Wander is an MMO that doesn’t feature any combat. That sounds pretty interesting, right? Too bad it seems completely broken.
The game just came out on PlayStation 4 and PC for $US25, and players have been brutal so far — with good reason. Searching “Wander” on YouTube brings you exciting titles like “Save Your Money Not Worth It” and “Worst Game of This Generation”. The second one seems a bit hyperbolic, buuuut…
I’ve sifted through a bunch of players covering the game’s launch, and it’s not a pretty picture. There are glitches that slip through every game that ever ships, but Wander is a total mess right now. You’re constantly clipping through the world, and it crashes all the time. (Some folks have had success re-installing the game, but that shouldn’t be a requirement in this day and age, you know?)
I mean, this is a game with an option called “Can’t move?” to reset your position. It’s as though the developers knew players were going to run into problems, so they built a cheat code into Wander.
I’ve never seen anything like that before.
This is only the tip of the iceberg, too. Thanks to the following videos for what you’re about to see:
- Wander PS4 Gameplay (Worst Game of this Generation) !!!
- Wander – Glitch Power & Crash & Freeze of the PS4
- Wander (PS4) – Possibly the worst game this generation
Acts of teleportation!
The ability to levitate above objects!
Moonwalking!
Why walk up stairs when you can walk through stairs?!
I’m going to assume this is a magic spell that lets you see through things?
You know, this one doesn’t need any words, really.
Maybe you shouldn’t buy Wander?
Comments
12 responses to “PS4’s Newest MMO Is Hilariously Broken”
To be fair WoW has the same “I’m stuck feature” as part of the support tool. It currently uses your hearthstone but it use to teleport your character approx. 15 feet to the side back in Vanilla maybe BC days.
Fair point. Although it is just sort of…there in the pause menu. They could have thrown it in Settings but instead, there it is on the main screen.
Well most people don’t know about the WoW thing because it’s buried deep in the help tool. If it’s a common problem you want people to see it. The fact that it is common enough for them to put it in the pause menu is the problem.
LOTRO and Everquest have similar options (both from the command line). Heck, even Eve Online has a suicide option. Having played all three games at some point, I’ve had to use that option at least once in LOTRO and EQ, and once in Eve Online.
Having the option is pretty much a requirement – otherwise the devs are assuming that their game is completely free of clipping and movement bugs, which historically speaking is never true. Putting it up front rather than burying it in the UI makes simple sense. You may not need to use it often, but when you need it you REALLY need it.
It’s not the sort of thing I want to have to google or read the whole blinkin’ manual to find out. As design decisions go, it may broadcast an expectation of faults, but frankly any MMO SHOULD expect faults.
This is not to say it’s a good game. Just that putting a location reset in the UI is not unreasonable. At one point the same fault in EQ required GM intervention.
wow had the feature less as a bug problem but for people who get themselves into situations they cannot get out of. I remember getting stuck behind boxes I jumped over in a town (forget the name its the neutral one in the barrens). Making sure spots like this don’t exists in a game like wow is almost impossible. It was 100% my fault but having that option allows me to fix it without waiting for a gm lol. Don’t get me wrong bugs do occur but that is not the only reason even big mmo’s have the option.
Ummm, getting stuck behind boxes in WoW is the very definition of a bug dude…
Not really, on one side the boxes were arranged in a step like fashion allowing me to climb them, after I jumped over the other side was not, it was 3 boxes high and thus too high to jump back getting me stuck. More of an oversight rather then a bug. My hearthstone was on cooldown so I had no way of getting out of it and had to use the “i’m stuck” feature. A bug to me is, using a example, clipping into a wall or ground and unable to move. In this case, the boxes worked, the wall worked. Everything worked but I was unable to escape due to placement and my own stupidity.
Dude, what you have listed is a bug, an “oversight” is a bug, in software, anything that isn’t expected or planned is a bug, again, I state, getting stuck behind boxes is a bug…
For reference;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bug
This is what it looks like when games aren’t QA’d.
Probably.
No they are QA’d – it’s just the publisher tells them to ship it as soon as there are no blockers.
QA tells Dev team about bugs – Dev team tells publisher how long it will take to fix said bugs – Publisher says nope – Game ships.
These guys were at PAX AU. I wonder what they changed since then… looks like nothing?
Bear in mind that this game is from a small number of passionate people that really, really care about video games as an art form, they have put everything on the line for this.
I have no idea if the author attempted to contact the Wander team, or if indeed he’s actually played the game (the “review” reads as if he hasn’t), but I am sure that they would have been open for an interview if he had. In any case, if he didn’t attempt contact and has not played the game then I firmly believe Kotaku should be above allowing such strongly worded headlines based on hearsay.
In terms of balance, the availability of the Wander team for Q&A, their post sales support, and incoming patches is not part of the article – it should have been. There is no doubt in my mind that the team behind Wander will resolve all of the major issues as soon as humanly possible.
We need to back our Aussie Indie developers, cut them some slack and allow them some mistakes along the way as they grow.