WildStar – Preview
Last week we got to pay a visit to the lovely folks of Carbine Studios to have a look at their new MMORPG Wildstar. We had the chance to have some hands on time with the game and I got to interview Stephen Frost, one of the producers working on the game. It was my first time seeing the game but I’ll go ahead and tell you that this game is one to keep your eye on. Want to know why? Read on!
For those who haven’t heard about the game yet, Wildstar is a new MMORPG made by carbine studio, a studio founded by , as they say it themselves, a bunch of guys wanting to make the next great MMO, and they do have a resume that makes you think that might actually be able to make good on that. The studio is filled with guys who worked on games like World of Warcraft, Everquest 1 and 2, Warhammer online, City of Heroes, Free realms, Diablo II, Starcraft and the list goes on for a while, so no lack of talent there.
The game takes place on the planet nexus, a recently discovered planet, and you are one of the two factions trying to claim it. You’ll be able to do this as one of the 7 races in the game, three unique to each faction and the humans, who can play as both. The game has 6 classes to pick from and you’ll be able to level your character until level 50.
The stuff we got to see last week focused on two parts of the game, namely the path system and the housing, let’s start with the path system. Paths are a unique form of specialization for your character, separate from your class, that lets you tailor some of the gameplay to how you like to play. The game offers you four paths to choose from, being: the soldier, the scientist, the explorer and the settler.
The soldier is the most straightforward one of the bunch, and if you’re way into combat, this is the one you’ll want to go for. The soldier offers you access to soldier specific weapons and skills and special missions all focused on combat.
Then there’s the scientist, the path for the lore nerds among us. The scientist path grants you access to a library of extra lore stuff you can acquire through missions, exploring the world and solving puzzles or even through analyzing the flora and fauna of nexus with your trusty science bot. A bot which you can rename if you want.
The third one’s the explorer. As an explorer you’ll get to hunt for rare and valuable artifacts, explore the world of nexus for your faction or even claim pieces of land. This is probably also the path you’ll want to choose if you’re in to platforming, because to get to all that stuff you’ll have to scale a decent amount of mountains.
The last one is the settler. He’s the guy who comes in after the rest and builds new settlements for people to live in the new areas. As a settler you’ll be able to construct new buildings in town, help in public events collecting materials and unlock unique NPC’s that can sell you stuff you wouldn’t otherwise be able to get. So if you want to help out your friends by getting them cool stuff or buffs, or if you just want to be able to build a bar, the settler is the class for you.
We got to test all of these paths and they really do add a nice diversity and customization that make your experience feel unique from everyone else’s, at least to a certain degree. The specific missions seemed pretty fun as well, although a few did lack a little bit of differentiation from regular quests, but the developers promised that most of the missions were really tailored to your specific path and would offer a good variety of tasks that felt different from your standard ‘go kill x things’ quests.
Then there was housing system. Carbine is really working hard trying to make the housing system an integral part of the game that offers something not just for those who love customizing their own little place in a game, but also something for the hardcore pvp’er or raider among us. You already get access to the system at level six and there’s a reason for that. One of the things carbine is trying to do, for example is give you extra rested experience when you log out in your house instead of other places in the game. You can even further increase that bonus rested xp by putting more stuff in your house. The houses are on sky islands so only you and the people you choose, can have access to it, since you have to get there by teleporting.
Another way to make housing something for everyone is the plugs and sockets system. The patch of land your house is on is divided in to different parts called sockets. On these you can build objects or buildings that help you with other parts of the game called plugs. Some of the examples they gave were training dummies for a soldier to train his skills, plants you can grow to use for your cooking skill, a raid portal so your raid has a place to meet up and from there go to the raid instead of meeting in some random location in the world. With this they want to try and make sure there’s something for everyone in housing and really make it a core part of the game.
Now you’ll probably say that these might not be new things, and Carbine knows that seeing it’s not their intention. They said what they want to do is, take what they love about MMO’s and make it the best they possibly can and not just try and invent new things, but improve what’s already out there. And from what they showed us, it seems they’re well on their way to accomplish it. If you want to know more about the game head on over to their website, Facebook page or look forward to future coverage from us as we’ll certainly be keeping an eye on this one.
Related Items
1 Comment
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
[…] more information about Wildstar, check out our preview of the game, the official Wildstar website, or if you happen to be there, visit their boots at […]