A warning for ESO? Another 2014 MMO turning off it's servers next month....

Bam_Bam

rynth wrote: »

Hell even ESO is going on and that game sucked from the start only thing it had was that it was ESO and could use and abuse a solid fan base.

Hehe, couldn't resist sorry. Just for play-play

Imperial_Voice

Wildstar didnt suddenly go bottoms up. Wildstar failed right out the gate and never recovered.

Imperial_Voice

MaxJrFTW wrote: »

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

Why is this a warning for Eso ? Eso has millions of players .

I seriously doubt that, just based on the low viewership both on twitch and youtube. Still ESO has a healthy population, i don't see it going away any time soon.

ESO has a reported 10 million players worldwide. About 90% of whom have 0 reason to worry about Twitch and Youtube.

Bam_Bam

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

[snip]

I'll just explain a little thing. ESO was a great launch, it was playable and stable on Day 1.

[snip] Or weren't here, at least for the PC launch. It was NOT a great launch or stable. It was playable just about but it was absolutely riddled with glitches, exploits and bugs. Surprisingly, lag was almost non-existent. That came later when everything was "fixed".

[edited for baiting & to remove quote]

Sevalaricgirl

First, I was with Wildstar at the beginning. Though it was a good game, their end game was crap, convoluted and a pain to get geared up for raids. It was spouted as the hardcore gamers game and guess what the lesson learned is, there are very few hard core gamers. ESO was never a hard core gamers game.

Sevalaricgirl

MaxJrFTW wrote: »

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

Why is this a warning for Eso ? Eso has millions of players .

I seriously doubt that, just based on the low viewership both on twitch and youtube. Still ESO has a healthy population, i don't see it going away any time soon.

I never watch youtube videos on ESO, why should I. I play it every day. Very few of ESOs players watch those streams/vids. It's ridiculous to think that the amount of viewers has any connection at all to the amount of players.

Imperial_Voice

Bam_Bam wrote: »

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

[snip]

I'll just explain a little thing. ESO was a great launch, it was playable and stable on Day 1.

[snip] Or weren't here, at least for the PC launch. It was NOT a great launch or stable. It was playable just about but it was absolutely riddled with glitches, exploits and bugs. Surprisingly, lag was almost non-existent. That came later when everything was "fixed".

I remember launch and I have to say it wasnt the worst mmo launch Ivr played through, but it was faaaaaaaaar from stable or even balanced.

[edited to remove quote]

rfennell_ESO

Bam_Bam wrote: »

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

[snip]

I'll just explain a little thing. ESO was a great launch, it was playable and stable on Day 1.

[snip] Or weren't here, at least for the PC launch. It was NOT a great launch or stable. It was playable just about but it was absolutely riddled with glitches, exploits and bugs. Surprisingly, lag was almost non-existent. That came later when everything was "fixed".

Maybe there were some issues on the EU side? Because NA server was playable and stable Day1 hour 1.

Were there some bugs and glitches? Sure, that not the same as "absolutely riddled with them".

Compared to WOW that has a week of inability to play the game on launch/content/expansion... it's a step in the right direction. I recall Wildstar being a launch disaster... crashing servers, inability to play the game etc.

The biggest surprise with ESO for me has been how playable and stable it's been on Day1 of every release. ZOS doesn't get nearly the credit they deserve for this, instead they get cries about trees in the forest, and while you do need to be able to focus on the tree and not the forest at times, the forest has been pretty good.

[edited to remove quote]

UrQuan

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

I'll just explain a little thing. ESO was a great launch, it was playable and stable on Day 1. Wow still isn't playable or stable on Day1 of expansion (and patches). If you raided in Wow, you mostly cancelled raids for the first week of a content patch as the game was unstable, the servers would crash and you would be wasting your time. It was mostly the same in most other MMO's... launches and major patches are not ready to play day1. Eso has been ready to play day1, to a degree that's actually quite impressive.

Now I'm not saying bug free or glitch free... Those are things that rarely exist in computer gaming. But ESO vanilla was both playable and stable Day -5 (early access), Day1, Patch1 day1, Every expansion day 1, Every chapter day 1. Some might have forgotten the old problems of other MMO's with instability or servers crashing and/or being down for extended periods during launch/patches/expansions. ESO has been exemplary at this.

Perfection isn't reality. [snip]

It was far from a great launch. It was also far from the worst launch, but it had enough problems that a depressingly high number of players who initially bought it didn't stick around past the initial subscription time that you got with the game purchase. If it was a great launch there would have been a lot more players who stuck around and paid for a subscription (you always lose a portion of the playerbase shortly after launch, but that portion would have been smaller with a great launch).

