At one point I promised that we’d look at the Wildstar end-game on MMOCO. This month, I make good on that promise. We’ll be talking about the max-level-oriented co-opportunities of Wildstar.
Nicknamed the “Elder Game,” Wildstar’s end-game has a bunch of different aspects, most of them cooperative group-focused. For obvious reasons, those are the ones we’ll be focusing on here. Once players hit level 50, their XP bar will be replaced with an Elder Points (EP) bar. These are mini levels which basically function the same way as XP, except instead of levels players receive Elder Gems. There’s a weekly cap on Elder Gems (140), and once players reach this cap they’ll receive extra in-game currency instead. These gems can be cashed in for a variety of things, such as level 50 gear, extra tier points for abilities, extra AMP points, extra LAS loadouts, cosmetic items, and the raid key.
Open world boss encounter, Scorchwing
There’s plenty of open-world content where players should have no problem working their way towards their weekly 140 Elder Gem quota. As of writing, there are currently three Veteran (level 50) zones: Crimson Badlands, Northern Wastes, and Blighthaven. In addition to a normal zone story quest line, each of these zones has repeatable daily quests. These dailies will give you reputation for the zone, which can unlock some pretty good gear rewards if worked on. There are even a couple of open world daily raid quests, with 20 people recommended to complete.
The real meat and potatoes of the MMO end-game is, of course, the dungeons. Wildstar offers both Veteran adventures and Veteran dungeons, with adventures being easier than dungeons. These are level 50 versions of the instanced group content that many players worked their way through during the leveling process. Killing bosses and completing the instance will net the group drops, but the real challenge is the medal system. Bronze, Silver, and Gold medals will award more and more loot at the end, with gold medals having a decent chance to drop epic-quality items. The requirements for receiving a higher grade medal vary from instance to instance, making them feel reasonably different from each other. Wildstar offers a group finder, so players who find themselves without a full group of friends can easily queue to find remaining party members.
And last, what MMO would be an MMO without some raids? Currently, Wildstar has two raids, one a 20-person raid and one a 40-person raid. Remember I mentioned the raid key before? Wildstar has an extensive key attunement process which requires completion before players can step foot inside the raids. This process requires many milestones which much be completed in a specific order, its tasks ranging from getting to 32k rep (Beloved) with either the Dominion of Exile faction, getting silver medals on all the adventures and dungeons, killing 10 world bosses, and various other open-world and instanced tasks. I haven’t done any of the raids myself yet, so I can’t really speak to the experience. All I really know beyond the attunement process is that the 20-person raid is a prereq to the 40-person raid.
So that’s Wildstar’s Elder Game in a nutshell. I’m currently working my way on getting gold rewards from the Veteran adventures with my friends, and having a pretty good time. I’m certainly looking forward to bumping it up a notch and tackling Veteran dungeons. Are any of you guys playing Wildstar’s end-game? What do you think of the end-game, whether you’re there yet or not? As always, let us know in the comments below.