing up. The regular PvP modes were killed off by the one guild that refused to give up on PvP, since all normal PvP matches ended up with a full stack of Gatlike Gangstars' dedicated PvP players vs some unfortunate victims trying to get their PvP dailies. I still wonder if Gatlike ever got matches competitive enough to be enjoyable, since I never once saw it happen. We constantly told the devs the only thing PvP needed was to stop matching premades against randoms, but player feedback is the last thing the WS devs wanted. The final bit of irony was that since I'd been a City of Heroes player, I spent my whole time in WildStar wondering when NCSoft would randomly pull the plug on the game. Instead, they did the exact opposite of what they did with CoH, and kept the game grinding on for years after it stopped being profitable.

[@Edymnion]

Yeah, the action combat actually meant that skill could overcome level and gear. It wasn't EASY, but you 100% could beat someone through just being better at dodging and lining up your attacks than they were. Which I'm sure was a huge turn-off to most PvP griefers who just wanted to roflstomp newbs.

[@knightofnaught]

I don't think action combat specifically puts people off of MMOs. Are there stats for that? I think it's just MMOs that are dying off. Anything that is popular is either popular because it's been big forever or because it has a massive IP behind it and otherwise still well developed.

[@grape5465]

thanks for the video @sawmanUK As someone who was there since the beta and later played the endgame content on the highest difficulty, I can share why Wildstar didn't succeed back then. The genre itself wasn't the issue-Wildstar was simply released too early. According to some Carbine developers-some of whom were in our guild-there were internal conflicts within the team and clashes with NCSoft. Later on, even artists had to handle programming tasks. The launch on Steam was a desperate attempt to make some money. The game was ahead of its time but was released prematurely. Additionally, the difficulty level was far too high for the average player. Many of you know WoW and its Mythic raids; in Wildstar, that was basically the equivalent of normal mode bosses. Mechanics worked differently in Wildstar compared to other MMOs like WoW. The overall difficulty was very high, even in regular dungeons. For a typical player, this was frustrating, and without a good team, it was even harder to achieve anything in such a game. Sure, there was PvP, but even that didn't work-neither battlegrounds, guild wars, nor arenas. The concepts were ambitious, but Wildstar was ultimately designed as a PvE game, and it showed. If Wildstar were released today, like it was when the Transmutation patch came out-with all the features, a significantly adjusted difficulty level, and functioning PvP-perhaps during a time when a new Guardians of the Galaxy movie is in theaters and everyone is in a sci-fi mood, I think the game could be a big hit as a relaunch. Big streamers like Asmongold could help round things out. But that's just my opinion. I miss this game a lot and still play on my buggy server daily, just to keep exploring the world. And it still doesn't get boring.

[@ShoddyCast]

Fun fact, we actually had a fully sponsored video for Wildstar to help build hype for it. I don't like to do those types of videos generally, and this was before I was making those kinds of decisions, but I actually remember generally enjoying it. It wasn't amazing or anything but I really did like their basic design philosophy of trying to cater to different known player archetypes. That said, I never played it after making a video on it, and I'm prone to getting addicted to games easily, so it couldn't have been that good lol

[@sawmanUK]

Hot Take....I honestly think if it came out today, given the current MMO market, it's likely to be in the top 10....the market was saturated with MMOs so people just didn't give it enough of a chance to grow. Most games like this evolve over the years, but I think NCSoft were too quick to pull the plug before it really became something amazing...

[@muhc2931]

As far as I'm aware. The issue the private server had in terms of how long it's taking to make is also caused by NCsoft. They had a full private server for the game. With everything as it was. NCsoft just proceeded to say no. They go ballistic when someone uses its source code. The issue that the private server is suffering is they have to script and build the develop the entire MMO from scratch. There's been a ton of petitions for NCsoft to give their source code and let everyone have a private server, but in all honesty the company doesn't care at all.

[@tjl8884]

Ya cause they lost like 300 million making it. They probably want someone to buy it.

