I'm Jeremy Gaffney, Executive Producer for WildStar, the MMO with hardcore raiding, battle fortresses, and psychotic hamsters. AMA!

Are we going to see a "Sell Junk" button when vendoring stuff?

I hope so, I want it.

Edit: Yep. In the interim, /u/Notturno below suggests JunkIt. (Go go moddable UI)

Monday edit: Also, /u/nervez suggests SpaceStash which has auto-repair and auto sell junk as well (though buyer beware, I've seen the occasional thread that folks using auto-repair mods end up burning more gp than the average since you can often find better stuff in the midlevels before having to repair your stuff. YMMV)

Do you know if the launch client will have addressed a lot of the performance issues some people are currently having?

I pinged this on the stream a bit, but here's the scoop:

In the hopper right now are SLI and Crossfire support (driver support will help this too) - should be in a hotfix soon (I think some support went in earlier this week). From the lead programmer:

"For those of you with SLI and Crossfire graphics cards. The code changes have been made to support these cards are done and are being tested internally. Those of you with these cards should see a substantial improvement in frame rate."

(JG: substantial is his word, not mine :) But being able to use both cards will help a lot; I run a dual titan setup which runs just fine at the moment but I'm looking forward to this upgrade too)

Other stuff from him (this will likely go up on the forums soon in some fashion, maybe edited further, so if it changes before it goes up, that's why):

"We’re also optimizing our new UI. The new UI (UI 2.0) is much better looking than the previous version, but there are significant opportunities for performance improvements that we’re pursuing. In particular, the raid frame and nameplate add-ons are being improved. There were also major changes to chat log, target frame, and the health shield bar.

We continue to increase CPU performance by moving more and more code off onto separate threads. We’ve also been making improvements to PVP and Raid content - areas with lots of players casting spells.

We’re also looking at specific areas in the game which have degraded performance. Sometimes these are due to bad collision objects, bad geometry, or the occasional content bug. We’re eliminating these as fast as we can find and diagnose them.

Our optimization efforts will also not stop with launch. There are a number of changes we’re planning on making which have the potential for major improvements but that can’t be done in the launch timeframe.

In the meantime, there are a number of graphics settings which can be used to coax better performance out of the game. We’re planning on adding the Render Target Scale back in to the graphics options, but until we do, you can set the variable in your ini file by adding the line

lod.renderTargetScale=0.5

to your user.ini file in Users[User Name]\AppData\Roaming\NCSOFT\Wildstar. "

So, yes, there are things going in for launch - we don't promise perfection per se, but hopefully the worst offenders will see some improvements, and there is more in the hopper (some rearchitecturing for instance that will let us split thread support even more efficiently) for post-launch as well.

-jg

[deleted]

I haven't heard AMD being particularly worse than intel, I'll check into it tho.

[deleted]

np. Just talked with the lead programmer and he says they haven't seen a noticeable difference per se on AMD vs. intel, FYI.

This is how you do an AMA. Someone asks a technical question- this guy goes to the person who can answer, gets the answer and follows up. Props to you for getting shit done!

As an ex-lead programmer, I used to be the clued tech guy :/

Every year I don't program, I lose about 10 IQ points; I should be qualified to run for Congress soon.

Hey all! Welcome to ze AMA.

As someone who has left the MMO scene for quite some time now, do you think WildStar could pull me back in? (ex WoW player)

Our #1 market is probably ex-MMO players, truth be told. That's many of us as well :)

Edit: I added a list of stuff we IMO do very well to the intro post above since this question came up a lot.

couldn't upvote this particular post enough.

half my guild(myself included) got dragged kicking and screaming into testing winter beta after at least 1^1/2 years of no mmo's each.

we're all still playing :)

Heh, y'all rock - glad you're having fun.

I've heard a lot of reports that open beta is driving people away due to performance issues and lackluster early levels (both of which are absolutely true). Essentially, open beta players haven't been given the chance to see what the game really has to offer because Carbine has put its worst foot forward if you will.

How is Carbine planning to handle this? I'm worried that this situation is going to hurt the game a lot since a healthy player base is such an important factor for MMOs.

I've heard some of the threads on early levels (I hit performance elsewhere) - here is my personal take on this:

a) The tutorials work well (we've focus tested the heck out of them) for folks new to MMOs, but if you've played an MMO, they are too slow paced. b) The more skilled of the player you are, the more you want things to go "off the rails" and have more abilties/etc. in combat sooner - and more difficulty. You often hear quoted "the game kicks in at level 15" (or 20).

So our answers: Just recently we added in more powerful monsters across all levels/areas. This means that a kill quest gets more interesting - kill one huge creature, or slews of easy ones? It's your choice. We're looking to let folks opt out of the arkship levels. Not sure when that will hit, but it'll help for those who are like "yeah yeah I know".

