Welcome to Wildstar, cupcake!
MMO’s have been jostling for the crown for years. With such a rigid formula, it has been difficult to create a game innovative and unique enough to stand out from the MMO crowd. World of Warcraft still stands with a smug smile on her face, looking down at excellent games such as Rift, Tera or TESO who have made valiant efforts to break away from the stereotype, but have fallen short. Admittedly, WoW gives Guild Wars 2 a sulky glance, which made leaps and bounds in becoming the best MMO available. I’ve never felt I wanted to commit to an MMO the way I have to World of Warcraft, which has taken countless hours of my life. Perhaps it is the WoW expertise that has gone into the design of Wildstar which has meant that all of this is about to change.
Soundtrack
The adventure that is Wildstar begins at the log-in screen. As I type in my details, a soundtrack that sounds straight from an adventure television show has my heart pumping and my fingers flying over my keyboard a little faster. This foreshadows the role of music throughout the entire game. In an MMO, you would expect a fantastical, grand tune to get you into a righteous, sword-fighting kind of mood. Wildstar’s dramatic music has you thirsting for adventure, the gun-slinging, cowboy kind. Even as you attune to the main soundtrack and it inevitably fades into the background, moving into a particular area can set off a whole different tune, perhaps something eerie to make you pause and expect a horde of enemies to materialise in your face. The sudden jar of a music change has had my gamer-senses tingling many a time. We all know that a music shift is bad news.
Character Creation
I’m ahead of myself. Let’s begin at the beginning. As with all MMORPGs, character creation could potentially take hours. Wildstar boasts two factions – The Exiles and The Dominion. Both have arrived on the planet of Nexus with very different agendas, resulting in an imminent rivalry. The Exiles, driven from their homeworld by the Dominion, are a group of outlaws who wish to appropriate the planet as a home on which to live; whilst The Dominion, a great space empire, wish to claim the Nexus as its rightful legacy. This is all fairly unoriginal, but it’s comforting to know what to expect when it comes to an MMO. Quickly falling into a state of familiarity, I pick Exiles. I’m just a rebel like that.
Picking a faction, as always, determines what race you can choose. For Exiles, I have the pick of gutsy Humans, huge rock-skinned Granoks, forest-dwelling animal-hybrids Aurins, and Mordesh, the space zombies. Within moments of assessing my options, my vividly pink, bat-eared Aurin is created. Customisation is vast, from hair and skin colour, to ear-type, to piercings. I’ve yet to see an Aurin cross my path that looks remotely like me, and it makes me feel more like an individual rather than another character in an animated crowd. A point which has a nod of approval from me too is that customising your character significantly changes its appearance. Rather than changes which very slightly alter your character, you have so much to express yourself with. In World of Warcraft, for example, you can spend an age meticulously adjusting eyes, ears and skin colours only to find that, in game, you’re near identical to every other Orc. In game, my character in Wildstar is a perfect rendition of the one I created. I stand out like a pink, girly thumb.
For the Dominion, the human-type is the superiority-complex addled Cassians. Interestingly, you can play a robot character called Mechari, mechanised killing machines. Savage Drakens and tiny, adorable, psychotic Chua make up the rest of the Dominion force.
Faction and race chosen. Now, as every MMORPG veteran knows, comes the most important decision of all – the class. Certain races play certain classes, so if you have a class in mind, make sure you choose the right race. Determined to have ears and a tail, I resign myself to whatever class I fancy from the Aurin. I made the mistake of having expectations. There would be a warrior, a healer, a mage, a hunter and a rogue, of some variation. Of this I was sure and I was right. I was also wrong. The class system of Wildstar is much more difficult to categorise, and the boundaries begin to blur into one another.
There are six classes. The warrior is as we might expect – tanky, brutal soldiers. Then we have the Spellslinger, a strange mix of mage and hunter, employing guns and spells in ranged attacks. The Esper is the master of illusion. The Engineer, decked in mechanical armour, is a ranged attacker and creates bots in order to assist in various ways in battle. The Medic is the support class, using gadgets to heal allies and attack enemies. Something I find interesting is that magic is toned down so strongly in the classes. Each class ability is the result of technology, with elements of magic thrown in if needed. The mystical, magicalness of the MMORPG world is already beginning to fade.
Whereas I would normally choose a ranged attacker, it’s the Stalker class that appealed to me. The assassin class, Stalkers use invisibility and stealth technology to stalk and slice’n’dice their enemies. This only seemed suiting to my already animalistic character. Watch out, Dominion. You’re about to be chomped by the cutest pinkest Aurin ever in existence.
