WildStar is coming to Steam, according to third-party scraper site SteamDB.info. When and for how much is less clear, given that Carbine and NCsoft likely didn’t want this information in the public eye, at least this early.
SteamDB uses SteamKit to “interface with the Steam network” and gives “more insight into the Steam database” by tracking applications and packages as well as keeping tabs on all changes.
Elsewhere, Redditors are comparing Steam codes for published games with those from the WildStar leak, but thus far there is no definitive business model information to be had.
“As has oft been discussed around here, Wildstar is going to be changing its business model in August (tentatively of course, patch stuff etc) to a Hybridized Free to Play model. Now thankfully it is not going Pay to Win, I suppose you could call it “Freemium” in a way as a lot of the stuff that the paid accounts will get is buffs to experience/rep/renown etc gain and character slots and the like, no direct power buffs or anything like that. MTX (Microtransactions) will be included moving forward as well and you will hear more about that very soon.
Steam release should be by the end of this year or January at the absolute latest. It should definitely be before the China release. The China release is slower because we have to change every asset that has bones or blood or teeth or eyeballs and all of that stuff that they are not fond of. Some whole zones, specifically those with the Strain, have to be overhauled.
Hey there! Steam integration has been coming for a while, Valve was in our office here in Orange County back in January. We are trying to get Wildstar to be THE MMO for Steamboxes, IE, Wildstar will be preinstalled with every system. It should be happening before the China launch that’s for sure. Ok, Content Cycles may be hard to explain/understand but I will try. The PLAN is for content to stay at the quarterly cycles that they are now. We have soft and hard locks for everything. That SHOULD not change however we are losing employees left and right, for example our dungeon and raid team is 4 people, we have 5 class designers, hell even our QA team is about 7 people for Wildstar and a few of those people are leaving as well in a few weeks. We have lost 2 Art Directors in less than 8 months along with several Producers. That being said, we have A LOT of features pitched and planned. It was something like 100+ pitched for 1.4.0. Obviously nowhere near all of them will get in but that is just to show you that there is a lot of content being created, whether it gets proper testing, integration, design, etc is another story.
[Regarding the mood in the studio:]Â It’s not great. From top to bottom we have handfuls of people leaving every week, there was a stretch where we averaged at least 5 people leaving a week for 5 weeks. As you all probably know we’ve had 2 Art Directors leave within 8 months, a handful of Producers have left, we still have no Studio Head to replace Gaffney, hell even our Wildstar specific QA is down to about 7 people and a few of them are leaving in the next couple weeks as well. We’ve had 4 designers from different Feature Teams leave in the past 7 work days as well. There is no transparency and everyone is always fearful of what will even be here 2 months from now. The place is ran very poorly by people who have the biggest egos that fight over everything.
We have not been able to independently verify the source, who as of this morning appears to have been banned from Reddit (again-again) thanks to mods with a grudge, so please heed the giant “rumor” tags. With thanks to The_Grand_Nagus and Dante for the tip.