We also look at the data for when folks drop out - believe it or not (I know everyone feels like their experience is that of everyone) there isn't a HUGE amount of data support; we have really high retention levels through 10, 15, and 20. But there are some hot spots where drop rates go up (and we work on fixing those places).

Another thing we can do better: communicate all the ways you can play. If you don't like the 6-20 experience, PVP is a great option (but we don't really highlight this in the UI) Etc. etc. Some lowbie dungeons might help the hardcore too (but aren't really in the hopper per se unless we move some items around - feedback welcome).

A level 10/15 dungeon would be ace. When i hit my first shiphand mission it was awesome so doubling up on that might be good

I actually agree. Dungeons take a lot of work, but another early one would IMO take some of the pressure off of is-it-too-easy-or-too hard open-world-content by providing an outlet for the more hardcore folks.

How about just moving the first shiphand to a lower level? It makes a great impression. It was definitely the turning point for me content wise and I'm sure for a lot of other people as well. And currently having a shiphand at lvl 13 and then the first adventure at lvl 15 is maybe just a bit crowded as well.

good suggestion; I'll check w/ the content folks.

edit Mike sez, "huh, that's actually quite a good idea". He's checking with other folks.

Well, I'm impressed. A developer just took an idea from an AMA and actually asked around to get it implemented. If this is the way you respond to feedback, I will definitely get this game.

We'll see, Mike D is Product Director - if he wants it, it generally happens. But there's lots of sanity checking to do before running off and implementing it.

Thanks for the response! One thing I've noticed is that the majority of mobs in early levels aren't really skill based--either you can autoattack them down and you kill them, or they outdamage you and they kill you.

There's very few mobs with telegraphed attacks which you can kill (solo) if you dodge the telegraphs but die if you don't. I think adding more mobs like that would go along way towards keeping interest early on!

we just did a pass with a lot more hard monsters (to add challenge and to help you fill your quest bar faster if you want to opt in for the tough stuff) - some of that stuff is pretty hard. So keep an eye out.

On costumes and PVP: Jen (our group systems lead designer) just on-stream in response to feedback committed to adding the option for PVP costuming in. So, yep, we'll do PVP costuming (we'll see what Drop we can get it in or if it makes launch).

The devs are, indeed, listening.

Do you guys have any plans on adding a second authenticator? Physical or as mobile app. (If you are, I'm voting caretaker themed. ;))

Yes, we're adding authenticator support. Should be in for launch but I haven't heard a concrete update on the tech involved recently, so if not for launch we'll communicate the timeframe around then. Phone app based, not dongle based.

Any chance of you guys using a standard RFC6238-based authenticator so we can just add it to our existing authenticator apps instead of having a separate one for Wildstar? My phone is getting kind of cluttered with different authenticators.

We're using existing auth tech, so I believe it'll likely work with one of your existing auth apps. I don't have the details nearby off the top of my head however.

Come check us out at /r/wildstar

Yep, we have devs posting there quite often; quite an active subreddit.

Loving the game so far! I just wondering if races will get more customization in the future like more hair styles/colors more ears etc etc?

Just added some a patch or two ago; there have been regular requests so not for launch, but perhaps thereafter based on feedback and the team schedule.

First off want to say I'm a big fan of the game and have pre-ordered.

Many people have had a really bad first impression of the game (usually first few hours of play), what would you say to these people to sway them into trying the game again?

Getting people back into the game is tricky (you form an impression and stick with it) - we change so much month to month that I don't expect to re-earn the eyeballs of many folks who played in the past and left (even if we fixed some of what bothered them).

My plan personally is that you play what your friends are playing; the one thing more than any other email/ad/PR campaign we can do is get people liking the game itself and convincing their friends to come back in - thus Friend Passes, etc.

I find it admirable that very early on you responded to two of the most difficult and talked-about issues people are having with the game (optimization/FPS and early game). While I don't agree with those who say the 1-15 part of the game is boring (I've been having a great time with it) I do think some people are spreading their negative impression of it and it may hurt initial subscribers. It's good to know you're listening and not afraid to respond.

Part of the reason we're doing open beta is to basically say "Hey, come on in and try it yourself".

We're not scared of any hard questions anyhoo; if we screwed something up, we fix it - it's been that way for years. We'll never guarantee perfection, but we will guarantee it gets better on average month over month to the best of our abilities. It's pretty hard to goof up in the long haul if you do that with honesty, and this is a long haul business.

Will the font (size/style/font family) be changed for quests (and UI in general)? Pretty hard to read right now, because it's small italic light blue text on blue background. :<

And yes, that's pretty much my only concern, because the game is awesome. :P

I've heard rumors that we've looked into other fonts but can't confirm or deny that (If a UI guy knows, chime in:)

Are there any plans to include gear preview? I can live without it in some other MMOs but since Wildstar has costume slots, it would be nice to know how stuff will look on my characters before choosing/buying it.

