I love "this thread". I love the way it keeps coming back. It has followed me around to every MMORPG I've ever played and I never cease to love reading it. Anyway, I've said this about Elder Scrolls Online before, and I'll say it again: it's being developed for cross platform play, which means it will end up being relatively simplified and "console-ish", which is an element that will ultimately push many dedicated PC gamers (people who choose the PC as their primary gaming platform) away from it. I'm not saying that it won't be successful, but I am saying that I don't expect it to make a huge splash in the PC market beyond the initial "let's check it out" phase of the first six months. After that, it will settle into a niche as primarily a console oriented MMO where the populations of the Playstation and X-Box servers outnumber PC server population by probably ten to one; see DC Universe Online and Defiance to see the precedent for yourself.

Put away the tin foil hats. As a fellow Canadian, let me explain why EA doesn't make the CC cards available in Canada. Exchange rates. That's all. Traditionally the Canadian dollar is worth 75 to 95 cents of the US dollar. It's not reasonable to expect a chain like Walmart or Game Stop (EB Games here in Canada) to constantly change the price on a virtual currency card to match the rate of exchange between the US and Canada, so then they only have three choices: - First is to set the cards at a higher price that would cover the exchange difference 90% of the time (so a card worth 5500CC which costs $40 USD would sell for roughly $45-7 CAD) so that Canadians pay more than everyone else most of the time. This makes retail CC cards a waste because most Canadians won't pay the extra $4-6 when they can get it directly online for less ($40 USD is about $41 CAD right now). - Second is that they sell on par (a $40 USD card costs $40 CAD), despite the Canadian dollar having a lower value, which means Canadians pay less than everyone else most of the time. This means a very small percentage of the market gets favorable treatment in order to make CC cards worth selling in that particular market. - EA chose option 3, which is sell CC to Canadians exclusively through EA's online store so that Canadians are always paying current exchange rates, which keeps them on par with everyone else. It is the "equal-est" possible way to deal with the situation, although comes with the small inconvenience that the OP can't buy more CC online than their monthly limit. To be honest thought, that places him in a tiny minority of an already small market segment. Coincidentally, EA is hardly alone in this practice: many companies such as Valve or Perfect World don't sell cash cards in Canadian chains. It's a hassle, but 90% of Canada's population lives within a one hour drive of the US border, so statistically speaking the OP probably could just drive down to the States and grab a CC card at a Walmart or Game Stop. That is, if buying more than his monthly online limit is really that important.

Can I ask the OP why the datacron system should stay the way it is? God forbid we ask EA to change something that huge numbers of players don't presently enjoy to something they might find to be more fun. Since it is a widely held opinion that many of the datacron puzzles are tedious and not fun, why shouldn't that be the thing that gets changed instead of implementing account wide legacy bonus? Why keep the tedious puzzle part and make the rewards shared across your account when perhaps everyone can get behind ditching the bad part and make the bonuses rewards for doing something fun? Instead of asking EA to implement shared datacron bonuses why not ask for an alternate/parallel system to gain the bonuses? I know, I asked the same question about five different ways there, but you're running to the "shut up and take my money" solution instead of asking EA to give you better content and I want to know why. I'd prefer better content and keeping my money for other things.

One last thing I should point out before I leave to do some RL (yuck) stuff: I'm not looking for a huge increase in difficulty. The only thing I want to see is the experience of using a healing companion brought in line with the experience of using a DPS or tanking companion. I simply want the "I win" button of a companion healer turned into a "I have a distinct advantage over you yet there still exists the possibility of my failure" button. I honestly don't believe that represents a colossal increase in the difficulty of the game.

The problem with your logic is that a player has to be invested enough into the game to get to the point where they want to "tweak their difficulty". If they're able to sleepwalk through, they're unlikely to become invested enough to stick around long enough to do so.

