Oh, No! It's Really Frustrating to Carbine to WildStar
As many of you have heard by now, today NCSoft took to restructuring their Western studios and Carbine got hit in a big way. It’s rumoured that the number let go is in excess of 60 people out of their dev studio of a few hundred. The truth in the numbers I do not know of but I have personally seen a handful of devs say goodbye on Twitter and it sucks in a big way. Many of these devs have chatted, helped and supported WildStar Core from the very beginning. Most of all though, every single one of them helped to make the game that I adore and it’s awful that this has to happen.
I do know however a move like this is not unusual in the MMO industry and is perhaps not really that unexpected for WildStar in particular, however that doesn’t make it any better. These are all great hard working people who have lost their jobs, so to those of you happy this is happening for whatever reason, please just shut up and get some empathy.
To all of those who have had to go
I just wanted to say something to anyone who lost their job today, I wanted to show my appreciation to what they did over their time at Carbine. WildStar is something to be proud of, no matter what anyone says there is a fantastic game there set in an incredible world. I have enjoyed playing WildStar more than many MMOs in recent years, that is my opinion but a true one. It sucks to be saying goodbye to such awesome people and makes for a bad day so let me thank you all for your support over the last 1 1/2 years! The WildStar community is by far the best I have been involved in and the only community I have ever seen devs so involved in themselves. That may sound normal but it’s not, the community team is usually the only port of call for the community of a game. In WildStar’s case however the devs appeared in force on social media to share and comment on my content along with many others content throughout the community. I am very humbled to have interacted with devs from all areas of the company and truly sad to see them go. I wish you all the best in the future and I am sure you will make some awesome games that I will want to play. It is just a sad day all round.
No WildStar is not being killed off
So today doesn’t look good for the game and of course there is no way to twist this into being a good thing either. What I will say is that this does not mean the end of WildStar, sadly almost every MMO studio goes through a cut like this at some point in their cycle. May I remind you ESO did so, SWTOR did too along with a long long list of others. It’s bad timing certainly, before drop 3-4 hits and while the community was finally starting to come around a bit more positively. Do bear in mind however that drop 3-4 or even the one touted for January will be pretty much done at this point, today is not going to affect anything in the immediate future in a huge way. However what does it mean for the future of the game, we cannot know at this point, I can say with confidence that WildStar is not being killed off by NCSoft, they are doing no different to any other investor in this decision. Remember the last thing they actually want is to kill WildStar off and shut it down, that gains them nothing. Carbine will need to step up to the plate on this and be even more transparent going forward I feel to combat all this negativity but the game in itself is not being canned, please stop.
I look forward and wait with baited breath on what the future holds for WildStar.