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My WildStar Review (And new MMOs in general)
11 years ago
General
I've not been doing a lot of art.. but I have been doing some gaming! I felt like doing a bit of writing (as well as updating my journal) and figured that since a number of people have asked me about WildStar, I may give my thoughts about it now that its been out for a month.
Just for starters, this isn't an attempt to get you to stop playing your other MMO for this one. Nor is it saying that it's better than other games. As a whole, WildStar doesn't do much in terms of being innovative. You won't find a lot of functionality or game play that has you going "WOW" if you've played an MMO before. But the game shines to me because of how well executed the game play is in terms of FEEL. It feels good to play (and the art direction/style is fucking fantastic). I think that's something a lot of MMOs miss out on these days.
A lot of folks complain to me these days that "the questing system is boring and outdated." And I wouldn't disagree! People seem to remember vanilla WoW so fondly back when it was most people's first theme-park MMO experience. WildStar's quests are much the same and that upsets some people. Why? Because there's no established nostalgia to tie you to the game anymore. I'm also willing to bet some people stick with WoW not because its fun, but because they have social circles they enjoy, or simply because they can't let go of all the time they invested into it. You've done the grind already and don't want to do it again with a new coat of paint. Understandable! However I feel like I learned something while playing WildStar as opposed to doing my typical MMO grind from 0-max level by myself.
It's the experience you have with -people- that makes it memorable and fun.
Sounds pretty common sense right? I mean its called a MMO for a reason. But so many people are in a rush to get to max level and get the endgame content for ???? reasons and then discover they hate the entire process of getting there. You gotta play with people or the entire foundation of the game makes no sense. Sure there's a story and RPG elements but we all know by experience that a level/gear grind wont hold people in a meaningful way for long term.
That said, here's some specific thoughts I have about the game:
The Bad:
There's a lot of little features that the game just doesn't have yet, all of which seem like common sense. Things like an automatic junk-selling button, or a easier way to find your own group members. They all add up to the experience of the game. Thankfully there are addons that help for these things, but they can be a hassle to keep updated while all these new patches keep rolling out.
The game also suffers from, like I mentioned earlier, a pretty boring quest system. Its spiced up a little bit occasionally with things that make you laugh or sad, but overall its pretty meh.
City layouts are annoying too. I feel like they made these massive cities and then discovered they don't have much to populate them with. So instead of making a nice convenient space for crafting with a bank and auction house all close together, they're spread all over the large city.
The coordinate crafting system is a money sink. I'm sure it's designed this way on purpose, but its downright annoying sometimes to have your materials all go to something you don't even want just because of a random generated number. At higher levels of crafting this becomes even more likely.
The auction house / commodities exchange needs work. As it stands now, the system is very inefficient. I won't go into details about how things don't work well (there's a number of things) but I'll just mention that they could make things a lot better based on my experience in other games like GW2.
The Good:
As mentioned earlier, I love the way the game play works in terms of combat. You know that when you screw up, its your fault because you didn't interrupt a strong attack or you didn't avoid the damage. A lot of the win/lose scenarios in the game boil down to how well you perform in terms of coordination with your team or how well you use your abilities as a player. Gear plays a role, but its definitely not as important as it is in other games.
The ability to customize your skills and amps (talents) is excellent. You can play around with builds on the fly to your hearts content. We have yet to suffer from an "ideal/meta" build scenario where a class wont succeed if it doesn't have ____ ability. This may come into play later, but I like how it works now.
Dungeons are challenging, but not overly so. I'll simply say that they provide a satisfying level of difficulty provided you're playing with competent people. We've found bosses can be figured out after a few wipes without the need for a guide. Sometimes they can even be figured out on the fly if you're really good. There's also a few different kinds of dungeons (adventures/sim-cores) that are much tamer in terms of difficulty and provide some unique challenges I've never seen in other MMOs. One of them we did recently was like LoL/Dota with creeps and enemy heroes.
The art style. It GUSHES with art style. The game doesn't take itself too seriously, and as a result, there's a lot of room for cute, goofy, gross, and stupid things to happen. And it's scifi! I love scifi. I need more of it in games.
Housing! Every character can have its own house that your friends can visit whenever they like. You can decorate it with all sorts of shit (there's tons of stuff) and there's other perks, too. I mostly just like making my house look cool.
I think that about sums up everything I can think of!
