WildStar Online

[Oatik]

I think open beta starts this weekend and is about 3 weeks long, not sure if that's every day or weekends only. Either way I'd suggest anyone who is interested to give it a look and them decide for themselves.

...a minute after posting and I find actual info..

NCSOFT® and Carbine Studios™ today announced that their upcoming action-adventure sci-fi MMO, WildStar® has entered Open Beta and will be available to fans 24/7 for the next 10 days. With the influx of new players a brand new European datacentre has been switched on to allow for a smoother game experience. NCSOFT and Carbine Studios welcome all players to explore WildStar, whether they are already familiar with the legendary planet Nexus or not, prior to the worldwide launch on Tuesday, 3rd June.

The announcement of Open Beta is also accompanied with a new trailer from Carbine Studios highlighting the background story of the game. The level cap has also been raised to 30 and the first localised German and French versions are available for testing. European players with existing characters will seamlessly be able to continue their adventures on the European servers.

Those new to WildStar can visit www.wildstar-online.com/en/openbeta for instructions and access, and players that have already participated in any previous WildStar beta event can log on with their current accounts.

To kick off the Open Beta, Carbine Studios is hosting a 30 minute Livestream on its Twitch Channel today at 20:00 CEST (www.twitch.tv/wildstar) where the developers will give a state of the game update and share their thoughts on exactly why WildStar is going to kick ass and disrupt the MMO category. The team will be back on Friday, 9th with a six-hour developer Livestream featuring a slew of content starting at 20:00 CEST, including play-by-play of some exciting raids and Warplots activity, a sneak peek into higher level Open Beta content and turn the it into a massive social ‘Ask Me Anything’, opening up every social platform to take questions – Facebook, Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter, Forums, Twitch, Vine and maybe even MySpace to name a few.

[Regolyth]

Thanks Oat. I'll check it out one night next week.

[Laethaka]

my friends back in America are flipping out over this game, but the character art really turns me off. It looks like an old Fox Kids cartoon.

[Morreion]

I tried Wildstar out this past weekend- I didn't get very high in levels, but here's my impressions:

The Good

The change of genre from typical fantasy is a positive. The world can be interesting, especially on the ark (the starting zone mother ship).

Normally I'm sort of a boring-guy tab-targeting and auto-attack fan (if I wanted to play FPS's like I used to, I'd play an FPS!) but the AoE/arc of attack targeting with one's weapons was sort of cool.

The Bad

Even with the change of genre, it's still a Theme Park Of A Thousand Solo Quests. I'm reeeeally tired of those types of games.

It's a bit of an ADD type experience with the sound effects, NPC chatting, flashing lights and bright colors etc. I think this is just a societal trend, but I want to register my displeasure with it anyway!

I just can't get into the cartoony/comedic art style and presentation. This is totally a subjective thing, it's just not my thing.

[Jaema]

I tried beta a little bit this weekend as well. I made an Esper and a Spellslinger, one a Settler and the other an Explorer. Those paths were the most intriguing aspect of my trial. I only got to do a couple things in each quest line but the novelty of it was appealing. I don't know that just that aspect is enough to make me buy it and once those quests got buried in a huge log of other quests as well maybe it wouldn't feel that entertaining. I didn't get to craft or venture into Nexus too far though I may try it again before the test ends.

I'm not a fan of the art style though the "jokey" NPC chatter seems well matched to the comic book styling.

[Morreion]

Another note- after another play session, I wanted to add to my previous observations:

If you liked GW2, you may like Wildstar. There are vistas and jumping puzzles, and with the path quests (I'm an explorer) you have a decent amount of non-combat questing to do. There's more depth to the game than I first realized.

I did find the "YOU LEVELED!" echoing yelling announcement when you dinged a level to be a bit much It wouldn't be out of character in a rowdy sports bar!

Filling in the map of a zone is a practical quest reward for explorers out there. Always nice to see.

