139100-wildstar-f2p-review-1-week-gameplay

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Before i start this review, there are a few things you need to know about me as a gamer :) .
 
I've played mmo's pretty much since they came out on the internet, Ultima Online, Everquest and a bunch of other now forgotten mmo's.
So i am rather battlehardened when it comes to waiting in queues, unprepared downtimes or maintenances, etc etc.
I beta-tested WoW for 3 phases and also played it from the release, when it was plagued by crashes, updated, downtimes...
 
So whenever this happens, i just tend to other games or reallife things like tending the apartment or going shopping.
 
With that out of the way, lets start the review.
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I was going to write this review a few days ago, but honestly i've been having so much fun playing Wildstar that i have had a hard
time NOT playing it, and actually do the review - but it has  to get done.
 
Wildstar for me is a mysterium, the game is so detailed; even with its cartoon graphics; it is very detailed and you can see that there was
time spent on everything in the game, it feels like it was made by someone with a passion, someone who wanted to put all their attention
into making it "their best work yet", someone who took pride in their creation..  and i understand it.
 
I would feel very proud over this, which is why it is a mysterium to me why it had to go F2P :huh:  , a tradgedy that this game didn't get
the attention it deserves and didn't become the wow-killer i had hoped it would be when i played the Wildstar beta.
The game however can be very punishing with all its menus and options for characters, it took me 1 week+ to figure out how to
add flair to my mount and to change my costume, and i still don't understand how some things works, like the crafting -
we'll get into that later.
 
Gameplay.
 
Gameplaywise the game is a total blast to play and it never ever gets boring. I have been mixing PvP with PvE and both works equally
well when leveling up, and if you're into either, both will entertain you, except maybe for the lack of battlegrounds, there are only 3,
and this could use some upgrading to 2-3 more, maybe a huge map with nodes to capture, like War of the Wilds, but players.
 
What's so fantastic about the PvE gameplay is the constantly storydriven content, every area you go into has a questline that takes
you from level 1 to 50 and then there are the gazilion of quests... im not exaggerating here, you have quests literally everywhere, there
are so much to do and so many quests that you won't even need to do half of them to reach 50, and most of the quests are awesome
with their own tales, their own characters with their own story.
 
I remember 2 days ago when i came to a desert area at level 40ish and was wrapping up quests everywhere i could find them when
suddenly i found that there appeared to be no more quests, then i step into a portal and end up in some biodome with more quests.
And as i was questing in these 2 biodomes, i was sent into other connected areas with more quests... everywhere.
 
To put it simple, very early on i got the feeling that every zone was like those russian Matrjosjka-dolls, with zones inside zones inside zones,
all filled to the brim with quests, and i could sit for hours just running them.
 
And mixed up with all these quests, are the challenges and path-missions.  Challenges are basically a task you have to complete during
a timer in 3 different stages, bronze, silver and gold. Each gives you increased points, and once you reach a certain amount of points,
you get rewarded with 1 of 3 items of your choosing.. and when you have completed enough challenges, you have collected enough
to get the final reward.. and these are repeatable with varrying timers.
 
The path-missions are an entierly different matter, they increase your path level B)  . And for each levelup for your path, you get
rewarded with; sometimes really good items; like flair for your mount to make it look cooler.
 
The combat is totally awesome and punishes the player who doesn't pay attention. The most simple mob can be your
undoing if you aren't watching the screen, and this is good, it keeps you on your toes.  Almost every mob in the game
has a special charge-attack which is telegraphed with a red area that warns, and you have 2-3 seconds usually to
interupt or get out of the way.  Stronger mobs; like bosses and minibosses; has what is called interuptarmors that protects
them from getting their charge-ability interupted.
 
But a player can invest abilitypoints into their skills to be able to break interuptshields, but those upgrades costs alot
of points and are best invested into your tree for PvE builds and not pvp.
 
A player that finds him/herself not interupting or dodging an NPCs charge-ability wiill find themselves either losing a
big chunk of health or sometimes their life.  However there are no "one hit" abilities that NPCs has, but some does immense damage.
 
 
Crafting
 
I haven't dug too much into crafting. All i can say is that it scares me away a little bit.. it costs ALOT of money, and trust me, you'll
want to save every penny you ever earn in Wildstar because everything costs a crapton of currency.   I picked armor-crafting
and still at level 49, i don't really understand how it works, it seems to be totally randomized.  I can pick up a task to create
6 armors for a vendor, and on a random, i get "failed" when using the exact same bonuses - which is weird - and the game
does a poor job explaining exactly how it works.  However, crafting isn't something i'm really interested in at the moment
so it doesn't bother me that much.
 
What scares me about crafting is that it's very expensive, first you have to pay for ingredients, and sometimes you have to
buy on auctionhouse because some "epic" ingredients doens't drop that much but are required in drows, even by the most
basic armors and other crafting.
 
For example. I had a stack of some quartz when i got a craftingquest to make some armors for a vendor, and suddenly
all my rare components were used up, and epic components are the rarest to find. So i am shocked to see simple craftingquests
require you to literally spend all your best craftingmats.
 
