I was fortunate enough to be able to reach the higher levels for this first impressions Wildstar Review but this is by no means a comprehensive review of the full game. As with most MMOs, the endgame plays a major role and something like that could take months and several articles to review. However, since I was able to kick around past level 25+ for quite a bit I was able to start seeing the elements of the game come together.

Consider this more as a review about the leveling content and core elements of the game.

The Wildstar Review: First Impressions and Beyond

Wildstar is a subscription-based, theme park MMORPG released developed by Carbine Studios and published by NCSoft. Games of this sub-category will usually have a stronger narrative and structured progression as you go from one quest chain to the next. The game is a blend of science-fiction with strong elements of fantasy present like magic.

The theme and tone of Wildstar will influence the player’s experience throughout the game. The game is over-the-top, silly, and hilarious. It has every bad cliché rolled into one and does so lovingly. The game even has enough cuteness to put kittens and puppies out of business. However, do not make the assumption that the whole game is a big joke. It does explore certain darker and even downright creepy themes as you unravel the mysteries of Nexus. The game takes a more light-hearted approach to itself and to its story.

The developers love this genre, something they remind their fans of in each interview, podcast, and DevSpeak video they release. They are a decent sized team of veteran MMO makers and they wanted to create an MMO that is fresh, new, and wonderful. It’s clear that they also wanted it to keep a lot of what they love from the genre but avoid the mistakes of the past. The Beta began over a year ago and the release date was not rushed.

They’re also loading it with features like: costume slots, armor dyes, player housing, war plots for epic PVP, structured PVP of all sizes, open-world PVP, dungeons, adventures, hard-mode of the previous two, raids (20 and 40 manners), ship hand missions, expeditions, crafting, and customizable mounts. You also have achievements, timed challenges, and entire regions of the map full of stuff you don’t have to go to. It has been a while since I played an MMO I could get lost in. There is also the dynamic movement-based combat with free-form aiming. More on that later.

Lastly, you will die. You will die a lot. The game will tease you based on your deaths as a way to teach you what to do and what not to do. Heck, it teases you for using your recall ability to avoid walking back to your bind point. However, at each point of this brutal punishment you will feel it was fair. When you finally succeed, you’ll feel ready to tackle similar challenges with your new-found knowledge until the next unknown kills you. However, the satisfaction of overcoming a challenge on your first try (they will happen often) will be twice as satisfying!

That doesn’t sound fun! Or does it?

Consider this. Most of my deaths while playing the game were from being confronted with an unknown and learning a new element of the game. Example: most of my early deaths were from not knowing what a Prime is, high-powered mobs that are meant for groups, but once I knew what they were and how to avoid them the rest was easy. Also, the game is pretty strict about attacking enemies over your level. Fortunately, there seems to be plenty of content to make sure you can avoid this, as well.

Unlike other MMOs, you can’t stand still and type out your rotation. Every enemy has powerful attacks that you must avoid. You need to remain on your toes at all times, know when to move out of an attack, and know when to launch your combos to devastate your foes.

So how is the Gameplay?

The game’s combat elements are discussed in the earlier DevSpeak videos. The basic concept is free-form aiming with telegraphed attacks. Additionally, the player will always have an active role in combat. These involve being able to break out of stuns faster or literally fighting blindly as your field of view blurs. The most critical part is that enemies use telegraphed attacks to land their blows on you just as you do on them.

The most important part for a system like this to work is if the game plays smoothly with very little input lag and latency issues. Smooth and crisp animations that are in-sync with the environment are also a must. Fortunately, Wildstar does succeed at all these. This makes even more traditional fights much more compelling and is the key for most MMOs. Combine this fluidity of control with the mobility of combat in Wildstar and you get a very satisfying mix.

Unlike other MMOs, you need to avoid your enemies’ attacks even if they are regular mobs. They start off weak in the early game but they tend to be much stronger as you progress and encounter enemies that will quickly kill you. Fortunately, they are much easier to dodge when compared to those that you meet closer to level 30. The combat system seems to be the perfect blend between the traditional MMO and a hack-and-slash game as you are always on the move aiming to do maximum damage on your foes while not getting hit yourself.