If you are playing or are interested in playing with a furry group, I do believe there is a group here! http://www.furaffinity.net/user/wildstarfurs/
Have a good summer everyone!
Just for starters, this isn't an attempt to get you to stop playing your other MMO for this one. Nor is it saying that it's better than other games. As a whole, WildStar doesn't do much in terms of being innovative. You won't find a lot of functionality or game play that has you going "WOW" if you've played an MMO before. But the game shines to me because of how well executed the game play is in terms of FEEL. It feels good to play (and the art direction/style is fucking fantastic). I think that's something a lot of MMOs miss out on these days.
A lot of folks complain to me these days that "the questing system is boring and outdated." And I wouldn't disagree! People seem to remember vanilla WoW so fondly back when it was most people's first theme-park MMO experience. WildStar's quests are much the same and that upsets some people. Why? Because there's no established nostalgia to tie you to the game anymore. I'm also willing to bet some people stick with WoW not because its fun, but because they have social circles they enjoy, or simply because they can't let go of all the time they invested into it. You've done the grind already and don't want to do it again with a new coat of paint. Understandable! However I feel like I learned something while playing WildStar as opposed to doing my typical MMO grind from 0-max level by myself.
It's the experience you have with -people- that makes it memorable and fun.
Sounds pretty common sense right? I mean its called a MMO for a reason. But so many people are in a rush to get to max level and get the endgame content for ???? reasons and then discover they hate the entire process of getting there. You gotta play with people or the entire foundation of the game makes no sense. Sure there's a story and RPG elements but we all know by experience that a level/gear grind wont hold people in a meaningful way for long term.
That said, here's some specific thoughts I have about the game:
The Bad:
There's a lot of little features that the game just doesn't have yet, all of which seem like common sense. Things like an automatic junk-selling button, or a easier way to find your own group members. They all add up to the experience of the game. Thankfully there are addons that help for these things, but they can be a hassle to keep updated while all these new patches keep rolling out.
The game also suffers from, like I mentioned earlier, a pretty boring quest system. Its spiced up a little bit occasionally with things that make you laugh or sad, but overall its pretty meh.
City layouts are annoying too. I feel like they made these massive cities and then discovered they don't have much to populate them with. So instead of making a nice convenient space for crafting with a bank and auction house all close together, they're spread all over the large city.
The coordinate crafting system is a money sink. I'm sure it's designed this way on purpose, but its downright annoying sometimes to have your materials all go to something you don't even want just because of a random generated number. At higher levels of crafting this becomes even more likely.
The auction house / commodities exchange needs work. As it stands now, the system is very inefficient. I won't go into details about how things don't work well (there's a number of things) but I'll just mention that they could make things a lot better based on my experience in other games like GW2.
The Good:
As mentioned earlier, I love the way the game play works in terms of combat. You know that when you screw up, its your fault because you didn't interrupt a strong attack or you didn't avoid the damage. A lot of the win/lose scenarios in the game boil down to how well you perform in terms of coordination with your team or how well you use your abilities as a player. Gear plays a role, but its definitely not as important as it is in other games.
The ability to customize your skills and amps (talents) is excellent. You can play around with builds on the fly to your hearts content. We have yet to suffer from an "ideal/meta" build scenario where a class wont succeed if it doesn't have ____ ability. This may come into play later, but I like how it works now.
Dungeons are challenging, but not overly so. I'll simply say that they provide a satisfying level of difficulty provided you're playing with competent people. We've found bosses can be figured out after a few wipes without the need for a guide. Sometimes they can even be figured out on the fly if you're really good. There's also a few different kinds of dungeons (adventures/sim-cores) that are much tamer in terms of difficulty and provide some unique challenges I've never seen in other MMOs. One of them we did recently was like LoL/Dota with creeps and enemy heroes.
The art style. It GUSHES with art style. The game doesn't take itself too seriously, and as a result, there's a lot of room for cute, goofy, gross, and stupid things to happen. And it's scifi! I love scifi. I need more of it in games.
Housing! Every character can have its own house that your friends can visit whenever they like. You can decorate it with all sorts of shit (there's tons of stuff) and there's other perks, too. I mostly just like making my house look cool.
I think that about sums up everything I can think of!
If you are playing or are interested in playing with a furry group, I do believe there is a group here! http://www.furaffinity.net/user/wildstarfurs/
Have a good summer everyone!
on Stormtalon, Dominion side. Chua forever!