Virtually every poster in this thread has acted as if I said that healing companions should be removed. I just said they need to be nerfed: as in they are presently overpowered and need to be toned down. That's an important distinction: I just want companion healers toned down to the point where they help you with the content, not carry you through it. The number of people who genuinely cannot master the basics of combat survival in a game like this is honestly very low: this is a turn based fighting system, and even while faster paced than many other similar games it still doesn't require lightning reflexes. I'm sorry for those rare few who would be left behind, but the PvE content has to have some sort of difficulty threshold to keep it from being completely trivialized. An oft cited reason for leaving the game by many dissatisfied players is that the PvE content is too easy: do you think that maybe, just maybe, the fact that everyone can run around with pocket healers contributes to that? It's a pretty simply formula: trivial PvE content = unengaged player = no incentive to stay/spend money. Furthermore, could someone please introduce me to these "casual players" who are apparently completely incapable of learning the basic survival techniques of this game? I'd like to meet one of these people because on paper we're practically identical: I don't PvP. I don't raid. I rarely ever run group content; usually only the story mode Czerka flashpoints once a week on a couple characters. I don't min/max: not even sure how you do that since the skill trees seem to favor "going all in" anyway. I don't have the sparing dummies unlocked so I can use something called a "parser"; as you might guess, I don't even know what a "parser" is. My reflexes aren't very fast and my hand-to-eye coordination is so-so at best. I have never played a single player game on anything but the lowest difficulty when the option was available, and even then I frequently would get my butt kicked and ragequit. I spend the bulk of my time in this game either running dailies to get the money/resources to craft gear for an alt I'm about to level up, or leveling up said alt. I am the very definition of this "casual" player that people keep saying needs to have ridiculously over powered healer companions, and I'm saying that it's too much. When a player can stand in a circle of death being cast by the elite boss they're fighting and plug away with their weakest attacks for five minutes to whittle down the boss and survive it all because of non-stop heals from a companion who never has to worry about running out of energy, it is simply too much. The majority of the players who are letting their healers carry them aren't invalids who can't move their characters: they're players who have no reason to care because their pocket healer will keep them alive through almost anything. With no reason to care, they have no reason to try; with no reason to try, they will not become attached to their character and thus the game; and without any attachment to the game, they have no reason to stay long, and certainly have no reason to spend any money.

Actually it's repairing a design flaw that leaves players feeling the game is too easy, thus discourages any sort of emotional investment into their character; without emotional investment into their character, they're less likely financially invest into the game. Without the "I win" button that healer companions currently represent, newcomers would be encouraged to invest more into their characters through the learning of combat survival techniques. By becoming more attached to their characters, players are more likely to loosen the purse strings and start making purchases; and this works regardless of whether the player is looking to join the end game or just the story. Additionally, an interested player who is forced to learn the basic mechanics of the game during the leveling process, reaches the end game more prepared and more likely to be welcomed by the community of established players. Welcoming in-game community creates greater retention probability, which also leads to a greater probability of spending money on the game. TL;DR? Regardless of "Casual" or "Hardore", people are less likely to pay to play a game they can sleepwalk through. And all of this is to say nothing of the fact that far too many people are able to solo even or near even con Heroics because of their healer companions. Pardon me for being a relic of a bygone time, but I believe that multiplayer content in a multiplayer game should require... you know... multiple players.

