For me, another MMO bites the dust. The waning interest left me wondering if I was past leveling characters in the genre. Then I considered that GW2 wasn’t all that long ago. I leveled 2 characters to max and enjoyed every minute of it. I also stayed very active in GW2 for several months after. Nope, this was merely a waning interest in leveling in WildStar.
What Happened
There is something about the world design that made it feel chopped up and artificially segmented. It kept reminding me, I was in a game. The only thing I can liken it to is Star Trek Online and Age of Conan. I mentioned before that the humor was engaging but at the same time, I wondered if it was leading to the disconnect I had with my character. The game doesn’t take itself too seriously so by association, I wasn’t taking the character seriously either?
The zones felt a bit empty when I was out leveling, something that even cute content couldn’t overcome. It felt like leveling in vanilla WOW after the first few expansions – crickets. After I completed phase one of my property, I was less and less motivated to log into the game and since there’s a subscription, I was forced to decide. Like Final Fantasy XIV, there was enough I enjoyed, that barring a subscription, I might mess around with it occasionally. However, I couldn’t see myself playing enough to warrant a monthly fee.
Woot, I Built a Day Spa
Photo Album
I became accustomed to the crafting mini-game even when it was annoying and was able to build out my property nicely. I built a day spa alongside my home that consists of a two story spa and clubhouse and a separate building as a sauna. I was planning to host RP events. However, the population wasn’t large enough to support much from what I saw. Any event that I attended, never had more than a half dozen players show up. The social features for locating houses to visit was very limited, bordering on BAD – random list of houses show up. Too many RP houses on the RP server? Lack of features for quickly locating them? No way to promote or share your favorite locations? Who knows, perhaps all of the above but these are issues already solved by EQ2.
I did see some truly amazing custom homes. Mindboggling in the amount of effort and creativity. I always felt bad that very few people probably even knew about them or would ever see them. I was glad that I did. *Smile*
What's Next
My departure from WS is unfortunate. I liked my class. I enjoyed the combat. The quests felt varied and less stale than many recent MMOs. I thought it was funny and it had player housing. And still, there was enough of something else missing. For a combination of reasons, WS didn’t feel like a world to me, the chief reason I play MMOs. My unsubscribing isn’t an indictment of the game. It's a good game and does several things well. It simply didn’t hold my attention or suit my preferences enough to keep leveling through it. I have a lot of things going on in my life (don’t we all) and as a result, I’m more particular than in years past.
Because of GW2, I know that I can still find magic in a new MMO. It may take time before lightening strikes again. I'm still looking foward living out my version of Firefly in StarCitizen. My son purchased alpha access to ArcheAge and this past weekend I played around on his account. I was intrigued enough that I also ponied up for an account and will be blogging about that as I go along.
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