World of Warcraft has long held the crown as the most popular and well-known MMO of our time. But after over a decade, it’s ailing. Subscribers are down sharply and continue to fall, and many rivals have risen to challenge its dominance. Some have failed, and some have managed to carve out their own little niche. Many have since opted to go down the free-to-play route, and it’s becoming increasingly rare to see a new MMO opting to retain the traditional subscription model.
Enter WildStar Online, the first project from Carbine Studios, founded by ex-Blizzard members who made it their goal to create the next big MMO and proudly retaining the traditional subscription model (though, similar to Eve Online, game time can also be purchased and then traded amongst players for in-game currency). A few of us here at Continue Play have been playing for quite a while now, both during the various Beta weekends and since release, and we’re finally ready to give our final verdict (we previously delivered some early impressions, which you can read here).
The bottom line: WildStar is as polished as anything you’d expect to come from a studio spawned from the house that Warcraft built and introduces a lot of innovations to the genre - but that praise comes with some minor (and addressable) caveats.
It starts traditionally enough. After a tutorial area you find yourself on the planet Nexus, inhabited by eight playable races split between two factions – Exile and Dominion. Each has their own story, but effectively we’re in Star Wars territory. The Exiles are the scrappy band of upstarts fighting against the Dominion’s tyrannical galactic rule. WildStar falls into the habit of portraying your character as the lone savior like so many other MMOs, which is unfortunate. Your character has no past, save from the lore of your faction and race, nor has any connection to the people around you. Sure, that’s standard for the genre, but we would have liked to have seen something a bit more meaningful. But the setting’s backstory is at least well-delivered, often amusing and nowhere near as overwrought as the po-faced and interminably dull scripting of Elder Scrolls Online.
Character progression is entertaining despite feeling slow, and if you feel like you’re getting burned out on standard MMO quest chains, there’s plenty of opportunity to spice things up. Killing an enemy may kick off a challenge, giving you a limited amount of time to meet some objectives in order to something something from a prize wheel.
When you get tired of that experience, WildStar also offers 10-v-10 objective-based PvP matches. All of them are fast paced and require a lot of skill, and the payout system is highly rewarding, giving out large amounts of experience and loot bags for both wins and losses. Arenas work the same way, though with fewer players involved.
And then there are the Warplots. These are large-scale, 40v40 PvP instanced battles that involve the creation, customization, and maintenance of large fortress-like structures that are kept by a War Party. Anyone who wants to dig into these must reach level 50, however, but doing so allows you to play competitively. Once you get to that point, you are added to the ranking system which gives payouts to its top players.
There are also off-world objectives known as Shiphand Missions, which offer a nice break from questing on Nexus. They are typically fast little side stories - sort of like Scenarios in WoW, but play them with a group and a nice little side story can turn into to a full blow space war, as enemy numbers and powers scale to your number of players. These Shiphand missions are full of fun and can really give any player a worthwhile reason to stray from standard leveling.
Combat initially looks like it will be the genre standard of selecting abilities from a hotbar, but Carbine has added a twist which feels like an evolution of the more sprightly encounters experienced in Guild Wars 2. Double tapping a direction will see you performing a dash or roll, you can string combos together (with bonus damage being inflicted the more hits you chain together), while enemy attacks are telegraphed via red zones which appear on the ground indicating where damage will be inflicted. You’ll charge an enemy and get a few hits in, roll out of the way or jump over them to avoid their attack, then retaliate with a string of chained-together abilities and attacks to inflict swift and brutal retribution. It’s a punchy, satisfying system that requires a high degree of situational awareness, resulting in encounters feeling as much like an action game such as Devil May Cry as they do World of Warcraft. In a genre that often relies on players simply being stationary and clicking on icons on a hotbar, this more immediate and involved take on MMO combat is something for which Carbine should be applauded. We also can’t help but think that the game would work well with a controller on console, utilizing a control scheme similar to that of DC Universe Online.
