PAX Prime 2013 – Wildstar
I got to play Wildstar at Pax and I like it. As you can tell by the video above, it’s got a more fun cartoon look than say… well a lot of other MMO’s right now. The choice of aesthetics are nice since that is one of the things I liked most about WoW. I love the look because it kept it in a very fantastical setting. I don’t need all games to look like real life since I get enough of that with my real life.
To get more into the nitty-gritty, Wildstar’s level of difficulty caught me off guard. I was having a bit of difficulty in the starting area of the Chua with the first mobs I encountered. I have a few reasons for this other than my lack of experience with Wildstar in general. The first is my Razor Naga has spoiled me rotten. If you’ve ever played an MMO with a Naga, you would understand. If you haven’t, then you’re missing out.
The second would be that the starter mobs have a lot more health than I thought they would. Normal starter level mobs usually take a hit or two to kill, but not in Wildstar. The combat is more involved than most MMO’s that I’ve played and it rely’s heavily on using your environment and abilities to your advantage. In the starter area I was in I was told to deactivate some mines, but guess what mines are also good for. That’s right, killing things (including myself). However, you can also lure enemy mobs to the mines and share all the explosive love that the mines have to offer! Remember, sharing is caring!
They wanted to kill the normal mob grind by changing it up a bit. By what I just described you may think I was lying. Wildstar’s a different creature and you’ve got to figure out how to handle it. In combat after you kill mobs you get buffs. When you kill mobs one right after another you get multiple buffs. This helps you to continuously slaughter those in your path with either attack buffs or even EXP buffs. It’s a pretty novel idea. Lore books are also hidden around the maps for those that totally dig story.
The enemy telegraphs of both enemy mobs and myself was rather intuitive and I really liked the light up area warnings more than I thought I would. The combat didn’t feel watered down like I was thinking it would. They more add to the action of the general gameplay.
They’ve got a ton of features like housing (that gets pretty complicated and cool), crafting, different “Paths” for people who like to play their MMO’s in a different way than the norm. This isn’t Wildstar’s info page though so I would suggest you going and Wildstar’s home page to get more specifics.
PS: Don’t bother telling them I sent you. I still wasn’t able to get into the beta even after making friendly with some of the local Wildstar Pax people… sad day.
I’m really enthused to get a chance at this game. I’m all in…probably. I guess it’ll depend on the level of price. I’m very enthusiastic about free to play games these days. Regardless, I do hope for a beta invite.
You, me, Lambs, and Obey I believe are all waiting for one lol!