Unfortunate Wildstar News -- Robotom signing off

A couple days ago it was announced that Wildstar would be shutting down and sadly that Carbine Studios would be shutting down as well. I went and took a look at Carbine's About Us page and was immediately heart broken knowing that these fine people had lost their job.

I don't have any insight as to what happened other than the obvious . . . the game no longer became profitable. That's when a game shuts down. I'm sure there were all kinds of things that happened along the way that led to this, and from the mutterings I've heard around my gaming circles was that it just wasn't a unique enough game from World of Warcraft. Of course when I logged on this morning to pay my tributes, it was all the talk.

LOL Princess Sponge with the random feature request causing the game to fail.

I've written enough about Wildstar that I have it at least tagged here on my blog. In fact, this link will get you to all three times (now four) I've ever penned a word or two about Wildstar. If you follow that link, you'll also find that I Twitch streamed it a couple times. (Come to think of it, it might have been one of the first games I ever streamed.)

Here's a few thoughts on the game that seem to be rolling around in my head still about the game:

Housing -- The first thing I remembered from my time playing Wildstar the one thing that REALLY caught my attention more than anything else was the housing system. It was simply amazing. In fact I remember thinking, oh crap, don't let the Wizard101 players see this housing system because they'll want everything . . . ALL the things in this system. I'm telling you, it's one of the best I've ever seen.

Combat -- The telegraph markers on the ground for combat were really fun and also kind of frustrating. The game kept you moving around like you were in an FPS and I remember doing some strange finger acrobatics with the WASD keys on my keyboard because of this.

The blue box was the "telegraph" of where my lightning blast was going

Promotion -- There were some strange things about Wildstar's promotion.  I remember watching a livestream at the time of Wildstar's launch, and it seemed like everybody in the world was really into Wildstar at the moment. Kinda fun. The really weird thing was that they had a couple guys just hanging out in Times Square that they'd cut to every once in a while. It was really baffling.  Like why did they need to do that?  Did those two guys just happen to be in New York and they thought, OH, LET'S TIE THIS IN SOMEHOW! Or did they actually ship a couple people out to New York to stand in times square.  So strange.

The one really cool promotion that brought me into the game was a sale on the box price of the game as they transitioned into free to play.  If you went to Gamestop and bought the boxed copy of the game for a discounted $10, you got like a mount or something. It was like a going out of business sale without going out of business. I'm all about that.

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At the end of the day, my highest level character was 25, which I believe is half-way to the level cap. I feel like I missed out on a lot, but I also saw a good chunk of the game and had a great time while I was there. 

This morning I removed the UI, logged on a few characters and roamed around the world just taking in the coolness of it all.  Here's a few screenshots memories for you from this morning.

What a stunningly beautiful, unique, and fun world they had built over there at Carbine.  I found a lonely little island in a desolate place of the world near my favorite Robot Engineer character Robotom Digilover. 

I figured this would make a great logging off point for him.  I will forever imagine my dude spending the rest of his days playing with his pet robot on this little island, waiting for the war to finally stop.

Thanks for the memories, Carbine, and for making a great game. Robotom Digilover raises a glass of oil to you and salutes.

Happy Dueling!