Wildstar: First Impressions (part 1)

I first got interested in Wildstar because the art style reminded me of one of my favorite animated films ever: Treasure Planet. The sassy voiceovers and steampunk-infused feel hooked me from the get-go. Got the preorder and sat down to start beta weekends with the group. Character creation is complex enough to make my character feel unique, but simple enough I didn’t need a snack to get through it. I’m a sucker for mage classes, but decided I’d use the beta to try out things I don’t normally do, so I went Dominion>Mechari>Warrior>Scientist. Because I couldn’t be a Warrior Poet.

At first I didn’t like the movement of the game. I get migraines and motion sickness fairly easily, so the swaying and bouncing motion of the character and the camera was really doing a number on me. Fortunately, the range of motion on the camera is huge, and moving in closer to my character evened out the swaying and made it much easier to play. I hardly even noticed it after that.

I love the abilities for the Warrior class, and playing a heavy is exactly as fun as I remember it. I have only one in another game, one I play as a heal tank, but I didn’t choose medic in Wildstar because it’s rumored to be one of the most popular choices. Commanding control from the screen corners is fun as a mage class, but getting up in a boss’s face is a totally different fun. I love it.

I also like the Scientist path. It’s got interesting quests that give tons of information about the world itself, which of course the writer in me is completely stoked about. I think it gets a bit unwieldy sometimes trying to balance the Scientist and Warrior, since sometimes I needed to investigate things that I also needed to be smashing. It might work better with a DPS class, but I actually enjoyed the challenge of trying to balance the two.

So it’s fun, simple yet challenging, the art is beautiful. And add to all that the freaking hilarious narration and all in all it’s definitely a keeper.

Firstblush: 

My thoughts on new MMOs should always be taken with a grain of salt.  I tend to be overly reserved in my affection for any new MMO.  Until I’ve really had time to get over tripping my own two feet on even the simplest of tasks, I tend to find everything a little confusing and that lack of familiarity always leaves me with an inevitable hint of distaste in my mouth until the unknown turns into the well-known. I did not have a huge amount of time to devote to Wildstar this weekend, so what I did get was a very shallow impression of the game.

Art-wise I cannot say the style speaks to me. The designs are very colourful and cartoony, just unfortunately not in a fashion I personally find aesthetically appealing. In some respects, it reminds me of Disney cover art, where you see what they are going for but something feels a little weirdly off about it.  A lot of the designs are just a little too big (read: bug) eyed and cutesy.  And this even translates into the exaggerated movement style, which make the character’s gait almost painful to watch when you’re staring at an ample behind in full pendulum swing and prancing stride.  Unsurprisingly the female walk is always a little worse, but even the male characters aren’t immune to this. There is a variety of walks among the races, so it was a relief to discover some have a little less flourish than others. But all of this comes down to artistic choice really, and some will undoubtedly find it more enjoyable than I did. That is not to say I did not care for any of the art. I actually did feel the Mechari, Mordesh, Draken all looked pretty slick.

The character design did offer some customization, though nothing too in depth.  A choice of anything from five to eight face types, hair types, skin/hair/eye colours, and sometimes jewelry.  Bodies seemed pretty fixed in one type per gender.  The facial features did have slide-bar adjustments, but these – like most games – always seem to result in very minor differences in the end.  But still, I appreciate having them, and spend far too much time tweaking them.

Starting the game itself was straightforward enough.  It points you to talk to someone, and you’re sent on your first quest to teach you the basic mechanics of the game.  The game allows you to zoom in and zoom out at quite a range of distance and this should please most people. I did have a few instances where I wasn’t happy with how it would seemingly readjust my camera angle, however, but that was only here and there.  A friend of mine was also quick to point out the helpful aspect of the game where if you click on your current mission task, you get an arrow pointing the way to where you need to go.   This was very nice, though while playing and running around, I kept wishing I could just hit one key to tell me the same info.  (Hey, I’m lazy! Even too lazy sometimes to move my mouse).

As I said at the start, I didn’t get to play much.  I barely got out of the starter area, during which my screen sadly felt like it was constantly being bombarded with pop-ups. Some of them meant to be helpful tool-tips and tutorials (which I’m sure they have some option to turn off somewhere), others just part of the current objectives I was on.  I do wish it was a little cleaner.  A little less cluttered.  I think I’d appreciate everything more if I’d just had the time to really quietly immerse myself in it all and poke into every corner and read every tip, but my mindset just wasn’t there this weekend.  Something that made me pretty much useless in my path choices, on anything other than soldier which only asks you to go kill things. Maybe next beta weekend my head will be in a better place…

The combat, however, was probably my favourite part.  It IS so nice to kill things, and I got to get a glimpse at both the Stalker and Spellslinger.  The Stalker is delightful because of your stealth ability, and there really is nothing more fun than sneaking up behind an opponent and then whacking them with an ability.  The Spellslinger took me a bit more time to get used to, but I really enjoyed the charge attack (which forces you to stand still and wait for a charge), and the dash attack, because both add some nice variety to the combat other than stand and shoot.  I have to say, I appreciate any MMO that does not force me to always be stationary while fighting, and this one, like TSW, forces you to move out of enemy attacks, carefully outlined on the ground for you.

Overall, I can see how this game is going to be loved by some people.  Those to whom the art style really calls to, who will truly appreciated those touches of over-the-topness (and the humorous level-ups).  I can’t personally say I saw enough of it to really appreciate everything, and certainly not enough to see really where it comes into its own and shows why it’s different than any other MMO out there.  But it seems fun.  Fun enough to be worth a $15.00 subscription fee?  Well, I don’t know about that yet.

Bryce:

I felt that the overall feel of the game was great.  It’s like a cartoony Firefly/Outlaw Star, which is pretty awesome in my opinion.  The races were all nicely done and animated (besides most of the runs), that said I felt like everything moved slower than in the devspeak videos, but I don’t know if that’s a problem on my end computer wise, or trying to play on a NA server from Korea-wise.  Now the classes all seemed super different from each other which was great.  No two classes played the same from what I could tell, and different classes even had different aoe patterns for their attacks (unless you’re one of the slashy slashy classes).  Also I really enjoyed the way combat was handled.  It was nice having to actively aim each attack instead of having my toon just lock on and execute strikes at the click of a button.  I didn’t get to make it very far in the beta because of life, and also because I enjoyed it so much I don’t want to spoil too much of it when it does come out.

 Part two is here