I found several emotes in the game, and one can sit in chairs or on sofas, which you don;t often see these days. Another thumbs up.

[Oatik]

I've played a bit more today and although it is fun for a bit, it is exactly like being in a loud sports bar, which is great when your team is playing but not a place you want to live. Today I got sent down the road and saw 50 NPC ready to offer me 500 quests and I just logged off...I need to stop doing PvE for a bit and try something new.

[Morreion]

Open Beta is Here







The Nexus Telegraph: WildStar's pre-launch ups and downs (Massively)

The decision to separate level progression and path progression into completely different tracks seems like a poor idea from the beginning, like a gift-wrapped package saying, "You don't need to care about this!" The original version of paths -- big chunks of content that could allow you to largely bypass the actual designed leveling experience if you wanted to -- was far more interesting and a great idea that unfortunately got put aside in favor of more straightforward progression...

Active combat ensures that two different classes really do play differently from one another; there's no way to mistake a Warrior's sweeping close-range strikes with the cannon patterns of the Engineer. More to the point, you can really tailor a lot of your class playstyle to the class you like the most. I decided during beta to try playing an Engineer totally devoid of pets, and while I wouldn't say it worked better than anything, it was doable. I had the tools to make it work. Nor was I permanently locked into that choice; more so even than in Guild Wars or Guild Wars 2 at launch, trying a build in WildStar was easy and painless.

WildStar's Stephan Frost on using the subscription model (Massively)

A recent interview with WildStar's design producer Stephan Frost saw him liken the subscription fee to the extra fee for viewing cable stations such as HBO. People pay the extra money every month because the channel produces good content, and a subscription MMO has to do the same thing to justify that ticket price. Frost goes on to state that players should see new content in the game roughly every 28 days, with a vague mention that the team may do an expansion at some point but is mostly concerned with justifying the subscription price. It also ties into the CREDD system, which he states helps to cut down on gold-selling practices while also creating some parity between players with more real money and those with more real time.

WildStar's name registration is on again, off again, on again [Updated] (Massively)

"There are over 15,000 trying to access 1 single page, slow load times are going to happen. Just gotta refresh and try again," says Carbine via Twitter. "If you see a timer, that means your name is saved and you are good. If you are seeing "[question marks]" wait a couple minutes and try again."

WildStar's Jeremy Gaffney praises ESO's marketing (Massively)

Gaffney goes on to explain quite candidly the marketing strategy for WildStar and how his studio is probably spending way less than ZeniMax did on ESO. He makes sure to give plenty of kudos to ZeniMax for what it's done so far with ESO.

Leaderboard: Are you raiding in WildStar? (Massively)

38% said yes.

WildStar compensating players with bonus loot(Massively)

The saga of WildStar's name reservation system appears to have come to a close. According to a forum post today from community manager Tony Rey, the system should be working properly now with no further issues. And while Carbine Studios can't turn back time, the studio is at least trying to offer up an olive branch to players and fans affected by the system's instabilities.

Players who have pre-ordered will automatically be granted five Boom Boxes, little bonus packs of items being awarded for logging into beta that contain mounts, mount customizations, costumes, and so forth.

Carbine spotlights WildStar's PvE raid design (Massively)

Which encounter will "cause the most tears"? That'd be Avatus, the last boss of Datascape, Scheinert says, but the elemental pairs in Datascape will be rough too. "Because [they] change every week (and there are 9 possibilities, each of which is almost an entirely new encounter), guilds will spend an entire week reaching then learning a pairing... then the instance will reset and they'll be back to ground zero."

Why WildStar's name reservations were screwed up (Massively)

The short version is that it started when a big information drop introduced a lot of new assets to the site, causing even more load than was expected for the page when the name service went up. After that was handled, however, another problem surfaced with the site's feedback, leading to what is described as the server performing what amounts to a DDoS attack against itself. And once that was fixed, another problem surfaced. If you'd like to see the whole breakdown in detail to understand how everything got messed up, take a look at the full post on the official forums.

