WildStar is still on the way to Steam, you’ll be happy to hear, at least if you’ve been following NCsoft’s latest quarterly financials. Carbine’s dev blog today confirms the plan and explains that the Steam launch will necessitate some other changes, including a tweak to the business model in the form of what it’s calling “Protobucks.”
“Instead of purchasing NCoin from the In-Game Store (or upcoming Steam overlay) you’ll now purchase Protobucks, and any In-Game Store items you previously purchased with NCoin will be purchased with the new Protobucks instead. And that’s pretty much it! There’s a new name and new look, but Protobucks otherwise work exactly like NCoin did. This change will occur with maintenance on May 18, and after that time you’ll be able to purchase Protobucks directly in-game, or change any NCoin you already have to Protobucks through a conversion system found on the WildStar In-Game Store.”
Converting NCoin to Protobucks will occur at a rate of 1 to 1, and no changes to cash-shop costs are anticipated, but Carbine is granting bonus ‘bucks to previous buyers and following the F2P trend of offering still more bonus ‘bucks to those who buy in bulk. You can still use NCoin for other NCsoft games, but you can’t switch back once it’s done:
“Be aware that converting NCoin to Protobucks is one-way! Protobucks are WildStar-only, and Protobucks cannot be purchased and converted to NCoin, or used in any other NCSOFT game. And if you choose to convert your NCoin to Protobucks you cannot convert them back. If you like you can keep them separate and have your NCoin for other NCSOFT games, and just purchase Protobucks directly for use in WildStar—you certainly have the option to maintain balances of both. It’s also worth noting that this conversion process may at some point in the future go away, and after that point you’d need to purchase Protobucks directly instead of converting from NCoin. We’ll give plenty of heads up before that happens.”