Just when you think it’s over … it isn’t. In Wildstar, you must also choose a Path. Paths have a relatively significant impact on your gameplay, but won’t affect the story-line. With the choice of Explorer, Solider, Settler and Scientist, you can decide on what play-style befits you best. Additional quest-lines based on your Path will run alongside the main quest-line as you play. Explorers must uncover hidden secrets around maps and embark on fun jumping puzzles. Soldiers are invested in creation of weaponry and armour and must test such on hordes of enemies. Settlers build battle arenas, hospitals and the like for fellow players, and Scientists scan and analyse fauna, parts and relics around Nexus. Obviously, action lovers would choose the Soldier path for example. My love for thouroughly completing quests in areas and exploring every nook and cranny of a map meant that Explorer was the obvious choice for me. It’s refreshing to have the chance to personalise your gameplay in this way.
And speaking of game play, we’ve finally created our character. It’s time to get to it. Nexus, here we come.
Early Game
Speaking strictly from an Exile point of view, I began on Gambler’s Ruin. Aboard the arkship of the Exiles, you will embark on a number of basic quests that will give you the general feel for combat and movement. Go-here and kill-this and collect-those quests are a-plenty. The first thing I notice is that combat isn’t the simple tab-and-go style we see in World of Warcraft, but a much more engaging style more reminiscent of Tera. Your hits, even your basic melee attacks, must be aimed at a foe. Anyone within range is hit. Telegraphs will appear on the floor to indicate the area of attack for a particular skill. Lining up your telegraphs to encompass your enemy, or as many enemies as possible, requires a little more thought and manoeuvring in combat. Your enemies also leave telegraphs on the ground, allowing you to move out of the way of strong attacks and line up hits of your own. Once you’ve gotten the hang of telegraphs, it is second nature to skip lithely out of the way of an oncoming blow and skilfully slam your enemy in the back before they’ve so much as finished their attack. Nothing makes you feel more pro!
This elegant, dance-like style of combat is reinforced by details in movement such as double jumping (double tap spacebar for a higher jump) and rolling (double tap a direction to roll). Leaping over the head of an enemy or quickly dodging a blow serves to make combat feel engaging and skilled, rather than simply mashing your attacks. Your combat skills are rewarded by a dramatic voice torn straight from Dota or League of Legends announces a ‘DOUBLE KILL’ or a ‘TRIPLE KILL’. I can’t help but feel a little smug every time this happens. Levelling up is an event in itself, as ‘LEVEL UP!!!!’ appears in your screen in huge explosive letters and the narrator booms at you. Though exciting, this is a little awkward mid-combat, when your entire screen is covered in level-up excitement, and you cannot see where you are hitting.
Visually, Wildstar is breathtaking. With each step, the ears of my character dip realistically, I stride forward with grace and purpose. The animations are detailed, making every step and jump a pleasure to behold. The environments are fairly typical but also stunning. However, this typicality is combated with the continuous invasion of mechanics and technology on the Nexus. Amidst magicaL, fantasy-world forests, the likes of which can be found in WoW and GW2, are snaking metal wires curling around the trunks of trees. The clash of machine and nature is prevalent everywhere. Although this snags at the back of my mind, the mythical magic still shines through. With giant mushrooms I can leap on to jump through flocks of golden butterflies which explode in a shower of sparks, I forget for a moment that this is a world at war and simply enjoy the beauty of it.
But not for long. Whilst completing quests, an occasional challenge will appear, accompanied by another dramatic narrator announcement. These often involve killing or collecting certain things in a time slot, in the area in which you are questing. Your quest completion is measured as a percentage rather than in numbers, and taking a more difficult route, such as killing higher level monsters, will boost your completion at a faster rate. Don’t get too cocky though. The monsters roaming the map glowing red are Prime monsters, and shouldn’t be tackled alone unless you are particularly beef. Grouping up is beneficial for these.
There is a lot going on as you quest. Your quests are ordered into World quests, Zone quests and Region quests. Below this will be your Path quests. Above all of these will be your challenges, if there is one active at the time. Public events are dotted around, inviting you to join a group to kill a larger monster. Clicking on any one of these quests brings up a large blue arrow which points in the direction you must go, and tells you how far you must travel, as well as marking it on your minimap. Finding quests and deciding which is closest and easiest is pretty much done for you, and if you tire of a particular quest line, there are more than enough alternative things to do in the mean time. You rarely have to return to the quest giver; instead, you receive holo-calls which you can answer and accept quest rewards and continuing quests. Cut scenes are also frequent, intervening at the end of most lines of quests. It’s motivating to take a moment to watch the consequence of your actions and to feel a sense of progression through a story in this way.
With level ups, you can receive skills which must be paid for to be activated. You can then customise your action bar. AMPs can also be added to, allowing you to specialise in certain areas of combat, similar to a skill tree. This means that, although certain classes obviously excel in certain areas, I can play DPS, tank or healer depending on how I tailor my character as I level.
Stay tuned, cupcake
My aurin stalker has been stealthily decimating my enemies, with the help of an involved combat system and an engaging story-line. Although I’m beginning to feel a little big-headed with my dodging and stabbing skills, I’ve barely scratched the surface. Wildstar is brimming with colourful characters and surprises. Stay tuned for PvP, dungeons, raids, player housing and more!
