Previous web designer on World of Warcraft and executive producer on WildStar (and now Nexon OC general manager) Jon Jelinek recently sat down for an hour-and-a-half interview with The Listening Game show to share his experiences on the various projects.
Jelinek was the man who was right there at the launch of vanilla World of Warcraft (and stayed up through Cataclysm, where he did art for the starting areas of the Goblins and Worgen). At that time, he got an offer for a better position on WildStar (which he starts talking about at the 16:30 mark). One interesting insight is that Jelinek said that there were at least two different versions of the WildStar IP before he even arrived there, as Carbine had rebooted the project twice before landing on the WildStar that we know at seven years into the studio’s lifespan.
For fans of the game, it might be heartbreaking to hear of the ultimate failure of Carbine’s tardy switch over to free-to-play. “Your first week, you gain a massive amount of revenue, and then it falls right off. Boom,” Jelinek said. “We saw a meteoric rise and then it fell — lower. It’s absolutely crushing.”
Looking for some inside scoop on the rise and the fall of WildStar? Treat yourself to the full video below!