[@chuggaluggs4098]

I remember monetization in WildStar wasn't bad at all. I got through the whole game, levels 1-50, without spending a dime. In fact, you got Omnibits just by playing the game which you could use to buy cash shop items for free. After saving up through questing and doing other content, I got myself a sick mount and some nifty housing decor to spruce up my plot. There was an optional sub fee, sure, but I don't remember there being any outrageous advantages compared to being a f2p player. I *think* you'd get more Omnibits while subbed, but don't quote me. It's been a while...

[@rickroll9705]

You can play BDO whitout spending a dime, its just gonna suck a lot. Just like it sucked for wildstar lol

[@phyzix101]

It was a subscription game though, so the cash shop definitely shouldn't be required. That would have killed it much sooner :D

[@gryphter343]

Yeah the monetization didn't really happen until it went F2P. The game was released at a time when the difficulty of WoW raiding/dungeons was starting to lower and they banked on bringing in the hard core crowd. I recall they overtuned all the dungeons and raids so people just quit out of frustration. I remember the raid being unreasonably difficult.

[@H41030v3rki110ny0u]

​@@rickroll9705not really.. played at launch but quit before it went f2p.. game was fine without spending money on the cash shop, fine gameplay experience

[@Edymnion]

@@gryphter343 this is it exactly. They fell into the trap of thinking hardcore raiders were a bigger market than they actually were. Blizzard knew better. They had a statement during Wrath that less than 1% of the playerbase had ever even stepped foot into a raid, much less beaten one. The raider playerbase just was not big enough to support an entire MMO on.

[@Solus_Fenryr]

Oh man I remember having such a great time with this mmo. Raiding was a lot of fun. It's a shame it shut down.

[@dudere]

Housing is the most fun I had with wildstar. I mean that on all counts. Housing bosses, and housing challenges were some of the most fun gameplay I interacted with. Probably because instance combat meant I had to count on how other player's moved out of hits. Housing stuff was solo. Except for player run hover board tournaments. There were so many player made skate parks. Exploration was better in housing too. The world of Wildstar was cool but by popping from house to house randomly I found so many cool varied ideas places. When I think about cool places in wildstar I am thinking 50/50 dev made and player made locations.

[@Grrowlerr]

this is a trip down memory lane - though i'm surprised you didn't talk about wildstar's music

[@sawmanUK]

To be honest, I turn the music off on a lot of games for recording purposes sadly

[@Grrowlerr]

@@sawmanUK you have missed out my friend :)

[@H41030v3rki110ny0u]

​@@sawmanUKmusic off wat???

[@drakkondarkspell]

Poor optimization, devs actively pushing non-hardcore raiders out of their servers, and a tone-deaf mismatch in their actual raiding scenes compared to what the players wanted at the time. NCSoft might have been a big factor, but the devs didn't do themselves any favors by pretending that hardcore raiding was the only way to play.

[@buutzaflow3880]

I was a "hardcore raider" at the time. And i dont get the "pretend" stuff. It literally was the game they built. PvP was unbalanced, Arena seasons didnt work and dungeon runs were obsolote once you aquired raid levels of power. Wich, I agree, was a poor decision. But nothing they did pretend. It was literally the game they wanted to create 🙊

[@MakoRuu]

Every day that goes by I miss WildStar a little more. NCSoft killed WildStar, not the players.

[@nicholaspritt9200]

I was in the closed beta and even got invited to their perma-beta before release and I fell in love with it. They had so many great ideas; the world, the classes, housing, so much more. Then I didn't get it at release because of irl issues and by the time things had settled and I could think of even trying it again, it was gone. RIP Wildstar and I'm happy people are still discovering this game so long after it's fall.

[@Felix-vb9kh]

I started Wildstar when it was already dying. I immediately fell in love with the graphics and art style, but the combat system was the best. It combined tab target and skill-based combat with real-time dodging like no other mmo. I've played Guild Wars 2 and Elder Scrolls online, but even today it doesn't feel as smooth as Wildstar's combat system. The classes were also very creatively designed, even though they represented typical classes. The paths were the icing on the cake. Really frustrating that NCSoft screwed this up, the players were up for it!