A few times over the last few weeks I've come across this scenario: a player at relatively high levels (40+) who seems to have absolutely no idea how to make their character do anything other than the two attacks their character can perform at level 1 who is standing there chipping away at an even con strong or elite NPC for a ridiculously long time while they stand inside some circle of death and take five times as much damage as they dish out. These sub-par players stay alive because only their healer companion just keeps pouring on the heals faster than the NPC can dish out the damage. They might be high level, but they certainly have no idea how to play the game effectively. Is it any wonder we end up with so many players queuing into hard mode flashpoints at level 50+ with less than zero idea how to avoid damage who end up wiping their groups repeatedly because of it? Or pleas for help in general chat from because they have no idea how to use their interrupts? Or that so many newer players end up coming onto the forums to complain about how some boss with an easily avoidable special attack is too hard or overpowered? A huge part of learning how to play in most MMOs (actually most games, video or otherwise) is learning resource management. The player resources in this game are health and power, and the moment a player no longer has to worry about one of those resources, they become overpowered and an overpowered player does not have to learn how to do anything other than button mash while they stand directly in harm's way. The fact that a huge portion of the player base thinks that all companions other than the healers are useless goes a long way to showing just how overpowered the healers are. A new player who gets a new companion that just heals away their damage almost as fast as they take it loses any reason to learn damage avoidance tactics or to figure out the most efficient attack chain available to them. The way healer companions work right now does a disservice new players as they make their way towards the end game and to the veteran players who've learned these lessons and have to team up with the newbies who haven't. I really don't know how one would go about adjusting how healer companions work in this game, but it seems to me that it should start with limiting how often they can heal the player character, and adjust their AI so that they don't start to heal the player until the player's health bar is in the area of 40 to 50 percent. From that point, their aggression programming would also need to be adjusted so that they spend more time attacking and using attacks other than just their basic pew-pew. I agree with the point many others have raised previously that the AI and survivability on tank and DPS companions sorely needs improving and out of combat health regeneration probably needs to be drastically sped up in order to minimize down time between fights, but the first step has to be properly balancing healers in order to get a better understanding of just how to make all the companion classes work better.

First, I'd like to say that the main point of my last post in this thread was that CoH's undignified sendoff was the result of Paragon's failure to do what they had been told to do (prep the game for shutdown so the game could go out on a high note), not because of malicious behavior on the part of NCsoft. I just wanted to clarify because it was late for me when I made my post and I realized that the point might have gotten a little buried in myth debunking. Now to the main reason for this post: Andryah you might be miscommunicating something or failing to state an assumption that your point of view is coming from, but frankly you're coming across as saying "CoH was cancelled because NCsoft was all butthurt from Paragon's negotiation tactics, which is the way Koreans behave." The idea that Paragon had no idea how to deal with NC executives is absurd because they'd already been doing so for a decade; and whether you mean to or not, your word choices seem to be ascribing a pettiness to NC's actions, then saying that's how Koreans act during negotiations. I don't want to start getting into accusations, but I'd like to think that there is something being missed and as such your posts have come off as very culturally biased, to put it the most neutral terms I can. I don't think that is your intent, but if it is I will say that is not cool with me and leave it at that. The more universal explanation is that it was a confluence of events that had nothing to do with the nationality of the involved parties. - NCsoft no longer wanted CoH on their roster and felt Paragon's projects in development would not be a good fit either. - Executives at NC likely created a timetable with a deadline for the sale or shutdown of Paragon and CoH. Thus to have them gone by the end of the year, they would have to have a deal in place by the end of summer because no one wants to run a transition over Christmas holidays, particularly if it's a game's shutdown; hence an end of August/beginning of September deadline in order to have a 90 day transition. - NC would have kept their deadline and rock bottom price to themselves because otherwise they would have entered into any negotiations from a position of weakness. That's not a Korean thing: that's Business 101. - NC entered into negotiations to sell CoH/Paragon to a third party. Those plans fell through. - Paragon management began to negotiate for a buyout with an unenthusiastic NCsoft. NC not wanting to let the studio buy itself back is also not a Korean thing because unless they're spinning off into an entirely different field, you're creating a new competitor instead of selling a used product to an existing competitor. - Once it was clear that Paragon was either unwilling or unable to make a deal work within NC's deadline and/or price, NC closed the book on the chapter and shut it all down. All of this is pure conjecture, as is everything else, but absolutely none of the above behavior is specifically a trait of Asian cultures in general or the Koreans in particular. Virtually any business would operate this way. And, for good or ill, I believe that is the most likely scenario of what happened.

