Whoever mentioned the housing..you are spot on! By far the best in the industry..i dont think another mmo comes close to the level of customization wildstar has.

Hell aside from going f2p if they would release the housing as a separate thing,with a separate cash shop for items non mmo players everywhere would jump on it.

hell...you could even make it mobile..if I could mess with my wild star housing from my tablet on the go...it would be amazing.

Dear Franbunny and Lethality,

Just announced that Wildstar is going Free-to-Play. http://massivelyop.com/2015/05/13/rumor-wildstar-is-coming-to-steam-and-might-be-going-f2p/

Sincerely, Peregrine Falcon.

P.S. Aaaah haa haa ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

@Peregrine_Falcon That's not announced you nutcase.

@Lethality I'm a nutcase? What part of "A confirmed Carbine employee announced that Wildstar IS going free-to-play" do you NOT GET?

I got banned...  Then unbanned https://twitter.com/JLIHPodcast/status/598629351370829824

Well,swtor went from a dud to the 4th biggest mmo on the planet. It made like 240million last year. So if wildstar makes the switch it could possibly do quite well. Just pulling from example you have DDO,lotto,swtor that all went gang busters after they went f2p.

If/When Wildstar goes F2P it's going to get a lot lot lot lot lot more people playing the game.  I and a group of my friends abandoned the game in the second or third month when it became evident that high level and endgame content was designed to be excessively difficult- not like, in a fun way, just frustratingly difficult- and I hope a F2P relaunch includes either reworking content to include lower difficulty options for more casual players like myself or at least adjusting the solo leveling experience to be a bit less difficult.

Love the world, love the lore, love the art, love the housing, love the combat, love the dungeons, not in love with the game basically telling me "screw you and your money, go play something else cupcake" when I wanted to just keep doing dungeons with friends and leveling on my own.  So close to a great game.

http://www.reddit.com/r/WildStar/comments/35v0js/meta_lets_get_this_subreddit_to_a_better_place/

Now the mod has been unmodded.

Not sure how I feel about it. My knee-jerk thought is it's an overreaction to an overreaction. I mean, like Fran's "rule", it has the best of intentions.

/shrug

@rabidwargamer good riddance. That only brought negativity as people, including me, thought Carbine was trying to sweep the F2P/B2P talk under the rugs. 

@rabidwargamer Was coming here one last time to post about this.

Well, the new mod seems to want to do more than just unmod Fran. It seems they want to improve the sub in general.

Meanwhile Fran seems to have deleted her Reddit account? THAT seems a bit of an overreaction unless she was getting slammed with some serious harassment...which to be fair, this IS Reddit we're talking about so that's entirely a possibility.

@AdeptusEnginus @rabidwargamer I didn't delete my account.

The moderator that came up and removed me was one that 1. does not play the game, 2. was inactive in moderating the sub and didn't do anything either.
I deleted the posts associated that I had put up as a moderator because they were no longer relevant.
Due to these posts and events I was infact being harassed and downvote brigaded.
People were threatening to stalk me and spam the subreddit as well.
I reported these people to the reddit administration and had most of them dealt with, however now the moderator has gone and unbanned the people threatening and harassing me.
I'm now being used as a scapegoat, and this inactive moderator simply because he could, is taking over the subreddit, getting new moderators,

I was planning on appointing two new moderators this morning, both of which were very active members of the game, reddit, and well regarded in the community.
My once good intentions backfired, and now a moderator that has been completely inactive in the game and subreddit decided to sweep in and take the opportunity to throw me under the bus as a scapegoat to make up for their complete absence and disregard for the subreddit.

@FranBunnyFFXII @AdeptusEnginus @rabidwargamer I see. If your side of the story is true, then you have my sympathies. I may wildly disagree with your actions but I recognize that your intentions were good and being thrown under the bus is never fun and rarely appropriate, and internet harassment is never acceptable yet unfortunately always seems to be the end result.

At least for now it seems the best course of action would be to consign these last two days to history and move on. The sub's good or poor future, at the very least, will not be on your hands. :P

Also, enjoy your time with The Final Frontier, they're a good batch of people. Say hello to Teluna for me!

@AdeptusEnginus @FranBunnyFFXII @rabidwargamer http://www.reddit.com/r/WildStar/comments/35v0js/meta_lets_get_this_subreddit_to_a_better_place/cr89l5x

Aera the previous primary mod explained it.

And pretty much whenever I post anything in the subreddit people are mass downvoting it.
So all the responsibility for the subs negativity and lawlta's inactivity, ect is all being pinned on me, and I'm being used as a scapegoat.

@FranBunnyFFXII @AdeptusEnginus @rabidwargamer i would feel bad for you if you didnt cause this whole uproar good intentions or not you brought trollls to that subreddit in full force of course they would scapegoat you most of the reddit hated you. i would have done the same thing

Eh, kudos for a graceful apology, anyway.

just silly. but at the same time, I can imagine how it must be getting old over there, as a topic.