[@Loopcats]

I loved Wildstar, but the game was almost immediately abandoned by the developer and they never really updated or added anything after the initial release.

[@growtocycle6992]

Second and third raid tiers??

[@xEkLiiPz]

As someone who thoroughly enjoyed Wildstar I still miss it to this day. The game launched a year too soon and was unfortunately a mess in the beginning : nameplates causing memory leaks, UI issues, etc. What made Wildstar special early on was that you could level all your way to max level by doing PvP battlegrounds and sadly that attracted a lot of bots which were a nuisance to both factions. The endgame felt like there was nothing else worth doing outside of raids once you started getting raid gear. Datascape (2nd raid) still is one of the best raids I have ever hard the opportunity to play as it required insane teamplay and very good individual skill. On the monetization front, there was no issue in the beginning as it was P2P. On F2P relaunch, I don't remember P2W being an issue as most of the good gear was locked behind raid drops. I remember there was a way to get platinum (ingame currency) to buy raid BoEs through the shop but it wasn't that much of an issue in the grand scheme of things. The game just died down as there wasn't much else to do that was fun in the endgame outside of raiding and housing for those who liked it.

[@PaulSherrard]

I miss this game so much. It had amazing potential, and I hope that one day there's a spiritual successor to it, done right. The action combat, the humor, the graphical style, and the setting were all top notch.

[@rekinek510]

Man, this brings back so much memories. Although I haven't played it that much and was still a kid but stil I remember it well. The level up effect was so cool for me back then and it still kinda is. Little touch but it gives you that good vibe. If I could choose one game to be bring back would be Wildstar for sure.

[@TrustedCharl]

The focus on hardcore is what kept the game alive as long as it did, i was deep into the raid scene, did every and we used to Sherpa people on a regular basis. People say the game was horrid but on the EU megaserver it was so beloved and the top guilds stayed right till the last second. I miss this wonderful game.

[@Edymnion]

Nah man, raiders are a TINY little minority of players. I remember at the height of WoW's popularity, WotLK, where Blizz released a statement saying that less than 1% of the playerbase had ever even entered Icecrown Citadel, much less actually finished it. The hardcore raiders were always a very small but extremely vocal minority. There was never enough of them to even pay the server upkeep costs.

[@xevenflux4709]

@@Edymnion By the time WildStar came out, most MMO players cared a lot about raiding and would quit MMO's if the raids were bad, too casual or inaccessible, which is why WildStar failed. Most players couldn't even get their attunements, and a lot of the ones that did were being carried through the 20 man, and even most WildStar raiders didn't even see the 40 man.

[@itrunamok8019]

I loved this game. I followed it for years while it was in development. I got all my friends to play on release and it was an absolute blast. It was kind of the last time I got to play with my group of friends on a regular basis. We all hit max level and eventually realized none of us had the time to be as hardcore as the game wanted us to be. I made several alts but eventually stopped playing about 1.5 years after launch. I will say the first time I played that game it was the closest I felt to the first time launching WoW back in 2005. It was something special spoiled by questionable direction.

[@ntall123]

Poor development is what killed Wildstar. There was almost no end game content. There were 2 raids, and they finally added a 3rd years later in an attempt to revive the game, but guess what they did as well.... catch up mechanics that trivialized and made obsolete the first two raids. The new raid was actually difficult, and because no new players had any reason to go into the previous raids, nor could find a group even if they wanted to, the 3rd raid was just too hard for all those inexperienced players, and the dedicated player base of 60 ppl gatekept so hard there was simply nothing for the new players except for pvp.

[@Getorix]

I never even heard of this game until this video.

[@zzzzzzz8473]

so happy to see the fan project preserving this gem , it would be a tragedy to lose out on exploring this game , the sheer amount of art and development that went into it , for the preservation of art alone it should be law that ncsoft release the code , data , source art to the community freely into public domain .

[@nathanielcarter5269]

Man I miss this game. I was part of beta and bought and played dag one. The really exciting thing for me was watching all the CGI videos they made showcasing lore and characters. They where beautiful and funny. Really hyped me up before the game released.

