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Seems there might be bad times ahead at Carbine Studios – known for their sci-fi MMO Wildstar. NCSoft announced today that it has reduced the staff at the studio, and it’s not just a few people either. It’s around seventy, which accounts for about 40% of Carbine’s strength. Ouch.
Wildstar of course launched well, but has hit harder times recently. The game was due to come to China as well but that’s been cancelled along with the staff cuts and when it went free-to-play about six months ago it was in a bid to try and attract players to the game. Despite reassurances that the staff losses were just down to ‘restructuring’ we all know that’s the word that studios use when they’ve had to lay off staff because things aren’t performing quite as hoped.
The ‘restructuring’ was announced in a post on the Wildstar forums, in which NCSoft said that the cuts are related “to Wildstar‘s evolution from a product in development to a live title, to the cancellation of work to bring Wildstar to China, and to the overall performance of Wildstar since launch in 2014.” They do say however that they remain “committed to the game” and will be delivering some major updates and community events in coming weeks.
The full statement from NCSoft regarding the layoffs is below:
Earlier this morning, Carbine Studios completed a reorganization of its operating structure. Moving forward, the studio will focus on operating and updating WildStar as a live game in the US and Europe. As part of this change, the studio has canceled its plans to bring WildStar to China.
Unfortunately, as a result of these changes, we’ve had to reduce staff. These cuts are directly tied to WildStar’s evolution from a product in development to a live title, to the cancelation of work to bring WildStar to China, and to the overall performance of WildStar since launch in 2014.
These kinds of decisions are exceptionally difficult. The talented and passionate professionals who are impacted by these cuts have been valuable team members and respected colleagues. We wish everyone well for the future and will be providing severance and employment search assistance.
As for WildStar, we remain committed to the game. Over the next few weeks and months we will deliver a significant update to the game, kick off a variety of community events, and continue our work on new content that we will talk more about in the near future.
Obviously yesterday’s announcement of Hearthstone’s latest expansion meant that we got to see the first of many new cards. Some are brand new while others… look a little familiar.
Check them out below, they’ll all Neutrals so far so you could find use in any of them:
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Beckoner of Evil
Minion, 2 Attack, 3 Health, 2 mana cost.
Battlecry: Gives C’Thun +2/+2 wherever it is.
Corrupted Healbot
Mech Minion, 6 Attack, 6 Health, 5 mana cost.
Deathrattle: Restores 8 Health to the enemy Hero.
Polluted Hoarder
Minion, 4 Attack, 2 Health, 4 mana cost.
Deathrattle: Draw a card.
Twilight Elder
Minion, 3 Attack, 4 Health, 3 mana cost.
Gives C’Thun +1/+1 wherever it is at the end of your turn.
Validated Doomsayer
Minion, 0 Attack, 7 Health, 5 mana cost.
Minion’s Attack is set to 7 at the start of your turn.
C’Thun
Legendary Minion, 6 Attack, 6 Health, 10 mana cost.
Battlecry: Deals damage equal to this Minion’s Attack randomly split between all enemies.
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As you can see, there’s already some cards made to work together even in this handful.
Of course, the tweet doesn’t include a date and none has so far been announced as to when players can expect to see it available. Numbers for the game were high originally upon the game’s launch in 2014, but the flame seemed to quickly cool as players moved onto other games quickly, so hopefully this’ll boost numbers for the sakes of the dedicated core of players who’ve stuck with it this long.
Of course, there’s a reason why Titanfall is coming to Access and that’s because EA want to keep the game in the gaming spotlight enough to make sure that the sequel Titanfall 2 sells well. That game’s due to be shown off at EA Play probably, and is set to release before April 2017.
This means that Origin Access now has seventeen games available through it, with Titanfall joining Dragon Age Inquisition, FIFA 15, The Sims 3 Starter Pack, all the main Dead Space games, multiple Battlefield games, and more. Subscribers pay £3.99 a month for this, so it’s not a bad deal. Too bad it involves EA and Origin…
So, following on from the announcement of an incoming… well, announcement, Blizzard finally revealed what the big deal was. And as we guessed, it’s the next big Hearthstone installment.
Whispers of the Old Gods will introduce into the game a whole bunch of new cards based upon the ancient and powerful beings that sleep under the surface of Azeroth… and they’re not exactly what you’d call merciful gods either. Among the 134 new cards incoming to decks around you will be four Legendaries based on the ‘Gods’ and a number of cards that contain some corrupted and twisted versions of familiar Minions you might have met before.
As with The Grand Tournament there’s a pre-purchase offer for 50 packs of the new cards at a discount, which will also include an exclusive card back. It’s $49.99 or the equivalent for your region to buy these. Otherwise you’ll need to wait until the release in late April/early May to begin adding these new cards to your collection of playable virtual cards.
Also, check out the trailer if you’ve not already caught it. It sets the atmosphere quite nicely…
Almost three years after its announcement, development has stopped on the next iteration of the long-lived MMO franchise.
Daybreak Studios’ president Russ Shanks announced the news on the game’s official site:
I’m writing today to let you know that, after much review and consideration, Daybreak is discontinuing development of EverQuest Next.
For the past 20 years EverQuest has been a labor of love. What started as a deep passion of ours, as game creators, grew into a much larger passion shared by you, millions of players and Daybreakers alike. Watching EverQuest’s ability to entertain and bring people together has inspired and humbled us. It’s shaped our culture and has emboldened us to take aggressive risks with our game ideas and products. When we decided to create the next chapter in the EverQuest journey, we didn’t aim low. We set out to make something revolutionary.
For those familiar with the internals of game development, you know that cancellations are a reality we must face from time to time. Inherent to the creative process are dreaming big, pushing hard and being brutally honest with where you land. In the case of EverQuest Next, we accomplished incredible feats that astonished industry insiders. Unfortunately, as we put together the pieces, we found that it wasn’t fun. We know you have high standards when it comes to Norrath and we do too. In final review, we had to face the fact that EverQuest Nextwould not meet the expectations we – and all of you – have for the worlds of Norrath.
The future of the EverQuest franchise as a whole is important to us here at Daybreak. EverQuest in all its forms is near and dear to our hearts. EverQuest and EverQuest II are going strong. Rest assured that our passion to grow the world of EverQuest remains undiminished.
EverQuest Next was an ambitious attempt to evolve the franchise. The first phase of that evolution was EverQuest Next Landmark, which was released as a beta in 2013. Landmark was focused on player creation, letting users craft huge structures and then sell the blueprints to each other.
EverQuest Next began development at Sony Online Entertainment, a corporate cousin to the PlayStation brand that was sold off last year to investment firm Columbus Nova and rebranded as Daybreak Studios.
In an interview with MMORPG, Shanks says that EverQuest and EverQuest II are still in active development. He also says that Daybreak will continue to explore ways to modernize EverQuest and notes the company’s current priorities:
The future of the EverQuest franchise is important to our company and you have not seen the last of Norrath by any means. It’s just as engrained in our hearts as it is for our players. We helped usher in the era of MMOs because we loved the idea of bringing gamers together within the game worlds in massive numbers, and we’ve continued to build on that over our 20-year history. The adventures within the worlds of EQ and EQII continue unabated today, and there is plenty of room for more.
Right now, we are focused on launching Landmark, advancing H1Z1: Just Survive, bringing DC Universe Online to Xbox One players, and launching H1Z1: King of the Kill on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