One element that helps with combat and makes the player choose his abilities carefully is the limited action set (LAS). You can only have eight of your class abilities equipped, you can swamp out abilities and spend ability points (specialization of abilities that increase their effectiveness) on the fly when you’re not in combat. There is no cast-time or cooldown to worry about either. This removes UI clutter of having 30+ abilities spread across your screen.

You will also experience a variety of content as you level. Side missions, timed challenges, and achievements give extra incentive to explore and interact with the world around you. You will unlock ship hand missions which are small adventures aboard a spaceship and on areas that are not on the main world. For those that love grouping, you will have zone bosses, public events, dungeons, and adventures. One said adventure actually plays like a MOBA. Many of the dungeons have fights and bosses that are reminiscent of raid fights, but at the 5-man level. The game also offers a selection of arena and battleground maps for those who are more in PVP, and world PVP objectives for those that prefer open-world PVP.

Presentation

Overall, I was pleased with the game’s visuals. There is a distinctive art style with its own visual flair instead of the usual ‘realistic’ graphics many games aim for these days. I find the game’s animation, latency, input lag, and video lag to be very low. The game plays and runs smoothly even at lower frames-per-second, and the character animations feels in sync with your commands and in relation to the world.

The only down side is that some of the character animations can be off. The already thin Aurin might look like folded paper in some of the emote actions, and the terrain will have a lot of 2-D textures. Again, I never had to deal with massive lag or visual stutter when I decided to turn around and jump down a cliff. The game uses particle effects and post-processing with good effect to create some nice visuals.

The game has amazing and varied music, including several odd western themes. The voice acting is good, and sometimes over-the-top with the southern accents of the Exiles and the posh faux-British accents of the Dominion. The sound effects of abilities seem to be in sync with the gameplay and are distinct enough that you will come to recognize some by sound alone.

I should note that the game comes with its own announcer like narrator. This announcer will tease you about what to expect when you get to a new quest hub and announce your level-ups. The in-game taxis are actually taxis, and their cabbies ramble on about random and terrible blue-collar jokes.

Immersion

Immersion, on the other hand, is flawless. Everything in this game has flavor, from the quest text lines to the NPC quotes. Aurin quotes are so cute and sweet you will die of tooth decay. It doesn’t too long before you get the feel of what the Exiles are and who the Dominion is. The one warning I will give, the game is meant to be comedic, so if you are expecting seriousness here, you will be disappointed. The game’s lore does have some really dark and even creepy elements to it, but overall the game presents itself light-heatedly. Still, you will get your heart strings tugged and some of the subject matters will be mature.

Without spoiling anything, the game is set on the ancient Eldan home world, a race that disappeared from the galaxy a while back. The Dominion, which is a faction led by the humans of Cassus who were empowered by the Eldan to rule a galactic empire take sovereign claim on this landmark. However, the Exiles, a rag-tag team of human rebels and races that have been shattered by the Dominion declared Nexus as their own because: a) they found it first, and b) they have nowhere else to go. Naturally the Dominion doesn’t recognize the claim of rebels, so you have your set-up for the conflict found on Nexus.

This setting leaves for a very rich environment as you explore the lush and diverse biomes of Nexus, and explore ancient Eldan ruins. Some of the setting’s grimmer and darker tones come out in many of these adventures as some of the lore revealed by data cubes have sent chills down my spine. These data cubes are all beautifully voice acted. Also, it has been promised that a lot of the lore will be revealed in solo-able story based instances in the endgame.

The other aspect of Wildstar that helps with immersion is customization. All players get access to player housing and you’re given a tonne of options to improve and customize your home, including placing a vase on an upside table or placing a toilet beside your bed. You can have a crafting station, raid portals, expeditions, gathering nodes, or telegraph practice halls socketed into your property. Heck, have a flock of Rowsdower if you like. The options overwhelmed me at first, and that’s a good thing.