Speaking for myself personally, launch had a lot of bugs and a lot of issues, but few enough of those were game breaking and I still enjoyed the game enough to stay - I've had a continual subscription since day 1 that has never lapsed, and I've never taken a break from playing to go and play something else for a while as my main game. But an awful lot of the game's initial players thought the launch was bad enough that they either left for an extended period of time, or left for good.

[edited to remove quote]

ZonasArch

Bam_Bam wrote: »

The hype around Wildstar was pretty significant when it was released and I remember a big bunch of various guildies quitting ESO to switch to Wildstar.

But next month, it is shutting down. Hopefully, ESO will scoop up some of the departing players?

But I would encourage ZoS to take note of how fast things can go bottoms up....

https://www.pcgamer.com/wildstar-is-shutting-down-on-november-28-carbine-plans-special-events-to-see-it-off/

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-09-07-wildstar-developer-carbine-studios-is-shutting-down

https://www.wildstar-online.com/en/news/2018-09-26-wildstar-signing-off-november-28/

I mostly only play MMOs, my friends only play MMOs, I only watch MMOs on twitch.... Never heard of this game. [snip] This game was completely irrelevant, I guarantee you.

Adding here that ESO is not without its problems, of course, but saying that the death of an ant is a warning to the elephant? Just... No.

[edited for baiting]

Imperial_Voice

Anyone remember when Wildstar was billed as the "Wow Killer" and everyone claimed games like ESO, SWTOR, and GW2 wouldnt survive a year of having to compete with Wildstar? That really was the level of hype behind that game and then it launched and from day 1 it was an absolute failure of a game with not nearly enough redeemable qualities for it to ever recover. [snip]

[edited for baiting]

aswedishtiger

I would kindly direct any and all skeptics to

https://steamcharts.com/app/306130

Since June 2014 ESO numbers and activity have literally only gone UP

The BDO forums are that way *points*

UrQuan

Imperial_Voice wrote: »

Anyone remember when Wildstar was billed as the "Wow Killer" and everyone claimed games like ESO, SWTOR, and GW2 wouldnt survive a year of having to compete with Wildstar? That really was the level of hype behind that game and then it launched and from day 1 it was an absolute failure of a game with not nearly enough redeemable qualities for it to ever recover. [snip]

There were a lot of threads on the forums back in the day about how as soon as Wildstar launched ESO was going to die.

[edited to remove quote]

rfennell_ESO

Imperial_Voice wrote: »

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

Bam_Bam wrote: »

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

[snip]

I'll just explain a little thing. ESO was a great launch, it was playable and stable on Day 1.

[snip] Or weren't here, at least for the PC launch. It was NOT a great launch or stable. It was playable just about but it was absolutely riddled with glitches, exploits and bugs. Surprisingly, lag was almost non-existent. That came later when everything was "fixed".

Maybe there were some issues on the EU side? Because NA server was playable and stable Day1 hour 1.

Were there some bugs and glitches? Sure, that not the same as "absolutely riddled with them".

Compared to WOW that has a week of inability to play the game on launch/content/expansion... it's a step in the right direction. I recall Wildstar being a launch disaster... crashing servers, inability to play the game etc.

The biggest surprise with ESO for me has been how playable and stable it's been on Day1 of every release. ZOS doesn't get nearly the credit they deserve for this, instead they get cries about trees in the forest, and while you do need to be able to focus on the tree and not the forest at times, the forest has been pretty good.

[snip]

Perhaps your experiences differed [snip]

I'm not talking about the idea of "bug free" "glitch free" or any other nonsense that never happens. Was I able to get online and play the game every day from day -5 onward? Yes, to this day from Prelaunch early access to last night I've been able to get online and play the game. EVERY DAY. I've never been unable to play...

[edited for baiting & to remove quote]

Abigail

"Never heard of Wildstar." The people claiming this were most likely the ones griping loudest about ESO, but are now unwilling to own up to it -- or they're just too young to remember.

Wildstar was hyped endlessly and this game's early forum entries are packed with people claiming it was so much better than ESO.

Imperial_Voice

Abigail wrote: »

"Never heard of Wildstar." The people claiming this were most likely the ones griping loudest about ESO, but are now unwilling to own up to it -- or they're just too young to remember.

Wildstar was hyped endlessly and this game's early forum entries are packed with people claiming it was so much better than ESO.