It’s not all combat however, and the Path system allows you to tailor your playstyle to a degree. Separate from Classes, Paths allow you to dictate the sort of side-missions that you’ll indulge in. Soldiers will find themselves in Gears of War-style encounters where they face off against increasingly brutal waves of opponents, Explorers will be bouncing and platforming their way around areas inaccessible to others, while Scientists will take part in quests that require solving plenty of logic puzzles. It’s a nice way of ensuring that no matter your playstyle, WildStar is accommodating enough to provide something for everyone, and you’ll want to roll a number of different characters just to experience the various different facets of gameplay and mission types.
Tradeskills are broken down into crafting and gathering, and you are able to learn two at a time and switch them out for others with no loss in progression. There’s also cooking and farming secondary professions, and it’s been rumored that fishing is coming down the line (because, for some reason, a huge amount of players love fishing in MMOs). As with most MMOs, some tradeskills work better with certain gathering ones, but with the in-depth and largely available auction house, getting your hands on what you need isn’t very hard.
The leveling system is also highly enjoyable, allowing you to add and equip multiple skill sets that you can switch between with ease. Mixing and matching abilities is fun and different every time, kind of like deck-building in a card game; there is a never ending supply of new and powerful combinations to be found. It also allows you to build your character how you want to, making them feel truly unique. Sure, it can be a bit painful at times to find one that works for you, but it’s a fun and creative sort of pain.
Unfortunately, progression in WildStar is slow. Very slow. Carbine wants players to work to reach the level cap, and trust us - you will. There are tons of distractions throughout the entire game, but the slow pace of progress sometimes takes its toll. If you’re looking to enjoy a game for some casual leveling, you may find yourself getting burned out; but given the chance, WildStar’s humor and inventiveness will keep you going. We’re hopeful that Carbine addresses the pacing issues in a post-release update, perhaps tweaking various things such as XP gain, the rate of attaining gear, etc, as the feeling of progress and constant reward doesn’t feel quite as smooth as it could be.
Luckily, there are a lot of other things to take your mind off of the 50 level grind; WildStar offers so much more than questing and dungeons and PvP. At level 14, you unlock the fun of player housing. Your house acts as a safe zone. You’ll be able to build your house in the center of this plot, which you can decorate inside and out as well as upgrade the materials of the walls, the front door, etc. And over the land there are six section where you can purchase more things such as a farm, a crafting table, a picnic area and more to put in the spots. Some of these extra side spots will give you a daily challenge and others will help with crafting and materials. Others are just plain fun. But while there is so much good to this aspect of WildStar, there is one very bad thing about player housing: start investing your time in it, and it will easily drain every last bit of your in-game money. Everything costs gold in player housing, unless you’re lucky enough to loot some of the decorations from your adventures (though quite where a small monkey hides a decorative cushion on his naked person, we don’t know).
Elsewhere, there’s a litany of dungeons and raids to work through, and all are very well designed with some highly inventive and challenging - and we mean challenging - boss encounters. Make no mistake, WildStar is tough, and requires constant player movement and communication with group members to progress through its instanced content. Dungeons themselves are also notable for their length, with many taking around an hour or two to clear, while some of the raids can easily take in excess of 4 or 5 hours. It would have been nice to see a few more digestible dungeons, particularly in the early stages, as the sheer difficulty coupled with the length of these areas can be intimidating.
But all of this is simply a joy to experience. The cartoony visuals are like a Warcraft/Pixar hybrid, and it helps with the silly, light-hearted tone. Meanwhile an impressive draw distance shows off the expansive zones to impressive effect, and sheer scale of the world can often feel a little intimidating, giving players the ability to see far reaches of areas in Nexus from wherever they stand.
