Game Preview: Wildstar [PC]

I gave seven good years to the Horde. I wandered Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms, Outland and Northrend. I rubbed shoulders with Kings and Queens, fought men that thought themselves Gods. I joined forces with dragons and even journeyed through the annals of time.

But Azeroth holds no more mystery for me, I’ve returned many times, but World of Warcraft just can’t hold my attention any longer. The old girl isn’t sunk, but she’s leaking.

The abyss that’s left in the absence of such a gaming gem, is not easily satiated. I’ve looked to every pretender to the crown, not for want of seeing the King fall, but just to have another chance at what was, some of my favourite gaming moments of all time.

Guild Wars 2, Star Wars The Old Republic, Rift, The Age of Conan. Many have tried, but all have failed. That’s not to say they were all bad games, GW2 for example, contributed some great things to the genre, which brings me to the new hope, Wildstar.

Wildstar is being developed by NCsoft’s Southern California-based Carbine Studio. It has with it, some of the staff that worked on World of Warcraft, Everquest 1 and 2, Warhammer Online, City of Heroes, Diablo 2 and StarCraft. Any WoW veteran will instantly notice the influence that part of the team has had on this game. Deradune, one of the few talked about regions of planet Nexus, looks like a much more updated version of The Barrens (low level zone in WoW).

The story, at present time, reads a little like Borderlands. Planet Nexus, a legendary planet of the Eldan, is the focal point. The Eldan were once the galaxy’s most powerful race, they ruled for millennia then suddenly disappeared. Their technologically advanced, automated defences kept anyone away from the planet, but now they have dropped, and the race is on to capture the planet’s secrets.

As with WoW, the GW2 influence is also obvious with the “combat telegraphs”.

There is also some dynamic questing (in a smaller guise), from some gameplay videos. As you pick up your regular quests from the people with the yellow, floaty-punctuated-head disease, some optional quests may appear at certain predetermined points. For example, one quest had the player deactivating mines, the optional part was to do it without taking damage. Doesn’t sound too major, but hopefully it becomes more imaginative as you go. Anyone who has ground their way through various MMO’s, will tell you that any kind of fluctuation to questing is usually welcome.

From what I can tell from the information we have, the game looks very solid, and for the first time in quite a while, I feel very excited to hopefully be able to sink myself in to another fictional world. There are however, a few things that concern me.

Instant teleporting.

This mechanic, is something that really detracts from the open world aspect in an MMO. It’s there for convenience, but it serves by tearing down the huge world they have created. It’s something I didn’t like in GW2 and to an extent in WoW (during the Cataclysm expansion). There was talk of having flying mounts in Wildstar, but this was apparently scrapped due to people saying it diminished the open world. So why then, would they keep this mechanic in? it makes no sense to me and I am hoping this is something they get enough feedback on, that they decide it’s not the way forward.

Limited Action Sets.

This is another issue, and in all honesty, the main issue that drove me away from GW2. Only being able to use a small number of abilities at one time, is something I can never get used to. For me it lowers the skill level required for each class. This again, is something that is supposedly being tinkered with during the beta. There is actually a sprint button and a dodge to be aware of, so it’s possible they are trying to keep the number of skills down due to this. Given the choice, I prefer to have all skills available to me (once you have levelled of course), being ham stringed by only allowing a certain set of skills doesn’t show any obvious benefit in my eyes. I am sure there are people who may disagree though. I have certainly seen arguments for, and against on the forums.

On the flip side, there is plenty to be happy about.

40 man raiding.

I haven’t seen this since the release of WoW in 2005, raids were lowered to 25 with the arrival of its first expansion (The Burning Crusade). You might ask exactly why this is a good thing, so I’ll tell you. Potentially (emphasis on that word), it could mean that the boss fights themselves will be much more complex. With bigger groups, you have more opportunity to have various encounters happening at once, forcing raids to have their roles and tactics down cold. It also hopefully means, that the battles will be of an epic scale. Imagine an open battle field with hordes of nasties hurtling towards you, then all 40 of you charging head on in to battle. It’s an intriguing concept for sure, one that I don’t think has really been nailed in an MMO yet. Maybe Wildstar will be the one. With the enormous amount of talent at the developer, it could happen.

Paths.