[@ktnjared]

I miss WildStar. Like, I still think about it off and on, which is how I ended up here. Great video by the way. It's great to see the progress Nexus is making and it's ticking enough boxes for you to enjoy it! I started playing launch day and held on as long as I could, even after the guild I in disbanded. It was a breath of fresh air at the time. It ripped me away from WoW, which nothing else had been able to by that point.

[@999karai]

As one who played Wildstar since launch and raided both 20/40 man and when they downsized 40->20 raid and did almost all the raids and all the dungeons and some pvp i can tell you that you hit all the wrong spots in your video, Wildstar didnt close because the theme was unpopular or some such, it DESERVED to be closed down , The game code makes Riot's spaghetti mess of a client look like a work of art, disconnects were rampant and considered a 'hidden boss mechanic' by most players during raids. And...bugs...soooo many bugs...the 20m initial raid was buggy and even than it was the least buggy raid! the 40m raid was INSANELY BUGGY with bosses that obviously have not been tested at all, mechanics that didnt work at all and some bosses that you could just not beat because they were completely broken (the only boss that somewhat worked was the first one) and the disconnects were even WORSE in 40m (about 8 random people dc'ed every pull at random times - have fun with that). The nail in the coffin was when they tried to go F2P on steam and the severs just imploded...and you LITERALLY had 2 minutes of lag (not even joking). There were other things like trying to cater only to the hardcore players so they made raids and veteran dungeons above the skill level of an average mmo player which drove it even further down and much more... Wildstar failed on its own merits not any of those issues you brought up.

[@Regge5]

I would love for a oppertunity to play this game again:) i played 250+ hours in the beta and one or two months after launch before burning out a bit. Went back when it was free to play again, but the monetization was completly out of the wazoo at that point and i couldn't get myself to cotiniue to play.

[@amiitsu5371]

i used to love wildstar, finished the whole game while min maxing. wake me when its playable thank you

[@gryphter343]

Man I miss this game so much. Everything about it was great. Dungeons were challenging and adventures were unique and had multiple directions you could go through them. This mmo was a gem. The private server is such a labor of love and I am thankful for their work.

[@xingore30]

I love that you referenced the community in this! Hands down my favorite show that I can't stop watching!

[@miroslavzima8856]

This is one of my most favourite MMO of all times (at least it was). Humor, dungeons, story and guild runs. And exploration. Second was Guild Wars series and third very dry WoW.

[@cbreezey3603]

This level of editing made me think you had over a million subs and when I saw you only had 29k I was SHOCKED. Needless to say your content is extremely high quality and I hope your channel continues to grow exponentially my friend! You have EARNED this sub and look forward to watching more of your videos!

[@TheMrMister34]

Nice video! I found it interesting that you can still play this game. If I may add one suggestion for future videos, it would be to lower the audio and audio effects levels a bit, as they clash with your mic levels.

[@IronBrutzler]

Wildstar together with Warhammer online just shows that you have to make Content for everyone. That is the reason Why games like WOW and EvE have survived for so long.

[@dactus3993]

If you're gonna try to compete with the big guns you have to release in a state where you are as good or better. The other games already had the audience and that audience wasn't willing to jump ship to a game that was only "good". The other games were already great and by the time most people went back to check on wildstar it was already a sunken ship. It came and went very quickly.

[@ragnnohab]

The game released with an engine issue that prevented it from running on AMD CPUs, it's more than a little embarrassing when your brand new game isn't playable by nearly 25% of the PC market.

[@fang4223]

Ah, NCsoft... my old enemy. One of the many MMO aggregators with a toxic touch.

[@TammyTwilightRose]

I absolutely loved the graphics in this game. I was also reminded of Ratchet and Clank. I'm also sure charging people a monthly sub to play didn't help either. I honestly would love to get those 14 players who make amazing houses and have them play around with Wildstars housing cause I'm sure they can make some nice crazy stuff!