WildStar will be intermittently playable from now until the headstart (Massively)

Carbine Studios has just published an FAQ covering WildStar's status from now until the beginning of the headstart period on May 30th. Dubbed "Ops Week," this period will see the team "testing various launch systems, practicing [its] disaster recovery processes, making sure [its] fail overs fail over correctly, and putting some extra testing on [the] final Release Candidate."

But you don't care about their problems; you just want to know whether you can log in. Yep! Carbine intends to make the servers available for play. Although uptime windows won't be announced ahead of time and some may be brief, players should anticipate server availability during business hours on the west coast. Open beta characters will be accessible for as long as the team can manage it before the inevitable wipes.

The Nexus Telegraph: Preparing for WildStar's launch (Massively)

Around the time you finish the starter area (a very linear experience), you'll start dipping your toes into the action set waters. That means that you'll have access to one new slot and two or three new abilities to mix in there. Your obvious instinct is to just click on each of them, buy everything you can, and figure out which one you want on your bar afterward. Right? I recommend not. In fact, I'd recommend taking a minute, looking at all of the descriptions, and then deciding which one you're going to use right now and which one to buy.

Why the early frugality? A couple of reasons. First of all, remember that this is not old-school World of Warcraft or the like; any money you toss at an ability you're not using is just money going to waste. Second, when you're starting out, it's easier to make builds by finding out what tricks synergize with the abilities you're already using, not what will go nicely with the abilities you'll eventually have. It's too easy to drop abilities that it later turns out you'll really want. Third, and perhaps most importantly, it's not until you've unlocked six slots or so that the game really expects you to be running around without necessarily using the first few abilities.

[Morreion]

Wildstar's Launch

Seeking success with WildStar, a game 'no sane human being' would make (Gamasutra)

"Achievement is the love of watching bars grow -- that's our industry," Gaffney admits. "I don't think there's a more fundamental human need that gets tapped into by these games than watching your bars advance, and that feeling of progression -- of being able to say, 'I am tougher than I was before.'"

His team's job is to make sure that watching those bars grow is an enjoyable experience -- for a variety of players across different experience levels and different tastes in gameplay.

"The goal is, it's tough to get bored," says Gaffney. "Most MMO players, they've killed enough 10 goblins, and they don't need to kill 10 more goblins," he says. "Every area in the game, we try to have an interesting thing going on in the environment."

The Nexus Telegraph: The first week in WildStar (Massively)

If I were asked to judge Stormtalon's Lair solely based on mechanics, it would get extremely high marks from me. The dungeon makes good use of interrupt armor as a mechanic and of interrupts in general, making every boss fight feel like a fun experience. Yes, there's stuff that you will die to if you don't interrupt, but you always get plenty of warning, since the bosses frequently have unlimited armor before that and then suddenly drop into the range of player interrupts knocking them out of it. And there's a great onus of personal responsibility. Ranking high on the end-of-dungeon charts for staying alive is a really satisfying feeling, because it shows the game is acknowledging your work at staying out of telegraphs rather than just running through them.

Not to mention the fact that the actual bosses feel unique and fun. The last boss particularly has two neat mechanics -- a big knockback followed a need to rush in and interrupt, and a very cool storm-summoning in the end that requires you to stay in the eye of the storm whilst dodging other telegraphs at the same time. A slow rotation around the boss helps in this phase.

The problem, however, comes with other players. I can't count how many times an interrupt failed because myself and another player fired off our interrupts properly... and the third person didn't pay attention or had fired his too early. Or the wipes we had on the first boss because of people failing to dodge one or the other of the big AoE attacks toward the end of the fight. It was a recurring theme, let's leave it at that.

This may well become less of an issue as time goes by. As it stands, running dungeons is a challenge mostly on account of coordinating with other people, some of whom resolutely avoid learning lessons. (Everyone's going to miss interrupts on the first try at a boss, that's normal. The ninth time? Not so much. And yes, that's what happened.) Set aside a good chunk of your day for these things.

