WildStar Will Release Spring 2014, Unique Pay Model Included

You may be able to play early game demos of WildStar at gamescom and PAX Prime, but don’t expect to be able to play the full game anytime soon.

Today Wildstar announced (through Massively) that they will launch in Spring 2014, a bummer for fans excited about the game who have been yearning for its release to the public. However, that nugget of information is far less intriguing than their proposed pay model for the game.

Apparently, you will have to pay $19.99 to access the game for a month when it releases. The current subscription model is usually $15/month, which means that the team at Carbine Studios better have a good explanation for why it costs so much to play their game. Their reasoning is that the $20 will give you just one option to buy C.R.E.D.D. (Certificate of Research, Exploration, Destruction, and Development). You can also cultivate in-game money on your journey throughout WildStar and use that to purchase CREDD instead of paying an exuberant amount of money each month.

It’s an interesting two-tier system that WildStar plans to utilize, one that probably won’t work the way the game’s developers intend to. Casual gaming fans who hear about this news will balk at the $20 initial asking price and may not give the game the time of day. It will be a huge experiment that will test the pay model waters of the MMORPG market, for better or for worse.