Lights
Legend
What's up, guys! My name is Lights (aka Gidget) and today I'm gonna show you the awesome upcoming MMORPG Wildstar.
This is coming from the perspective of a seasoned MMO player and gamer alike - I've played WoW since 2006, Diablo, Guild Wars, Dragon Nest, League of Legends, DotA and a plethora of other online games throughout my endeavours so far.
So you're a WoW player and you're wondering what all the Wildstar hype is about?
Well here's the first thing, Wildstar has been in development for almost a decade (that's almost as long as WoW's entire life!) and it's not by just any devs either, it's a close-knit team of old friends that worked on World of Warcraft in its very early stages through vanilla, so to say, WoW wouldn't be anything like it is today without these guys.
The second thing, Wildstar isn't trying to break the genre, it's not trying anything overly ~new~ and that's what makes it beautiful - it's taken everything we've loved about previous MMOs, it's polished and reiterated on what makes them great things in an online game and it's put its own cowboy/scifi/western theme on top of it (with already over 2000 years of interesting lore prior to the happenings in-game and where you're going in this new world)
The third, the storyline is continuing, upon release (June 3rd) that's only the tip of the iceberg, there's already 13 months of planned content and we already have an amazing amount of lore based around the Eldan, an ancient race that inhabited Nexus and mysteriously disappeared (and our job here is to find out what happened and progress through the storyline!)
Fourth and finally, Wildstar's combat is AMAZING, hands down. It feels like WoW, Tera, Guild Wars and a spin-off of League of Legend's ability system have all met in an engine and made harmony. The game is smooth, fast, reactive and dynamic, and that's not even to mention the insane fight mechanics and movement capabilities that this has been made possible.
Classes and Limited Action Set.
There's six classes in Wildstar - Warrior, Stalker, Engineer, Medic, Esper and Spellslinger, each with their own theme and armory of abilities and weapons, but the coolest thing about Wildstar's classes isn't your class choice per say, it's how you play them. Every class is capable of two roles, that's to say there is still TANK/HEALER/DPS and whatever class you choose, you will always be able to fill two roles based on your loadout (and that's the next thing I'll explain)
Just like any MMO, you gain new abilities and skills as you level, but Wildstar handles this is in a unique way, you have an action bar that has 8 ability slots and you have to choose 8 abilities out of the 30 odd ones you have, you can also allocate points into these chosen abilities to boost their power/add extra effects (kinda similar to Diablo 3's ability system!) and there's also AMPs (think WoW's old stat trees combined with Glyphs), which are like extra stats and extra ability effects (which are all balanced and constantly being monitored, of course)
Raiding, Dungeons, Adventures, Arenas, Battlegrounds, Warplots and other content!
There's a huge amount of content within Wildstar already and it's not even fully released yet, but to just to dot point a few crucial things for every different kind of player.
- Raiding - 20-man raid available upon level cap with around 3 months of progression needed, followed by a 40-man raid that unlocks (with an attunement first, of course!) upon defeating the 20-man boss.
- Dungeons and Adventures - 5-man group content, dungeons are located in places within the actual world and are pretty damn hard, Adventures are emulations of places you've already been with a multiple choice/outcome theme and a lot of replayability
- Arenas and Battlegrounds - Practice and Ranked with attached and visible ratings (and gear/aesthetics and other rewards upon achieving certain ratings!
- Warplots - Huge 40v40 battlegrounds that are made entirely by the team prior to the match - set up traps, cannons, terrain, troops, anything and face off in a rated and rewarded 40v40 match.
- Shiphands - Solo dungeon/elite missions that are scattered around the world.
- Professions, paths, housing as well - which all intertwine and benefit everything else in the game!
Addons, UI and Macros
Wildstar's user interface is completely customisable just like its sister game WoW. Everything can be turned on/off and added via the games addon menu.
The macro system is also a lot like WoW with a full language supporting all sorts of custom macros for abilities/gear switching/etc.
There's already a huge amount of addons on Curse mirroring a lot of WoW's core addons like TinyPlates, Recount and Threat Meter!
Helpful Links and other stuff!
- 2000 years of lore in a short read, everything that's happened up until now in Wildstar - A history lesson covering over 2000 years of in-game lore : WildStar
- DevSpeak videos series on gameplay - covering Movement, Aiming, Ability Mechanics, Crowd Control, Housing, Paths, Classes, Customisation, Arena & Battlegrounds and Adventures!
- Wildstar just went Gold! (500k sales, that's all pre-orders, guys!)
- PAX 2014 Wildstar Panel with developers!
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