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[Review] WildStar: Dig In & Explore Nexus, Cupcake
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
WildStar is Carbine Studios’ freshman effort… but don’t let that fool you. This team is filled with MMO veterans, all trying to make a monster of a game that gives you every thing you’ve loved from past MMORPGs, without the stuff you may not have liked. Did they succeed? For the most part, absolutely. WildStar is a polished, content rich experience that theme park MMO fans will go gaga over. But that doesn’t mean it will be loved by all. Read on for our full review.
Read more of Bill Murphy's WildStar: Dig In & Explore Nexus, Cupcake.
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Yes, that’s a hat… and it talks to you while you wear it.
Comments
At first I really had zero interest in this game but a freind of mine was very interested and so I jumped on the band wagon...
It was a little over the top as far as the "schtick" goes but it's all good.
I managed to progress through the "leveling up" content without issue, actually really enjoyed the process visiting all of the various quest areas. Didn't have much of an issue here maybe a small handful of quest bugs which were fixed along the way.
I also managed to level up my patch which as a stalker being a scientist came in very handy especially when porting groups to my location. Overall a pretty cool experience.
I finally hit 50 and thought to myself "what do" and also noticed I still had an "XP" bar but now the game shifted to Eldar gems whcih is needed for various other items. I thought to myself ok cool... no big deal... I read up on a few things like "what to do at lvl 50" and that is when the game took a dive off a cliff for me...
See, the game does a great job of luring you in and giving you a healthy dose of content and fun stuff along the way until you reach 50... Then the tedium of grinding the Eldar gems rolls in...
Now as I recall you can only gain 140 (or so) Eldar gems a week which is the cap... (I believe there are other means to extend this) but say I was wrong at it was 300 a week cap...
Well you need something to the effect of 3200 just to flesh out your AMP spec
You also need roughly 2800 (or 2900) to flesh out you skill point
That's months of grinding the same dailies and "whatever else gets you gems" just to finally complete you level build. While I did read there are other ways to gain these points such as very rare drops etc. You still have to grind that up.
Now the raid sutff...
You need 150 just to get the "raid key"
While there are a few solo steps along the way you will fall flat on your face unless you are in a hard core guild as you now need to gain silver (or better) in EVERY veteran Adventure and Dungeon... which according to other reviews it is practically impossible to pug and even difficult with a solid group... To gain Silver in adventures there is a 75 minute time limit... Dungeons are the same 75 minute and you must complete the questlines (or so I read). Now while YOU may have gotten lucky and circumvented some of the grind through drops, or used the architect exploit and were selling certain furniture for Eldar gems (fixed) you still need to wait for 19 or 39 of your fellow constituents to get there as well, who may not be so lucky.
The problem as I see it is this is where things may look good on paper but Carbine is forgetting exactly how shitty the MMO community can be. "Speed Runs!" "Must be XY spec in order to group" "Link your achievements" "What's your gear score" "show me your resume'"... basically all the fun is sapped from the game because you must "play a certain way" in order to participate.
Putting wekly caps on things just seems like a shitty and artificial means of "slowing things down" or forcing the herd through a specific path.
There is really not much else to do in the game... Basically have a great time leveling to 50, then get on the grindiest treadmill ever... Which on top of that is limited by gem caps.
I thought there was other things to do as opposed to appealing to the 2% of gamers.
Housing is OK but that is a side show that's not the main event...
I cancelled my sub, as This playstyle really isn't for me.
Currently playing an NDA sandbox which I backed on kickstarter.
What are your other Hobbies?
Gaming is Dirt Cheap compared to this...
Nice score, I think it is fair. The biggest con of WildStar is in fact the framerate performance. From time to time, it seems that it varies and I have to keep on messing with the detail settings. I believe that the game plays best when you get at least the 50/60 frame rate, so that you can feel the action based combat which is great. At around 30 something dipping to 20's the game just does not feel right and takes all the fun out the window.
WildStar with the performance issues solved will have a nice chunk of the MMO market and I truly believe that it will continue to grow and be a success.
Nice score. I agree with it. Outside of the optimization issues it's a really solid game. If you're not sick of so called 'themeparks', this one hits just about all the marks. It also looks like Carbine is going to keep the momentum going with solid updates on a fast paced schedule.
I think this one will be sticking around with a decent sized population.
"If you’re sick and tired of themepark MMOs, chances are you’ll tire of life on Nexus quickly."
It's a quite traditional mmorpg, but with many features bumped up a notch. I've probably played just too many of similar games to stick with wildstar or any other traditional mmo, and i bet im not the only one.
The rewiew seems quite fair. But the art style probably makes fair amount of people disagree with 10/10 rating...
Even the raiding, the attinuations alone will prob kill the raid scene. The raid encounters themselves should be the real challenge, not the path you have to take to step inside.
Great mmorpg though, for those who can stomach the above.
Originally posted by Arskaaa
"when players learned tacticks in dungeon/raids, its bread".
You made some really good Points. Not my cup of tea either.
I have no level50 char yet. But did you try out the New Strain content? It's suppose to be for all kind of playstyles. Solo, small Group, large Group stuff.
If they manage to put that out on regular basis. Then there should be enough to do really.
But in the end tho. Pretty much all MMO's end up in a grind at the Level cap. They have to keep you busy in some way and warrant the Subscription fee.
If everything would be too easy to acquire, then a Whole horde of 24/7 gamers will start crying "NO CONTENT" within a month after launch. /Sigh
The game itself is great!
But its support department is horrible. The only way to contact them is thru the ticket system which becomes an email system. Then it is get standard robot reply for 2 days then finally get a answer from a person, but the answer really says we need more time. Then if you do get another response it will say everything is fine and your ticket has been sent to another department. Then after about a week or two you probably finally give up on support for the game and move on to another game. Which is really sad because it is a decent game!
They really need chat or phone support, in this day of digital media no reason not to have one or the other.
"A deep complex game..
which you have experienced MANY times already in other games it copies, but with a subscription this time"
*FIXED IT FOR YOU*
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
The Wildstar I played during Beta must have went through a complete destroy and rebuild overhaul.
I NEVER had problems with the overall art style of Wildstar but it absolutely did not translate well into the actual game IMO. I always felt like the in-game style was missing ink outlines. Firefall (yuck) had an option to turn that on and it gave a much better feel. Between that the UI, font choice and font size I think that 10 is ridiculous. A perfect 10. Think about that.
Also a badly optimized game (that should be running WAY better according to it's art style simplicity) shouldn't get an 8 in polish. Especially when we're talking about a game that just got a 10/10 for aesthetics.
I'm not even going to bother with the other scores. Like I said, some huge huge changes must've happened since open beta.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Same goes for Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed, Mario Bros. Blah! Horrible PvP.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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Keying and attuning isn't so bad, it is an element of the old school games that actually gave people a chance to work toether for a common goal...
With Wildstar however it is a major hurdle which is hindered by the fact that you have limit caps on how much you can progress by way of spec, skill points to flesh out builds to achieve such content, by needing the Eldar Gems which you can only get 140 / week.
The attunement WILL kill the raid scene for all but the .5% REALLY hardcore raiders willing to take a shot at it... the other casual raiders will never get past the attunement barrier of the silver level goal for the vet dungeons.
So basically YES THERE'S RAIDSSSSSSSSS, however that carrot is being dangled pretty much months before it is even attainable.
What are your other Hobbies?
Gaming is Dirt Cheap compared to this...
After five years? You been living under a rock or something? WS doesn't do anything different that others haven done before except with an overuse of telegraphs.
Solid MMO but nothing that really hasn't been done before.