I must be obtuse, I thought we'd already added this. I'll check with econ.

Hello!

I've never heard of your game until today, but I'm intrigued.

I remember picking up WoW in 2004, and being floored. I played for the next 6 years watching the game slowly go to shit, and eventually quit. I tried various MMOs since, but I haven't been able to replicate that original "WOW" feeling I had in 2004. Right now there is no MMO in my life.

So finally, my question:

What makes this MMO special? I tried 5 different MMOs in the last 2 years, and they were all meh. Can you discuss one or two of the game mechanics that will cause an MMO to finally floor me again?

Here's stuff that IMO we do really well:

Action combat - simple at the start, quite complex by mid/late game

Telegraphs - show your allies your attacks, enemies can do VERY complex attacks because of this too (see our raid footage, it's insane)

Housing - Deepest since Ultima Online

Warplots - that housing stuff where you instead build a 40v40 PVP battle fortress, including capturing raid bosses to help you.

Paths - unique system where you tell us what kind of player you are (Combat, Story, Explorer, Socializer/builder) and we make about 20% of the content be about that, with benefits for doing it with other players.

Hoverboards and other customizable mounts

Heya Mr. Gaffney. I have been following and playing games that you have made/produced for over a decade now. I have a couple of questions in case you would be obliged to answer.

1. Although Ultima Online 1 created a huge community based system that allowed for much drama, and fun, the Patron/Vassel system in Asherons Call bore out the development of the Mega-Guild system that we see in many more sandbox development titles. A. Was the original intention to create this, or was it merely achieved through the min/max mentality that players bore? B. Do you think it benefited the MMO community overall? I ask the second question, as even though I no longer lead a Megaguild anymore, that I played and still have many friends now that were guild leaders of the other guilds, like Blood, and House of Sagacious from Darktide. It seems that recent mentality in MMO communities is that guilds that are too huge are bad for games now by a lot of people newer to the MMO Market.

2. As someone that developed many games that have been considered by many to be extremely successful, even if not topping out at 5 million subs. What do you personally feel defines a successful MMO. I am not just stating this from a content only position, but also in regards to subscriptions versus further development.

3. Finally. What lesser played MMO do you think brought the most to our gaming world, even though many missed the opportunity to try it out!

Thanks Much! I know I am late to the party!

The Patron system is one I personally came up with before we even started Turbine, so I can speak to the intent pretty authoritatively. The goal there was simple:

In MUDs at the time or PVP based games, you logged in, were immediately ganked, and someone took your short sword and your 7 gp that you started with.

The incentives were all towards ganking newbies, or ignoring them.

So the question was: How can you make a new player into a resource that is valued? How can you incent someone wanting new players to have fun?

Well to break that down, how do you measure fun? I decided on XP as a measure since that meant you were actively engaged in the game (maybe a better one exists, but it worked). So if you are encouraging more newbies to get more XP, then the best way to incent that was to give you a % of it - meaning that if they play, you win. Thus the core of the system.

I think it was a great benefit; I'm a little surprised no one has doubled down on it since. It was a reference point when we added the sidekick system to City of Heroes (Jack Emmert and I worked on that together) since it again encouraged you to form tighter friendship bonds across play patterns (a theme that again shows up with the design of Paths).

Success = a player base that grows over time, even slowly, after the initial spike and then normalization to the long-term players. It's also where the money is (and the two are of course tied). But EVE is more successful than many spike-and-drop games because of this.

Other MMOs: Lots of interesting ones made bold experiments - a Tale In the Desert, Meridian 59, a bunch of MUDs (Medievia for instance), Secret World - lots of games also had a good concept or two wtihin them even if the whole didn't hang together.

Hi! Just wondering what the plans are for the beginning zones? Currently, there is a consensus that they do not engage the player and feel very on-rails. Is there anything in the works to help make them more exciting, open, or tutorial-like?

We've tuned them with noobs and hardcore both; we have zones I think that work OK for folks new to MMOs but experienced folks want to get off the rails ASAP.

We're looking at adding options to opt out into the more nonlinear areas, and may also look at retuning content as well.

The data says retention through those areas is actually quite high, but we've heard the feedback enough to not trivially discount it based on data.

Thanks for the reply!

I have been watching the stream and heard about large/difficult mobs being worth more XP and therefore more % of the quest bar. Would it be possible to add more of these hard mobs to the beginning quest areas and/or increase their spawn rate? I think that change may help experienced players both get through the content quickly and look for challenge.

My understanding is that more is coming in future passes.

So. Gold Spam. How're y'all gonna stop it?

Banhammer, level requirements to spam, easy reporting UIs/mods, lots of GMs, backed by our own personal hatred of such.

Not to mention C.R.E.D.D discourages it as well

Man, missed an opportunity to pimp CREDD. Thanks.

First. Love Wildstar, I hope it will be my main game for years to come.

Question:

When will we get a launch server list? Please!