Zayth on Stormtalon, or use my email: z.a.y.t.h[at]hotmail.com
"It's the experience you have with -people- that makes it memorable and fun. "
I could never find a group of people, I always just played solo. You join some random group of people and there is no coordination so you lose. You join a hardened group and by god if you don't have a mic and this isn't your 18th playthrough *kick*. Join a guild and if you're not there everyday 6PM sharp *kick*. My non-social play style has made it difficult to return to MMOs but I REALLY want to play one. How does group finding work in WildStar? Is it posting:
"LFG DRAGON RAID LVL 44 TANK"
In the chat every minute or is there some form of match making? Do you have to have friends in the game to enjoy it?
I forgot to link this to you before. This is something I've really begun to notice at 40+, it's pretty ridiculous. :c
Was also just linked this.
I tried playing Wildstar quite a bit after the big hype started pouring online once it was reaching beta stages. My mate and I were able to get in the closes beta and tried it out on many many different occasions cause we were desperate to find a new MMO to play. No matter how many times we tried, neither of us could get pulled in or immersed. The leveling system just was not innovative enough. Though I will say the combat was really good and very similar to GW2!
I am happy many have found this game a good MMO to pick up, I sadly just invested too much time into WoW and other games. Though I will say to anyone who is interested, definitely give it a try!
I've seen plenty of really good reviews on it and at the same time (like you mentioned), I've seen a lot that complain about the boring questing system.
All in all, I would give the game a chance if I ever really get back into the MMO scene.
NCSoft pretty much forced Carbine to release the game earlier than intended. I would've been completely comfortable waiting a few more weeks/months before an actual release because of this fact.
After the amount of praise I heard about wildstar and now also hearing the flaws of it in this journal, again hard to give me incentive to even bother or care about playing this as time passed from the previous hype I got of it like almost a year ago, unless I got some people to back me up and im not exactly good at making friends and better at losing them in some way shape or form, so.
You're right though. It's an MMO for a reason and people need to play with each other to enjoy them. The big problem though is that most of these games are designed to be solo and not be multiplayer at all. I don't know if Wildstar gets around it because I haven't tried it [even though I do want to!] They design them that way so people aren't hindered by not having friends or people to do them with. Fair enough, but it usually weakens the multiplayer aspect. Or they design these elaborate stories that really are only enjoyed by one person at a time. The recent star wars MMO is a huge lesson to be learned in this regard. So much elaborate in depth story ... that everyone hated because they just wanted to play the damn game... and when you were grouped with people it was even worse! Because as YOU listen to the story, the other party members get bored! [Or in my case, booted from the dungeon group cause no one wants to listen to the story but myself.]
MMO's that hit the market now really need to focus on that multiplayer experience... Or at least, they do if they want to grab my attention.
Also a note on "Economy" and "Auction Houses." The only people who did "Economy" and "Selling/Buying" things right to date is EVE Online. Their system promotes actual physical locations becoming trade hubs, and if you want something cheaper you will actually go out of your way to find it on a fringe world somewhere. That's actual economy... I guess it's a thing players need to decide on... Do I prefer convencience? Or do I prefer an actual economy?
I personally wish more fantasy MMO's would take on an EVE like economy system [which is honestly more than just buying and selling. Horizons/Istaria had a shot and failed.] Forcing players to move around, open trade routes, or shut them down if they want to be jerks about it. Make location mean something. WoW auction house sucks. And as far as I understand it GW2 is multi server based? Which sucks even more and waters down the market place game play that could go on.
But that's just opinion!
Fun read!
Though in terms of my comment about the auction houses, it was mostly about how they functioned in terms of usability and ease of use. Not necessarily to do with how well the economy functioned. I'm going to assume most MMO economies are quite unstable for a few months after release.
As for whether or not wildstar puts a lot of emphasis on group stuff? Its debatable. It doesn't force you to play with people but I'm going to argue that you'll have a lot more fun and succeed more often if you do play with friends. There are certain benefits aside from that which encourage cooperation but I wouldn't say they are vital. Aside from like.. dungeons of course. Those require groups.
