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Wildstar Megaservers
The big announcement by Carbine on Tuesday was: server merges megaservers!
In the near future, we will be implementing Megaservers for WildStar.
Going the Megaserver route means that we vastly increase server capacity allowing for greater critical mass of our player base, resulting in more people, more groups, more activity and more raids… more of everything that makes WildStar so fun. The Megaservers and their increased player capacity will give fans more options to group up and enjoy WildStar with friends and other players for a long time to come.
Of course, when they say “more people,” they really mean “putting the few people who are left all in the same box.”
Perhaps that is a bit uncharitable, considering I have no metrics to point to in regards to the health of the game. All that I know is that I haven’t played since June despite having paid for July’s subscription cost via in-game money. My interest really waned around the mid-30s when I discovered DPSing on the Medic was borderline masochism whereas other classes breezed (and continue to breeze) through. Then there were all the trips at the end of July/beginning of August, then the guildies that came over on Day 1 unsubscribed, and it turns out I never set up a recurring payment anyhow.
But back to Wildstar, I do believe this is another indication that servers, in general, are an anachronism of a bygone age. And good riddance – I have been calling for their removal since 2011. Every thing that people traditionally enjoy about servers (getting to know people, server pride, etc) are all actually symptomatic of artificial social barriers. Yes, megaservers mean that player interactions tend towards the LFD default of asocial behavior, but is that price worth paying when you intentionally divide and hinder real-world relationships? Amongst my gaming group, two of the six people who bought Wildstar ended up on a specific PvP server. I rallied the others to a RP-PvE server, because A) I can’t be bothered with PvP servers anymore, and B) I knew some bloggers were going to be on it.
Maybe we would have all quit playing anyway, but it nevertheless feels like a pretty stupid problem to have in 2014.
Along with the general megaserver news, Carbine also hid a few other interesting changes. For example, the FAQ mentions the introductions of last names:
What happens if two characters from different realms have the same name?
Along with the Megaservers, we will introduce character last names. Each characters will have a unique name comprised of a first name (this is your existing character name) and a last name separated by a space. In the character select screen, you will have to choose a last name before entering the game. You will be limited to a total 30 characters including the space.
I am still pretty sure that Guild Wars 2 has the best naming system in any MMO I have played, insofar as it simply allows you to use spaces. Don’t want a last name? Don’t make one. Or make a goofy phrase name. Or not. Unfortunately for Wildstar players, it certainly appears as though you will need to enter something in the last name field whether or not you wanted one.
By the way:
Although we’re far enough in the process to begin talking about it, we are still some ways away from the Megaservers going live. One of the things we’re doing to make the wait easier is that as of this post going live, we have put free realm transfers in the game for all players.
I am not entirely sure whether this will mean that you can realm transfer from PvE to PvP or vice versa (I am pretty sure there was a restriction at some point), but it is worth noting.
Also of note: you will be able to roll both Dominion and Exile characters on the same server.
So there it is. Megaservers. I sort of dislike the “3-monther” pejorative, but Wildstar has been out… for three months this week.
Unsubscribing, Take Two
I may have reached the end of my second run of WoW.
As was the case last time, there was no clear death knell, no final straw, no slap in the proverbial face. Forensic evidence would probably suggest that my decline in activity can be traced back to the 5.2 announcement. At that point, I stopped bothering with LFR, knowing that I could endure the same long queues for 20+ better ilevel gear in a few weeks. I was also pretty much geared in all 483s anyway, much to the chagrin of my less fortunate guild survivors.
5.2 reinvigorated several things for me, including reaching some of the reputation milestones on alts that I would have dismissed out of hand as ridiculous previously. There were some underlying truths about myself I started to realize however:
- A healthy variety of dailies is 100% meaningless. Blizzard seems to think that 15 dailies out of a pool of 90 is somehow more palatable than the same 15 over and over. But… dailies are dailies. Unless a certain daily quest is particularly odious, such as having to kill a hard elite solo (the Pyrestar Demolisher), all daily quests blur together into a gray slurry of virtual obligation.
- Between the lack of interesting Black Market Auction House wares (which has admittedly improved in 5.2) and the BoP-crafting material economy, it is difficult to maintain interest in even lucrative AH shenanigans. As I continued canceling and re-listing cut gems and other goods day in and day out, I asked myself what exactly I imagine myself doing with this almost 400k gold. Buy something… but buy what? The lack of 476+ BoE weapons particularly was annoying. Yes, I could run LFR a bunch of times or even Honor farm, but all this gold was supposed to save me time, at least theoretically. If time = money, then money = time, does it not?
- I continued playing long after I no longer experienced any fun because of the possibility that things might change in the future. Which is quite a bizarre feat of circular reasoning, if you think about it. I have 76 pieces of Imperial Silk, for example, because if I suddenly developed a resurgence in interest, my future self would have more fun with all these accumulated mats (which you cannot really get any other way). It reminded me of how I behaved in my Middle School history course: the teacher handed out a week’s worth of worksheets on Monday, and I always completed them that very evening so I could slack off the rest of the week.
- The Legendary quest backfired big time, at least for me. By the time 5.2 came out, I had 2 Sigils of Power and 14 Sigils of Wisdom. With an average ilevel of 491, I was faced with the prospect of slogging through half a dozen or more DPS queues for the starter LFR raids, getting 476 vendor trash… if I was lucky! And then what? 6000 Valor? The questline might not have been “required” for anything I was doing, but it certainly felt more in-your-face “you are falling behind” than I ever felt before about, say, a raid-only reputation or heroic valor gear, by the very virtue of its accessibility.
- Once I got over the initial trepidation of skipping a day’s worth of cooldowns and AH re-listings, it actually became more difficult to convince myself to log back on at all. I had already “lost a day” that I would never get back. So… why bother? I skipped logging in one Saturday, and suddenly half the week is gone with nary a fuck given.
As with the last time I unsubscribed, I do not begrudge Blizzard and crew anything in particular. Well, maybe for the shit-hole of a no-pop server that they continue to allow to exist, to the detriment of all the lost souls trapped in Auchindoun-US’s hellish purgatory. But beyond that, most everything else I see as an improvement over prior design. Heroic scenarios sound like a great feature, and would have been custom-made for the 2-3 of my friends that actually managed to log on these past few weeks. Similarly, I am/was looking forward to being able to choose which spec to gear up in LFR, regardless of current role.
But… well. I could quite literally be playing any one of a hundred other videogames right now; games already purchased and with no subscription fee. More than the money though, I am looking forward to having the mental space back. It’s… liberating, in a way that cannot be described to someone whom has not had that same sort of mental real estate spoken for and suddenly vacated.
In An Age 