I'll see if I can dig one up now.

Just asked CRB_Cougar, he'll pop on and answer this. It's complex, is the short form.

Your stand on "catch-up gear" content? Like if I want to get into raiding say about year after release and I of course need to get proper gear to get into raiding. So are you planning to do 5man dungeons with some godly gear or other catch-up mechanics?

We'll want some catch-up mechanics that are also fair to the long-term raiders; I know the econ guys have thought but thank heavens that's a ways out yet.

Will it be possible to purchase high end gear or tier equivalent gear via the Auction House? In other words, given the existence of the CREDD system, will it be possible to buy power in this game with cash?

In general, nope. In practice, there may be a few BOE pieces of appropriate rarity/difficulty to acquire that spice up the mix, but buying power is a dangerous thing to systemize.

Can we get power cores and other crafting items that are currently going into our regular bags to go in the tradeskill bag where they belong?

Hmm, I'll ping the tradeskill guys.

From the lead:

For technical reasons this is not possible. After we launch we'll be trying to explore other avenues of freeing up that precious, precious bag space.

Hey Jeremy I actually talked to you at pax this year. One thing I didn't ask you was how often all that endgame content is going to be released? You guys have said you have almost a year and a bit of content after launch but how long will we be waiting between patches? a month or two? Thanks for all the work being on the hype train for another month is going to suck!

We're aiming for monthly patches; I'm not sure that some don't move backwards or forwards. They're huge so it can be tough to gauge exactly, but we've hit monthly for the last 6 big beta updates (we were practicing for live).

How about new raids/dungeons? Can you talk about schedule aimed for those specifically?

At launch we'll start talking about timing of various future drops; we'll also keep the schedule a bit flexible to be able to respond to user feedback.

Because of the modular nature of most of our content we can also expand existing content where desired too (raid variety, discoveries, housing, warplots, etc.)

Adding on to his question: You've announced you have a solid plan for a year and a half a couple weeks back, but what about beyond that? Are there tentative "soft" plans for a lot longer than that?

Yep. The year and a half out is stuff you can mostly walk through today on dev builds in various stages of moving through the pipeline, at least for the open-world stuff. And at least one dungeon. And battlegrounds.

How many more "planned" patches do you have before you go live at the 31st?

Several hotfix patches in the works on individual issues, and one (might get split into 2 to get fixes in open beta) that we call "Drop 0" to hit right before headstart/live.

Plans change of course based on the realities of how things go through beta/QA/etc.

PTR also goes live soon after launch with Drop 1 on it (our first big postlaunch update).

I apologize if this was already asked/answered but will there be add-on/mod support? For example, UI mods or DPS meters like you can find in WoW? You guys have done an excellent job with all forms of customization/personalization so far within game but would be cool if others could help the cause

Full moddable UI in the game, LUA based. Check out curse for instance, there are already a few thousand mods out there.

Guards put in place of sanctuaries on PvP servers are insta-gib guards with 40k damage per hit. This is the same as a sanctuary. Are you going to change this because it will not encourage OWPvP at all.

Just to confirm: Yep, what /u/Roclol said.

Any plans on having a website that functions like WoW Armory? Where it can track my character's Gear and Achievements?

We have some pre-work done on the API for that, but we haven't committed to a schedule publicly.

Will you be taking out 1-shot kill guards to make cities more raidable, even for lower levels later down the line on PVP servers?

I've seen internal threads discussing this but haven't heard the concrete answers yet.

Walk us through an average day at Carbine right now.

Is it really hectic? Quiet? I've never seen a company work so hard to get the game ready for launch. How is everyone coping with the mass amount of work?

Kinda insane; lots of folks crunch (yes even exec types), work hours are flexible but tend to be long.

It's a high fun environment in some ways but also high stress - you put years of your creative life into endeavours praying that everyone else in every area has their areas under control too; that makes for a lot of stress and creates the potential for interpersonal conflict.

In general one tries to collect folks near them with whom one wants to work for the rest of their careers; if you manage that you win :)

How active will class balance be. I know that balance is much better than it was a few months ago, and you are getting closer to that sweet spot. However it seems that there is still some work left to do. Warrior threat and Engineer DPS come to mind. How often can we expect tweaks, tuning, and other balance passes.

Very. Tweaks monthly (or hotfixed in emergency situations) and overhauls quarterly is the current plan (plans can change of course).

Will carbine help the smaller wildstar streamers and content creators in anyway? Maybe during the Friday livestreams you guys have planned, do a community spot light that shows off the content created by not the just big names but by the little ones.

Gawd, we'd love to. Suggestions welcome.

Good afternoon,

I have a few questions.

Are there any plans to bring a spectator mode to arenas? I am a big fan of eSports and I do a lot of shoutcasting for it. I'd love to be able to help being a wonderful scene to Wildatar!

Custom arenas would also be something is love to see come into wildstar. This would help tournaments to become extremely organized.

