I can still remember how excited I was when I got the E-mail. I would be the 403rd person to log into the WildStar servers, joining the first round of close beta. I had been following the game for some time and couldn’t wait to get a look. If you haven’t done “ground floor” beta testing before, it’s a very different experience then playing an MMO; the server population is extremely small and at any given point you could be grouping with a developer (and at this point it was more likely you were grouping with one of the 300 or so friends and family of the dev team playing then one of the 200 public beta testers). In game chats about the direction of the game happened every Thursday, you could join pre-made groups with team members of weekends. I remember posting a bug report to the forums at around noon on a Friday, to see it fixed within the hour. I’ve had a year now, sometimes on and off playing, sometimes obsessive playing. I’ve seen 5 server resets, 2 complete UI overhauls, and countless updates. Last week the NDA has finally lifted, and I can’t wait to talk about the game. What I hope to bring you here is part review (of the current build, which may change before release) and part retrospective on the development cycle, which should give a lot of insight to the way the game is updated in the future.
WildFly
I’ll be clear about one thing from the start; if WildStar picked up the licence to make a game in the Firefly universe the only thing they would need to do is add some Chinese curse words. The music, the art style, the charter design, the plot, and just about everything else that makes up the “feel” of this game invokes the series. That’s not a bad thing and I bring it up simply because of the effective picture it paints. If you’re unfamiliar with the show, it seamlessly blends classic Westerns with Sci-Fi to create a world that is extremely relatable while still being alien; where some things are very different, but the whole and most importantly the people feel the same. On the surface, WildStar appears ups the ante with non-human races and fantasy aspects, but these additions are superficial. The alien races might as well be re-skinned humans, with simple world views like “honor is good” or “we love nature”, but this does nothing to stop them from adding charm and a good bit of humor. Fantasy elementals are handled with technology in an almost comical way, from firing spells out of guns to carrying around a giant combat modified defibrillator on your back. Overall you get something fresh and bursting with personality, but far from perfectly realised. Despite an overall enjoyable art style and a fantastic attention to detail in the character models, the graphic are simply outdated even by MMO standards. Despite a wealth of Sci-fi influence to draw on, you could easily mistake the zones and even some dungeons are coming from World of Warcraft or Everquest. There are a few standouts; mostly the internal areas, but they are too few and far between. One of the starting areas is particularly bad; I found myself thinking I was in Winterspring (a vanilla WOW zone) until some broken down vehicle reminded me I was in a different game.
Unfortunately this desire to see more WildStar and less generic MMO gets worse before it gets any better. The game has a strong and interesting story focusing on the conflict between the brown coats and the alliance ... I mean Exiles and Dominion and the mysteries of an extremely interesting place call the Nexus. It’s a story I would love to be immersed in, but the game doesn’t make it easy. The lack of voice acting prevented me from making any real connection with the characters in the world I was a part of, and seems almost unforgivable in a modern MMO trying to sell itself on the weight of its personality and story. Making matters worse, plot is often relayed in the form of text boxes while you’re out in the field and can easily be lost if you in a battle or otherwise engaged. And like most other MMOs it’s hard to tell what you should read. When trying not to hold your group up, it’s not always obvious if that wall of text that just popped up is plot critical information you’re going to regret not taking the time to read or just some whimsical banter about exactly why you’ve just been sent to kill ten swamp rats. It’s not all bad, mind you. What you do read is genially humours more often then it’s not. You will find a lot of the same wonderful charm you see in the trailers while playing the game, as well as some truly engaging plot ... you’re just going to have to go looking for it and carefully filter it from the trivial content.
Not the combat we want, but the combat we deserve
WildStars combat and character system started off as a refreshingly complex mix of new ideas and old standards. It’s two most radical departures from the ordinary were an attribute system that forced trade-offs by making every attribute valuable in some way to every class (only 4 of the 6 classes were live at this point) and combat system that was generally challenging. There was no fodder; if a quest told you to go kill 4 bears, you could expect 4 challenges and long fights vs. bears that would pass as mini-bosses in any other MMO. You built your class by picking a limited number of skills from an available list, similar to Guild Wars 2. You could augment the skills with perks, and there was a healthy amount of customization which allowed some classes to play multiple roles equally well. Attacks are delivered without targeting; either effecting everyone in your party, a cone in front of you, the closest creature or something similar, while enemies telegraphed devastating area of effect attacks, creating an action oriented game that kept you on your toes. It was different, but not unwelcome. The core system focuses on build and burn abilities; one attack creating a resources which other attacks consume. Unfortunately, it tested poorly, and not without reason. Mob density was a huge problem, as a single wondering monster turned any fight into a retreat (or worse). Given how long a single kill could take, would cost you a significant amount of time and a string bad luck could turn a whole play session into an unenjoyable waste of effort. Wonky mob tethering only added to the problem; attempts to move enemies out of groups often resulted in them going invisible and warping back to their home at random. The telegraphs were often overwhelming; as soon as you had more than a single enemy (which was unavoidable as some encounters were groups of less powerful monsters) it was easy for them to force you into situations where it was simply impossible to keep up; by the time you had positioned yourself to deliver your own attack, you had to move again before you could execute it. Rather than tackle the big problems, the developers took the easy path and lowered kill time, scaled down the telegraphs, and made combat generally easier. It’s wasn’t enough to quite the voices of the mass market however, and calls for simpler and easier to understand attributes were soon raised and answered. Simplified gear and crafting followed. Then less customization and class choice, so that people didn’t need to worry about making an unplayable build. What we have now is exactly what you would expect from a game looking for mass appeal. There is one core attribute to focus on for each class, once you pick a role there is a correct way to “build” for that role, and combat itself is quick and forgiving. This isn’t to say it’s not enjoyable, but if you have played guild wars, Neverwinter, Anon, or any out action based MMO, there is nothing new waiting for you here.
