Wildstar seems considerably more finished than Star Citizen. Star Citizen won't be out for a few years, whereas Wildstar seems like it could release much sooner given the fact they are already in beta. I am not sure on the timeframe exactly though. If they release around the same time it would be a bit of a disappointment. Themepark is a game where there is direction and focus. Sandbox has no focus. So for example in WoW the point is to participate in raids, do quests, etc. You are guided throughut the game to do things. This is good because the developers can guide your experience and ensure you see the content they worked hard on to make you happy. Sandbox is good because you are not forced to do things you do not want to. Minecraft is a good example. You can mine or craft. Build a giant cock and balls out of gold or go kill spiders. There is no real focus, just tools for you to do what you will. An MMO that tries to do this is kind of like Darkfall. While there is a focus on GvG to an extent, you can do pretty much whatever you want. No real goal to be had.
I will probably only play Archage when it comes out, and will probably disregard all other games, until I see a few "LOVE IT" posts from the forums. I'm currently playing WoW and having fun, but only plan to play ArchAge, Star Citizen and Camelot Unchained.
Star Citizen should have a playable module in early 2014, and add more modules down the line. MMORPGs are released as betas these days anyway, so there's no telling when each of these two titles will be "complete" (depending on one's definition of a complete game).
Well the dogfighting module being pushed back could push back everything. This thread is probably a pretty good representation of the upcoming Star Citizen calender and from it, we are hearing about different modules. Independent modules that will become available in pieces, as opposed to something that is patched and added to. That sounds to be something they are saving for the beta, which doesn't happen until the Persistent Universe Module (which I do think will ultimately be pushed back to 2015). Mini-game modules, I don't think they will keep people that busy if there is a full game coming out they want a few months with. Wildstar seems pretty far along and I wouldn't be surprised to see if launching next to or shortly after ESO. Plenty of time to enjoy a game if you are waiting for 2015.
They "said" that the dogfighting module pushback won't push back anything else but who the fuck knows.
Wildstar will be releasing next year either a few months after the WoW expansion release or afterwards. I doubt Star Citizen will see anything playable till Q3 and even then it will be a fairly unpolished alpha.
If the combat mechanics and the setting don't do anything for you, then the rest of the game won't because it seems to be a fairly by the numbers MMO otherwise.
SC won't be "playable" till 2015+ unless u want to spend countless hours on the dogfighting module itself and the modules they add little by little. Wildstar will be fully playable before summer 2014. The only question is "will they put it before ESO or after". It'll depend, i guess, on their confidence level to how big a flop ESO will be. If they sure it'll fail they'll release it after and not care, if they're afraid it'll succeed, they'll probably release it by the end of Q1. But i wouldn't stop playing Wildstar because of SC... U'll probably have time to be bored of WS with maxxed out chars and stuff before SC is released. Archeage is another story tho even tho it seems they have no idea when they will release that thing. It's being ported for so long now.
The delay on the dogfighting module isn't a delay because it's unfinished. They could have launched it in the next week or two if they had wanted, but they decided to delay releasing it to the public until the server side code was done, which had always been scheduled for ~March. Basically, the original plan was to release it without the custom back-end and change it over later. CR made a judgement call and said the back-end needed to be in place for the public release because of how much scrutiny the game will be under. Anyone who has ever worked with coding projects (and plenty of other disciplines that I'm unfamiliar with) can fully understand pushing a milestone back to be simultaneous with a different milestone. As for Wildstar. I want to like it. I really do. Everything I'm seeing tells me it should be a pretty good game. I just can't convince myself that I'm actually interested in playing another themepark mmo.