There was a time when you couldn't go to an MMO forum and not have dozens of people claiming Wildstar was about to out every other MMO out of business

srfrogg23

Imperial_Voice wrote: »

Abigail wrote: »

"Never heard of Wildstar." The people claiming this were most likely the ones griping loudest about ESO, but are now unwilling to own up to it -- or they're just too young to remember.

Wildstar was hyped endlessly and this game's early forum entries are packed with people claiming it was so much better than ESO.

There was a time when you couldn't go to an MMO forum and not have dozens of people claiming Wildstar was about to out every other MMO out of business

Yeah... then those people got to Wildstar's end game and didn't have anything to do but Raid-log until they just quit playing altogether.

Dagoth_Rac

UrQuan wrote: »

But an awful lot of the game's initial players thought the launch was bad enough that they either left for an extended period of time, or left for good.

Most of the many people I know who left did not leave because of stability issues or bugs or game was unplayable. The game worked quite well from day 1. Most people left over design decisions. They did not like the slog of Vet Ranks. They did not like that bulk of endgame was playing other faction quests at artificially ramped up difficulty. They did not like that first content update (Craglorn) required not just groups but groups where everyone was on exact same stage of a long quest line. They did not like that gear cap was increased twice within a few months. They did like not how stingy the gear drops were. They did not like the "on rails" aspect where you were linearly funneled into zones that were at your level, while you would never revisit prior zones, and later zones had mobs that were way above your level. They did not like the lack of daily quests, or really any reason to log in on a regular basis.

In other words, game was mostly working as intended at launched. But most people did not like developers intentions.

It was a bad launch from a design perspective, but not really from a technical perspective.

Jeremy

Bam_Bam wrote: »

The hype around Wildstar was pretty significant when it was released and I remember a big bunch of various guildies quitting ESO to switch to Wildstar.

But next month, it is shutting down. Hopefully, ESO will scoop up some of the departing players?

But I would encourage ZoS to take note of how fast things can go bottoms up....

https://www.pcgamer.com/wildstar-is-shutting-down-on-november-28-carbine-plans-special-events-to-see-it-off/

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-09-07-wildstar-developer-carbine-studios-is-shutting-down

https://www.wildstar-online.com/en/news/2018-09-26-wildstar-signing-off-november-28/

Wildstar was terrible.

ESO is a far superior game and - having tried most of the competition out there - they should be fine.

Jayne_Doe

MaxJrFTW wrote: »

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

Why is this a warning for Eso ? Eso has millions of players .

I seriously doubt that, just based on the low viewership both on twitch and youtube. Still ESO has a healthy population, i don't see it going away any time soon.

I've been playing since PC launch and the only ESO videos I've watched were the 2 recent official twitch streams that awarded the flame pet and 5 crates. Other than the occasional video on the website or a few housing videos linked in the forums that happened to be on YouTube.

It's like assuming all ESO players go to the forums.

UrQuan

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

But an awful lot of the game's initial players thought the launch was bad enough that they either left for an extended period of time, or left for good.

Most of the many people I know who left did not leave because of stability issues or bugs or game was unplayable. The game worked quite well from day 1. Most people left over design decisions. They did not like the slog of Vet Ranks. They did not like that bulk of endgame was playing other faction quests at artificially ramped up difficulty. They did not like that first content update (Craglorn) required not just groups but groups where everyone was on exact same stage of a long quest line. They did not like that gear cap was increased twice within a few months. They did like not how stingy the gear drops were. They did not like the "on rails" aspect where you were linearly funneled into zones that were at your level, while you would never revisit prior zones, and later zones had mobs that were way above your level. They did not like the lack of daily quests, or really any reason to log in on a regular basis.

In other words, game was mostly working as intended at launched. But most people did not like developers intentions.

It was a bad launch from a design perspective, but not really from a technical perspective.

You're talking about people who left later, while I'm talking about the large number people who left without subscribing due to launch issues (ie. the ones who left during the 30 days of game time that you got with game purchase). There were a ton of those, and they didn't stick around long enough to get to vet ranks, long enough for the gear cap to increase (they weren't even close to the gear cap from launch), or long enough for Craglorn to come out. Some of those may have left due to the way the initial zones worked back then, but a large number left because of the number of bugs and issues. Hell, for way too long after launch the main questline was broken and couldn't be completed, and a lot of people left because of that.