I honestly think that the explanation of what happened between NCSoft and Paragon Studios is a lot simpler and more reasonable than the management of Paragon Studios suddenly forgetting how to deal with the people who'd been their employers for nearly ten years; and that also doesn't make NC look they'd suddenly taken up the Kim Jong-il school of insane non-negotiation tactics. (I used spoiler tags to help break up the wall of text. Your eyes will thank me.) MMORPG.com article siting an anonymous source within NCSoft that creates a picture of the situation at Paragon Studios and NCSoft: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/3/feature/7015/City-of-Heroes-Profitable-or-Not.html Now for some facts about what happened from someone who was there in the form of a Matt Miller interview (lead developer at Paragon Studios) from April of this year: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/189896/ So the simple explanation of what most likely happened: That's business. Was it about the bottom line? Yes, there was red on the ledger and NC choose to get rid of it, which they were well within their rights to do. And it's not like there was one shot at saving the game and then that was it: NC had already been trying sell off CoH to other companies far more able to afford taking over CoH than Paragon was. NC more than likely entertained Paragon management more out of respect for their hard work over the years than because of any real belief than poor Paragon was actually able to afford the buyout. Let's not kid ourselves, NCsoft is a corporation that made a decision based on a corporate image and the bottom line. But the blind arrogance of management at Paragon is why low level employees and players were not properly prepared for the shut down.

There's a real reason to worry about the reliability of those involved in the project because everything in their promotional materials comes across as a bunch of butthurt CoH fans who are essentially trying to recreate that game. Ignoring the fact that the very first line on their page admitts to the fact that they're making a "spiritual successor" to an IP they have no legal claim to, look at the words they use: "City of Titans", "Missing Worlds Media", "The Phoenix Project", "Giving back to the community what was taken from it". After reading the first couple sentences, I caught the same whiff of fanboy desperation that I get from the SWGemu project: only this is sadder because they're trying to get hundreds of thousands of dollars out of fellow butthurt fans whereas the emu guys at least did it mostly under their own finances (barring small donations in order to maintain their server). I'm sure that there are several people at the core who are deeply committed to the project, but that's going to be maybe 20 to 30 guys who will be trying to build an entire MMORPG from scratch in their spare time. Real life is going to come along and quickly snatch more than a few of them away before long: on their website there is an announcement thread where they discuss how one of their core founders is seeking a masters degree and will be unable to contribute much to the project over the next two years. These people aren't telling us who they are: they're literally anonymous forum posters, so the people whom they're asking to give them money have no idea of who they're giving the money to or just exactly how qualified they are to even attempt a project like this. I'm not saying that a small group of dedicated "amateurs" can't build good video game, but I'm positive that can't do a game on the scale that they want to without having a professional core that is actually able to work on the game full time. I played City of Heroes for six years and I loved it. From an industry perspective, it is important because it shows that a theme park MMORPG can exist without being built from the WoW blueprint; it also show that you can attract a large and committed audience without building an endgame designed primarily around raiding and PvP (I'm not saying that either of those things are bad, or that no game should do that, I'm simply saying that alternative models can be successful). I would love to see someone come in and purchase the IP from NCSoft to launch an actual sequel or create a "spiritual successor"; but in order to build a game on that type of scale, they're going be professional and I just don't see that in these guys.

There's multiple problems with overlooked items on this patch. In all likelihood patch 2.4. or 2.4.2 will probably rectify that stuff, but it would be nice to get some answers about the grossly overpriced 69 weapons and the lack of Isotope-5 on any vendors.

I haven't completed Oricon yet, but it seems to me that the boss fights are mostly DPS races. I've been running my tank spec'd Guardian with HK as my companion (I'm in purple 69s, he's in purple 66s) and mowed through the first two bosses no sweat. My honest advice: try it with a decently geared DPS or tank companion. I think the devs have been watching: they've noted how many people are completely dependent upon their pocket healers and created content meant to kick the snot out of the guys who think that non-healing companions are useless.

I don't think it's necessarily mob density as it is their aggro range is a bit to large/placement is too "perfect" to allow sneaking around any of these mob clusters. If aggro range was reduced just a little bit then players would have a bit easier time moving around on these worlds (mostly Makeb and Oricon) without making the trip completely free of the risk of being attacked (which is more interesting than travel on most of the leveling worlds; stick to the solid yellow path on your mini map = never have to fight anything ever = really boring).