WildStar begins to sell C.R.E.D.D. subscription items (Massively)

C.R.E.D.D. is an in-game item that adds 30 days of play time to an account. Players can purchase one for $19.99 to sell on the exchange or purchase one from another player for in-game gold. Basically, it allows you to buy more game time with in-game currency or to gain more in-game currency with your real-world dollars.

Choose My Adventure: Crafting in WildStar (Massively)

There are two different types of crafting in the UI: Circuit Board Crafting and Coordinate Crafting. With the Circuit Board, you're placing microchips and powercores into sockets, increasing or decreasing stat points, and adjusting the power bar. All of this combines to create the item you're looking to make, and sometimes random things happen during the process to create more unique items.

With Coordinate Crafting, you use a grid to uncover hidden variants locked in the grid. You can place additives to help locate those hidden variants with clues given along the way. Uncovering these variants adds to the item's rarity and effectiveness.

Choose My Adventure: Final thoughts on WildStar (Massively)

Favorites

There really are a lot of things that WildStar got right. I actually like my characters. I like how they look, how they act, how they move, and what they can do. This is a huge part of the MMO genre that many developers get wrong. Customization is not just about nose and ear sliders; it's about providing the player with a tool to build and grow his avatar as far as he wants. This helps with eliminating burn-out and making us want to come back to the game when we're away from it. And that's huge.

The crafting is also fun. I described it in greater detail in last week's article, but I really like how the whole crafting system seems to fit with the "tinker" flavor of the game. And once you get past the initial learning curve, you're so excited that you figured it out that you can't wait to go further into it. And then you discover that it goes even deeper!

Then you add in things like housing, PvP, paths, adventures, mount customization... the list goes on. It's not so much that WildStar invented anything new with these features (because it didn't); it's the implementation that is so appealing.

Least favorites

There are still quite a few bugs in the game, as is expected of any launch title, but many of these severely hinder my enjoyment. Bad camera angles, resetting mobs, and bugged quests seem to be at the top of my list.

The graphical style burns my retinas at times, but that may just be the post-apocalyptic fan in me talking. I'd argue that "cartoony" isn't always a bad thing, but sometimes I just feel as if I'm too old to be playing this game. And then there are times when the style absolutely blows me away, like in the header image for this article.

Personally, I'm also not a huge fan of the game's linear progression, but I think it's still done well. I have to remind myself to look at this game not as a sandbox fan but as an MMO fan. And for an MMO in the traditional sense, WildStar does it well.

E3 2014: WildStar's Jeremy Gaffney introduces The Strain (Massively)

Although WildStar launched a mere week before E3 2014, that didn't mean the team didn't have exciting new things to talk about! In fact, Carbine President Jeremy Gaffney revealed the new content coming up at the end of the month. Fans, prepare yourself for the Strain!

If you think the moniker implies some hideous malady that results in freakish mutations, you're right on the money. From ferocious multi-fanged rowsdowers and giant gastrointestinal pustules to an emote that makes a purple alien mouth erupt from your chest, this new content created by the "intelligent virus" shows a whole new side of the planet Nexus. And I got a sneak peek of the new land, new dungeons, strain-infected gear, and other mutated goodies that await players in the Strain Ultradrop. As a bonus, we've even got the official trailer for you.E3 2014: WildStar's Jeremy Gaffney introduces The Strain (Massively)

Although WildStar launched a mere week before E3 2014, that didn't mean the team didn't have exciting new things to talk about! In fact, Carbine President Jeremy Gaffney revealed the new content coming up at the end of the month. Fans, prepare yourself for the Strain!