[@alexanubis1]

I had a dream tonight that the game was back online xD and everybody was soooooo happy

[@metalfyregaming2468]

I was lucky enough to have played the game for a year to a year and a half before it closed down. Seeing as I am a one handed gamer due to a disability, it was quite the challenge to do dungeons. But man, I did love the game and played it until shutdown. I always hoped there would come a private server to play on. I know that the Nexus Project is trying that right now, but I guess I'll wait to play it until most of it's features work correctly. I sure do miss this game.

[@nickisashkir]

Wildstar, we had no story connection to the world. It was riddled with bugs. However, their housing system is by far the best I've seen in any game, even better than Sims.

[@GoogleSpiesTooMuch]

Played the game when it first launched. I earnestly spent time in the forums giving feedback. Ultimately, the devs never listened and the game died as a result. They made a game for the 5-10% of WoW raiders and with little end game content to boot. So once they got bored of waiting, they all went back to WoW. The other 90% of players were ignored so they finally left too.

[@kristianflamsted9038]

It would be so sick if the Wildstar server code somehow got leaked. I know it would've probably happened already if there was a chance of that. I don't know. We'll see how the development for NexusForever goes. Nice vid.

[@everlonggaming1966]

The JSH dead mmo genre is strong here.

[@BarbaraEllison]

I was there for the end of WildStar, it's the MMO that made me warry of all MMOs.

[@everlonggaming1966]

Same fam... same..

[@kreenbopulusmichael7205]

my mouse had broken like a week before the end and I still think about how I wasnt able to be there for the last few hours

[@Brunnen_Gee]

I loved this game so much, I was devastated when they said servers were going down. I had no idea someone was working on a private server for it, I may have to check that out.

[@kayfrenly5460]

You should try Star Sonata. It's not really dead. But it's close enough to being dead that I think it'd be a good fit for your channel. Also, maybe you could bring interest back to it a bit :P

[@scraplette9608]

Ah I miss Wildstar. Hands down the best housing system of any MMO I've played. I also just loved the world they were building lore and setting wise.

[@strakermidwich9679]

The thing that killed WILDSTAR??? The Stun mechanic for dungeons, where all or at least 3 players had to stun the boss/and or Trash mob to take off the shield. If you didn't do it 1 of of the players was pretty much 1 shot. So unless you were all on comms it was nigh on impossible!

[@kaossverige]

Shame that NCSOFT didnt keep this treasure alive. Shame that they are not bringing it back and SHAME for all the haters and crybabies back then🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@coreyschweikert9243]

honestly i loved the concept of wildstar as a game, it had so much potential, both my mum and i were big fans of it cause we loved games like WoW and guildwars so having a game with some similarities to both was right up our alley, i do miss it now cause i sometimes have discussions with my friends about the state of the mmo genre and wildstar often gets brought up, weirdly enough i feel a hint of sadness when i think about it oddly enough. i do feel it closed way to early it just needed idk more?

[@Trollstrolch]

They decided not to learn from errors other made but to make them all themselves. Too many servers, too many merges, renaming and deleting toons, ... Somebody had to kick those devs out of their crystal tower apart from the world way earlier. This combined with the publisher killing / selling Aion before...

[@crazedmonk8u]

I think the main thing was WildStar came out at the wrong time. Now we are starved for good non p2w non korean mmos its a damn drought right now waiting for ashes of creations. iirc correctely their biggest competition was WoW since they focused heavily on raid content, pretty sure there was a marketing campaign spefically targetting WoW. if not the similarities are there in art style and heavy end game/raid focus. and as we all know, all the WoW killers failed, the only thing that killed WoW was WoW itself. and at the time, WoW was still the biggest mmo since most players still liked WoW

[@sawmanUK]

The wow devs had a huge influence on this game but the mgmt pretty much destroyed this title.

[@plasmashade6339]

I agree about the WoW portion. Wildstar was pushed to release before Warlords of Draenor (a subpar and boring expansion imo) by NCSoft. I feel they would have done better if they had waited for the big decline in the WoW player base.