I have never heard of nor seen any MMO company giving time credit to subscribing players for game time for anything less than at least 30+ hours of down time on all servers. In fact, in my own personal experience I've only seen SOE do it when they were hacked. All the servers are up right now and there doesn't really seem to be a significantly lower population online right now than any other Monday night. Long story short: rage all you want, but getting credit for extra time just ain't gonna happen.

The last two times double XP went along with something. The first double XP event was to get a large number of people up to maximum level in time for the launch of the DLC pack and th enew level cap; and the second event was sort of a kick off to summer. I think that in all likelihood, the next time there is a double XP event it will be a "winter holiday kick off" event; possibly starting around American Thanksgiving and going on through to Christmas/New Year (although that seems a bit excessive to me).

I'd love to see a comms exchange where you can take lower level comms and trade them in towards higher level comms (at something like a 5 to 1 exchange rate). It would allow non-raiders like me to continue advancing their characters, albeit at a significantly slower rate, while also providing benefits to raiders (ie. changing excess elite comms into ultimate comms to get that next piece a little faster). I'd like to see a heavy armor orange version of Aspiring Knight's armor. I don't care if it's adaptive: I just want to be able to have my Guardian wear it. I'd like to see Treek's speech AI adjusted so she doesn't speak after defeating every. single. mob. Jawa companions for all classes is a given. Finally, I'd love to see the crafting system get an overhaul to be able to craft items that would be useable starting at level 1 (players themselves should still have to wait until level 10 to actually learn crafting skills). This would lead to appearance customization right out of the gate, creating greater synergy between crafting and the Cartel Market (as opposed to the friction that exists between the two systems) while also encouraging new players to spend money so they can look as cool as the other players they see in the custom gear. This one probably isn't realistic to see by the end of the year, but I'm including it on the wishlist anyway.

I would love all of this stuff. That is all.

A few years back when I was a regular on the Nvidia forums (which sadly no longer exist), one of the moderators there shared a link to an article that basically said that statistically only 1 in 3 single player video games purchased ever get completed. Most are purchased, installed, played for three to six hours and then never touched again. John Lennon once said "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans" (maybe he wasn't the first, but whatever). I myself bought Saints Row IV when it was released with the plan of drinking in all the insanity until it was done. I played the hell out of it for about a week and an half until I realized I was "falling behind on my SWTOR dailies" and my DVR had a ton of my shows piled up and waiting for me. Now it's nearly three weeks later, I haven't touched SRIV in that whole time and the truth is it's highly likely I will never get back to it. The point of those stories is to say that while not finishing most of the video games you buy might seem odd or troubling to you, it's actually rather standard behavior. Take a look at your friends list on Steam and check out how many own 40 or 50+ games and ask yourself: do I really believe that all of these people have completed every single thing they own? It's doubtful. Now maybe you're done with console style games, or maybe your done with gaming in general. Either one is perfectly fine and neither need be permanent decisions. Maybe you're going through a phase at the moment; or maybe it really is the types of games available right now: the gaming industry is in the middle of some pretty radical shifts in gaming tastes and business models. Don't worry about somehow being terminally unique, because the truth is that there is a very good chance you are one of the majority: caught in the middle of shifting paradigms and unable to find anything that really keeps your interest for very long. There's really no need to over think something so simple as what to do with your leisure time and money. If you're not jazzed about pre-ordering a new console, then don't do it. If you're enjoying watching TV shows more than playing games, get yourself a Netflix subscription or grab some full season DVD box sets at BestBuy. Just do what you enjoy most and don't worry about the stuff you're not enjoying.

