Wildstar the Second Shot

In a strange reversal of fortune, I am trying Wildstar out.  This is particularly strange when you consider Pitrelli just reversed himself and decided to give Elder Scrolls Online a go and drop Wildstar.  Now I need to explain; I did not pick it up again of my own free will.  I have a friend who is begging me to play it.  He got further than I did and seems to love it and he really wants me to play with him.  Me, being the great friend I am, decided to give it another go.  What follows is an updated impression.

First of all, many of my problems in my earlier impression post still stand.  Though I have gotten used to the telegraphs and have even come to understand what they are trying to do, it still makes the game to damn bright at times.  There is entirely too much flashing going off on the screen constantly.  I really do not recommend this game if you are prone to seizures because there is no doubt this game will give you one.

Not only that but the background environment is entirely too busy, especially the tutorial zone.  Every square inch is covered with whirling doodads, laser scanners, surveillance droids complete with flash bulbs and a myriad of other things.  I am reminded of when George Lucas discovered CGI and reissued the Star Wars movies.  He wasn’t content to just update Jabba the Hutt, he also had to throw new CGI into every single frame.  There is really no need for this.  The tutorial is so jammed packed with stuff that its distracting.  There is simply no need for so much stuff jam packed into everywhere.

I decided to make a Chua Spellslinger named Gizzbro this time.  I will say the Chua are one of the greatest races in any game.  They are basically cute Gremlins that are insanely smart at making weapons.  I really like everything about them, which is good because I don’t like most of the other races.  I really dislike the human walking animations, the mechari aren’t appealing and the beast race has some strange animations as well.  But, the Chua make up for it.

Combat-wise Wildstar is solid.  Perhaps better than I thought initially.  The combat is fast and frantic and there is a pretty good skill curve involved here.  I can certainly see arena and rated battlegrounds being a big thing here.  I am still not sure the telegraphs add or detract from the skill needed to play it but its fun regardless.

My Wildstar Thoughts

I have to tread carefully here because of the NDA but I will articulate some thoughts on Wildstar.  I will state, up front, that Wildstar is a well-crafted MMO.  It is quite obvious, from the moment you start the game, that the developers have worked hard making the game.  They imbued it with a solid world, a good story and a quirky sense of humor sharper than anything this side of World of Warcraft.

All that being said, I will not be playing Wildstar at release.  I enjoyed all the things I mentioned above but there are a few things that just turned me off.  The good news is that all of the things that I did not like are completely personal preferences.  From a mechanics standpoint there is nothing at all wrong with Wildstar.  Bugs are few and far between, the engine runs fairly well, the quests worked.  All the mechanics are solid.

Elder Scrolls Online PvP

With my history with MMOs, it should come as no surprise that the PvP in ESO would get the most scrutiny from me. DAoC continues to be my favorite MMO of all time and even in my time in WoW I spent a lot of time PvP’ing.  PvP will make or break a MMO for me.  If your MMO doesn’t do PvP well or doesn’t do it at all, I am much less likely to spend a significant amount of time there.

It is strange that Elder Scrolls Online focuses so much on PvP.  They basically took a single-player, quest driven RPG and made it into a MMO that focuses strongly on PvP throughout.  This seems like a very strange decision and one that takes a certain amount of courage. I am not sure how many Elder Scroll fans would classify PvP as one of the things they were looking for if they designed an Elder Scrolls MMO.

That being said, if it is well done, it will succeed.  There is a large contingent of PvP players in MMOs and they will support a well made game.  Admittedly, there are few truly well made PvP MMOs out there.  Guild Wars 2 tried mightily with their WvW PvP but I believe they missed the mark with a few poor decisions and an engine that was simply incapable of keeping up with the large amounts of players displayed on the screen at any given time.