Thank you for your time!

-Patrick

We'd like to have spectator mode and full twitch integration. But I don't know dates associated with those.

I'm going to guess that you don't answer anymore and you're also going to avoid this topic like the plague... but I'm going to ask anyway.

Currently, imho, the costume system has gone backwards by a huge amount. Where we used to be able to edit and add to the costumes on the fly, any time we got a new costume piece, now we need to go to one NPC in our faction capital (from my point of view the other faction's capital does not exist, not a viable point for costume change).

1. The new change is not in line with the rest of the game and does not inform new players what to do with costumes - unless you consider reading forums, googling or asking area chat as informing

   • we get costume slots at 7, I believe, questing progression naturally brings you to city around 14ish.
   • game tells you that you now have costumes available and proceeds to tell you nothing at level 7 about how to add pieces to your costume and use it
   • game tells you about dyeing at 14ish in the main city, but you have to basically infer that you can edit costumes and how to use costumes from a quest that is about dyes.
   • in Ilium at least the NPC is called dye something and is hiding behind a pole and guards do not inform you where he is and he is not marked neatly on the map

2. The new change presents us with a much less useable and friendly costume system. We used to have great systems. Two iterations ago we could use the same hat in ALL of our costume sets if we wanted, but we had to keep hold of the hat if we ever wanted to change it and then put it on again. One iteration ago we lost the ability to have said hat in all costume sets, but gained the bonus of not having the costume pieces take up slots in our inventory. Now we have to go to one NPC in the entire world so he can help us change our undies. Seriously, how can you NOT see that it's a downgrade from two pretty damn amazing systems?

I feel like you betrayed your dev speak on customization hard. The last we have hard is basically a rather set in stone answer that this is the crappy system we get for launch and no ifs buts or anything about it. All because some people used costume slots to same inventory space. You threw the baby with the bathwater and left yourself no time or willingness to fix it.

Here is your dev speak, in case it was so long ago you guys forgot: youtube video

I want to know: A. Do you plan to at least fix how you communicate costume system to the new player in game BEFORE launch? The current system would be considered broken in any MMO if you have to google how to use it and have to disrupt leveling or wait 7 levels to use the system. B. What are your plans post launch? You have been uber tight lipped about your downgrade of a wonderful costume system and made no comments about how you plan to fix this mess.

Your level of communication when it comes to character customization and costumes have left a lot to be desired. I generally have no concerns that you guys won't fix bugs or won't deliver content or won't keep the game balanced. But I have huge doubts about your ability to improve or even keep customization good.

I agree we don't do a super job of communicating the costuming system; this is actually in part because (I'm not defending it one way or the other) the old way was easier to access but when we usability tested it almost no one was able to figure out how to use the darn thing. So we made it easier to actually use, but at such a late state of beta that getting in proper messaging, etc. around the new way ended up out of sync (as you're pointing out).

I strongly suspect there will be more ways of modding your costume going forward than the single point; it's only the desire to not bust what is in and (mostly) functional now to keep from improving it this month (IMO). So, sorry for the perceived step back but make sure the social guys know your frustrations on the forums as well (I suspect they are aware but I've not spoken with them directly on this for a few weeks)

Helloooo. IIIII again! >:]

1. Has the stance on costumes being available in PvP changed any after the large support thread on the forums?
2. There has been other concerns regarding PvP systems such as the viability of CC after the increased TTK, the lack of diversity in PvP gear such as set runesets and only 1 set per role per tier (assault/support), LAS being locked during rated arena prep time, and the suggestion of raising base strikethrough to match base deflect, a stat many think to be toxic in PvP. Has there been any discussion on this feedback, and what are your guys thoughts on the matter?
3. Warplots have been shown that the PvE aspects impact the game more than the players. What will you be doing to counteract this? Is that what you intended?
4. Class balance is on going but their seems to be a mostly agreed tier list, with Spellslingers and Medics at the bottom in terms of DPS, and by a fair margin. What approach are you taking to get classes more in line with each other? Nerfing the top classes, or buffing the lower ones?
5. Medic specific question. As you may have noticed, I've been adamant about Medics having a no daze AMP option. I think this is a vital change that needs to happen to keep Medics competitive in high tier PvP play. There hasn't been a response yet, which I understand as it's a very controversial change that needs to be thoroughly discussed. I would ask if we could have some insight on where Merkal and Aodz stand on this.
6. One more! World bosses in past MMOs have been a hotspot for world PvP. Currently, from the world bosses I've experienced at higher level, none are currently worth fighting over. I know there's a zone yet to be explored. Is there a world boss here that has significant enough rewards that can encourage the type of PvP that many will crave for?

Thanks for your time. I know my methods may be a bit abrasive at times but I really appreciate you all and look forward to a smooth launch. Cheers!

