What Guild Wars 2 can learn from the death of Wildstar

[Algreg.3629]

Wildstar failed for a number of reasons, the often cited "hardcore" is really an oversimplification. Just a few points:

• Devs did not really understand "hardcore". They took things that were annoying in MMORPG of the past and used them, things which are not "hardcore", but just atrocious, just like that annoying raid attunement stuff.
• Even if you want to do a "hardcore" game, it certainly is not wise to actively antagonize parts of the overall playerbase. Do a hardcore thing, but don't overstress that stuff in communications. And certainly not in an antagonizing way.
• The game felt unbelievably cluncky at launch, no idea if they ever fixed that.
• Pseudo-action combat. Just like GW2, Wildstar had a weird hybrid approach to that, still relying on stats too much instead. Tera has a way more true and intuitive action-combat (but sadly, the game suffers from unbearable otakuism - but I am sure GW2 will get there eventually =) )
• PVP equipment: While I like free open world pvp (not implying every game needs it or should have it), the idea of having to switch gear for pve/pvp is really arcane to me. Not talking about things like berserker vs soldier, but either/or. If you cannot use one set of stats/gear for pvp/pve, especially in maps where you will encounter both kinds of challenges, back to the drawing board with you.
• entering the market with a pure subscription based model in today's environment was, say, bold, if you don't have the buzz of the gaming superstars.
• housing absolutely rocked in Wildstar btw.

[Randulf.7614]

@JohnRiddle.8196 said:

@"IndigoSundown.5419" said:What can ANet learn from the closure of Wildstar?

Games that don't make enough money hurt NCSoft's bottom line and go away.

Why did Wildstar not make enough money? There were several reasons.

• The game was primarily marketed to
  and designed for
  an MMO gaming niche (raiding) that is already being catered to by other games that did it better. The same thing has happened to GW2 with respect to sPvP as an eSport. There are too many games that do PvP better than GW2. Fortunately, ANet already avoided the mistake of marketing primarily to the dedicated PvP crowd. Dedicated PvP was one of several demographics that GW2 was aimed at.
• In addition to designing mostly for the raiding niche, Wildstar misread the willingness of that group to grind preparatory to actually raiding. A lot of players who wanted to raid did not want to "get ready to have fun." ANet has done a much better job with that aspect of GW2.
• Carbine did not really provide much content for anyone at endgame outside of raiders and PvP. MMO audiences as a rule tend to like games that they
  can
  devote a lot of time to. Anyone who did not want to raid had almost nothing to do. GW2 did not make the mistake of putting all or most of its eggs in a single basket, so to speak. There might well be a cautionary tale in this aspect of Carbine's failure to make money. Based on the last NCSoft quarterly report, GW2 still looks like it's drawing enough revenue to be making a positive contribution to the NCSoft P&L tables. However, it remains to be seen whether Living World only content will continue to keep
  enough
  players playing the game with nothing else to look towards.

Finally someone gets it!

So in summary, gw2 has nothing to learn from wildstar or its closure since it is and always has been doing things better. which is what we have been saying