The Nexus Telegraph Extra: WildStar's deafening silence

How many people are currently playing WildStar?

I don't know. You don't know, either, beyond vague guesses based on things like Raptr numbers, which say more about what Raptr users like to play than about actual game popularity. But it seems like the sort of answer that could be used to at least deflect a great deal of criticism, doesn't it? If Carbine Studios is sitting on two million players at a reasonable level of activity, that wouldn't shut down all discussion of the game's myriad problems, but it sure as heck would demand some rethinking.

That's precisely what I asked when I, at Carbine's behest, sent the team questions about the health of the game over a week ago. The bad news is that Carbine still hasn't answered my questions, nine days later. But the good news is that in the interim, Carbine was willing to tell another site that WildStar does not have a "player interest" problem, which seems like the sort of waffley question you'd answer if you really didn't want to be specific.

Sometimes, silence speaks volumes. If you ask your boss whether your job is safe from a wave of layoffs and she responds by quoting an email from the company president, the answer is no. If you ask your teenage son what he was looking at on the computer and he hastily closes the tab and responds with a shrug, you can be reasonably certain that he wasn't checking the Weather Channel. And if players ask why they should sub through a dramatic patch slowdown (even though frequent patches were touted as the justification for that subscription model) only to be told, "Well, this is a good game," then reading between the lines to determine that there never was a good answer doesn't take much effort.

I don't need to tell you that WildStar has taken a drubbinglatelyonMassively. The public perception of the game is that it's floundering and desperately trying to right itself while still in the water, a perception that I don't think is inaccurate. When Carbine offered me an interview, I naturally asked about those pressing topics we knew the least about at the time, important issues that had not been addressed to that point... and still have not.

I asked what exactly in the game is meant to entice non-raiders. I asked whether Carbine believes non-raiders are satisfied being progression blocked. I asked about beta and launch feedback in regard to raiding, attunements, and gear drops. I asked what specific content Carbine plans to implement to appeal to soloers, small-group players, and crafters.

Silence.

Carbine was happy to tell other journalists all about its renewed emphasis on not releasing buggy content. That's great. Squashing bugs is always good. But if there's one lesson to be learned from ArcheAge's launch, it's that people will put up with a lot of buggy instability if they're super excited to be playing. "Fewer bugs" has been the repeated chorus for why content is being released more slowly, but does anyone believe bugs are really the biggest problem that the game has right now?

Chad Moore also informed MMORPG.com that WildStar's emphasis was never on making a game purely for the hardcore, which seems directly at odds both with the marketingpushesas the gamecrept closerto launch and with, you know, the actual game itself. You can say your game is meant to appeal to everyone, but if you can't explain why a player who does not fit into the "hardcore" side of things would want to keep playing at that point, guess what, cupcake? That's the game you made.

Not that it's easy for the players who do want to hardcore raid to keep going. Raiding guilds have been posting farewells on the forums and Reddit for weeks, announcements that boil down to, "We could not get the people together to keep doing this." I asked Carbine whether these encounters will ever be made less brutally taxing, but again, we still have no response.

Mike Donatelli has now declared that megaservers were always the plan, but they just couldn't be ready in time for launch (which isn't exactly what Gaffney told us last May). If we take that at face value, that means that the team created server communities, including flags for the roleplaying community, with the intent from launch of destroying all of those communities within less than half a year. Even if that sounds completely plausible to you, it also sounds awful.

Another question I asked recalled the game's big endgame presentation at PAX East before launch. Up on stage, Jeremy Gaffney mentioned that the vast majority of players never group up, and so the team wanted to ensure it had content available for solo players as well. At PAX Prime, meanwhile, the number of people playing the game solo was treated as a surprising figure. Even now in this latest interview, we're seeing the idea that people want to play for short bursts and get something done presented as a novel idea that requires unspecified further development, not something that's been a known fact for many months. My question: What changed? How can you be up on stage saying that most players play solo and then be surprised and still scrambling to meet that need months after launch?

I have gotten no answers.

More than a week ago, Carbine asked me if I had any questions I'd like answered to address the current perception of the game, and that's exactly what I sent. I've received nothing but PR delays about how busy the developers are while those same developers responded in more controllable venues. The fact that my questions have gone so long unanswered says quite a bit. That gentler questions answered elsewhere were still met with damage control spin and vagueness says even more. Carbine is sticking to its script, managing its image instead of truly addressing core problems, and for MMO gamers and industry watchers, that's deeply troubling.

If you're still certain that things are fine, that there are no problems, that everything is completely on the level, tell me this: How many people are currently playing WildStar? Because I asked that too, and I don't expect an answer... which is an answer all by itself.

Here's how it is: The world of Nexus can be a dangerous place for a tourist or a resident. If you're going to venture into WildStar, you want to be prepared. That's why Eliot Lefebvre brings you a shiny new installment of The Nexus Telegraph every other Monday, giving you a good idea of what to expect from both the people and the environment. Keep your eyes peeled, and we'll get you where you need to go.