But when complete the craftingquests, you get rewarded with a currency that can be spent on anything from new plans to
ingredients and better harvesting-tools - this was a refreshing installment.  Having your harvesting-tool uptodate is important
because it decreases the time it takes to collect, and it increases the chance to get good drops when harvesting materials.
 
In hindsight, i would've made a more thorough ingame-guide to how crafting works, step-by-step, and reduced or removed the
costs for the main crafting - because why should it costs ME to craft something with MY components :huh: .
 
 
The UI. 
 
The UI can be frightening for the new player, and even with years of experience from mmo's, i sometimes get lost
in the massive quest-tracker. When you at times have several quests that requires to you use "T" button to activate
an item on questmobs or targets, you end up just running around pressing T on every mob with a "T" mark on it.
 
And at times, even when i try to really clean up my quest-tracker, there are so many different ones that i end up with a scrollbar,
but that's just because there are so many quests - not a complaint :D .
 
However, it is easy to get lost in what i have to do, with tasks, path-missions, challenges, storyline mission, zonebased missions.
 
I haven't delved much into the UI and its settings, so there is little i can actually review about it.
 
 
 
The Dungeons.
 
Forget any other mmo you've played, Wildstar dungeons starts at HARD, and them become progressivly more insane.
I haven't done many dungeons because i haven't been that impressed with the loot they give compared to the challenge
they pose to the player. I've always been a firm believer of reward should reflect the difficulty.
 
I have however done Stormtalon's Lair and Kel'voreth and let me tell you... they are no joke, even on the "normal" setting out
of the 2 that are available.  My first trip into Stormtalon ended up with wipes on the very first packs simply because people
weren't paying attention to interupts and the NPCs charged abilities..
 
And the bosses themselves are what can be best described as an orgie in AoE, nothing more, which i find abit boring
and disappointing. I expected more then just an INSANE AMOUNT of "dodge this".  The final boss in Stormtalon for example,
is ofcourse Stormtalon himself, and he goes steadily through 3 phases, each one with different AoE and you have to
really pay attention, and if you have a healer that doesn't keep your party topped of, you are going to start losing people.
 
I consider myself fairly good at dodging and paying attention, but even i got roasted last time i fought Stormtalon
simple because he gets into a phase where he does a huge room-covering AoE that moves around him, and inside
that AoE, there are more that you have to avoid, all doing large damage.
 
In Kel'voreth you have a boss that binds all your party to nodes, then sends out bombs and ontop of that,
a massivly damaging moving AoE. And not only do you have to free yourself, you have to rush to the healers
in your team and free them, then move out of the AoE, and dps the bombs..   and all it takes is ONE person
to drop and you either lose your healing, your tank or dps, and with 1 dps down, the fight becomes so much harder.
 
It reminds me of Tera, but even more frenetic dodging.  To put it simple, if you go into an instanse, be prepared to die
if you have something in RL that requires you attention for more then 1 second... B) .
 
Me personally would've prefered a more...(or less) AoE-free type of fighting with the occasional AoE to check
that everyone is paying attention, not this constant bombarment. But that is just me.
 
 
 
The PvP.
 
This is what seperates Wildstar from most other mmo's out there, and too my liking.  You can level up from 1 to 50 using PvP only
and you will gain gear that will constantly keep you up-to-par against any other player doing what you do, it usually comes down
to builds and playerskill.
 
And unlike other mmo's with PvPgear, you don't have to spend entire days farming for that 1 item. It took me 1 day of pug-farming
the 30-49 bracket to get enough prestige-points to buy each item.  However in the highest level 50 league, the prices on the pvp items
increases drastically to 5000 points per item.  But if you are a dedicated pvper like me, this is no problem, it just makes sure that
not anyone can just spend a day and suddenly they get your items as well - it will require some time to acquire all of it.
 
And i've always been a huge fan of rewarding gameplay; unlike GW2 where gear doesn't matter much; i like a gameplay
where your time spend grinding in a game, combined with your playerskill gained, will completely crush a player who's only
done pve and haven't spend time getting the gear with stats focused on pvp.
 
This was one of the main reasons why i quit WoW after a few years, because players who ran AQ40, BWL or ZG would completely
annihilate players who has spent weeks getting the warlord or the esteemed but near impossible Highwarlord items...
Blizztard was kinda urinating on the pvp-players and told them it was raining.
 
The only problem i've experienced with Wildstar PvP also finds itself in all other mmo's and i was hoping it had been sorted
by some mechanic but it hasn't.   I find that in battlegrounds there are almost no healing done because everyone wants to do damage.
And at times when i have been doing PvP, i can get extremely frustrated after not winning any battles in several hours simple
because my entire team has been made up of damage, no support.
 
I would've liked to see more incentive to healing and supporting your team, that might have made more players taking that role.
 
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So what do i think of Wildstar after 1+ week ?.
 
