At PAX East 2013, I was able to get multiple doses of Wildstar in different flavors. It’s kind of funny, because I knew so little about the game before I went to PAX East 2013; however, between my friends wanting to go to the Wildstar panel, a scheduled interview with Executive Producer Jeremy Gaffney, and trying out the game on the expo floor, I learned a whole lot about the game in a very short period of time. Therefore, I thought it would be a nice idea to do an MMOCO volume on the game, but as a preview.
There’s a ton of stuff going on with Wildstar, but you guys all know the drill - when I highlight a game in this column, we focus on the cooperative side of things. A couple of general things about the game before we dive into all that, though.
Two things immediately stood out to me when I first got in front of the monitor: the fun, cartoony artstyle and the fact that the game seemed much more actiony than a lot of other MMOs. As far as the artstyle goes, I think people will either love it or hate it, depending on their preference. I happen to like it, but that’s just my personal opinion. The action slant to the game, though welcome, was not a huge shock to me. Many MMOs these days appear to be moving more towards an action set-up with less skills, but more active combat. Like a couple other games I’ve played recently, Wildstar has reticles which show the area that a skill will land in. In Wildstar, they’re called “telegraphs.” Very often, enemies will display red telegraphs on the ground to show where their next skill will shortly fall. Players will want to try to dodge or back out of these telegraphs to avoid damage. If you played Guild Wars 2, this set-up will be very familiar. Unlike Guild Wars 2, however, Wildstar displays telegraphs of all sorts of shapes, not just circles. There are cones, multiple red circles at once, and some very strange shapes. This makes gameplay a little more interesting, as fighting different enemies feels more different than if all enemies just had one red circle on their skills.
The two things I learned about Wildstar that seem very exciting from a co-op or social perspective were housing and paths. Player housing is often a prevalent theme in MMOs. Whether it’s guild houses or individual houses, MMO players often love having the option of purchasing a personal space of their favorite virtual world. I have to say, Wildstar looks to be undergoing the most ambitious player housing I’ve ever seen in an MMO. Gaffney told me that the number of fixtures players can put in, on, or around their houses numbers at least in the hundreds, if not thousands. Some are mostly cosmetic, but many have functions. For example, players will be able to purchase a Raid Portal to put outside their house, which gives a buff. Player housing will have an invite list, so you’ll be able to make it as exclusive or as open as you like. I’m sure that these houses will provide great hubs for socialization between friends. Players will be able to buy their plots for their houses at level 5 or so, which means that housing is not only for the rich - which is excellent news. You can check out most of the details of housing in the following “dev speak” video:
The second unique co-op/social aspect of Wildstar I wanted to touch on is “paths.” Separate from character class, all players will pick a “path” on character creation. These paths consist of Explorer, Scientist, Soldier, and Settler, and picking one will enhance a particular part of the game (you’ll get missions for your path). As Gaffney told me, players already know what they like about MMOs. These paths give them the chance to get more of the content they like. Explorers are people who love to explore the world and uncover all its little secrets, Scientists are lore nuts, Soldiers love fighting and combat, and Settlers love socializing and helping others (hands up for those of us who are Settlers here). Wildstar will of course offer all these aspects to all players, but picking a path will give players extra content in that specific area. The really cool thing is that Wildstar will 100% support cooperation between paths. Since paths share XP, helping people with their paths gives you XP as well. The dev team is also planning some areas where two (or more) characters of different paths are needed to discover a secret of some sort.
Wildstar has no release date yet, but I’m interested by what I see. There are definitely some awesome ideas here. What do you guys think?