1) Haven't heard anything since that thread, but I've been in DC meeting with CNN, Associated Press, etc. the last few days so I am out of the loop - if any Carbinite knows and wants to answer, feel free. Update: Beepz mentions below that Bardic just announced on stream that we'll be allowing costumes in PvP sometime after launch :)

2) If Jen or Kevin are on, they can prob chime in here.

3) Warplots IMO are a system that will get more iteration going forward; we ran some good private tests but the overall economy needs more folks playing with legit players with the post-launch economy, because as you get higher tiers of elder advanced players the balances shift; your higher power gear means that the player power gets much higher than the PVE power. So I hear the feedback, but think more live data is needed IMO (which Jen/Kevin are quite good at reacting to)

4) We err on the side of buffing rather than nerfing, but not to the point of insane mudflation. We'll pretty regularly rebalance classes so that none is too gimped or OP (some drops are slated around this directly, while some will happen in each drop for higher priority stuff).

5) I'm not up on this - let me poke class designers to see if they have concrete thoughts.

6) We'll tune up rewards over time; one of the biggest sources of econ breaking is things that are intended to be hard that end up farmable/zergable so we tend to start things off underbalanced and creep up.

You're still answering these? Wow, I'm seriously impressed!

So name reservation starts tomorrow, and we still don't know what time. Cougar said it depends on the web team's publishing schedule. Please could you ask them, or say how to contact them if they're regular users of reddit/Twitter/etc.?

If you don't want us to know when the reservation page goes up to avoid us crashing it with too much traffic, a) good luck with that, we'll probably crash it anyway as soon as word gets around that it's up, and b) please could you at least say whether it's on the 13th according to PDT or UTC or some other timezone? I'd rather not stay up all night tonight refreshing things if I don't have to.

On that note, where will it be announced when the page does go up? Or, even better, can you give the actual address of the name reservation page?

Thanks to you and your whole team for making such an awesome game, and interacting with us so much!

np! I'll go ask why we haven't put out the exact info.

Edit: Community team will be posting the info later today. Don't think there's a particular reason for the secrecy.

Q: In the warplots video...can I get that angry goldfish frog beast in my warplot or house pool? I want em!

Heh, I've seen it in devs houses, so it exists - not sure where it is in the content :)

Wildstar is fantastic. A quick question would be, are there any plans to address the Mechari's boot discrepancy? Also, PVP costumes?

Boots aren't currently planned to change, but Jen just committed on-stream to allow PVP costuming.

Will there be any love for Linux users ?

Not for quite a while; we're not close to that. (sorry for the answer)

Hi! Thanks for the AMA. My question is regarding housing. What are the long term goals for it?

Thanks!

Basically we want to keep doubling down on it - there's a big set up new items/decor/plots/houses for instance in Drop 1 that are a whole new set of creepy goodness. I think they'll show some on the stream later during Mocarski's section.

Also all the player made content has the social team brainstorming for what to add to help that out. As they figure out what they'd like, I'll sure they'll post about it.

Will you be adding functionality for Officer Notes to the Guild UI? It seems like a must-have tool, but currently isn't in place. Thanks!

Talked to Joe about this: His answer:

We will investigate the officer note system, but my gut says you'll see it post launch for sure.

Are there any plans to increase the number of character slots per server, either before or post launch? I know its greedy, but I'm a bit of an altoholic :)

heh, not at the moment. Because of housing, each character slot potentially takes up a huge amount of server resources, so we are cautious to add more for a while.

Thx a lot for doing this AMA :) Love the game so far, preordered it and trying to get my best friend to play it.

My question: Do you plan to have a "practice" version or Warplots for players who do not belong to huge guilds? Like Alterac Valley in WoW, a bigger version of BGs but opened to all. I find it a bit hard to limit 40vs40 instanced PvP action to big guilds only (and the occasional PUGs). Could be a modified version of Warplots with limited customization and all, but that would give everyone the possibility to get into bigger fights.

that's why we have mercenary support is for exactly this - not that we may not tune that up as more of our player base hits 50 in the real live environment and economy post launch.

Can you tell us anything new about "Vindball"? This still a thing? Tell us moooaarr plz lol ty :)

Ha! Yes, we cauterized the system (because we wanted to make it cooler) but you could build an arena where you could fight in combat soccer, dropping vinds (those inflatable weasels in some zones) in the middle and battling them into goals like multi-ball-combat soccer.

Might well make it back in some day :)

I played AC for 6 years on Frostfell and I haven't played an MMORPG that could even touch what AC offered in the past 10 years. Wildstar beta brought back that whatever skill tree(OG Mage, ect...), and line of sight spells and attacks that I loved so much! Thank you so much for bringing these back to an MMORPG!

Edit: Do you think jumping will play a factor in completing some dungeons?

