WildStar

The cartoon sci-fi MMO built for hardcore raiders, gone in four years

Shut down
19902026

WildStar was a cartoon-styled science-fiction MMORPG from Carbine Studios, published by NCSoft and launched on 3 June 2014 with a subscription and a deliberately hardcore endgame of 20- and 40-player raids. Players poured in and out within months; it went free-to-play in September 2015 without recovering. NCSoft closed Carbine on 6 September 2018 and shut the servers on 28 November 2018.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2011
  2. 17 August 2011 Feature
    WildStar is revealed

    Ex-Blizzard developers show a cartoon sci-fi MMO at Gamescom.

  3. 2014
  4. 3 June 2014 Launch
    WildStar launches

    $60 plus a subscription, with 40-player raids.

  5. 15 June 2014 Peak
    Launch month

    The high point of subscribers, before the endgame cliff.

  6. October 2014 Decline
    Server merges and layoffs

    Revenue halves within a quarter.

  7. 2015
  8. 29 September 2015 Revival
    Free-to-play relaunch

    A spike, then a slide.

  9. 2018
  10. 6 September 2018 Shutdown announced
    NCSoft closes Carbine

    WildStar will wind down.

  11. 28 November 2018 Shutdown
    Servers close

    Players gather in the capitals for the last night.

The site through time

Browse wildstar-online.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Carbine Studios (NCSoft) 2014–2018 Founded Developed by Carbine Studios, owned by NCSoft since 2007

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: WildStar launched as a subscription MMO aimed at players who missed hard raiding, and its subscriber base collapsed within months as most players hit the difficult endgame and left. It went free-to-play in September 2015, which brought a bump and no lasting recovery. On 6 September 2018 NCSoft closed Carbine Studios and announced the game would wind down; the servers went off on 28 November 2018.

Our analysis: WildStar was made by ex-Blizzard developers for the audience that thought World of Warcraft had gone soft, and it turned out that audience was loud and small. Forty-man raids with attunement chains do not sustain a subscription business in 2014, and by the time Carbine relaxed them the players had left. It was charming and well made and it is a case study in designing for the vocal minority.

History [edit]

Nexus

Carbine Studios was founded in 2005 by seventeen former Blizzard developers, many from the original World of Warcraft team, and NCSoft bought it in 2007. WildStar, revealed in 2011, was their answer to what WoW had become: a bright, cartoonish science-fiction world called Nexus, with a telegraph-based action combat system, player housing that became its most loved feature, and an endgame that made a point of being hard, with 20- and 40-player raids gated behind long "attunement" chains. It launched on 3 June 2014 for $60 plus a $15 monthly subscription, at a moment when almost every other MMO had gone free-to-play, and sold well at first.

The cliff

The subscriber curve was a cliff. Most players hit the level cap, met the endgame's difficulty and its bugs, and left within weeks; NCSoft's quarterly figures showed WildStar's revenue falling by half and then half again. Carbine merged servers in the autumn of 2014, laid off staff, loosened the raid attunements and in May 2015 announced the game would go free-to-play. The relaunch on 29 September 2015 brought a spike, a Steam release in 2016 brought another, and neither lasted; content updates slowed to a trickle by 2017.

Shutdown

On 6 September 2018 NCSoft announced it was closing Carbine Studios and beginning to wind WildStar down; the date, 28 November 2018, followed a few weeks later. Carbine gave everyone the paid "Signature" status, boosted drop rates, refunded recent purchases and ran farewell events until the last night, when players gathered in the game's capital cities to watch the servers go. Fan server projects have since revived parts of the game.

The domain today

wildstar-online.com was NCSoft's site for the game and now redirects to NCSoft; the community lives on in emulator projects.

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Sources [edit]

  1. WildStar review IGN 26 June 2014 [archived]
  2. WildStar devs confirm free-to-play as part of huge revamp IGN 28 May 2015 [archived]
  3. Carbine Studios will shut down WildStar on November 28 Game Developer 27 September 2018 [archived]
  4. WildStar is shutting down on November 28 PC Gamer 27 September 2018 [archived]

Last verified: 15 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).