I have subscribed, level 49 and looking to buy that cool spidermount of crabmount, totally enjoying the game and looking forward
to running premades with my pvp-guild, farming for those epic pvp-rewards, min/maxing my build. 
 
On a sidenote, some of you might have noticed that i didn't write anything about the "issues" with updates, lag, queues etc etc... :ph34r: .
And the answer to that is, they aren't any "issues" to me, they are only an issue if you let them be.  To me, an update or downtime
or queue or crash... or murphys law, is just an opportunity to do something else.
 
Ofcourse lag is an "issue", but the only lag that was this past week was because of the overcrowded servers, nothing else,
hence nothing could be done directly to solve it, nothing that wouldn't take some time, so i didn't bother making it an issue.
 
Whenever there's a downtime, i play some Borderlands 2, i go shopping or clean my appartment.  What i don't do is sit by
the computer and hammer the login while getting frustrated because i can't get in..  that's is a wasted time.
After almost 15 years in the business of playing mmo's, i've come to understand that things happen and you can't really do anything
about it, and the devs and technicians are usually always on it, even during holidays... so i don't worry about it, hence it's not an issue for me.
 
 
Anyway.
 
This was my reivew of the game after 1 week + of gaming, im about to go shopping again for food and then get back into Nexus
and kill me some damn Dominion scum :angry:  and continue saving for that mount i want.
 
Grobnar Reznek signing out !.	
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			Excellent review. I could not agree more, my time on nexus has been fantastic. But go to hell Exile scum!	
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			Awesome review :) I am happy you are enjoying the game and I totally agree with your part about issues with Lag or log in or maintenance, people just need to do other things while Carbine gets it sorted out been playing the last 4 days with no queues or lag on my server :D 	
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Glad you're enjoying the game. Being able to level by PvP is how I convince some friends to check it out. 
 
 
{| class="blockquote"
 looking to buy that cool spidermount of crabmount, 
 
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Thanks for the positive feedback, i felt like doing this review because its a great game that imo deserves alot more attention.
 
Today i reached 50 and is wrapping up quests, time to join the big boys PvP.	
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One big issue i've found since i really started to grind pvp is the targeting system, and it need sorting.
 
Whenever there is a massive fight and i have a selected target i really want to kill, all that indicates my target is a small colored circle at their
feet that will be impossible to keep track of among all the AoEs and telegraphs.
This can easily be solved by placing an icon over the current targets head to make it easier to follow, afaik most other mmo's have this function
and i can't see why Wildstar shouldn't have it.  Or let us mark targets simply, like in pve, but on a individual level and not for the entire pvp-raid.	
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I played before the change to free to play. After initial fondness for wildstar everything seemed to irritate me hell. The constant dodging of telegraphs, jumping skills required to complete quests, and quests given to me from hopping rabbits making everything seem childish. Combat seemed frantic due to whenever killing a quest mob another quest or challenge would start. 
 I will be interested to see if wildstar holds your interest but for me it became a really irritating mmo. I was considering coming back, but checking out the forums I doubt it	
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You had me right until I realized you were a filthy exile. ;)
 
As far as PvE fights I totally see your point, I would say veteran protostar does the best at variety but the meat of wildstar pve is dodging and interrupting. Raiding really does the best job at changing that.
 
In the meantime though, pve fights are still incredibly rewarding, but that might just be my taste. I do hope we get more mechanics in the future, not a game killer for me.
 
Nice review glad you're enjoying yourself. I have also held off on crafting for your same reasons, as for plat I find farming expeditions and vendoring/selling things on the AH has worked for me.
 
Anyway, enjoy nexus! You filthy exile :3	
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I totally agree to your point that the game does a bad job at explaining itself in many of it's aspects.
Add to that a good load of bugs and you have the recipe for frustration.
			
				
	Edited October 10, 2015 by f234r2gh	
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@Papzazz (cant quote for some reason booooo)
 
Yeah if you don't like the combat you'll hate the game no question.
 
The cartoony style I've heard a wide assortment of opinions on (and I'm throwing Lopp - aka rabbit children - in with the cartoony style because I think they coincide). I've had friends who outright refuse, others who dislike it, but love the game play so keep playing. Some that loved it, and some that actually warmed up to it.
 
So while I don't understand the deal breaker for the style, I know it can be an issue for a lot of people.
 
Sorry it wasn't your cup of tea, probably nothing will make you change your mind if combat or looks is your core issue.
			
				
	Edited October 10, 2015 by Kezra	
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			Great review	
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			I'm about to get back into my pve life since I'm about pvp burnt out. I know dps classes are fine, but the support is slacking behind :P. Nevertheless it is great to see new players here and there. This is how it should of been a year ago, but all oh well. That's in the past ;).	
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			Thanks for your reply Kez. Like I said at the start I liked WS a lot but then everything became frustrating. I quite liked the cartoony style at the start but then it went downhill. I would have liked to return but there seems to more negativity what with changes to crafting armour repair costs etc than when I quit in June. For my casual style of gameplay it won't suit me. It really is a return to hardcore mmo gaming from the past	
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