What the heck, I'll bite. - I would raise the level cap to 55 for free players. This would not include RoTHC content (Level 55 Operations, Makeb, GSI missions, The Shroud and Dreadseed arcs), it would simply allow them to continue leveling to 55 (via existing content like the Black Hole and level 50 HM flashpoints) where they would then help fill up the queues for level 55 HM flashpoints and PvP matches (which qualify as "generic 2.0 content" in my opinion). For subs, it means queues pop faster, increasing customer satisfaction and all the benefits that go with it for my business. For the free players, being at level 55 with a distinct lack content will most likely push the dedicated free players towards buying the expansion, which is also good. - I would consider enabling the trading of CC within the game along the lines of how Guild Wars 2 does it. I'm not sure if we'd actually do it, but I'd put a team to work to study the feasibility of such a plan within this game. I would increase the opportunities for non-raiders to earn Elite and Ultimate Commendations: 1. We would start by changing the completion reward of the Czerka story mode flashpoints from Basic Comms to Elite Comms (2 each, but the reward could only be earned once per day) but the bosses within those flashpoints would continue to drop Basic Comms. 2. For the the Ultimate Comms, I would create a Comms exchange where players could trade in comms towards another type. PvP comms would only be traded for PvP comms and PvE comms could only be traded for more PvE comms. The rates would be slightly punitive, but not abhorrently so: 5 to 1 for upwards exchanges (5 tier one comms to 1 tier two comm), and 1 to 1 for downwards exchanges. And finally, comms would only be able to be exchanged to the immediate "neighboring" teirs (planetary <-> Classic <-> Basic <-> Elite <-> Ultimate). This allows non-raiders to slowly exchange Elite Comms towards Ultimate Comms. - I would fire the jagoff that keeps putting Rob Liefeld-esque shoulder pads on gear designs: that crap is straight from the 1990's, which I already lived through once and don't particularly care to do so again. If you want that type of thing, go play Warhammer. - I would order a complete rewrite of both the Consular and Inquisitor storylines focusing on downplaying most of the more overt "Force Mysticism" aspects: largely because that type of Ouija board crap drives me nuts, but also because it feels more like it belongs in Everquest or WoW, not Star Wars. And before someone tries to tell about something from some novel that I'll probably never read: if it ain't in a movie, it ain't official; so sayeth the Mouse, and so sayeth the George. I'm sure I'd think of a lot more stuff, but hey... that's just day one.

Generally speaking, a hotfix patch will get called off at the last minute when they find something even worse in it than the bug it was supposed to be fixing, so that is most likely what happened.

I find a lot of MMOs have problems getting players onto their test servers these days. I do agree that part of it is as mentioned by many other players, there is the feeling that the developers aren't listening to their feedback about the content. Whether or not that's actually true is debatable as devs tend to look at the test server solely as a bug finding resource while they make game play and balance decisions based on observations from the live servers, this feeling does leave many feeling as if their feedback isn't listened to or things are so inefficiently run that it takes the devs months to act on the feedback they receive. But the other part of it that I haven't seen mentioned much in this thread is that many players feel like they lose out on progress on the live servers if they're playing on the test servers. If some sort of incentive program were offered to players that used the test server to compensate for "lost time" on the live servers, I'm sure they'd be able to attract more testers.

Ben Affleck as Batman could work, if my suspicions are relatively correct. Word has it that despite making money hand over fist at the box office, Warner executives are a bit butthurt over the fact that Man of Steel was still soundly trounced by Iron Man 3 and the reviews of the movie have only been lukewarm overall. Then you have to add in the fact that a lot of their licensees were not impressed with a Superman movie that was anything but child friendly, and that means that the studio execs will probably have to guarantee some changes to the next film or risk losing a lot of merchandise revenue. Making a cinematic superhero universe using Christopher Nolan's Batman films as a launchpad just doesn't work, so Affleck will not likely be playing the same Bruce Wayne as Christian Bale; we're probably looking at a new continuity for the character from that perspective. I personally think that in an effort to distance the next film from the negativity surrounding Man of Steel, little to no reference will be made to the events of that movie and the studio will force any film maker to make the next movie have a much greater resemblance to Richard Donner's Superman (not in terms of continuity, but in terms of a more lighthearted yet still serious treatment of the characters that doesn't shy away from some of the more "comic book" elements), which is where a Batman played by Ben Affleck will probably fit in better. While Zach Snyder is the director as of this moment, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if some miraculous opportunity for him to film some dream project or some unexpected family issues arise and he quietly leaves the film early in preproduction, perhaps to be replaced by Affleck himself (doubtful though: most actor-directors find trying to do both in mega-budget films to be too much pressure). If that happens, you'll probably see a mid-level action director like Peter Berg or Simon West brought in: someone who's got a history with big budgets, but isn't really considered a strong creative force and will probably be easily malleable for the execs to get what they want. Anyway, I guess that's a lot of words to say this: the next film is likely to be drastically different and Ben Affleck could be a good Batman in a film world that more closely resembles the Superman movies of the 70s/80s (hopefully not Superman 4 though... uggg...), which is what I suspect that film will be going for.

