Murf has a mass-market article on Gameranx.  It deals with the more familiar aspects to the launch of Wildstar and community.  Disclaimer – both Murf and I are on Evidra (in a guild run by overlord Liore), an RP server.  The type of player who knowingly selects an RP server is vastly different than a normal PvE or PvP server.  That said, I think the general rule applies.

My personal experiences echo those of Murf, in that by and large, the community is much more familiar and family-like than other games.  I’ve stated in a few places that Wildstar takes a social-first approach to nearly all aspects of the game.  You can certainly play alone but the experience is exponentially better with other people.  Challenges in particular, are run at a disadvantage if multiple people attempt them without grouping.  Each zone has 5-6 group quests, usually 2-3 people with an additional 5 member quest.  Grouping with random people also awards Renown, used as a currency for many customization features.  Grouping with 2+ guildies also gives you guild credits, which unlocks additional features.

The old community aspect is that the game is familiar enough in concept that people were able to transition somewhat easily from other games and if you have friends, you can actually play with them.  So that’s a direct contrast to say, ESO.  The fact that transition was so simple and intuitive, it allows for a much lower stress environment when it comes to questions and answers.  It also helps that there are few bugs, so frustration is also very low.  It makes for a much more enjoyable community.

I think it bears to mention that Wildstar’s skill level is a fair bit higher than the competition (as always, FF14 aside) and that as more and more people run adventures/dungeons, people looking for an easier ride will have to either reset their expectations or head to another game.  This is EXACTLY what FF14 did and from the numbers we can see that was a rather successful position to take.  I know I have personally died many, many times as a solo player.  Dungeons are challenging, not punishing.  I think my level 90 Monk died once while leveling, and that was from falling.  With a higher skill level, it means that people are a bit more focused on what’s going on.  That makes for a more involved player base, which is certainly positive.

By this point, I had a pretty good feeling for ESO but I waited til the end of the month. Will do the same here but wanted to post a quick update.

My Esper is 36. There are 2-3 people higher than me in the guild (Evindra-Exiles-Cats in Space) so I’ll venture to say I’m top of curve. It’s about the same rate as ESO and FF14, half as fast as TOR. I have spent an inordinate amount of time “goofing”. Exploring, crafting, little quests here and there, challenges. A fun dungeon runs, a few housing picnics (and a dungeon inside one!). There’s a ton to do and I am loving it all.

Catching some air. Massive air.

I was in Farside, subzone 3.1 I guess. It’s the mini zone attached to the large moon (with 1/3 gravity no less) and was just astounded by the little details. Small nooks are full of fun stuff. Hidden ghosts, passed out gambling NPCs, giant snails making out, hidden sets of stairs. And the lore is just jam packed with juicy bits.  Farside is also an odd one as it’s made up of smaller zones.  Compared to Whitevale (just before) you’re only in each zone a couple hours.  Mind you, each has their fun components.  The 2nd zone (the sand biome) has a spider-man like challenge.  You can fall from the highest point while doing it and I spent a solid 45 minutes getting through.  That I tried for 45 and didn’t just move on, speaks a lot I think.

Syp’s lot is pretty neat!

Are there bugs? Ya, a few. I’ve only ever had to drop 1 quest though. A rare /reloadui fixes the rest. One bug happened in the world quest line, at ~35.  That took a bit of magic but the quest itself was impressive, so I didn’t mind redoing a fair chunk.  I think I could count the bugs on my hand actually, which is so vastly different from ESO, that they are like night and eclipse.

World Quest – just amazing art

Housing.  I will have to make an entire post on housing.  Neighbors are easy to find and some people have been ultra creative.  Ryven found one piece of loot, not even at max size, that takes up 25% of his lot.  I’m adding pieces here and there, though I think I’m going to go for an underwater vibe – given my squirg headgear.  I like farming on other people’s land too, since you share resources.  It is so much more than I expected and extremely seamless.

I spend a lot of time smelling the roses. And doing that with other people too. That alone should speak volumes to what Carbine has been able to do here. I am continually impressed, even as a jaded vet.  I think, at the very foundational level, things just work and work smoothly.  It’s more or less intuitive.  There’s very little bullcrap that you have to put up with in order to have fun, which is a great change from more recent games (as I like to remind everyone, FF14 is the exception to all my MMO complaints!).

Oh, and I love Lopp.

First off.  Ding 30!  Or rather, shabow, kabam, wazow! Guitar shred solo.  I know people find that part grating but you only see it 50 times during all your hours.  I can’t think of another interface you see less often. /meh

I’ve finally unlocked all my LAS slots.  Most of my skills.  I have some T4 skills too, which unlock additional effects on some attacks.  While 25 is the numeric middle point, I will say that 30 is the spiritual mid-point.  You have access to all types of content (except war plots and raids), have a solid understanding of your class, plenty of housing options, a lot of the tradeskills figured out and lots of combat experience.  Is good.

Of note, level 30 achieved after completing nearly every piece of content available to me.  Path, adventure, dungeon, main quest, side quest, challenge… you name it.  It’s wildly fun.  Housing rested experience is extremely useful – not only for the base 5%/10% buff but a night logged off there gives me about 30% of a level of rested.  DO EEET!

Wildstar vs the rest

Comparison posts are the best.  Especially since I like to work with allegories (social tick as well).  Truly, this post is coming from Shintar’s post on my Stormtalon video.

That video reminds me a lot of the boss fights I’ve been seeing in Neverwinter. How would you say the styles of those two games compare?