Np, and jumping is a factor in several dungeons and raid fights already already. Actually from a design standpoint the trick is keeping the uncoordinated few from ruining the experience of the many (I personally may have fallen off the chains on the way to Molten Core a few times; I'm just sayin')

Hey Jeremy! Big fan of Wildstar and a lot of your past work. Will you give me a job at Carbine? Keep up the good work!

P.S. Please tell me more about your Magic Castle membership! I would love to see videos of you performing magic.

Heh, I can't do much magic - just a fan of the genre. Any club with Neil Patrick Harris as president is cool (though he's stepping down soon).

Can you give us more info about how Boom Boxes work? Will the contents be bound to the character that opens the box or will the items be account bound.

Many super-rare contents are actually tradeable (even via AH), most are character bound. It's reasonable feedback to instead make them account bound.

Just wanted to say love the game.. me and my friends can't play due to us being from Oceanic region. But we tried the beta and think the game itself is great. Good luck

We've marked a few servers (one PVP one PVE) for Oceanic play - we'll try to see what size community we can get going for y'all.

Please release a mac version of the game! I have a bunch of friends playing but I'm left out.

Some of the programmers have put weekend work into this because they are Mac fans - no promises though :)

Hopefully nobody has asked so far; but I love the aspect of mining in any games. I know that WildStar has it but what'll its interactions with other tradeskills be and can I expect to go on multi-hour mining quests without having to look too hard?

We try to have some crossing of the streams for tradeskills - Chief Sarcan did a great summary of this and SilverCircle built an interactive chart for it:

Tradeskill interaction

Mining nodes can turn out to be on the back of giant ore worms whose stomachs you can run around in and mine. So there is that.

I feel like I can get overwhelmed in a raid with the massive amount of red, blue and green telegraphs. Any suggestions on combating this? I haven't pre-ordered the game because of this.

There are a ton of options in game for how you want telegraphs displayed. You can hide things like other friendly player's telegraphs, change the colors, and change the opacity as well. I recommend hopping in beta and playing around with them to find what works for you!

Beepz has this one right.

Will there be an in-game FOV slider/settings?

This is one of the first major walls that's stopping a great number of people from continuing any aspect of the game after 20 or so minutes- accompanied by a raging headache/nausea.

You can change FOV via the console. Not sure if we're adding it to the options directly, I know there's a pass on the vid options panel being worked on but I hadn't looked at FOV specifically.

I have been enjoying the game, and the marketing content that has been produced (epic drop videos, devspeak, the hot pepper gaming fire sale video, etc). So This is more of a fan want...will the rowsdower plushies ever go on sale or are they only giveaway items if I happen to be somewhere in person or win some drawing?

We'll probably sell em again at some point; they were $18 at PAX E and sold like cakes of hotness. But for now they are mostly for giveaway items (I hear Tony in the other room doing a giveaway right now)

Will we ever see a "Guild Finder" type tool?

It's not in the near hopper, but likely to exist at some point IMO unless a 3rd party meets the demand.

Is the UI 2.0 that we have right now completed? A bunch of the art seems to be place holder (anything other than the crafting UI and HUD to be honest).

Most of the main UIs are converted but many minor UIs are mid-conversion.

I loved the ability to play instruments in games like Mabinogi and LOTRO - is that a possibility in Wildstar? Would it be something you guys are even interested in implementing?

The combat in this game is fantastic, but it's the out of combat things that really make me want to stick around. I've been playing WoW for ten years now, and sometimes I can hardly log in at all, because there's nothing to do outside of dungeons / raids that I've done a thousand times, or the CC contest that is PvP (it's much better in Wildstar!).

I really liked that in LOTRO - we don't do that atm, but you can put player pianos in your house on the ground, record songs on them, etc.

Glad you like it!

Hey! So far I like what I've played of the game. I have some minor issues, like the frame rates, and quest bugs. But other than those the game plays really well.

Now If you'll follow me on this one, I have a bit of a curse. In every MMO I play, If I go in blind, I pick what's generally considered the most worse off class. Vanilla WoW? Warlock. GW (vanilla) and even GW2? Ranger. These classes are fine now, but at launch they really soured my experience because they didn't play well to begin with, and weren't fixed in a timely fashion. The GW2 ranger is still being worked on from what I understand.

So let me ask you. What's the Carbines philosophy on balance? Can we expect timely balance patches? What would a patch look like? Would it be akin to Blizzard patch notes? Or how Icefrog (DotA 2) does things, small incremental changes usually?

Also there's a lot of empty space between "hubs". Walking from hub to hub sucks early game. I suggest using that empty space for stuff.

we look to tune things monthly and do larger overhauls quarterly. Hotfixes can go in weekly for emergencies.

Hey Jeremy,

I know you probably want to talk about WildStar specifically, but I have a couple of general questions for you about the MMO genre in the context of how WildStar will address that. If you could answer any, I'd appreciate it.

The last few MMO games I've played have given me the impression that MMOs are kind of in a rut. What do you think the next step forward in MMOs, and what do you think WildStar adds to the experience?