Eve struck me as perhaps TOO real an economy when one of the most profitable players in its marketplace basically became wealthy due to running a Ponzi scam. When you can make money providing no service or goods whatever, and basically can just set yourself up as a banker of MILLIONS or even BILLIONS of a game's economy, then the game has failed to be so much a game (meant to be entertaining and an escape/diversion from reality) to being something that models reality TOO well!
I also infer from what else I've read about Eve that it is a complex and highly technical model of space, combat in same, and other aspects of a futuristic life that break the "KISS" rule of highly successful game design. (KISS = Keep It Simple, Stupid.) By lowering the bar to accommodate a low common denominator of texels, modeling and animating them, and keeping content basic but challenging, WoW enjoys its singular throned position that it does.
I think people with PCs are smart gamers, and ready and willing to change to other games, servers, economies, and social settings. But there is and will be inertia in the speed at which people do abandon some stale gaming platform for a new one - if not tossed out on their virtual ear like say players of SWG have been (I played it from before it changed radically) to say nothing of Istaria...
I still remember being a Bio Engineer in the old SWG, still efforting to get just the best raw materials and samples to craft items as well as good battle creatures. I remember owning a huge home on Tattooine with Rancors and Krayt Dragons in the basement. There I had so much left unexplored, so many story arcs left yet unexplored, I was ready to continue subscribing for years yet. Then the day came when my profession was no more, and my goods no longer craftable... Sad days indeed.
I don't mean to be argumentative more than I mean to be conversational, but have difficulty sometimes with tactful expression of my thoughts, as well as my tell-assertive personality showing through. Please do accept that I respect and see your point of view and it simply inspired me to express these thoughts in addition, not intending to invalidate anything you said.
Anyway... No, I was talking about SWOTOR. Star Wars The Old Republic. A game where so much focus is on story, that it's very single player... And frankly when people get done with that single player content they're done with the game. Going through it again is not as much fun. That's why things need to gear themselves more towards EVE ... They need to provide interesting systems and ways for players to manipulate the world around them and grow int he world around them. Mind you they can still follow your "KISS" rule and I'll give you that EVE is not simple... but that's also part of it's charm honestly. Anyway, not these lame little one off story theme park MMO's. Honestly when I play MMO's that are like "WoW" now, I often ask myself, "Why isn't this just a single player game where I can invite 4 friends along with me if I care too?" That shouldn't be asked. That's exactly what ESO is, but worse! ESO you can change the world I believe, but it's only changed on YOUR client! So I can literally be RPing having saved this city and it's so awesome... It has flowers and reconstructed towers... Where you perhaps destroyed it and left it a burning mess.
Back to EVE...
When I battle to conquer a solar system... I conquer it. It's mine... and all its resources and value are all mine [and my corporation's.] People know that... They see that... And they plot to challenge that conquest. We the players change the world, we don't just read along in a story book. SWG and EVE are like this. Horizons/Istaria was suppose to be but failed.
From your journal title, I was hoping you had comments also on ESO, but your points are well taken about WoW. It's social, it has a thriving economy (chiefly due to the huge player base), and apparently keeps millions of people challenged just enough to keep paying month-to-month for access.
After all, seeing an MMO as being more or less a glorified chatroom is like asserting something like say SECOND LIFE could catch on with millions. It can feature better done, better looking avatars and environments than WoW does, but because the world just isn't alive and challenging, this is what I feel is one of the biggest detracts away from SL and why it takes a fairly-well crafted MMO, in terms of economy, player crafting skills, crafted items having some demand, raw materials having even bigger demand, gathering professions being a good money maker, and endgame content to attract and keep millions, especially those belonging to "Super Guilds" that in some cases have a presence on multiple servers, if not both factions on the server, and as well if not a presence even in WildStar...
If WoW stopped expanding and as well stopped having at least seasonal new content updates, it would stagnate, becoming no better than say the WoW replicant servers who provide the same gaming experience frozen at a certain point in time, and at least one expansion backward to boot. People would look out of boredom toward WildStar with better interest, as well as ESO - imho.
If I appear to be argumentative, I don't mean to other than argue an additional point of view I saw missing in what I read. Since I was a beta tester of WildStar, and since I currently have active subs for both EverQuest II and WoW, and have had some beta and post-release experience with ESO, I felt compelled to add my comments as conjunctive to yours, not one-upping, but just accepting the opening to converse about MMO gaming more, since it's one of my singular passions this side of Star Trek (and yes I have played STO - lifetime sub in fact).
Hope that answers your question.