Wildstar

Wildstar is a new mmo that looks to be a lot cooler than recent WoW clones
it claims a much more interactive and interesting experience. the game looks ballin from what i can tell, but that's not worth very much
it starts out very standard: 2 factions, each faction has access to all classes
there are the standard range of classes
it gets different with the introduction of paths. paths are like professions on super crazy steroids. some paths don't have gathering professions and some don't have crafting. they each have mission professions though

Spoiler:

the game officially received a release date (June 3rd) as well as a lift on its beta NDA. it's a monthly sub, but you can use in game money to buy a month of sub off another player (they have to be willing). since this works through the auction house im guessing it'll always be relatively expensive but definitely cheaper at the beginning than as time goes on. there are 4 more beta weekend events so people should try and get into them to give it a try

...so yeah pat, you should post something about what this game is like

Were you waiting for the NDA lift to make this thread?
I was going to post "i cant talk about it because NDA" but i looked it up to be sure and the nda was lifted yesterday but now that the nda is gone ill post about it

First of all the game isnt a WoW clone, it doesnt play anything like WoW, it plays more like gw2
The quest system is like WoW though, the opening tutorial area is really good with its own story, but past that it goes into standard quests with little story
I stopped reading the quest text once it started giving me "kill x number of y mobs" type quests though

Paths arent really play styles, well they could be, if you dont care about getting rewards for the stuff you do
I didnt try settler but fighter and explorer are far more useful then scientist is, which is a shame cause i wanted to be a scientist
Fighter gets tasks where he has to kill waves of mobs in a certain area, generally these areas are also areas where there are quests, so the ability to fight waves of quest mobs really speeds up the questing, also it helps with challenges, challenges are like bonus quests from swtor, but these have a time limit, so you need to kill the number of mobs it says in the time it gives you or you fail, being able to fight waves of enemies makes this much easier (all paths/classes get challenges like that), and you get exp and loot from the waves, as well as exp for finishing it
Explorers can open up secret paths and areas, the paths help you get around the map much faster and speeds up the questing in a different way, the secret areas will have pretty good loot and you get exp for finding any secrets
Scientist can scan things... thats it, it slows down questing as you have to stop and scan stuff, you get exp from scanning but no loot, and scanning stuff is boring/tedious as you have to scan the same types of things more than once in most cases, oh yeah you do get lore info about the stuff you scan, info that you could look up on a wiki if you really wanted to know
You can level up your path, and at certain levels you get special abilities, i think scientist is still under devolopement since i got more skills from my path with explorer and fighter, that would explain why it sucks so much

The 2 factions can be any class/path, but classes are limited to race, and race is limited to faction (anything can be any path though), both factions have 1 race that can be any class, the other races can only be 3 or 4 of the classes, but as far as i could tell your race has no impact on combat in any way so picking your race is just a cosmetic thing
I only played dominion, and they are awesome, very evil, the opening area is really the only time you get to see that, but its really well written and funny

I only played 3 classes, spellslinger, esper, and medic
Medic was the worst, i really disliked it, it seems like the kind of class that needs to be high level to be fun and they have a really boring mechanic, each class has a special resource mechanic that lets them use certain abilities, similar to diablo 3 but not really since mana also still exists, for medic you use power cores which just generate passively/automatically as you are out of combat or when attacking/healing
Esper was a lot of fun, and actually makes a better healer than the medic if you use healing skills (medic will probably become better later in levels), his resource is psi energy, which certain skills will generate, where as certain other more powerful skills consume it and the more power you have the stronger the skill will be when the skill consumes it, its really fun
Spellslinger was my favorite and the one i played the most mainly because you get dual pistols and i love dual pistols, his skills are really powerful and he gets to teleport a short distance which also stuns enemies that you teleport through, it just feels powerful, except you die really fast so you need to move around a lot, his resource is kindve boring in that it just generates over time when you arent using it, but awesome in that when you active it you basically go super sayain and all your skills are super powered while using it (it drains over time while using it, it drains faster when using skills), your an unstoppable killing machine at the press of a button, until your energy runs out which can happen instantly if you spam your abilities, even your basic attack is powered up by this
The combat is the strongest part of the game

I played to level 10, and at level 10 you get a hoverboard, which is like a mount, but it actually acts like how you would expect a hoverboard to act, it uses the rules that back to the future 2 established for hoverboards, and its surprisingly fast, i think its a beta only thing though
I didnt try pvp, mainly because the game hates my computer, like looking at the graphics my computer should be able to handle it, but it struggles, my game crashed many times and ran poorly when many players were on the screen at once, which makes no sense to me because i had dozens of mobs, maybe 100, on my screen at one point and it was fine, it only happens 20+ players in an area, the main town was like a slide show for me as my fps tanked to 3 anytime i entered town, it was especially bad for 1 quest where you get a super speed boost and have to deliver something to the town, since you move so fast as soon as i got near the town my computer was like "... wtf do you expect me to do here, i cant load this shit at normal speed you fucking moron", and since the quest is time limited it was really hard for me
I feel like these things can be fixed by the end of beta though as it seemed to be an optimization issue on their end since people with better computers than mine had similar problems

