The WildStar website outlines "big plans" Carbine Studios has for their MMORPG this year. WildStar Product Director Mike Donatelli expresses pride in some awards the game collected as 2014 ended, but also takes criticisms of the game head on, saying they will that they will continue to enhance WildStar, they will be making it "a more fun, less grindy, game," and that one of their focuses will be to support varied play styles and group sizes. Here's a portion with a bit of the big picture as well as specifics on their next update:

Getting more specific and focusing on our next update, The Protogames Initiative, we are adding many new features, including:

• Protogames Academy – a training dungeon to prepare lower level players for telegraphs, interrupt armor, and boss mechanics.
• Ultimate Protogames – an exciting new dungeon for upper level players.
• They Came from Fragment Zero! – a level 6 shiphand that introduces players to group gameplay at a much earlier level.
• LFG upgrades – currently, some shiphands, adventures, and dungeons are intentionally hidden or need to be unlocked. Unfortunately, this keeps many players out of the content. Moving forward, all of this content will be added to an expanded LFG tool.
• Datascape 20 – the 40-person dungeon wasn’t getting played as often as we hoped. Not only was the content challenging, but roster management was painful. In the next update we will lower the player requirement down to 20.

Looking further ahead into 2015, we will ramp up shorter-session (30-45 minute) gaming content. The intent is to give players something they can do more quickly in game that still delivers a sense of accomplishment (and meaningful loot). Some of the things we plan in this timeframe include:

• A new Contracts system which will provide players with short, fun objectives throughout different kinds of WildStar content, enabling them to obtain rare and exciting rewards.
• Revising overall levelling and elder games experiences and making adjustments to enhance story immersion, fight combat fatigue, and fine-tune our reward streams.
• As our Raiding guilds begin to face Avatus in the Datascape, we’re working on your next challenge! A brand new 20-player experience.
• This isn’t everything, not by a longshot. We’ve got much more in store for you in the coming months and the bottom line is that we have very big plans for WildStar in 2015. We hope that you’ll join the conversation and help us shape WildStar’s future.