This quarterly reports is abysmal. 2.5 million for.

-box sales during this period.

-subscriptions during this period.

-in game store and credd sales during this period.

You can guesstimate the subs from this....what do you think? Maybe 40k subs? 50k? Is that enough for their business model? I doubt it.

Justin found a gold mine hehe.

Suddenly I feel a lot better about AoC's revenue...

Topic has been unbanned btw.

welp. According to the quarterly report..Uh..wildstar made about..2 million dollars..total.

So uh..yeah. Free to play is pretty much the only option left.

@Midgetsnowman  Stopping development/sunset or shutting it down are always options.  F2P conversions are not free to implement and at a certain revenue are not worthwhile.  But especially with a Wildstar in China opportunity, I think they will quite likely try f2p/b2p first.

@SallyBowls1 @Midgetsnowman Shutdown is definitely a probability, since it's NcSoft. the title doesn't even have to not be profitable for them to do that.

@SallyBowls1 @Midgetsnowman right, I agree, I meant more f2p is the only way forward that doesnt involve the game shuttering.

With all this news lately of reddit basically selling out totally to gaming companies, why is anyone still using it? It's corporate trash now, RIP reddit.

@_Ariel_ This isn't just a Reddit thing, people get crazy about all kinds of consumer goods. Car brands, sugary carbonated drinks, boy bands, sports teams... and video games too. Fanatics gonna fanatic.

Seriously though

Banning trouble makers > banning contentious topics

This is what happens when someone takes their position a little too serious. More mod-control-freaks.

@NobleNerd It's just a draconian decision. Wide sweeping, blanket decision because policing the individuals is too hard.

Another self-righteous mod bucking for a paying job with the company they're slurping up to.

And people wonder why I don't automatically side with devs and mods when they ban "troublemakers."

((Deleted by mod. Completely uncalled for. No personal attacks on our commenters.))

@Damonvile @Peregrine_Falcon He will probably tell about how friendly the Wildstar community is in another post. 

(Midget is right. I'm feeding the trolls. Deleted by mod. Just stop, Lethality.)

@Lethality My "contribution" is a comment. Which is what the comments section is for.

@Lethality @Peregrine_Falcon And the contribution to the community of a rude as hell special snowflake who is never ever wrong and constantly belittles everyone who fails to meet up to his standards is what exactly? How much is he contributing by going into full tantrum meltdown now that he's been proven wrong yet again?

Well, besides the copious amounts of schadenfreude. Its fun to have, but I don't think every community needs it.

@Peregrine_Falcon @Lethality Don't take it personal. He's just developing a mod portfolio to apply to wildstars reddit.

@breetoplay @Lethality Dont even try to engage him bree. Lethality has been the number one cheerleader white knight for wildstar since the day the forums for it went live. Even back when people were initially voicing concerns about the game's design at launch, his standard response was divebombing into the thread and goioing "THE GAME WASNT MADE FOR YOU NOOBLARS, IT WAS MADE FOR TRUE HARDCORE MMO PLAYERS, GTFO" well. Not in as many caps but that was his argument every single time up until we all started leaving. then he started into claiming there were no significant losses in population except of the bads. Now he's claiming we dont know what their revenue targets are.

He's so far up the dev's asses he cant see straight.

and he's seriously not helping the devs by doing it.

@necropsie @Damonvile @Peregrine_Falcon It was pretty friendly. Its just lethality has never been the friendly part of the community. He's the angry old racist uncle nobody acknowledges.

@Midgetsnowman @necropsie @Damonvile I was just looking at his posting history. All he does is defend Wildstar in MOP's comments section. It's almost like it's his job or something...

@Peregrine_Falcon @Midgetsnowman @necropsie @Damonvile His posts on the wildstar forum are functionally identical in tone, too

From Reddit...

NCsoft published the earnings report for 1Q 15. The feelings/impressions of an increased or even stabilized population in Wildstar were wrong. The sales crashed again.

• sales 2.6 bln kr Won after 5.5 in 4Q 14

• sales figure: http://i.imgur.com/Bkv05M6.jpg[1] 

• whole report: http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/earnings.aspx#none[2]

The drops 3 and 4 had no positive influence so far. The illusion of a higher population was mainly caused by the new trial version.

Wait Wildstar pulled in 2.4 million in Q1 alone?

@AdeptusEnginus @BobDobalina NCSoft is charging the cancellation cannon.

@Fantastico @AdeptusEnginus @BobDobalina I'm guessing they opt to business model switch first. It'd be ludicrous of them not to at least try, especially since the game has so many internal systems ripe for a cash shop.

