and how to work with their team. I find that refreshing
GO: The game has undergone a massive overhaul
over other games that continuously dial back to pacify the
over the past year. What impressed you most about the
larger general audience.
changes?
This isn’t to say that WildStar doesn’t provide outstanding
Behalter: Well as of this week the thing that has
content for the player that just wants to hop in and do
impressed me the most is the free-to-play announcement.
something quick and fun, there is plenty of that to be had,
While all of the previous changes up to this point were
but I think that Carbine is doing a good job of riding that
great ones: massive amounts of bug fixes, reduced
line of offering tidbits to both the casual and the hardcore
raid size, game optimizations, and tons of quality of life
gamer, and as long as they continue to do that I’m going to
improvements, I think that it took WildStar a while to get
keep talking about WildStar.
to where it needed to be in order to hold mass appeal for
an extended period of time. During the journey, population
GO: You decided to take a break for a while, but luckily
for us, you returned!. What was it that brought you back?
suffered and we were left with an awesome game without
the player base behind it to keep it afloat.
Behalter: I think our break happened more due to real
I know that the decision to move to a free-to-play model
life just catching up with us. Sometimes it’s tough to juggle
was probably not an easy one, and personally I wish this
work, family, and play and one has to take precedence over
game could have continued to garner popularity and remain
the others at times. I still had my eyes on the game, but at
subscription based because I believe the benefits to the
the time I think it was trying to find its stride, news was a
player are much greater, but with so few MMOs holding on
little slow, and family came first.
to a subscription model these days, the decision to change
models was inevitable.
Avidguru: Yeah, that’s a big part of what our community
at MOG Nation is about. We often talk there about putting
The thing that has me impressed is how Carbine is
family first. IIRC, the break was around the holidays, so we
handling the transition, new g&VR