Next, with the exception of WoW and EVE, most MMOs seem to hit big and then die off. It seems like positive word of mouth is a big deal, and retention of a player base is just as important. The easiest way to improve both is getting a real community feel in the game world that keeps people coming back and makes those people want to bring others with them. What kind of mechanics do you think are best at that and how will WildStar accomplish that?

What do you think the impact of simulation games and purer sandbox games like Minecraft and DayZ will have on MMOs? Are non combat roles (pure crafters) a potential untapped resource for MMOs that haven't been utilized yet? How will you guys attempt to give people diversions outside of other MMO games that might keep attention for longer than a trip to max level and upper level dungeons/raids?

Nah, I can talk to anything.

This is a long one, I'll try to hit it quick - but ask me in another thread and I'll see if I can give it the half hour it deserves.

Hit big and die off: IMO this is because of the lack of time taken to do elder games (post cap stuff) well - combat and all being great up to level cap and then nothing new = 2 month subscribers.

Sandbox is more resistant to that because the systems can be interesting over time.

IMO also your perceived commitment to live development helps a lot - look at how powerful LoL's 3-week updates have been, or the positive effect of Living World on GW2. Frequent updates keep the game fresh (you see a lot of this in domestic China games now and little from US MMO folks). Thus our big monthly update infrastructure/strategy.

We're doing friend passes, path content that is group friendly, tuning quests to be small group friendly, circles, neighbors, and more to try to tighten the friend communities. And lots of public events at cap, as well as housing dungeons that scale, etc.

I think user generated content in MMOs has been tried a lot and keeps failing to get over the hump of "players tend to do what is easy/rewarding more than what is actually fun if given the choice" hump - great content is often ignored for trivial content because getting to 50 faster is perceived as being of better benefit than more slowly going through something with (say) a deep story. Hard to solve in normal development, super hard with UGC.

Will a list of realms be released prior to May 13th -name reservation day?

Cougar's chiming in on this elsewhere in this thread.

Edit: /u/SavageCore found a link to it below.

Currently WildStars PVE Group Content ins linear, like in vanilla wow or tbc (the good times). With Wotlk and multilayer-content, problems like content skipping occured. Are you aware of that and are your gonna stick with the linear system? How will you ensure, that the linear system will work successfull on longterm for all different kind of raidguilds (casual, average, hardcore).

Adventures are intended to be heavily NON-linear, and raids are intended to have a fair amount of weekly variation (room ordering, sub-bosses, etc.) for just such reasons - if what we have is well received at launch, we'll add more.

Hey Jeremy,

Big fan! I wanted to ask you if you miss City of Heroes and if you have any regrets about how that game was put out of service?

And, what the hell, would you like to see CoH revived one day?

Fantastic work on Wildstar. Your game has the best movement and combat system I've ever played in an MMORPG. Consider me a subscriber! I'd pay mad cash for a Rowsdower plushie by the way...

Thanks

Yeah, I really loved COH and hated to see it go. I wasn't involved with putting it out of service as I was running Carbine at the time and was no longer head of Product Development overall.

I'd love to see it comeback. There are some kickstarters involved around such as well.

Glad you enjoy the game!

Is there any chance we can get rid of the racial locks on classes and no female Chuas?

Nope, not for a while at least for racial locks as some races don't have the animations they need for all classes and that'd take a while to add.

I'd like to see more options for chua looks too (I play a pink Chua in the beta named "Pipsqueak" from time to time) - but not sure if that's in the character team's plans or not.

What are Carbine's plans on interaction with the community once the game goes live? Do you have any events planned with launch or shortly after?

So far Carbine have been pretty good with interacting with players, whether it is through Twitter, Reddit or Livestreams, but everyone knows that this kind of thing can easily lessen once a game releases. I hope to see Carbine continue to have a lot of interaction with us, in game and outside of game.

We're going to try to keep the pace and transparency up. We may be overwhelmed by numbers at some point (the fanbases are rising) but our intentions are pure.

Am I correct in saying that UI 2.0 hasn't yet been FULLY implemented (in all aspects) into the client build, and that the rest of the transition into the new UI will occur by launch (perhaps in the "Drop 0" patch)?

Not all has been fully implemented, more in by launch, probably more to follow (mostly minor stuff of course).

Wait! What did you do on Asherons Call? Were you one of the devs that denied the loot bug that loot was seeded based on your zone ID?! I miss AC1, I swear anytime I ever bring AC up on reddit I get the equivalent of a blank stare.

Really my big Wildstar question is "When and where can I buy one of those light blue tshirts?". I've asked here and there before and I don't think anyone actually knows the answer.

Ha! No, I wasn't one of those devs (we had a number of seeding issues as you may recall, such as with amulets/etc.).

We've been focused way more on game development than merchandizing, after launch we may put some cycles on it however.