The customization doesn’t stop there. You gain costume slots so if you really liked that space trench coat from level 12 you can keep it as your look. You can also dye your armor and costumes with a wide selection of dyes. Higher level gear can have stats slotted into them, thus giving you more of what you need. You can even customize the looks of your mounts.

Is that all?

I haven’t spoken about crafting much. It is pretty straight-forward and simple with gathering and crafting profession. However, the system does require a bit of input from the player as you tailor the crafted gear to a preferred specification. You can also salvage old gear to get some of the mats back and you can also salvage drops for the same reason. It also appears you gain talents and achievement in crafting, encouraging you to attempt different things, which rewards you with the ability to further specialize. I feel it strikes the right balance between having player input and turning it into a tedious mini-game.

Also, as mentioned no high-end content or Elder game was touched. Elder game is Wildstar’s term for endgame content. The focus of the game seems to give everyone something to do. The game might boast about its ‘hard-core’ raid dungeons, but also has a slew of PVP options and a variety of things for the more relaxed players to do (ship hand missions, expeditions, story-based quest chains, and solo-able story instances). The developers have even promised that one of the first type of content they will work on after release is more solo-based content.

We have just begun scratching the surface here!

Summary

Wildstar doesn’t shatter new ground per say. A lot of the mechanics it does were seen in other MMOs, even its combat. However, what it does is bring in elements into each part that the others didn’t do, and then it brings it in together for the home run. If you were expecting some unique reinvention of the wheel you will be disappointed, but if you were expecting a better more polished and modern wheel made of the latest materials you may be pleased. It’ll also throw a few pleasant surprises at you.

My overall feeling is that the combat does change up the pace. I usually play MMOs lounging, but when I played Wildstar I was playing it far more focused and ready to react on a dime. I found that the game was actually gorgeous looking once you get used to the visual style, and the music and sounds were a pure delight. I was immediately sucked into and immersed into the world of Nexus.

Most MMOs lately have started to loose there shine once I hit the mid-teens in levels. I was well into level 30 and not for a moment the new car smell faded from this game. I actually enjoyed the game more as I progressed forward. However, remember this is still an MMO at its core, so if you didn’t like past MMOs there is no guarantee Wildstar will win you over.

Wildstar is definitely worth considering if you are into MMOs of this genre or maybe if you are into MMOs in general.

Pros:

• A humorous style that influences every aspect of the game, thus creating a very immersive experience.
• A faster paced movement-based combat, combined with LAS, makes the player choose their strategies carefully.
• Plenty of content and diverse nature of said content makes the leveling experience more enjoyable on average.
• Challenging encounters that makes leveling dungeons actually an exercise in skill.
• A rich and new setting to explore, and despite the humour, does tell an intriguing story.

Cons:

• Still an MMO at its heart, so people that do not like MMOs won’t be magically sold to it.
• Some players may feel elements of content is gated away from them because of the skill level required for some of it.
• The art style and theme of the game might actually be a turn-off for some.

Click here if you want to know more about Wildstar’s Subscription Model.

Current Minimum System Requirements:

• Operating System: Windows® XP SP3 (32-bit) or later
• Processor (CPU): Intel® Pentium® Core2 Duo 2.4 GHz, AMD Phenom™ X3 2.3 GHz, or better
• Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce® 8800 GT, ATI® Radeon® HD 3850, or better
• Memory (RAM): 4GB
• Storage: 30GB free HDD space
• Screen Resolution: 1024×768 minimum display resolutions
• Peripherals: Keyboard & mouse

Current Recommended System Requirements:

• Operating System: Windows Vista® (64-bit) or later
• Processor (CPU): Intel® Core™ i5 Quad Core 2.66GHz or better, AMD Phenom™ II X4 3GHz, or better
• Graphics Card: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 460, Radeon® HD 5830, or better
• Memory (RAM): 8GB
• Storage: 30GB free HDD space
• Screen Resolution: 1920×1080 minimum display resolutions
• Peripherals: Gaming keyboard & mouse