This is something I am really looking forward to. Paths, is the name given to a system that allows you to level in a way more tailored to your play style. Do you like searching every inch of the map for loot and bragging rights? The explorer path is just right for you. Are you a lore hound? Do you enjoy learning everything to know there is about the game, so that you can bore the living daylights out of every player you meet? Well the scientist path will suit you fine. Are you a more social type maybe? Someone who likes to help others and build a bar for brave warriors to relax in? The settler will be right down your street. Or maybe you just like to run around and bash the various colours of blood out of things? The soldier path has you covered, warrior.

You get quite a few different quest types with each path, and it has its own levelling system to boot. I think the only way this could end up being a bad thing, is if the quest are insanely boring, but it looks great to me so far.

Action oriented combat.

You might have read that last sub title and thought “Well duh!”, and in fairness, it’s combat, so it’s going to entail action, right? Well, if you have ever played any MMO, you will know that it can be a little, shall we say, stagnant? We are talking dice rolls and auto attack, I know some of you are smirking at that, and I don’t blame you. It can feel, occasionally, like your just pressing a sequence of buttons without really reacting to the environment, or the enemy. Not always, but there are times, certainly at low level.

I think this is something GW2 attempted to move away from, they had the right idea, but they executed it very poorly. The idea was to make more of your abilities, utility skills. That’s a good thing, don’t get me wrong, but you ended up only having a couple of damaging abilities, and most of your DPS (damage per second) coming from auto attack.

From what I can garner from gameplay videos of Wildstar, there is no auto attack, and a lot more damaging abilities. That won’t cut down on the utility skills though, Apparently you can set up and use which ever skills you want, how much this is changed, and how well it works, is still out for the moment.

 

Arenas and Warplots.

PvP is a huge part of any MMO, despite the obligatory bunch of balance whiners, there is usually a good core of people to throw down against. With this in mind, Wildstar borrows from WoW and GW2 with arenas and warplots. The former is, from what I can tell it’s fairly similar to your regular arena battle, except one major difference, in Wildstar each team has a number of respawn tickets, you have to whittle them down then kill any remaining opponents.

Warplots is something akin to the WvWvW in GW2. Again, there isn’t much information yet, it seems that you can build up your warplot as another team attacks it, I assume erecting (stop giggling) fortifications to hold off the opposing teams advance is the order of the day. I wish I could offer more than that, but as I’ve said, there is still a huge surge of information yet to be revealed. Something I did find from Gamespy though, was this.

“We thought it’d be cool if we took all the same powers of this and see how it could affect gameplay. And so, in PvP, we now allow players to craft their own battlefields by adding terrain or capturing a raid boss and pinning it down on your battlefield so you can send it out to kick the crap out of your enemies. The early tests on this actually turned out to be quite fun.”

I’m not a huge fan of PvP usually, however, this sounds like it could really be something great. Far too often, developers seem to just be ticking boxes, but Carbine Studios seem to be thinking outside of them.

Player Housing.

Finally we have a place for you to call your own.

It seems like Carbine Studios are trying to cover all the bases with this one. According to the video it seems like you can build a plethora of items and even plant a garden. I’m not sure what purpose anti-air missiles would have, it would be an interesting notion if you could invade peoples plots, that’s for sure. This really just seems like it would be to attract the sim gaming crowd. I don’t blame them really, it certainly doesn’t look like it will harm the game in any way, and honestly, it looks kinda fun.

There is also crafting to consider, an MMO feels hollow without it, I won’t go in to this as I couldn’t find anything more than rumour to contribute, although I did find a little morsel about “circuit board crafting”. This seems to be more about what would usually be, applying gems in sockets on armour. If you read through it appears to be a great concept, allowing a fair bit of depth. If the rest of the crafting is this in depth and well though out, it may be a sink hole for the more creative player.

It’s difficult for me to keep calm in the face of something so promising. There are concerns, but you can’t deny that it’s shaping up superbly. To me this is a culmination of a lot of experienced minds, pouring their experience on to quite possibly, the MMO many of us have been waiting for. There is still a huge amount yet to be revealed, and hopefully it keeps coming up trumps. It’s true that it could just turn out to be another generic MMO, but I will be keeping my eye firmly on this. rest assured, as soon as I can grab myself a place in the beta, a full run down will be yours, when NDA allows of course.

There really are few things better in gaming, than starting a huge journey through an immersing MMO, with the right soundtrack, some great lore, and not forgetting some slick and well designed combat, we could have something that can finally challenge the Blizzard juggernaut. Even if it doesn’t topple the beast, there is nothing to say it can’t live along side it.