More isn’t more (except when it is)
Paths, one of the games key features, seem a fantastic way to keep the game fresh and enjoyable regardless of your play style. There are 4; explore, soldier, scientist and settler, which focus you on tasks outside the standard level progression and reward you with unique and powerful abilities. Combined with 6 classes, this provides and absolute unprecedented level of verity and choice, and near infinite level of repayable .. on paper. In reality, only settler and explore really stand out, with soldier and scientist mostly have you doing a little more of what you are already doing. As for the classes, the fantastic and unique stalker and engineer are a blast to play, while the Espre, Medic, and Spell Slinger feel way too similar to each other, and the warrior is a very generic tank. Over the games development, the team has made changes to the path systems to ensure they are all useful and diverse, and this has always seemed a focus. The same can’t be said about the classes. While the class monotony was a key talking point from tester almost from day one, they never given much attention. They argued that combat itself was complex enough as it is, and the design will serve to amplify the minor differences. Once you enter a group and move to the fantastically designed instances, for example, things can get chaotic. With positioning playing such an important role, understand not only what you need to do but where you need to do it from can be a real challenge. Playing a healer stands out as particularly frustrating as heals can affect people around you, in front of you, or closest to you, and there are still telegraphs to worry about. Voice chat is almost a must; there isn’t any time to type. If you like this or not is going to be a matter of option, but the point made by the developer is valid; the depth of combat itself amplifies the small differences to the point where each feels unique, but only for players who invest enough time in the game to see these elements.
Mine! All mine!
Anyone who has played an MMO and been even slightly invested in it knows one thing; developers talk a lot and do little. They fill the forums with grand visions of vast improvements, new systems, and game changing ideas, then spend all their time nurfing class you like to play. So when the Wildstar devs started talking about their own grand vision of customizable EVERYTHING, I didn’t get to excited. When player houses went live, only a few weeks after they said they were working on it, with a charming and original twist (your house is in zone that has its own quests) ... I still didn’t get that excited. Then custom gear game. And custom mounts. More housing items. More gear. A few months from launch, the influx of new and improved customization items hasn’t slowed down; in fact it has speed up considerable. This is the area of game play where Wildstar is really making its mark. The world and story are good enough to make you want to play there, and the customizing dose a fantastic job of making you want to live there. Ironically the opportunity for a strong crafting system, something that generally goes hand and hand with customization, was lost very early on when a somewhat interesting system was scrapped altogether in favor or something simple and generic. Quality of life improvements are also an issue; for a dev team that keeps its’ base informed about where they want the game to go, they rarely talk about the basics like run speed, travel distance, or the other minor issues that can make or break an MMO. Bag space is a huge problem; not only is it unreasonably limited in size but there are no dedicated crafting material or costume item storage like you see in most modern MMOs. As such, I found myself unable to get sucked in the way I felt I should. Every time a new and wonderful improvement was added, some minor detail kept me from enjoying it. The vendor with that new great item was 40 minutes of real time travel away, or I didn’t have any space in my bag for that new gear set.
The final word: Who’s paying for all this?
Wildstar has a lot going for it. The world is interesting, the combat will be enjoyable to the right type of player. All the systems that are in place, from PVP “raids” to well-crafted dungeons, are at least serviceable, and no matter what you want to do with your time, there is opportunity to have fun doing it. Most importantly, Wildstar has one of the most responsive, quick to act, and capable dev teams I’ve ever seen. If they are given the time and support to continue to polish this game post release, I see great things. But will they? Wildstar is already over budget and half a year late. It’s also going to be pay to play, putting it in the direct line of fire of extremely polished games with unlimited budgets like FF14RR, ESO, and WOW. Is what’s available today (or in a few months) enough to bring enough players over and keep them their long enough that the dev team get the money then need to continue to make the improvements the game needs? Sadly, I don’t think so. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t take a pass Wildstar; it’s worth playing. At its core it is a strong MMO with a low barrier of entry absolutely brimming with style and charm. But in going for mass market appeal with a higher budget and subscription model, WildStar needs to be more than just a good MMO. It needs to be a successful one. What good are a million different ways to customize your house if there aren’t a million other people making different ones? The best thing I can say after playing for a year is that WildStar is a solid MMO with great potential. I like it; I like the races, I like the story, and I like the people who are making it. But when I step away from that personal like to give an objective opinion I can’t help but realise what I’m saying is that WildStar is just another solid MMO with great potential, and in today’s market we get a few of them every month. Only time will tell, but this vision of the future may very well be fleeting.
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