I see a lot of people talking about how it's a change in the market that keeps driving games towards F2P, which is true, but it's only part of the picture. The people who keep saying "Wildstar will be fine if it has a game worth paying for" actually have a very valid point. Players aren't just silently leaving these games: take a look at the copious hatred that Rift/DCUO/LoTORO/DDO/STO/etc all generated from their player bases that led to their population freefall and you have to come to the conclusion: the games themselves are driving players away due to the generic-ness of them. I'm not just pulling this out of my butt either: the industry itself is seeing this trend and reacting. Last fall, John Smedley announced that SOE had scrapped most of the work that had been done on Everquest Next to date; when asked why, he stated that they'd seen the trend 18 months earlier (around April 2011, roughly the time that DCUO started to crash and burn) and realized that it wasn't just a shift in the market, but the games themselves had to be looked at and when they did that, they realized pretty much everyone was releasing what was generically the same thing (a theme park MMORPG built pretty much with the exact same blueprint as WoW) and that's why they added a massive amount of sandbox features into the new Everquest Next. In light of declining subscriptions, Blizzard has been introducing more sandbox gameplay elements because they're more economical to maintain; over the long term, the loss of adult aged endgame raiders and PvPers will be compensated by younger players who enjoy the more free-style sandbox elements like pet battles and farming. Saying that the players themselves are finding that the games aren't worth paying for isn't just fanboy whining: it's something that the developers themselves have realized to be true. Building a theme park MMORPG isn't necessarily a formula for failure, but making something that amounts to nothing more than a slick version of WoW most definitely is. Pursuing the entire range of casuals and hardcores also doesn't work anymore either: at a time when virtually all entertainment choices are becoming more and more focused on particular demographics/interest groups, building massive budget, generic games with an attempted broad appeal increasingly doesn't work; and is counter-intuitive when you see that pursuing targeted market groups while spending less money has been a goldmine for cable TV networks, independent film makers and indie game developers. I'm not wishing the guys at Wildstar any ill will: the game looks fun to me and I definitely have plans on trying it. It's good to see that they are trying an alternate means of generating revenue (although I'd much rather have seen them use GW2's model because that has been wildly successful so far). If you consider it for a moment, this revenue model can easily convert to the hybrid subscription/free-to-play model that we've see pop up everywhere without the same degree of in-game culture shock that tends to happen in the conversion of pure subscription to the hybrid model and that's a good thing for the game's community. However, the post-launch conversion to the hybrid model is kind of like seeing children in jeopardy in a Steven Spielberg movie: every time that happens you're going to get diminishing results and at this point it's been done so many times you have to wonder if it's going to work again. If Wildstar is little more than "WoW in space with a slight gimmick" then it is going to do what every other theme park MMO in the last 5 years has done: but this time hitting "the F2P button" might not do anything.

How is this happening? You can only do 1 henchman and 1 kingpin bounty per day on a character. The XP grants from mission completion are actually about the same (or even less) than what you would get from doing regular quests over the same period of time (ie. if 1 bounty quest equals 15k XP in 30 mins, then regular questing would also roughly equal 15k XP over the same period of time). If it's really an issue, then wait until next time when you're likely to have hit max level and "too much XP" won't be a problem.