If you think the moniker implies some hideous malady that results in freakish mutations, you're right on the money. From ferocious multi-fanged rowsdowers and giant gastrointestinal pustules to an emote that makes a purple alien mouth erupt from your chest, this new content created by the "intelligent virus" shows a whole new side of the planet Nexus. And I got a sneak peek of the new land, new dungeons, strain-infected gear, and other mutated goodies that await players in the Strain Ultradrop. As a bonus, we've even got the official trailer for you.

The Nexus Telegraph: WildStar's first dose of Strain (Massively)

I'm kind of surprised that first thing we're getting out of the gate is a lot of Strained-themed stuff that is, well, cosmetic. Seriously, I can't imagine the Strain costume we've seen marching around is going to be limited to armor weight; that's purely visual. Ditto the Strain housing plugs and decorations, as vile and infected as you could like to see. New dyes, new emote, a hoverboard that looks like it'll threaten to eat you and/or your cat...

I'm happy, so don't get me wrong, but I had honestly expected "here's all the new gear with larger Brutality bonuses" to be the operating theme. We've slogged through years of that being standard operating practice in other games. We've been told about new and more powerful equipment only a few times. It's a distinction I quite like.

At a glance, this update will feature some of that, but not exclusively and perhaps not even primarily escalating power. I imagine a lot of these new cosmetic bits are locked behind either challenges or reputations, just waiting for people to work up if they're more interested in the non-progression side of the game. I certainly hope so, as no one enjoys being shown something that only a small portion of the playerbase will even have a chance to get.

WildStar bans thousands of botters (Massively)

"Obviously 7,300 is a tiny fraction of the overall player base, but it's a noticeable chunk of the current bots," Gaffney wrote. He pointed out that over half of those accounts were regular players who had their accounts hijacked and urged players to use two-factor authentication as a preventative measure.

WildStar offering a free mount to players with 2-step verification (Massively)

Do you have 2-step verification on your WildStar account already? The team at Carbine Studios really wants you to, since the added layer of security helps ensure that no one steals your stuff. So you're getting a little added incentive starting on July 10th -- a free bike! The Retroblade mount is free to all accounts with 2-step verification starting tomorrow, while everyone without 2-step verification will simply have to stare at your new ride with envy. Or, you know, get verified.

The Nexus Telegraph: The basics of crafting a WildStar build (Massively)

A good build in any game is all about synergy. You're not looking for individual skills that are good, exactly; you're looking for skills that work well together. A skill that, when tiered up, refreshes the cooldown of another skill is designed to work well with that other skill. An AMP that heals you each time a damage-over-time effect tick pairs up well with a bunch of DoT effects. That sort of thing.

In WildStar, good builds usually have about 3-4 skills on active rotation. My Warrior, for instance, has Smackdown, Breaching Strikes, Rampage, and Relentless Strikes, and all of those skills should be either on cooldown or in use. Since Smackdown and Rampage are both cooldown skills and Breaching Strikes has a trigger, those four skills work nicely together. Use Smackdown to Expose all of my enemies (and have a chance to reset the BS cooldown), spam BS when I get a crit, hit Rampage every time it comes off of cooldown to keep myself Empowered with its max tier, and use Relentless Strikes the rest of the time to build kinetic energy and reset Rampage.

The rest of your skills will be utility skills that do important things but aren't necessarily "hit always." For my build, that takes the form of Power Link (a nice group buff to damage), Grapple (destroys interrupt armor and pulls hard-to-reach targets), Emergency Reserves (helps if something clips me or I'm otherwise in danger), and Kick (another interrupt and a useful stun where needed). These skills are unlikely to be tiered up in any way and are there mostly to address situations that might come up in play. Consider them insurance.

[Oatik]

So I haven't really been playing Wildstar the last few weeks and then for fun I patched GW2 and picked up an old alt. I really like how GW2 shows you on the map where you can go (empty hearts) and then you just go there and get stuff done as opposed to Wildstar which sends me on my way with 15 quests. Part of me wants to log into Wildstar but mostly I'm scared how many things I'll have to do once I get there...