Carbine Releases Details on the State of Wildstar and Upcoming Changes
It’s no secret that things have been a bit rocky of late for Carbine Studios. While Wildstar had, in my opinion, a pretty successful launch, the months following brought rushed post-release content which in turn led to some dissatisfaction among players regarding the end-game content as well as Carbine’s perceived attitude of who Wildstar was geared towards. It culminated in Carbine president Jeremy Gaffney stepping down from his leader role to a consultant. Just last week, though, many of the curtains have been pulled back as Carbine attempts to pull everything back together and make changes to Wildstar.
The planned monthly content drops have been abandoned, and have instead been put on a more realistic time track, to ensure that the content is complete and player-ready. So the Mystery of Genesis Prime content, originally slotted for September, is now being rolled in with the update that was planned for come after it (Journey to OMNI-Core-1). Together they will be called Update 3, which Carbine hopes to get out in November.
The update, which is still in the works, has changes and fixes that apparently clock in at over 100 pages. Some significant changes, based on player feedback, include being able to skip the tutorial, a rune system update that will include unlocking and rerolling rune slots, and changes to the ELO matching in PVP. There will also be cross-class combat balancing taking place as well as ability revisions, and client optimization.
Update 3 is supposed to be a game-changing update, and Carbine is so serious about it that they’ve announced that there will unfortunately be no Halloween or Winter Holiday events this year. Despite the fact that months of time had already been devoted to these events, Carbine feels that all their time should be spent on this overdue update and improvement to the existing game. While I’m sure many players are disappointed with this announcement, I can’t help but support the reasoning behind it. Time will tell just how much Update 3 changes Wildstar. I, for one, am hoping it will be a success because I’d love to have a reason to jump back into the game again.
So that about rounds it up for this month. What MMOs are you guys playing? Any thoughts about Dark Age of Camelot, SWTOR, or Wildstar? As always, let us know in the comments.