Carbine Studios has some bad news for fans of its sci-fi MMO WildStar who were hoping for some seasonal treats - the developer has had to cancel planned Christmas and Halloween events.
Content designer Kristen DeMeza took to the game’s forums to explain the lack of seasonal content, and why cancelling ‘Winterfest’ and ‘Shade’s Eve’ ”isn’t as crazy as it sounds”.
”Now, holidays are great,” she admits, ”but they’re not as important as making sure the live game is working well. We took the time we needed to fix things players were already experiencing – all of the departments – and that meant that the schedule changed to account for it. But Halloween and Christmas weren’t interested in our bug fixes and didn’t change their schedules for us.”
“With limited-time events,” DeMeza continues, ”it’s even more imperative that your content work and work well, because if there’s a show-stopping bug that happens, every hour you spend fixing it is an hour players miss of that content for the year.”
While it was initially fairly well received critically and commercially, it’s not been the smoothest launch for WildStar; the game moved over to a smaller batch of ‘megaservers’ last month, and fans have voiced their displeasure at buggy content drops. It’s a wish to avoid the latter issue that’s lead to Carbine scrapping their winter plans.
“Winterfest wasn’t in the same state Shade’s Eve was when we stopped,” says DeMeza. ”It was a rough li’l bit of content at the time. Fun, but rough. Even if we started the train back up now, finishing some part of it, testing it, and getting it out by Christmas would be a tough prospect with everything else cooking. We’d much rather deliver something that’s full-featured, fun, and high quality.”
Teething issues aren’t exactly uncommon in the MMO genre, and WildStar’s definitely had its fair share. Concentrating on perfecting and polishing its content rather than shoving it out in an incomplete state is a smart move from Carbine, but disappointment from players cruelly denied reindeer mounts and festive eggnog is understandable.
