Have a nice Wednesday afternoon, or whenever you find yourselves here to inhale the weekly dose of frustration. Today I want to once again deal with WildStar – probably and hopefully for the last time. A little bit of grief processing, just before the actual death. Sounds a bit morbid. But you know what? I don’t care.
Beautiful Memories without a Future
WildStar is like a beloved pet to me, one that quickly grows dear to the heart. While the early days were nice, then came cruel incidents – first the dog loses a leg, later its eyesight, and slowly the realization dawns that prolonging the animal’s suffering is only done by not putting it to sleep.
This is exactly how WildStar feels. When I stare at the big blue “W” icon on my desktop, my heart gets heavy – and that’s more than just a silly cliché to fill this post. I think back to the many wonderful hours in RP with my Aurin-Matria, to the evenings in the tavern, to the legendary “Miss Nexus” election, and to summer festivals.
I think of my first instance visits, where we were mercilessly stomped into the ground by the trash mobs. I think of the many secrets I passionately sought to finally understand the Eldan and Drusera. And I remember how we presented each other the coolest housing projects. WildStar was the last big game that managed to bring my “core friend group” from cyberspace together once again.
And again and again the RP. I miss it. But it will not come back.
What Remains – A Pile of Debris
Today I look at WildStar… and everything is still there. All the houses, all the instances, and all the areas that I loved so much. And yet the soul of the game has long been gone. WildStar without “DevSpeak,” without Stefan Frost, without Tony Rey, and especially without all the players is just an empty shell. A shell from which the future has now been taken by simply laying off 1/3 of all developers.
And even though Chad Moore, whom I adore for the lore of the game, now says that one must “reorganize and then continue to work on the game and produce new content,” these words no longer sound convincing. The game will no longer release in China. Sure, the release on Steam is still pending, but in my eyes that is also just a formality that is probably already enshrined in some contracts.
What is left of this game nearly makes me cry.
Yes, feel free to complain that columns like this only make things worse. That is simply not true, and I believe you actually know that too. I remember WildStar with many moments fondly, but I wish it would finally disappear – into the past. Because the game has no future anymore.
