128301-quick-first-impressions-from-a-new-player

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The first thing that's crossed my mind is this game is so much better than i expected to be. The wow obliterating cuteness (face it, wow stopped taking itself seriously since 2010) and sheer fun of the combat so far are such great scores for the game. The graphics and the music grow on you after a few days. So good.
 
The populations seem low. As in lower than when rift was dead. Swtor beginner zones on an average weekend have double or triple the population of the amount of people i see running around in the starter zone i'm in. I guess there must be an endgame population keeping the lights on..?
 
The reason i didn't try this game was i was saving my sub for eso. Which i played, and completely ignored wildstar until now, when it was $1 for a buffed post f2p account (how much i cared). From a players perspective, i feel like saying they royally screwed up the launch for cashgrab sake. Going up against a known ip elder scrolls plus a sub 'is it worth burden' was a massive mistake.. without the weight of a monthly fee just for permission to grind like vanilla wow now go image.. it scores so excellently. The tragic thing is eso not once gave me the "gotta play a little bit more" sensation that wildstar seems to be doing... Strategy people!!! Greed failed!!!
 
Yeah, well. Looking forward to f2p. I think this game even after this much has replaced my rift as the backup bored mmo. Shame... B2p (like tsw but done with not a skeleton team) would have probably would have won me over from eso... Especially with the costumes (saw the other thread) and player housing.. its setup for b2p... I sincerely hope their first few months of sub profits has given them enough success so they can recover from the business decision not game creator.
 	
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Now are you on Entity or Warhound? 
 
The PvP server is rebuilding so you may not see the people yet. 
 
The PvE server is over capacity due to the humble bundle deal and is a lag fest/slide show atm.	
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			Go dominion if PvE. What lagfest?  :P  :ph34r:	
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The populations seem low. As in lower than when rift was dead. Swtor beginner zones on an average weekend have double or triple the population of the amount of people i see running around in the starter zone i'm in. I guess there must be an endgame population keeping the lights on..?
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I'm a new player too. I started a trial, and then subbed. I have seen other players in the levelling areas, but I tend to mostly solo play, although grouping up has never been difficult. However, in MMORPG's I have no expectation that there even be anyone else levelling up in the zone. The reality is that endgame really is where it's at for social play, even if you are in a guild. But I love the group finder for various adventures, and have actually done one. 
 
I have heard a lot about the problems at endgame, so I approached Wildstar with a different outlook - I would play mostly casual play rather than raiding etc, so doing the attunements and everything else wouldn't feel so bad. But needless to say, I found that I've been able to run dungeons since level 10, so that has made me happy. I don't know exactly the intricacies about endgame, so I can only comment on the game overall. 
 
So far, I actually really like it. It feels a bit like a combo between a game like Unreal Tournament with the announcements and game aspects, but I've found it doesn't detract from being an MMORPG. I actually really like the UI as a default UI. I like the controls, and the camera controls. Love the combat. I play a healer, and for a while I came to wonder if I was even needed, but I died once, and quickly saw that indeed, the reason why the tank didn't die was because I actually was needed, and I wasn't just wasting time spamming unnecessary heals and shields. It's quite interesting to me that it seems so far that I have a support utility role as well as just healing, so for me that's a plus. 
 