[@NartrachGaming]

The launch had lots of issues too, if it waited after wod launch to fix those issues. And the raiding scene being 40 man was a bad move. Because it required 40 skilled players unlike vanilla wow where it required a few knowledgeable people, not skilled people.

[@DraconasTenZHG]

Wildstar came out when WoW was in Warlords of Draenor. If it came out today, when Blizzard became fucking ass and people started looking for non-WoW MMOs, Wildstar would be much more popular I think.

[@metaphyzxx]

I was thinking about this game yesterday (June 25, 2024). It was EXACTLY the game I wanted to play, during it's beta. It had the feel of Classic WoW, but with modern gaming mechanics. Different styles of play based on how you built your character. And it wasn't faceroll easy. They just built it too late. Everything else was going FTP at the time, and basically, if LoTR couldn't make it with a paid model, why would you think you would...

[@Abdaltu]

Wildstar was so fun and unique, and it was one of the very rare sci-fi MMO. I truly hope Wildstar or something similar will come out one day

[@Mediados]

I could forget all of Wildstar's gameplay, but never could I forget it's art direction and setting. Nexus was such a great planet, and the look put me right back into Ratchet&Clank.

[@phyzix101]

I remember the engine had a lot of issues for people. I can't recall a lot of details, thought I also played from beta to close. A lot of small bad decisions, but there was so much character and innovation there too. It could definitely have become more popular with some TLC.

[@tamiemi]

The comment about "prioritizing gw2" comes as odd to me because I think the problem was not NCSoft but the direction of the developing company and it's culture. NCSoft has cut a lot of potential from GW2 but the main reason the game is successful is because it catters to a more casual audience and its main systems are good enough for players to stick with the game even when there's content droughts, and that's totally on Arenanet. Anet was just better at their worst time.

[@NobushigeAzai]

Another banger? Dude you make some of the BEST content that I've ever seen on mmorpgs! Thank you for delivering on another fantastically edited video!

[@Vash-Venture]

Wow, I completely forgot about Wildstar. I remember being extremely excited to play it and played it for around 5 hours once it launched. I don't really remember why I quit; I think I just wasn't having all that much fun? Didn't know there was a fan project though! Maybe I'll take the plunge and play it again.

[@soundaddiktion2006]

As a big fan of the game from launch till end, I have to say the fomo blended with cash shop felt predatory at times. Like the only way to get this stone door for your housing was in a fomo event and if you didnt have the time you had to pay money and even then it was RNG if you got that or something else and items for housing are like used, so if you get two of that housing item you can only use two in your houses across all your characters. I also feel like if they made it so you could add more stuff like speed boosters to housing you could have seen people make minigames in housing. For example I had a place that I was designing for races, and the only way I could make variable outcomes for speed was by using the physics system and having jumps along the way. Because the physics were kinda crazy and so if you jumped whilst hitting a ramp it would propel you much further than if you were on flat ground. This in its self was super fun. But yeah. Honestly hoverboards + this game's physics + housing were the best things in this game.

[@Lithrux]

I remember playing it when I was younger. I pre orderd it at game stop and didnt really understand how the game worked but I loved every second of it

[@nickfarace9339]

More needed to be said about the housing. Like, if they released the housing system in this as a standalone game, and let you travel to other houses, it would sell. It was that good. You didn't just set preset things down in a couple places and call it a day. You didn't just make a building, chose what lamps were on the wall, the color of the doors, etc. Nah, you freaking got craploads of objects to use, you got to put them LITERALY ANYWHERE. You got to resize them, turn them in all xyz directions, flip t hem over, anything. No rules, you wanted your tree to clip halfway through the floor upside down? Yeah you can do that. You want a wall that goes up to the heavens and splits your plot? Sure thing. And most of these had full collision, which brings up the biggest aspect of it. The skatepark thing you mentioned? Yeah Wildstar had this cool thing no other MMO ever tried. Momentum. Or at least, it faked momentum at worst. You fly up a hill on a hoverboard and then jump? You jump HIGHER. Going up and down hills affected things. This combined with that full no rules housing customization led people to make legit racecourses for these things. And even back when I played it in its first few months before having to quit (because literally everyone in my launch guild over 100 players strong had quit, I was completely alone) there was KILLER housing plots made for racing and general obstacle courses. It was unbelievable. No other housing system in an MMO game was even 10% of what this was. I know some of the people who worked on Wildstar ended up back on the WoW team. Dunno if any of them had anything to do with the housing, but I pray they did. Because this housing system NEEDS to come back. The rest of wildstar was solid and will be missed, but its an actual high level crime this housing is gone forever.