Danikat

Imperial_Voice wrote: »

Anyone remember when Wildstar was billed as the "Wow Killer" and everyone claimed games like ESO, SWTOR, and GW2 wouldnt survive a year of having to compete with Wildstar? That really was the level of hype behind that game and then it launched and from day 1 it was an absolute failure of a game with not nearly enough redeemable qualities for it to ever recover. [snip]/quote]

To be fair it seems like every MMO which is released is declared a "WoW killer" by some people, who then seem to post on every MMO forum they can find demanding to know what the developers are going to do to counter the massive rush of players leaving their game which will happen when this new one is released. Which of course never actually happens.

It may have been more drastic with Wildstar because it was marketed specifically to hardcore raiders, who tend to believe they're a much bigger group than they actually are and that they're the players MMOs absolutely want to please and hold onto at all costs because if they could ever find a game which produced content as fast as they burn through it they'd stick with it for years.

Whereas I suspect the players most MMO developers want to hold onto, especially since the rise in cash shops selling cosmetics, are the casual players who will trundle through the content never quite getting around to all the things they want to do so they don't need to find another game to keep them busy, and not worrying too much about bugs or balance changes, but will buy that shiny new thing to use while they're questing.

[edited to remove quote]

Malamar1229

Crap game

Cpt_Teemo

ESO has nothing to do with Wildstar it was its own company

johnbonne

Looking purely at Steam Charts (so take the numbers with a pinch of salt), ESO's doing pretty well for itself. It's all-time peak of players was 29.9k players on Steam alone, which isn't counting those who play exclusively on client and consoles, which must be a fair few. But let's say it's 16k players acc. to Steam Charts this very minute, that's still more than what most MMOs have pulled on Steam. The game's been around for four years too so it's survived the test of time quite well.

I'll echo what others have said though: WildStar was designed as a raider's MMO, trying to appeal to those who wanted consistent high difficulty and was hinged on no small amount of Vanilla WoW nostalgia. It failed to deliver much end-game content, and less still that kept them paying their subscription. The way I view it is that WildStar filled the time until WoW released its next expansion or raid tier, which is not a good advertisement.

I'll be sad to see it go, I don't like developers losing their jobs because they're human beings and I want the best for them, but they failed to deliver a satisfying product to their core audience, and their ideological design shunned those who may have been their salvation. I hope they find their feet under better direction and management.

I don't see ESO in any danger of closing down. I think we'd have to see some more player drops and drastic changes to the subscription service before ZOS decide it's curtains. Unless we're superstitious about the year 2014. Malacath knows I am; tons of games that came out then sucked.

JiKama

I loved Wildstar and still do. It breaks my heart to see it getting closed down. I know a game is doomed to fail when people label it as the "WoW Killer". ESO is in no shape or form in the condition that Wildstar was in. Anywhere I go in ESO the town's are bustling and adventurers are exploring. The last time I logged into Wildstar NO ONE was talking in chat and I saw maybe 20 people in the main city hub. I played the Drakken=BestRace btw Maybe one day Wildstar will be brought back and put in good hands ;(

Arandear

I remember alot of people saying Wildstar would be better than ESO.

Personal opinion - ESO is actually alot better than most think, wish the performance would improve though, get's worse with every patch

AlienatedGoat

MaxJrFTW wrote: »

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

Why is this a warning for Eso ? Eso has millions of players .

I seriously doubt that, just based on the low viewership both on twitch and youtube. Still ESO has a healthy population, i don't see it going away any time soon.

2.5m monthly active users across all platforms. The game is quite healthy, and not going anywhere.

Manami

WildStar's biggest flaw was 40man required content.

No one does 40man anymore.

It had cool ideas and fun races and gameplay.

I'll miss my cute Aurin cowgirl

Danikat

Manami wrote: »

WildStar's biggest flaw was 40man required content.

No one does 40man anymore.

It had cool ideas and fun races and gameplay.

I'll miss my cute Aurin cowgirl

Did it actually require 40 people to complete?

My first reaction when I read your post was to say Guild Wars 2 has a lot of open-world content which needs squads of up to 50 people, but now I'm thinking the key point might be 'required'. The GW2 stuff can be done by 10 people if they all know what they're doing, a full squad just makes it easier. But I got the impression Wildstar was intended to be very, very different from GW2 which was designed to be very casual-friendly.

(Now I'm wondering what the minimum would be for something like Dragon's Stand in GW2. It needs at least 6 people because there's 3 lanes and at one point each land splits into 2 groups, but I'm sure it's far, far less than the 150 maximum.)