In case you haven’t checked out my review of Carbine Studios’ Wildstar, let me sum it up for you. Wildstar is awesome. So you’re going to be disappointed to hear that Korean publisher Ncsoft has told Games in Asia that they are not planning on launching Asian servers at this time, and “are currently focusing on North America and Europe.”
(See: Wildstar review: the MMORPG that converted me to the genre)
Their reasoning for this is the price. Wildstar currently costs $59.99 to purchase and requires a $15.99-per-month subscription after the first month. Those are some pretty steep costs for anyone, and alienate many Asian gamers immediately. That being said, it seems odd to me that Ncsoft, a Korean company wouldn’t want the game to be immediately accessible in it’s own market, and let’s face it, MMORPGs have a record of success in Asia.
Also the longevity of MMORPGs, especially one of this calibre, has to be take into account, and it’s unlikely the Wildstar will be disappearing anytime soon. However MMORPG king World of Warcraft had its own Korean servers up and running within 3 months of the official launch, and that was nearly a decade ago!
Currently, the best Asian gamers can hope for is to play on the Oceanic server Myrcalus, but only if you pay via the American site, otherwise you will be stuck in European servers with high ping forever! However you look at it, this is bad news for Asian gamers looking to get their hands on some MMORPG goodness.
Why not check out our video introduction to Wildstar?
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