[@Silidons91]

Okay, this game was pretty freaking awesome when it launched. I grinded hard and was one of the first to max level on my server, and as someone who always grinds hard to make loads of in-game money, I did just that. I would literally harvest all day. Why did I quit? I couldn't get any material - bots would teleport all over the map and instantly spawn on top of nodes and jack it from you. I literally recorded loads of footage of this going on, with the same bots day and day out, and sent it to the Wildstar Team (as well as reporting the players everyday). Guess what happened? Nothing, they never banned anyone. I ended up literally quitting over that because I *literally* could not get any nodes from teleporting farmers in high-end zones.

[@magicth]

Man this brings me back. I was there at launch and loved it. Fell out of it for a while as I moved for college aaaaand… yeah. Gone when I got back.

[@ShadowXZ0271]

I missed this game everyday. This game helped me through a tough part of my life and brought me some joy Hoping one day I can play it again

[@DieBlaueRatte]

Back in the day I went with Guild Wars 2 because it wasn't subscription based. When I finally tried Wildstar, I instantly fell in love with it. Sadly they shut it down soon after.

[@DualStupidity]

I remember me and my friends trying it out while we were big into WoW. We really didn't play more than an hour or two before going right back to our dailies or whatever it was that kept us locked in that mmo.

[@akkidarkness4824]

I wish I'd played it more when it was around. I was a Founder and played the betas and into launch. Interest to actively played died as the direction started to waver, and though I came back a few more times before the end, it was never the same. The focus on hard-core was very real and the players they were seeking to attract just went back to WoW anyways, as they always do. Regardless, I still miss it sorely. Best housing in a game I've ever played around with. Loved the music and art aesthetic, there is definitely a massive void still left in its wake in the digital sphere. I have a hard time putting into words what I mean, but the sort of Rachet and Clank/Jak and Daxter sort of art style, type of humor, and awesome music. There is a distinct lack of that out in the world, and Wildstar was the MMO with that vibe. I will 1000% play Wildstar if it ever returns (officially or no). I don't consider GW2 even in the same tier (one isn't better than the other to me) and while I adore GW2 and still play it to this day, I want Wildstar back. If there has ever been a game I have truly lamented the loss of, it was this one. It didn't deserve the fate NCSoft gave it.

[@Charperatl]

Loved this game, played from Beta till server closure. My brother used to make custom homes for people in game. Man I miss this one.

[@christianpater590]

I did really like the game and its setting! Was really something else to play, with great humor. I think at least one nail to the coffin was, that a lot of people claiming themselves to be "hardcore" were ... not soooo hardcore in the end. I remember trying one of the first dungeons, and we already had a hard time getting past the first trash mobs, and we all had played a few MMOs before. You really had to put a lot of work into that. And if you have to work for a game, fun time gets quickly less and less.

[@Drunkencrono]

Nice video, I've been meaning to check out the private servers. I loved WildStar to bits and was really sad to see it go, but not surprised. I know a lot of people in the comments have already said it was too hardcore focused, but honestly that wasn't even the main issue. The main issue is that it was unfinished, because it spent a lot of time in the oven and NCSoft basically demanded they kick it out of the door. It was buggy as hell, and ran like dogwater. The bugs at launch made it nearly unplayable there was a quest you couldn't finish that was along the Exile's early critical path... The optimization was so bad it ran like hell on most PCs. And they were committed to monthly content updates at the start, which while necessary, just introduced more bugs. I think the action combat is an interesting point, because it WAS tab target. However someone created a mouselook mod that let you bind click/rightclick to skills and it played so much better that eventually it became the standard. But that was way down the line, and it didn't play nearly as fluidly as a tab target game since it wanted you to aim everything. It also needed much more tutorializing than it had at launch.