I should add at this point that I do play world of warcraft, and I do like (no, love) flying. So I did actually look into whether or not there would be flying in Wildstar, as I was fairly certain that if any game was going to have flying, it would be this one. I also do play Aion a bit, and love aerial combat and gathering nodes in the air, although flight in Aion is a bit too limited in my opinion. But Aion is quite an old-school game compared to this one. I was actually a bit disappointed to see the usual antiflight arguments being trotted out like it makes the world less dangerous, seem smaller, breaks PVP etc. In world of warcraft, they decided the new expansion would be a no flight expansion, and then even started talking about not having flight full stop in the future. That was actually a huge mistake. It turned out that the antiflight players are a minority, and their arguments all seemed quite asinine. In world of warcraft, but I have already seen that Wildstar is a significantly different game, and it could actually be a little more valid than in world of warcraft. So I can see that considerations in Wildstar would need to be taken to ensure that it doesn't break the game. Such as
* making being on a mount give an aura. If an aura for a flying mount has been present when you landed somewhere, objects can not be gathered or no achievements granted. So make it so you can fly to somewhere to land on the ground in order to achieve exploration or jumping objectives, but you can't achieve them by flying. 
* for PVP have PVP objectives in the world which are attractive for players to want to win. Without being able to mount in combat, it does mean that players will be on the ground in order to be in combat. In world of warcraft, it quickly became apparent that the only people who were opposed to flight being in the game objected to the idea that players on PVP servers had a means to avoid being in combat if they didn't want to ie being ganked. Even now there is talk from some players about disabling flight on PVP servers, however a significant portion of players on PVP servers dislike this intently. It turns out that flying really just is that popular. 
* disable flight when levelling. No flying until max level. 
Other than that, the issue of not encountering other players is kind of moot given that being in the air does not turn off your chat, you can still talk to other people. If anything, it makes grouping up easier because people can get to other people faster. In world of warcraft, my experience has been that there were far more people out in the world when there was flying. Like I said, it's just something that a lot of people really do love. It turned out that the antiflight crowd was really a vocal minority, while when it came to people who loved flying, I think the sheer popularity of flying really surprised a lot of people, even including some of the devs. Unfortunately, this really is an issue which a lot of games seem to appear to be reluctant to be popular with, which is one of the reasons why no other game can come close to competing with world of warcraft. It's just something that really makes the game so much more enjoyable, and something that does have arguments against, but in world of warcraft, it seems like playing other games makes you appreciate world of warcraft all the more, because other devs and elements of communities are so set against various features which really do help with being able to play and enjoy the game for the masses. I don't want that for Wildstar, because I would actually say that so far, to me it's one of the best games I've ever played, and I would love to see it become a strong game in terms of numbers and popularity. 
 
OK so that's enough about flight. 
 
I haven't experienced any performance issues, and I do play with an AMD. So that's not been an issue for me at all. I love how the devs have embraced addons, and I really like my house. If anything, I wish we could get more sockets although I have not yet been hit with paying rent on what I have, so that could change my views on that, and I'd actually be kind of sad if the game became so housing-oriented that you never had to go into the world to play and could do it all from houses (your own or neighbours/guildies). The crafting is interesting and fun. 
			
				
	Edited June 23, 2015 by Sylvianna	
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I disagree on the flying thing.
 
I played WoW before they added that, and it really messed up the sense of a world in that game. Now I avoid games with flying when I can. The only one that did it right was City of Heroes - because you could fight and be attacked while flying. But even they had the flaw that no hostile NPCs were up above a certain height, and yet players could go up there.	
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			ah. I'm the opposite, and tend to stick to games with flight and actively seek them out. If anything, I wish they'd embrace flight more, like add elements of aerial combat, content that requires flight, add some danger to the skies etc in the games that have it and actually consider the third dimension instead of thinking in terms of 2D and platforming. With SWTOR I thought they would actually do it, and have races, and bombing type quests etc, but they went with a completely different system for spaceship flight.  	
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			The attunement quest (for Dominion at least, I haven't done it on Exile) has a portion that turns you into an air elemental and allows you to fly around for a limited time and in a limited space. Fun quest. But i hated flying in WOW because all you had to do was jump up 6 inches from the ground and suddenly nothing was attacking you, it was dumb as heck! EQ2's was slightly better in that agro range was 360 so you could agro from above and get knocked down, but generally you could fly over most agro, or around any other agro flying mobs.	
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 But even they had the flaw that no hostile NPCs were up above a certain height, and yet players could go up there.
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