While Wildstar was still developing, a lot of players kept asking for harder, harder, really punishing game play. I was one of them. At the time, action combat was shifting from the "new big thing" to the "norm", and players who burned through GW2 content + Diablo III content (like myself) wanted a "challenge". Carbine actually listened. Test after test, things got harder and more difficult. Soon it was tuned to a level where even the first dungeon felt like raid difficulty, which finally satisfied the hardcore testers.
And then the game launched.
It was going really good at the beginning despite all the problems --- it was by all means, a very solid game. People complained about the normal things that any game launch would have, yet they kept playing. But a few weeks, a few months into the game, the atmosphere changed.
Many people who previously thought that they were "hardcore players" because they raided in WoW, were locked behind very difficult content where it was impossible to progress rather than "get good" --- no gearing upgrade/drops, no raid until no-death dungeon achievements. Players had to keep dying to the same dungeon (yes, first dungeon, most can't even get past the first boss without a highly coordinated group) without any progress. Patience started to die out, and more importantly players felt shitty about themselves, so they found other reasons to complain about (like minor crafting issues etc) and left ('cause nobody wants to admit that the game is too difficult for them, but at the same time they kinda felt it, so it was soul crushing).
So the hardcore and really good players should enjoy it plenty right? Wrong, raids required 20 people to have passed those 4 dungeons with gold/silver/bronze difficulty (yeah they kept reducing the difficulty, but it was too little too late). You just can't get enough people. The one who passed them first had to go back each night trying to get guildies through dungeons, some of these guildies never make it, some of them make it but then they are also in that boat having to try to get other guildies to pass. In some servers you can't even find 20 people across the entire server to form a raid group, nevermind within one single guild.
So why was it hard to crack the demise of Wildstar when everything was looking so good, EVEN by today's standard? Because nobody wanted to speak of the devil: the game was too difficult for the audience it tried to grab. It was designed for huge groups, having 20 man and 40 man raids, and 40 man war-plots (PvP). Yet it was also designed like Dark-Soul where one mistake and you're dead. Even very simple games become very difficult when you need to coordinate 20 people. Its humour and style attracted fun-liking people but its combat was hardcore and unforgiving. It knew exactly what it wanted to be, but it forgot to do a thorough market search to make sure that there are ENOUGH PEOPLE to pay for that niche.
Also, half of the hardcore players who finally stuck through to the raiding days also ended up leaving after a few months. When a game has only hardcore players left, suddenly a very good player feel mediocre at best. The atmosphere also shift to become more competitive and almost business-like. It may be difficult to wrap our minds around but, hardcore players actually need casual players there to feel good about themselves. And ego fuels a lot of us.
Sure, they started to tune down difficulty week by week after they realized that less than 1% even made it past the first boss after getting stuck on it for weeks. But it was too little too late. And the bigger problem? The difficulty of the game actually WOUNDED some players, I had a very hard time convincing friends back into the game (unlike other games that we play together), because although they don't say it, Wildstar didn't make them feel like "it was a shitty game" --- rather, "I'm a shitty player at that game". So actually, changing the contents and adding/fixing stuff didn't help at all, because most people weren't leaving because of the game, most people left because they had doubts of THEMSELVES through playing the game. Evidence: people complained about server, well server was fixed, but no one came back. They complained about crafting, well crafting was overhauled, still no one came back. The game was tuned to be easier sure, but who's gonna go back to a game knowing that it was something that you can only beat when it gets "dumbed down for you"? It was a lost cause, dissatisfied customers can still come back after fixes, but wounded customers don't.
Partly, the community was to blame. People always say, devs should listen to the players --- nope. Some players, sure. Not all players. Not even MOST players. Players don't know what we're talking about. We're no game design experts, neither are we psychologists. We can only tell what WE want, and what WE want reflect only the very small fraction of people who are like minded. Game-fanatics and hardcore players like myself instinctively assume that everyone would want to play like us --- and to be honest, sometimes it's just impossible for me to imagine how can someone find dodging red circles difficult. But some people DO find it difficult, that's just a FACT, and that fact can result in player frustration that builds up, builds up, builds up, until the player has to leave and the money is gone, eventually it will burn to my tail.
Wildstar was a lesson for all of us, I'm sure many hardcore Wildstar players knew this in our hearts.