[@theblaisemcbaine]

I am constantly reminded of this game. It was so so good.

[@GeorgeSithspawn007]

This game actually had a shot at being on the top, it was amazing, too bad it got taken down, I'd love to play it again one day, maybe someone could revive it in a new fresh way

[@Shiirow]

it didnt die, it was put out of its misery by the company because the dev team didnt fully understand what they were doing until it was too late to change it and was subsequently taken behind the shed to be given the Old Yeller treatment.

[@666silencioso]

Absolutely loved the whole custom housing plot idea. Would spend days creating massive structures, mazes, hidden pathways you name it! It was amazing being able to visit other players plots and seeing the masterpieces they created, especially during halloween for the trick or treat buckets 😊. If it ever made a come back Id 100% drop WoW and rock a spellslinger again.

[@Paelmoon]

Only thing I recall about WildStar was logging in, making a character, my eyeballs melting in the main town from all the colours, then logging out and uninstalling. Edit. I'm also pretty sure that guild wars 2's latest xpac, which includes housing, yoinked wildstars housing systems to some degree - they are both ncsoft properties.

[@kellymurphy1098]

I remember Wildstar. A lot of my acquaintances were always talking about it, but the devs were pitching it so hard at the "hardcore" demographic, that I passed on it, even though it looked adorable and the cute little avatars would normally have drawn me in.

[@RicoRaynn]

One of the few titles I actually miss on a regular basis.

[@StarfieldWX-tb42]

I like story and the journey, not end game... so honestly I think I'm going to check this out. Why not? I don't care about combat as long as it isn't turn-based. Everything about this game looks super cool. *pokes buttons to find links*

[@wolfgangromine8341]

This is the first video ive watched about Wildstar and it looks pretty cool. the housing system alone is enough to make me want to play it.

[@TalithShotgun]

Gods do I miss this wonderful game.... I was "lucky" enough to play for a few months before it shut down. And I had no issues with it personally. I'd absolutely love to see it get back on its feet again.

[@EndurroShow]

Anyone else feel like if it were released today that it would still be around?

[@EhrenG]

I remember the Wildstar hype around the time when the game was being promoted. There was a whole slew of "WoW killers" that got released in the early to mid 2010s (Wildstar, The Secret World, Star Wars the Old Republic, Elder Scrolls Online, Et cetera Et cetera). I wasn't interested in Wildstar at the time because: I was already invested in another MMO (World of Warcraft) and I'm not really into the Sci Fi space setting for games in general.

[@H41030v3rki110ny0u]

Rift!! Lol, such a mediocre game

[@skarghan3027]

I would play for sure if there was official servers relaunch!

[@LucidAbstract]

This game was awesome. I preordered and played until the servers went down. The combat was fun and smooth. The housing was incredible. I had guildies that built a huge hover board park that was so much fun. The pvp was fun but was one of the first things to start to fail due to population que times were an hour+. The raids were good and the content could actually be hard at times which was so refreshing after I had quit wow cause how dumb down it become. The scifi and goofy sense of humor was such a great change of pace from all the other mmo on the market. The game started as a buy and sub to play model at launch which was successful at first but the game seemed like it rushed the launch cause there was a lot of bugs and imo that's what cause the bleeding of population so when the game went free to play it was too late cause reviews had already bombed the public view of the game. Didn't very long after that. I would love for wildstar to come back. I play guild wars 2 and all the time I see stuff on the game that I recognize and be like "hey the took that from wildstar" like some fights and mechanics or even the telegraphed combat. Wildstar was one the best.

[@Psoewish]

I loved this game a lot and actually played until the day the servers shut down. The only aspect of the game I didn't really get along with was the endgame, because the raids were just not that good. But as a whole, I really miss this game.

[@arostwocents]

I remember this looking quite good but then I only heard bad things