WildStar Shuts Down

Today is the day that WildStar faces the inevitable end and goes dark.

The news came back in September that WildStar would be shutting down.  The surprise wasn’t so much that it would shut down but that it lasted as long as it did, given how keen NCsoft has been in the past to terminate titles.  Many a City of Heroes fan still laments that the game was making money when it was closed.

Back when the announcement came I wrote a post that summed up the lift of the game, from the idealistic foundation to the harsh realities of the MMO market through to the seemingly inevitable demise. That post includes links out to many others doing the same.

The announcement of a game closing seems to be the point of reflection, the time for shock and acceptance, gloating and regret, nostalgia and dismissal.  By the time the actual closing date comes much of the emotion has run its course.

And so we say good-bye to WildStar today.  It has run its course.  Launched in June of 2014, it ran for nearly four and a half years.  Carbine Studios itself, founded back in 2005 by former Blizzard employees who had worked on World of Warcraft, was shut down back in September.

WildStar to Succumb at Long Last

Back in 2013 it was WildStar and The Elder Scrolls Online who were going to buck the free to play trend as both pledged to make MMORPGs that were able to sustain the monthly subscription model.  The Elder Scrolls Online didn’t want to pollute their game with the necessary evils that come with free to play and WildStar thought they had an out in their PLEX-like CREDD idea.

WildStar went live in June of 2014 while The Elder Scrolls Online was up and running in April of the same year, and before too long it became a coin toss as to which would have to go free to play first.

The Elder Scrolls Online blinked first and announced the end of mandatory subscriptions in January of 2015.  WildStar held out until May of the same year before announcing a free to play option.  Neither made it a full twelve months before they had to conform to the reality of the market.

But, while The Elder Scrolls Online went on to adapt and even thrive, the same could not be said for WildStar.  It got an initial boost, but soon sagged.  Likewise, it jumped on to the Steam bandwagon looking for more players, only to find little help and mixed reviews on that front. In the mean time its low revenue numbers stood out every three months in the NCsoft quarterly reports, until NCsoft stopped listing the game at all in in its reports.

NCsoft Sale by IP – Q2 2017 – No WildStar mentioned

And so the death watch began.  NCsoft, which had built up a reputation for rather brutally shutting down games that were not making the cut, including the beloved City of Heroes, inexplicably let WildStar linger on.

The time has finally come.  A story over at Kotaku indicated that staff were informed at a meeting today that Carbine, the studio founded by former World of Warcraft devs who went on to create WildStar, was closing and the game would be shutting down.  The statement quoted was as follows:

Today, we are closing Carbine Studios and will begin the process of winding WildStar down to ultimately shutter the game,” NCSoft said in a statement. “WildStar players who have spent money within the game will be refunded purchases from July 1, 2018 until the payment system is shut off. We are also in the process of identifying the teams that will be doing the work to bring WildStar to a close. These decisions are very difficult to make and we are in the midst of shifting as many of our teammates as possible into other roles within the organization.

It isn’t clear how long WildStar will remain up and running, but with the staff having been given their notice, it cannot have much time left.  If you want a last look at the game I wouldn’t wait around.  Log in now to get your fill and take your final screen shots.

As of this post the WildStar web site is still up and advertising the game as normal, inviting people to create accounts and come play.  No word of the closure has yet been posted though one of the community team did confirm the story in Kotaku in the forums.

Coverage:

• Massively OP
• Kotaku
• MMO Fallout
• Inventory Full

Friday Bullet Points – Numbers, Pokemon, and Phishing

Another Friday morning when I have a half a dozen almost done posts in my drafts folder, but no real drive to finish any of them.  So time for some bullet points.

Such Super Data

I do enjoy when SuperData Research puts out another blog post with titles ranked by revenue.  They just posted one for June.

SuperData Sez – June 2016

Of course, I enjoy their charts for odd reasons.  They are, in their own way, very effective trolling devices.  I can already predict a SynCaine response to this.