Those with lower-spec PCs might see more jagged edges and distant fog, but with a powerful system WildStar has some of the best graphics of any MMO right now. It doesn’t try to attain the sort of realism that something like Elder Scrolls Online targets, but the result is that it also avoids the uncanny valley, and bold, bright colors mean that each area feels distinctive and a pleasure to look at. That said, the zones are sometimes a little generic. Snowy planes, large cities, savannahs and villages of huts built of sticks are everywhere in Wildstar, but then they’re also there in almost any other MMO you care to mention; everything looks beautiful - and it really does - but Carbine hasn’t given us anything truly new to see. Thankfully, they’re well-designed, expansive and easy to navigate (for the most part), with a great sense of scale and plenty of secrets to uncover.
Outside of a few incidental characters and the occasional scene or single-sentence comment, a general lack of voice acting in the main game means that some characters who are actually pivotal to the game’s overarching story are easily mistaken for generic questgivers, which can reduce the dramatic impact somewhat. It would have been nice, for example, if more use was made of the comm channel, which allows you to remotely turn in or pick up quests, and which you’re frequently contacted on while out exploring and questing. Having to stop and read text can interrupt the flow of the game, and perhaps if had been delivered through voice acting the characters’ personalities would not only have been given the chance to shine a little more, but could have prevented some of the occasional staccato rhythm by allowing you to continue playing as information was relayed to you over the speakers.
The best voice work comes from the announcer, who sounds off whenever you level up, die or get an achievement. He’s reminiscent of the agency boss from Crackdown - a constant source of feedback and commentary on major achievements or failures. Kill a boss and he’ll sound off saying, “You’re kidding me, right? No way a cupcake like you could kill that thing.” Upon hitting level 8, he shouts, “Oh snap! That was f-bleep-ing awesome!” And when you die, he’s always on hand with a sarcastic comment or humiliating insult to berate your lack of skill.
Also amusing is the holographic taxi driver who ferries you between different zones, filling your trip with with plenty of witty remarks and complaints about his family and the dreariness of his own existence. He’s been given enough lines too that his dialogue takes a while before it starts to repeat or grow tiresome, and having him there chatting away to you helps to break the temptation to go off and make a cup of coffee while waiting to arrive at your destination (a problem that World of Warcraft has historically suffered from).
Alongside the sound effects and the voices comes some of the most beautiful and varied music in any MMO in years. Seriously, the soundtrack is amazing, with a full orchestra belting out tunes that John Williams would be proud of. Each zone has its own theme, and they suit the setting and the tone of your surroundings perfectly. It’s easy to be submerged in to the world of Nexus with the score Carbine Studios made for their game.
Apart from the general lack of voice acting in missions, another problem affecting the impact of the story is a lack of cutscenes. Though there are plenty in the early hours of the game - all wonderfully animated and feeling like a cartoon that you might see on Adult Swim - there aren’t nearly enough of them once you get past the first couple of zones. The first 10 or so levels are accompanied by plenty of short videos that drive the plot along and help to establish some of the key characters in the lore, but they soon dwindle and then all but disappear entirely - meaning that later quests don’t necessarily feel all that important. The in-game lore journal helps to explain everything but again, while the writing is witty and various key concepts are clearly conveyed, it’s never as immersive reading about a character’s personality or history than it would have been experiencing it directly. Hopefully, Carbine addresses the issue in future content updates.
Don’t let these small issues put you off though - and really, they don’t hamper enjoyment anywhere near as much as they could have. Carbine Studios has done a miraculous job with WildStar. It has the makings of becoming the next big MMO, and the develops isn’t done yet - promising that they already have over a year’s worth of monthly updates planned out with the first major content update, The Strain, having just been released as free update).
WildStar is worth the time of anyone with even the slightest interest in the genre. With plenty of new ideas, a great sense of humor, and a wealth of content out of the gate has seen Carbine Studios suddenly go from an unproven - if experienced - collective of developers to a team that can be mentioned proudly alongside the likes of Blizzard and Bethesda when it comes to discussing the MMO heavyweights. WildStar is quite possibly one of the most polished, playable and enjoyable MMOs we have ever played, and so it comes highly recommended.
To quote the game’s announcer: “Boom! Now things are gonna get real.”
Heather Williams
@Olaris_Rhea
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Dale Morgan
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