Excellent question!  To which I attempted to answer and realized it’s a bit more complex.  Wildstar is a combination of Guild Wars2 and Neverwinter.  The first game I couldn’t really get into (but others did!) and the latter which I invested heavily.  I’ll focus mainly on combat for this post.

For quick comparison, here’s a post to a NW boss fight.

Active Combat

Both games use a limited action bar, where you can only slot X amount of abilities at any given time.  GW2 limits this mostly to weapon types and traits (ugh) while Neverwinter really allows dynamic allocation.  You can slot pretty much any ability at any time, which is what Wildstar is about.  The hiccup here is that Wildstar uses a tried and true themepark stats model, so if you want to swap between DPS and Tank/Healer, you need a 2^nd set of gear.  My Esper has, something like 12 bag slots of healing gear.  I’ll find a mod to help with that.

The action in combat is based on heavy movement.  GW2’s hilarious “roll everywhere” is partially present here but with a tank, there’s a bit more stability.  NW’s don’t stand in the fire and dance around is all over the place but the core difference is that the red stuff is not often in the shape of a circle.  Squares, rectangles, moving circles, shapes that grow or morph into other shapes.  You need to be paying attention.  Let’s just say you can’t multibox.

Where WS differs wildly from the former two is that it is global cooldown (GCD) locked.  GW2 & NW both rely heavily on cooldowns for abilities; you can’t just spam the most powerful attack.  WS instead allows you to use most any skill at any time but with a builder/finisher model.  The limit on skill usage is a GCD between skills (~1.5s), like other themeparks.  WoW’s model is only recently moving this way (think rogues, monks, paladins).

Role Focus

In many, many other games, the DPS are just dumb guns.  They stand and pew-pew, rarely move out of the way for anything and just focus damage everything they see.  I truly dislike this in WoW. GW2 has no roles, so let’s skip that.  NW has a tank/healer model but the tank does have issues keeping everything but the big-bad-guy on them.  Plus, all boss battles seem to follow the same model of summoning friends every ~30seconds.  DPS are required to take those down through skill lockdowns, which is generally fairly simple – especially with a Control Wizard.  DPS need to avoid damage but the healers have fairly simple tools to keep everyone up.  Bosses can rarely be interrupted, so it’s more about avoidance and lockdowns rather than timed attacks.

WS really has a focus on the trinity.  Tanks need to keep everyone on them as much as possible and usually have the skills to do so.  Healers are often left alone (in terms of threat) and can focus on keeping the tank alive.  They can heal DPS, if they are in range but their focus is always tank/healer.  DPS is a bit different here and more akin to NW or old-school WoW.  Focus fire, interrupts, stuns are really important.  Some bosses will wipe you if you don’t interrupt (and the need for multi-interrupts is another factor).  Traditionally CC doesn’t exist.  DPS also need to avoid all the red fire crap too, while doing the above.  If you look at the Stormtalon video, you can see that this isn’t super-obvious.  Movement from a DPS also means you’re often out of range of healing.  There’s a fair amount of pressure on the DPS and a rather higher skill level than almost any other game in recent memory (FF14 the exception).

Summary

My gut feeling is that the skill wall in WS is just holding the line on the skill wall issue.  Content (solo and group) is hard, requires a fair amount of attention from players and rewards smart play.  And that’s only the leveling content.  When’s the last time people died on a dungeon run in another MMO – again, FF14 aside?  I think that WS’ main benefit with this model is that if you train people, over the levels, to expect difficulty, you get better players at the end.

I ended up in the first dungeon yesterday, Stormtalon’s Lair.  It is a fair bit different than other games in that the trash packs are not easy.  CC options don’t really exist, outside of quick stuns/interrupts, so you need to juggle a fair amount.  Plus, there’s a fairly large gap between the trash and boss fights.

Trash is more or less static combat.  You move to avoid some attacks, just like single player combat.  2-3 enemies at a time.  It’s fun enough.

Bosses though, wow.  Everything is moving all the time.  The video below is the first dungeon end boss – Stormtalon.  The bosses before that are somewhat similar but this guy, just crazy.  Of interesting note, I am thinking people will need to circle strafe AND click buttons.  You don’t just move to avoid damage, you constantly move to avoid damage.  So that means attacking while moving.  I have a mouse with quite a few buttons, so there’s something beneficial there.

As an Esper, a static playstyle is challenging.  As you’ll see in the video.  I mess up a fair amount but it works out.  Dungeons take about an hour.  I died on the first attempt to the boss and died about 4 times total on the map.

Success!  By luck of events, this weekend gave me good fortune to get a fair amount of time into the game.  And it would appear, that by and large, there were next to no server starts woes.  ESO was a good high bar and Wildstar is right on pace.  It does put other games into stark contrast when you think about it (Watch_Dogs, D3, SimCity, etc..).  In the age of the interwebs, you’d hope they’d get this part down and Carbine did a fine job.

So, with my name all nice and reserved, I made my Exile Human Esper Asmiroth on Evindra.  What a mouthful.  I decided to take a trip to Algoroc as a starting zone, which has a more wild west meet sci-fi vibe.  Rocky canyons, cliffs to climb and a secret robot base.

One fun quest was out in the middle of nowhere, with no breadcrumbs to get there.  Here’s a video.

I just hit 15 and got my house too, so the next little while I think is going to focus on my customization.  Until that time, here are some screencaps.

Rocket Man

That’s a big gun

Big bad robot