@Bannex19 Yeah, but that's actually a pretty disappointing sum for a game as ambitious as this one. It is also nowhere near enough to keep the lights on given that Carbine's payroll alone is probably about ten million annually (200 employees at an average salary of $50k, which is fairly standard in the gaming industry).

@AdeptusEnginus @BobDobalina CoH in Q2 2012, right before the shutdown announcement quarter, was 2.855 million won.

http://evilasahobby.com/2012/09/01/city-of-heroes-villains-an-end-of-the-world-event/

@BobDobalina Yeah, not great news for Wildstar fans (roughly 2.4 million USD for Q1 of 2015). Lots of guys on the official forums saying "I give up: I'd rather see F2P than Wildstar's cancellation."

However, on a more positive note, Wildstar is still beating the projections of KDB Daewoo Securities (http://massivelyop.com/2015/03/16/investment-firm-sees-a-dark-future-for-wildstar-bright-hopes-for-guild-wars-2/ ). Not their projected downward trend for the game: it's just making more money than they estimated. But that's kind of like being called the skinniest kid at fat camp.

@BobDobalina It's fine... you have no context of their revenue targets, ad the population is growing. 

@Lethality @BobDobalina

@BobDobalina God... that is just depressing. Can someone remind me what CoH's tally was when it was stuttered? I remember it was more than WS's in Q4 2014, which was sort of the first sign of how bad things were.

I expected it to be bad...but not THIS bad.

@AdeptusEnginus @BobDobalina If I remember correctly, City of Heroes was making about $20 million USD when it was shuttered. It was actually running at a profit though: Paragon Studio was not however and profits weren't covering development of a new project they were working on). Additionally, CoH was nearly ten years old, already had gone F2P, and was axed as much for not fitting into NC's portfolio as it was for diminishing profits.

Just saying, Wildstar is much more likely to undergo a business model transition before getting the axe.

@BobDobalina Just to try to bring something positive, Guild Wars 2 did better than I had expected after Q4 and with zero new content for the past couple months. I was seriously expecting something in the teens. Get hype for Heart of Thorns!

And Blade 'n Soul's continued growth has to mean good things for bringing it Stateside, right? Right?

@Lethality @BobDobalina because its totally fine that their revenue is so far below even the next most profitable game of theres that theyd need 4 wildstars to catch up

@sray155 @Bannex19 I doubt Wildstar even had a fraction of the development costs of most of its recent competitors had (SWTOR, ESO, GW2).  In terms of investment vs returns it probably isn't doing too badly.

@Lethality 

SWG was in a far better position than Wildstar is now.  Nobody on the business side was happy with that though.  So really what matters is if the people at the top are happy with that.

@dorn2 @Lethality SWG shut down for license reasons. 

Protip: businesses do not so quickly flush investments north of $100m down the toilet. ;)

@Lethality @dorn2

Profitp: acting like a smug know it all who insists nothing is wrong when the game is in obvious severe dire straits does not help the game, it just makes you look like a smug asshole who is trying to shut down conversation

@sray155 @Radfist @Bannex19 Actually, Wildstar was in development for 9 years. Which might have had something to do with it getting shoved out the door.

"Release SOMETHING, ANYTHING... Just make the bleeding stop!"

@Lethality http://www.reddit.com/r/WildStar/comments/35vm11/wildstar_coming_to_steam/ I'll just leave this here for you. 

@bauhau5 @Lethality And this is just for you. https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8018-TAJK-6238

@BobDobalina Madda can't find it.

@Radfist @sray155 @Bannex19 Wildstar was in development for about 4 years: payroll alone makes 40 million during that time; and that doesn't take into account the number of part time contractors who worked on the game and are no longer there (roughly 200 employees is the present size of Carbine, at least 60 that we know of were let go shortly after launch). 

Plus hardware costs (setting up a brand new studio is not cheap). 

Plus marketing (fully rendered teaser trailers ain't cheap). 

Plus rent (Silicon Valley = mega rent). Plus licensing (Microsoft Direct 3D + who knows what else). 

Plus legal. 

Plus servers. 

Plus bandwidth. 

Plus... plus.. plus... the costs just keep piling up. Building and maintaining an MMORPG is expensive.

A modern triple-A MMORPG costs 80 to 100 million USD, which is a fair estimate of what Wildstar cost to develop. Wildstar had a total revenue of about $50 million last year: that's boxed sales and subscriptions combined. For any MMORPG, box sales stagnate after 6 months, so that's pretty much done as a source of significant revenue. 

That just leaves subscriptions, which even if they doubled in the next three months would leave Wildstar generating half as much revenue as NCSoft realistically wants it to be making (they're realistically wanting to be making at least 30-35 million USD per year on the game based on the probable investment cost).

So there's just no way that Wildstar is in healthy shape right now from a financial perspective.

@Lethality @BobDobalina  Although this has been said already, I feel that I need to repeat this, although slightly differently, just for you.