I did try the big boss mob in the level 5-10 area, its impossible to solo, so i got a group going and then we learned its impossible with 4 people so we tried to get a raid going but everyone in chat was saying hes impossible and to not bother, which would explain why no one was trying to kill him other than our group in this huge beta weekend event
Eventually we got some other foolish people together and did get a 16 person raid going and tried him again, thats when we learned that hes impossible with 16 people, in fact we lasted longer with 4 than we did with 16, it scales with the number of people fighting it
More time passes and we finally get about 30 people, my computer cant handle this many people so i kept dieing but i kept running back, trying to keep my distance and keep my camera pointed away from people i was able to stay alive, but ultimately it was no use my game crashed after about 15 mins, in that time we got him down to about 75% hp, when i came back on i wasnt in the party and was in a different channel than that raid and i had no idea what channel i was in before crashing so i dont know if they won or not
My conclusion is that he is impossible and i shouldve just listen to the chat

Crafting seemed really in depth at first, it has a skill tree and everything, but once you figure out how the UI works, its very straight forward, the skill tree just makes it so not every profession can craft every item of that profession, which is strange, i didnt really get to see how that effects the game since getting mats takes a long time and the tree doesnt really matter at low crafting levels
You dont get the ability to salvage items until level 8 and i really hate when games do that, it makes it take longer to get mats to mass craft when you start out, none of the stuff i could make when i started crafting was better than the stuff i already had, so i would need to grind a bunch to get my crafting level to a point where the stuff i can make is useful, and not having the ability to salvage until level 8 makes that grind longer
It might just be that i had over powered equipment at my level (i only crafted on 1 character) but the weapon i was from a quest so it shouldnt have been OP


Overall i like the game, the combat is solid and not all the quests are standard, there are a few that stand out, theres not much story but what there was is really good
I dont think this is worth a sub though, a 1 time box price would be fine, but theres not enough story or interesting quests to make me say its sub worthy, the combat can only carry it so far

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Were you waiting for the NDA lift to make this thread?
I was going to post "i cant talk about it because NDA" but i looked it up to be sure and the nda was lifted yesterday but now that the nda is gone ill post about it

yeah haha. well either that or for you to pm me about it. a week after you told me you were going to pm me but didnt, i realized i'd been pat'd.

Quote :

First of all the game isnt a WoW clone, it doesnt play anything like WoW, it plays more like gw2
The quest system is like WoW though, the opening tutorial area is really good with its own story, but past that it goes into standard quests with little story
I stopped reading the quest text once it started giving me "kill x number of y mobs" type quests though

i was reading player feedback on what the game could improve on and one person said that they really wanted more "fetch x from y location and deliver it to z location" and "kill x mobs for item y" style quests. around a hundred people commented seconding his suggestion. i tried to understand why for a bit and then i started to lose my sanity so i stopped

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I only played dominion, and they are awesome, very evil, the opening area is really the only time you get to see that, but its really well written and funny

wait. from level 1 - 10 you only interact with your race's theme in the opening area or because of beta restrictions on content this was the only time it showed through?

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I played to level 10, and at level 10 you get a hoverboard, which is like a mount, but it actually acts like how you would expect a hoverboard to act, it uses the rules that back to the future 2 established for hoverboards, and its surprisingly fast, i think its a beta only thing though

one of the preorder bonuses is a special hoverboard skin so i dont think it's beta only

Serenity09 wrote:

yeah haha. well either that or for you to pm me about it. a week after you told me you were going to pm me but didnt, i realized i'd been pat'd.

I didnt have any time to make it, then i forgot about it, and when you reminded me about it i put some stuff in chat which i was like, yeah thats good enough, but now that theres a post about it and i had time i could go into more detail

Serenity09 wrote:

i was reading player feedback on what the game could improve on and one person said that they really wanted more "fetch x from y location and deliver it to z location" and "kill x mobs for item y" style quests. around a hundred people commented seconding his suggestion. i tried to understand why for a bit and then i started to lose my sanity so i stopped

I guess they only ever played WoW and are used to the quests there and like how easy/mindless they are
The graphics style is similar to WoW, i could see how people would expect something like WoW from it because of that

Serenity09 wrote:

wait. from level 1 - 10 you only interact with your race's theme in the opening area or because of beta restrictions on content this was the only time it showed through?