And then there are the questions raised.  What defines an MMO?  What defines a P2P MMO? (SWTOR claims to be F2P, right?) And, finally, how the hell is FarmVille 2 even a thing?  Is Zynga still a thing?

NCsoft Numbers

NCsoft put out their Q2 2016 earlier this week.  You can find them at their investor relations site.  The PDF summary is the usual 10 pages, with everybody’s favorite chart on page 4.

NCsoft revenue by title – Q2 2016

The surprise of the quarter is WildStar, which revived with a more than 40% boost in revenues over Q1’s all time lows.  Of course, WildStar’s revenue number is still pretty small.  GuildWars 2 dropped by more that 6.5 times the WildStar total and still pulled in 7 times as much revenue.

The numbers are in millions of South Korean Won (KRW), which makes the WildStar total about 2 million USD for the quarter.

Meanwhile, it looks like GuildWars 2 is going to be feeling some pressure to release another box and, as always, the 1998 title Lineage rules the revenue roost for NCsoft

(Hat tip to MMO Fallout)

Pokemon Nation Championship Restrictions

The 2016 Pokemon National Championships are being held not too far from where I live… just up in San Francisco… and Nintendo has asked me not to show up.

Pokemon come to Baghdad by the Bay – By Invite Only

Due to the limits of the venue and the popularity of the event, no outsiders or random visitors will be allowed in to view the competition.  So that is that.  Nothing can keep you from going up to SF to hang out, but if you think you’ll be seeing some sort of Pokemon competition, you had best plan on running it yourself.

Also on this front, the whole Championship series is undergoing changes for 2017 as well.

New Eden Phishing and Seabeasts

CCP has an alert out on a phishing scheme going about, with emails pretending to be from support asking players to log into their account via a dubious link.

Know your login pages

So, you know, don’t do the dumb.

On the upside, CCP also announced that the Matigu Seabeast SKIN is now available in the New Eden store for a variety of Caldari hulls.

And that is about it for Friday.  The weekend approaches.

Google Tells Me Nearly All Games are Dead

There is a game you can play with Google… well, there are probably many, but this is one of them… where you enter the name of something, followed by “is” to see what pre-filled search suggestions come up.  These results are driven by what people have searched for previously.

As I was playing this game the other night instead of doing something important, I began to notice a trend in my searches.  It seemed like Google was declaring most everything dead.

Sure, sometimes that was apt.

Abe Vigoda, after being reported dead by mistake on multiple occasions over the years, does indeed now sleep with the fishes, having passed earlier this year.

And sometimes the result wasn’t so spot on:

I’m pretty sure somebody would have mentioned if he was dead… or a mack daddy.

I decided to see if that trend held for video games on my side bar.  First on the list was, of course, EVE Online:

Given that “EVE is dying…” is practically an meme at this point, that wasn’t too surprising.

Likewise, EverQuest, at 17 years of age got a similar result:

At least it wasn’t both “dead” and “dying” I suppose.  Of course, that last item lead me to World of Warcraft:

Three of those aren’t so good, “dead,” “dying,” and “boring.”  Even EVE Online didn’t get “boring” as a top result.  That lead to a series of other titles, all of which at least got dead as a result:

I had a whole run there where “dead” wasn’t just a result, but the top result.  Then I started branching out from MMOs:

I finally hit a game where “dead” wasn’t the top result, though I am not sure that was a good thing:

Even Minecraft got “dead” as a result, though at least it was in fourth position, which was practically an endorsement at this point:

Hey, “awesome” came before “dead!”

Landmark was odd, but I think it suffers from having a generic name:

Still, I think “dead” might be in there just for it.

Then, finally, I hit a game that wasn’t dead:

League of Legends is only “dying,” not “dead.”  Also, it is “gay,” which I think says more about the demographic that is searching for things about it.  Still, it is doing better than Heroes of the Storm:

“Dead,” “dying,” “bad,” and “free!”

Then at last, I hit a search where “dead” wasn’t even a result:

I’m not sure Hearthstone was really winning with that draw.  I mean sure, “dead” wasn’t on the list, but the rest was hardly an endorsement.