WildStar Going F2P In August, According To Carbine Employee
As reported by MMORPG.com, a Redditor claiming to be a Carbine employee -- a claim apparently backed up by the mods of the WildStar subreddit -- has posted several details about WildStar's future and the generally grim atmosphere around the office.
According to "God_of_EDM," WildStar will be going to a "Hybrid Free to Play model in August," or somewhere thereabouts. Of course, it won't be pay to win, though there will be microtransactions for things like buffs and XP gain bonuses. The game will also apparently be coming to Steam, as the Steam database has been updated with a WildStar entry and God_of_EDM confirms that Valve visited the Carbine offices in January.
As for the attitude around the Carbine offices themselves... according to God_of_EDM, "It's not great." Employees are leaving left and right, there's been no studio head since Jeremy Gaffney left, and
"There is no transparency and everyone is always fearful of what will even be here 2 months from now. The place is ran very poorly by people who have the biggest egos that fight over everything."
Here's an odd thing, though... while we're all jumping on the "OMG shadow leak!" bandwagon, the fact that God_of_EDM concludes his reveal with a friendly
"What are your thoughts on the model? I personally like it and am excited as I can't see how this wouldn't bring players back and new players in."
makes him sound less like a rogue agent and more like a community-focused employee of Carbine asking for honest feedback. In other words, I'm not sure this isn't a planned action by someone at Carbine, especially knowing as they do the current public perception of the game and the realization that sticking their heads in the sand and denying everything won't get them far.
And, as short as any employee's tenure might be at Carbine, why risk it -- not to mention future employment with another gaming company -- by posting this information? The discussion about the management at Carbine might fly in the face of that theory, but if this is a Carbine-approved action, it's a whole new sneaky level of community involvement.
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Jason Winter is a veteran gaming journalist, he brings a wide range of experience to MMOBomb, including two years with Beckett Media where he served as the editor of the leading gaming magazine Massive Online Gamer. He has also written professionally for several gaming websites.
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Why doesn't this surprise me? It seems that every studio made up of a bunch of people who leave Blizzard thinking they can do it better like they used to do it in the past ends up this way. It's like they think because they worked on the 800 pound gorilla in the early days that some how they know everything and their shit doesn't stink.
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If it does go F2P in august and it's on par with the likes of Aion in the level of F2P that is offered then i will jump in and give it a go.
The best way is to simply wait until NCsoft themselves come forward and say that the game is either going free to play or buy to play.
In short; if you aren't the developer, don't make the claim it will never happen. You will only look like an arsehole later down the road.
They made the game to be "old school" but yet it didn't feel old school like Vanilla WoW at all, except all the frustrating stuff. Like getting keyed for end game, gg. The success of Carbine and Wildstar is just an end result of bad management and conception. All this is just my take on the game mind you, but obviously the HUGE amount of subs and revenue that it's been raking in has obviously proven me wrong. :)
I'm also afraid how they would do free to play - most games that don't start with that model are usually pretty terrible for free players (see SW:TOR, HoN's early F2P).