If developers or publishers secure rights to names, it may indicate an upcoming announcement of a game with that title. A new trademark registration from NCsoft concerns … WildStar.
What is this registration about? It concerns the rights to WildStar and was submitted by NCsoft in recent days – an image on Reddit shows the registration. The reason: the trademark registration initially submitted for the online role-playing game that was discontinued in 2018 has expired last month.
Some fans of WildStar are now hoping: Hey, if they renew the rights to the brand, then they must have something planned for the game or universe! Dylandel asks the community directly in his post: Is WildStar coming back?
- Curious_Baby_3892 responds on Reddit: “I wouldn’t be surprised, as it looks like NCsoft is throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks.”
- therealmrbob writes on Reddit: “Man, I would play WildStar so hard my fingers would burn.”
- For Reddit-user Syphin33 this would be great news: “I would cry, I would jump on it immediately, no joke. I mostly played a healing Spellslinger, one of my favorite classes ever. There was also an Engineer, a ranged companion class. They did a lot of cool stuff with the class system.”
Reign in your hopes
How likely is a comeback? That WildStar has many fans who would wish for a return of the MMORPG is shown, among other things, by the voting on gog.com for the inclusion of the game in the so-called “Preservation Program” or also a petition from 2020 that has been signed by more than 10,000 fans.
That NCsoft is not completely averse to such a revival is shown by City of Heroes. The superhero MMORPG was discontinued in December 2012. In January 2024, the operators of the unofficial private server “Homecoming” surprisingly announced that NCsoft has given them the official approval for this version of City of Heroes.
However, the truth is also that such rights renewals for brands are part of the everyday life of publishers and developers. Often it’s not about specific projects that are already being worked on, but rather just about not losing potentially exciting IPs that have a certain value for the future.
Many players in the Reddit discussion also point this out.
- fistfulofbottlecaps writes on Reddit: “This is not enough to derive anything from. They need to renew the brand to keep their intellectual property. I remember about ten years ago, everyone was flipping out because GM renewed the trademarks for Chevelle and Nomad, and then nothing ever came of it. I’m not saying it won’t happen, I’m just saying that people should temper their expectations. I suppose it at least means they haven’t completely given up on the possibility.”
What do I need to know about WildStar? On November 28, 2018, the servers of the MMORPG from Carbine Studios and NCsoft went offline. Just over 4 years after the release in June 2014. Thus, WildStar belongs to a small group of MMORPGs that many genre fans were greatly looking forward to but then disappointed.
The disappointment includes the fact that WildStar, with its tight raids, whimsical combat system, great housing, and zany humor, was actually too good to end up in the MMO graveyard after just 4 years. The fact that it can pay off to work for years on an online role-playing game to make it progressively better has been proven in the past by Final Fantasy XIV: One of the best MMORPGs of all time had to first destroy itself to save itself
