The Dominion are kind of dicks for burning this place down.

Wildstar, if you didn’t know, is a new MMO from Carbine Studios. It is a studio that’s a veteran of various MMO’s including vanilla World of Warcraft and Burning Crusade. For those who don’t know much about MMO’s, the first three expansions of World of Warcraft are generally considered the better days of WoW when it didn’t just seem like a Juggernaut waiting to die.

But what makes it different from MMO’s of late?

Skill and Design my friends, skill and design.

Skill, Kill your Enemies Before they Kill you 101

Highborns love their tea, but are willing to kil……… I’m not going to finish this one.

Most MMO’s require very basic skills to solo the PvE content, most mechanics and the need for group co-ordination doesn’t come into play until dungeons, and most end game dungeons at that. In Wildstar, that’s not the case.

The level cap of Wildstar is 50, meaning from level 1 to level 50 you’re going to be seeing most of the world that they’ve created so far with a bit of puttering about at max cap trying to find guilds and raiding partners. The raids are back to their classic 40 man style raids as the ultimate achievement of the game from the perspective of raiding and dungeons but they do have the more contemporary 20 man raids in the game as well, if the numbers aren’t there.

In Wildstar the first instanced (Cut off from the main over-world of the game) event you’ve played will be the Sim Cores rather than the traditional Dunegons gained at level 15. They will either be called the Hycrest Insurrection or the Riot in the Void depending on what faction you’ve chosen.

By level 15 the need to master the skills of positioning, timed interrupting and careful skill balance hasn’t become pressing yet but you’re starting to feel the need to keep moving and avoid the telegraphs that are being sent your way.

Sim Cores change that sort of dynamic; you need to know how to play your role inside of a Sim Core in the context of Wildstar. You need to remember to avoid enemy telegraphs, stay close to the healer for aoe heals (Much like in Guild Wars 2, the number of targeted heals is close to zero, so sticking close to the healer is the only way to get delicious heals) keep within a certain area to avoid additional aggro and just generally know the skills you’ve learnt from other MMOs if you’ve played them.

Positioning, threat management and avoidance, it sounds mundane if you’ve ever raided in any context at all but the major difference is that it matters right from the outset in the Sim Cores while the gear you’re wearing doesn’t really matter as much.

Then you hit level 20 and you encounter the first dungeons of the game and you run smack dab into the middle of a Heroic (A WoW term, used to denote an advanced dungeon generally requiring greater skill and gear in order to proceed) at level 20. Sufficed to say, it’s not a pleasant experience and you should expect many party wipes before you get the hang of it.

But there’s more to it than the traditional WoW gear grind needed to play the dungeon and a little bit of knowledge regarding positioning and a little knowledge of threat management (something that is fairly easy to do, provided you’ve got the right skills in WoW).

Everyone is moving during a Dungeon, even the tank, something that even now my old WoW tanking instincts are saying is wrong. Everyone is positioning themselves to avoid the next telegraph, but still remain close enough for aoe heals from the healer. Everyone needs to know threat management, because the tank needs some time to build up threat to get the monsters to focus on them and there are no instant taunt buttons that can easily be used.

And that is just the trash monsters, the normal kind of monsters you see in the main world. When you hit the primes, your pick up group (Pug for short) better learn some co-ordination on taking down Interrupt Armour and dash dodging as most of those blows will wipe someone down in an instant, and if it happens to the Tank. Well you might as well say party wipe unless you’re lucky.

Wildstar has done something I’ve never seen done in a MMO before (aside maybe from Eve Online), they’ve made skill matter as much as experience and foreknowledge of a dungeon. To further illustrate this as I go through this article, and towards the end, I’ll drop a few photos and links towards the experience of Dungeoneering in Wildstar.

Design, How did it Come to This?

The end of Grimhold sees you getting the hell out of there on a motorcycle!

A big part of why the game poses a challenge is that it’s been designed to do so. Much like Guild Wars 2, it was designed to have the players take a more active role in combat rather than just standing up against your opposing mob and beat each other to death with hunks of metal or magic. The former still happens from time to time but the game forces you to move much more to survive.

Because enemy special abilities are telegraphed on the ground and their area of effect is much clearer to see, then it’s easier to dodge them and complete a fight without taking any special damage (Damage from telegraphs, in Wildstar white damage is unavoidable like in most MMOs) meaning that the pace is kept higher in terms of questing and movement.

Another thing clearly recognisable telegraphs allows is the ability to interrupt more successfully, and as mentioned previously it’s something you need to do in co-ordinated bursts for it to be effective sometimes.

There are other things that add into it as well, for instance if you interrupt an enemy during a certain attack you gain a “Moment of Opportunity” where your attacks deal double damage. Meaning that not only does interrupting or disturbing casting stop you from getting murdered, it also increases your ability to damage your opponents making it worth interrupting casting even more profitable.

The combination of the design choices is fairly self-evident if you’ve watched a gameplay video or played the game itself. During normal solo PvE you can quickly fall into a pattern or rotation of skills, but the game quickly comes alive when you start facing multiple mobs of your own level and then you start having to ask questions like “Should I knock them down now, to pop a healing potion and gain some breathing space, or should I wait for a moment of Opportunity?”, “Should I use my innate class ability now? Or save it in-case something else comes along?” and “Should I use my damage mitigation abilities? Or go full out attack?”.

You’ve got a few seconds to make those choices, and they’ll either kill your character or save it. When you are forced to make choices in how you attack, when to defend and even when to run away, that’s when a Game becomes fun and challenging. Wildstar, so far has got it.

“This conversation has stopped being profitable, good day” – Hyper Capitalist Canadian Protostar CEO