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It looks like WildStar, Guild Wars and City of Heroes publisher, NCSoft, is running in to some trouble and as a result, the company, along with several developers have been hit with layoffs. Guild Wars developer, Arenanet, is unaffected whereas WildStar developer, Carbine, has had to let go around 60 people, cutting the team down by quite a bit.
This number comes from a source speaking with Polygon. However, an official post on the WildStar forum mentions “several colleagues” being affected and Studio Creative Director, Chad Moore, mentions “WildStar teammates who were affected today”.
NCSoft's official response goes as follows:
“Today we announced a restructuring of key operations within NC West. As a result of this restructuring, we are implementing staff reductions across our Western operations with the exclusion of ArenaNet. While decisions like this are always hard, they are necessary as we begin the implementation of a new strategy designed to strengthen our footing as a leader in global entertainment.”
“Moving forward, we will continue to focus on our core development capabilities and the intellectual properties (WildStar, Aion, Lineage, and Guild Wars franchises) that have made NCSOFT what it is today. However, we are looking to move into new business segments like mobile and tablet games as well as explore emerging technologies.”
“Again, the decision to reduce staff was not an easy one, and we sincerely wish everyone well in their next endeavors.”
These lay-offs come shortly after Carbine had to cancel Halloween and Christmas themed WildStar content, suggesting that there are deeper issues involved, rather than just NCSoft “restructuring”. WildStar also went through a server merge of sorts, suggesting that many early game buyers since left, leaving some servers rather empty.
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KitGuru Says: WildStar actually looked pretty fun and I liked the art style. However, much like Elder Scrolls Online, the player base has been dwindling since launch, which raises the question, are subscription MMOs dead? Has World of Warcraft officially conquered the market? What do you guys think? Also, let us know which MMOs you guys play, I could do with a few suggestions myself.
FFXI and FFXIV are the only other 2 MMO’s that have been able to maintain a submodel. It’s sad to because F2P ends up costing you more in the long run to get the same playing experience.
I really wanted to play this game, but I cannot afford a monthly Sub. Same reason I never played WoW.
get a good guild that will help you with credd. In other words you can exchange in game currency for game time 🙂
really though I think I could do with restrictions, but I just want the game to live 🙁 having lots of fun in it and I really wouldn’t know what to switch to if it closed 🙁
When development houses produce a new MMO the usually do a pretty great job from the launch, through to the latter levels of XP and growth, then they struggle. While they have strategies, players have their own and when they become bored they leave.
What the developers need to do within the first month of release if grab a group of players from the hardcore to the casual and create feedback groups who say what they want and expect from the game, to continue, they can then feedback to the overall community, create their own feedback loops etc.
This way the developers can develop to what the gamer’s want, rather than what the developers think they need.
Not every game or gamer wants a Halloween theme or Christmas theme, nor are they necessarily relevant to the lore.
Getting the player base involved early, and not through forum suggestions is the only way to grow. Cater for your paying playerbase directly and converse with them.
Managing to captivate players to an MMO for long periods of time is hard and unrelated to whether or not the MMO in question is pay monthly or not. Guild Wars 2 is for me THE best MMORPG I have ever played. They even continue to release enormous packages of content for free but ever since a year after launch (more like 7-8 months), the number of players became really insignificant compared to what it was before. The game just feels dead for me now, still, it had its moments and 300+ hours of my time which I consider satisfactory for an RPG. (especially since I only played 200 hours of Skyrim).
If you don’t already have content updates and expansion plans in development at launch you’re already doomed to failure.
When WoW launched it could get away with it’s grindy feel and spotty late game because what was really competing against it? Everquest was getting old, Everquest II was rejected for not being Everquest, and FFXI was way more hardcore and grindy so most couldn’t reach its amazing late game. WoW had the time to build up and by the time everyone was getting ready for Wraith of the Lich King WoW had found it’s formula and developed enough content to keep players going.
Launching in MMO today is a 100x more difficult because you’re never going to launch one with anywhere near the same amount of content as WoW has after 10 years. Everyone is rushing to play catchup the instant their game hits the market. Soon as they fail to keep up with player demand for new content they start losing people. Then they go Free 2 Play just so they can start raking in as much money as possible while enough people are still willing to play.
Thing is Subscriptions afford companies a budget for support and development. You can fairly accurately predict your subscription numbers on a monthly basis and that helps determine revenue. When you go Free 2 Play you lose the ability to predict revenue as it will spike and dip from day to day. Companies will drastically cut back on support and scale back development under a Free 2 Play model because of this.
That’s why when Blizzard releases a WoW expansion it always feel a lot bigger and gets a lot more hype around it than say the Expansions for Star Wars: The Old Republic. It’s because they are bigger and they did have more money put into them. They probably had a staff 2 to 3 times bigger working on it. Sad to say but WoW dying out would likely be the best thing that could ever happen to the MMO genre right now, but it might take another 10 years as Blizzard cancelled their plans on a new MMO.
dead? with china in the business guild wars 2 is booming like no one…i never saw so many people playing, at least in my server, and i have almost 2 years of gaming. and im only talking low level areas which are the places i do mostly. so it means that we have new fresh players around.
Im having fun and i dont even do pvp or www yet.
with the halloween events we are having a lot of fun.
I can agree, they made some pretty big changes to the game these few months, some which i am not ok, but still it’s like you say, it’s the best mmorpg around. and i doubt it changes soon.
ah maybe it’s like that now but I can assure you that three months ago, when I tried to start playing it again, there was one person per low level area and no one in Lion’s Arch
play guild wars 2.
Guild Wars 2 had a pretty decent amount of content at launch and has had huge free game changing updates to the game ever since then.
wat? Exaplin what you mean by that, are you praising FF XI and XIV?
It was also designed from the start to have no subscription system. It’s not really Free 2 Play though since it does require a game purchase. They are getting revenue from those sales on top of their Microtransactions. They’ve done a great job of keeping that game interesting. They did a great job with Guild Wars 1.
It’s a lot harder to come out as a subscription based game and then go Free 2 Play. It’s like a Zebra trying to change it’s stripes. You can paint over them but you’re still a Zebra.
i believe you. but now it seems to go well. At least on my server.
Any game is “dead” if you decide to play it alone. Gw2 is anything but.
Wildstar lost players due to a series of bad design choices. Most specifically.. the attunement process which was a brick wall for every casual (and most hardcore) gamers. No one wants to grind out the same content for hours/days on end trying to get a perfect “timed run” which is necessary to raid. Top that off with 40 man raiding and you get a game that no one can play. They eventually dropped timed runs, but it was too late. PVP was also a mess and never really got on its feet.
Too bad for Carbine as the game they made was actually fun and challenging, but bad design choices combined with a mountain of bugs caused the game to be a chore more than anything.