The theme isnt your race, its faction based, you start on your factions ship orbiting the planet, thats the opening area im talking about, the quests you do on that ship depend on your path, though some of them are done by all paths, after that area you have a choice of 2 low level starting areas (the choice is the same for all races and once you choose you cant go back) the low level area has the main city i was talking about (which during the beta was the main city, but its not the main city of the game)
In that area you mostly get quests having to do with the people living in that area, you have a main quest that is based on your faction, but none of it is voice acted past that opening area, and like i said i stopped reading the quest text after awhile, but the stuff i did read wasnt as well done as that opening area so its basically just that opening area

Serenity09 wrote:

one of the preorder bonuses is a special hoverboard skin so i dont think it's beta only

Oh yeah, it would make sense to make it a preorder bonus, its just weird to have pre order bonuses in beta unless you pre ordered (even that is rare), but i guess games are just doing that now since eso is even letting everyone play imperial during this weekends beta

You can get beta keys from here for a limited time: http://www.curse.com/betas/contest-300k-na-wildstar-beta-key-giveaway

That key will let you play Wildstar from april 4th to april 7th

This games open beta begins on May 8th and ends on the 18th
http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/news/open-beta-is-coming-may-8/
Its the last chance you have to play it for free, after this youll have to buy it for $60 and either earn enough gold in game to keep playing after the first month (the gold cost for this is set by the players, so it will probably be crazy high) or pay $15 a month

The open beta performs much better than the closed beta did, it actually runs properly now, still crashes sometimes though, but not too bad

I made an exile character, i like the dominion side a lot more, they were so evil it was really enjoyable, where as the exiles are so good its sickening to me
The dominion is a parody of evil empires, the exiles are a parody of the do gooders that want to stop the evil empire, the game has a really good sense of humor, i just find the evil side to be funnier than the good side

But the exiles have a much more interesting starter zone, the landscape is cooler, theres this area where you get a jump boost (its like a super jump) and the only way to navigate it is to use the jump boost, the dominion area didnt have anything that fun, theres even an underwater area with a quest at the bottom of it

Underwater combat isnt anything special, it uses the same system as land combat, its kindve weird but i didnt like the underwater system from gw2 and would rather have this so im fine with it, also theirs a breath meter but it lasts so long i didnt realize there was a breath meter (i didnt notice it at the top of the screen) so when i started drowning i was surprised

My name is Peshold and im on the exile side if anyone wants to play

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I made an exile character, i like the dominion side a lot more, they were so evil it was really enjoyable, where as the exiles are so good its sickening to me

yeah okay, arthurio. i had never gagged while playing a game until then

He wasnt sickeningly goody goody, hes made some harsh choices, but he has to be good because i gave him a backstory which make his good choices make sense and also explains why hes a jedi since it was an RP server but there wasnt any actual RP (except that 1 time) and i just carried over his do gooder backstory even though there was no point

There are 2 things the game doesnt have that all mordern games should have, a sell all junk button and waypoints for your map

Luckily the game supports addons and addons that fix those 2 things are already made

Junkit: http://www.curse.com/ws-addons/wildstar/220002-junkit
Junkit will auto sell junk when you go to a vendor, you can set it to sell white items too

NaveMate: http://www.curse.com/ws-addons/wildstar/220031-navmate
NavMate lets you add waypoints to the map, and will bring up an arrow pointing the the waypoint you made (by default its in the middle of the screen which is annoying, but if you right click the arrow and click unlock you can move it to the top right to the left of the minimap, or wherever you want it)

You can install addons by unzipping the folder in the zip file to %AppData%\Roaming\NCSOFT\WildStar\Addons\
If the addons folder doesnt exist just create it

Theres also this: http://www.curse.com/ws-addons/wildstar/220174-localtime
Which puts the server clock into your system time rather then the server time, for some reason chat logs are kept in your time, but the time thats displayed at the bottom is the server time and the difference was kindve annoying to me, you can still see the server time by mousing over the time

Those make the game much better, a list of addons can be found here: http://www.curse.com/ws-addons/wildstar
But the 3 i mentioned in this post are the only 3 that i find useful



At level 14 you gain access to housing, you get a plot of land for free and for 1 gold you get a basic house, a bed, a table, a rug, a bench, and a tree
There are various different house types, you can choose from 4 types at first, they all are the same size which is just a single room
After that you can add to your plot by building more stuff, the only other thing i can build is a moonshiners shack, which gives access to a challenge for making moonshine
You can customize the house quite a bit, you can change the floors wall ceiling, place various type of items (anything you can think of really), and even the lighting effects, you can place stuff outside on your land as well
You can upgrafe your house at level 36 or by completing achievements and unlocking bigger houses sooner
It all costs gold though, a lot of gold, at level 15 i had 11 gold, 1 gold for the house and 50 silver for most of the stuff you can place in the house (a potted plant is 50 silver), books cost 25 silver each which is crazy, to make a book shelf its like 15 gold total for a shelf and books to fill it
Each object in the house gives some sort of bonus, most of them just give you a rested exp bonus for logging out in your house, and its not worth the cost, you can get access to your bank from it, but i havent found a way to do it, you might need a better house than the starter one, you can get wall sections too and divide the room up (walls are 50 silver too)
So having a house at low level seems to provide nothing useful, but at higher levels it probably is great

At level 15 you can get a mount, its costs about 11 gold, its really slow and kindve disappointing, you can get a hoverboard at lvl 25 for 25 gold, i used a hoverboard in the beta and they are way better, if i was going to play during the release i wouldnt even bother to get the level 15 mount