I think the thing that can make levelling up in games boring is when it’s simply too easy. If you can just mindlessly grind down enemies, it can be easy to lose interest and feel like you aren’t really accomplishing anything at all.
While playing Wildstar across two Beta-weekends, I found Nexus to be unforgiving. That said, I did not find it frustrating. The amount of force used against me was not unreasonable, for if I had just been a little more cautious or checked the strength of the mob before I threw myself at it, I wouldn’t have died.
I was forced to think about what I was doing and thus I felt like the game was interacting with me, rather than passively letting me faceroll my way to max level. This means I had to actually LOOK at the world around me, instead of letting it go past in an unappreciated blur (it would still be a beautiful blur though, Nexus is gorgeous). There are plenty of group quests and tough monsters that will ensure you get to team up with other players in questing areas.
The combat system contributes greatly to the appeal surrounding the game. New abilities and spells can only take a game so far, but when a unique combat system is introduced, it adds that extra layer of “something new” that many MMORPG players have desired.
Healers will be glad to hear that healing is no longer a case of “stand in one place and spam spells”, instead you will find yourself cartwheeling around, frantically chasing DPS who are on low HP and generally being a badass.
Customisation is a huge deal to most MMORPG players. We like our characters to feel unique by adding our own personal touches. We want our own plot of land.
In Wildstar the character creation tool has plenty of variables so that you can fine-tune your hero. Whether your taste is silly, serious or sexy, it’s unlikely you will regularly run into other players who look just like you. Wildstar also has a costume feature, meaning you can change the appearance of your armor for vanity reasons only (costumes aren’t visible in PvP). Mounts are also customisable, I happily found out as I glued some lopp ears to my hoverbike.
In the image above you will see a Grand piano that has been made by a Wildstar player. In total, the player, known on the Wildstar forums as Dën, used 758 objects to create this masterpiece. I feel that by creating this Dën has given us a glimpse into the future and a sneak peek at the absolute versatility players can have when it comes to decorating their plots.
Much like character customisation, plot/housing customisation options are plentiful. Plots can host a variety of buildings and what I can only describe as “awesome things”. You can place scalable dungeons on your plot, along with other constructions which produce resources (and zillions of other stuff). In a way, I feel like calling it “Player world”, because that’s certainly what it feels like. You can change the sky. The SKY.
The icing on the tasty Wildstar cake is how awesome the developers are. I think putting together a fun, functional and challenging game is a huge feat, but I wouldn’t be able to appreciate it as much as I do if the devs were douchebags.
The Wildstar devs have so far shown themselves to be extremely engaging with the community. They kept us up to date when the weekend beta servers were wobbly and even gave us some free goodies as a way to say sorry. Masses of information about the game and the ifs and buts surrounding it have been widely available through various social media and streams.
It’s clear that a lot of thought about the MMORPG community went into the creation of Wildstar, otherwise the game wouldn’t be causing the positive stir that it is. I hope that the Wildstar developers stay as open and communicative as they currently are, to maintain the positive relationship they currently have with their fans.
All of these things plus more, make Wildstar a worthy contender in the MMORPG market. I feel like I can’t say enough about Wildstar. This is only the beginning and I can’t see what else Carbine have in store for us!
