Hey, it’s Wednesday! Hey, WildStar is Free2Play! Hey, nothing works! Sometimes my thoughts are very brief and focused, but the great advantage here is that there is another Complaint Wednesday to read. But okay, Cortyn, master your emotions, tell everything in order, and first calm your mind with a great cinematic!
Yesterday at 6 AM, WildStar celebrated its second release and is now called WildStar: Reloaded. Because the game is now Free2Play, many players downloaded it in advance to dive straight into the SciFi MMO at launch. Of course, exactly what always happens during a Free2Play transition of a major AAA title happened: The servers couldn’t handle the rush.
The result was long waiting times at the login servers, along with a very questionable calculation. Supposedly I would have to wait nearly 120 hours before I could enter the game. Strangely, however, after 30 minutes, the first 118 hours had already passed – lucky me! Sometimes just the hope that things won’t be as bad as announced is enough.
As you can see, you see nothing
But I don’t want to blame Carbine solely for the login problems. It’s normal for a massive rush to happen on release day, which then suddenly fades away. It is also more than understandable that you don’t want to get completely new server structures for just one day that will only be 20% utilized in the following weeks.
However: It is really astonishing how little works in the game. While many of my friends (and I too) could overlook certain issues, such as the non-functioning in-game shop (which probably also relates to server load), other bugs were more serious. Friends lists appeared to be deleted, guilds dissolved, chats set up so that whisper messages could not be received (and also there was no other way to be notified about it).
Almost all social functions worked only partially or incorrectly. This made it very difficult to re-engage returning players to the game when you couldn’t even contact them to explain the new features.
Worse than any spam bot
A small extra award goes to the developer who thought it would be a good idea to send all “replacement runes” received from old equipment individually via mail. I surely have about 150 different messages waiting in my mailbox – if I should ever be very bored, I can surely spend an hour just on that.
But yes, I know myself that this may not be justified at the moment. However, since the problems seem to lie not only with the server but also with the patch itself, the unpleasant thought arises that WildStar could be experiencing its second spring right now – with all the pollen and childhood diseases that it brings with it. It just reminds me too much of the first launch. May the coming days prove me wrong. I hope the next few days bring swift changes … because I would really love to report some nice things.
P.S.: At the moment I preview the article, WildStar advertisement appears on the side. Sometimes it takes so little to make me smile.
