Wildstar launched today (6-3-14)
 

I picked this up last night against my better judgement and all logic. Was watching people stream it over the weekend during the headstart.

Looks ok -- about what we all expected as a wow clone. (I really don't understand those people saying it's not a clone because it fundamentally is.) The mob telegraphing looks interesting, so I'll give it that. But otherwise questing looks grindy and not all that interesting -- just like every other MMO. Raiding seems like it'll be inaccessible to anyone other than very well organized and competent guilds (in other words, not me). The raid fights themselves seem to be a combination of "don't stand in the telegraphed attack" and "everyone interrupt the boss's ability at the same time or we wipe" -- soooo not interested in that. Interrupt-based fights were always the suckiest experience in WoW; I can't imagine why people think it'll be fun as the core mechanic in WS.

So yeah, I don't know why I picked it up. Temporary insanity maybe. But I'll play a bit this week.

Let us know what you think after you play it some more. Everything just seems so same same as the past decade in the mmo department. Eq next?

Can't decide if I want to try this or not.

I should be getting a few guest passes in the coming days (whenever they decide to send them out). Will let you guys know so you can try it out before purchasing.

Got my 7-day guest passes (3). PM me if you want one.

from what I read asano, the early level quests are very grindy. But every person said that the END game is amazing. They said you reach a point where all of a sudden the quests become amazing and much more complicated. Like, sneak into this factory, steal this item, get out with out being seen, go through this gate, do this, drop off this, get this back. Much more involved than just a "go kill 4 of X" or "bring me back item X"

What server are you playing on Asano? I'm on Pergo, Exiles with a bunch of my friends. If you don't already have a group you're playing with you're more than welcome over here with us casuals.

I've also got 3 guest passes if anybody wants them.

For what it's worth, the beta gave me the best first impression of mmo since WoW. If you have a solid group of guys to play with I think it'll have some staying power.

I'm itching to play a new mmo, please let us know what you think.

I'm on Thunderfoot (Exiles) at the moment which is a PvE server. No desire to play on a PvP server, but thanks for the offer.

Got to level 9 tonight after ~4 hours. It's pretty slow leveling so far, and tbh, the first impression wasn't great. Not much is very intuitive, but it's getting better the more time I spend on it. I don't think anything will ever beat WoW's character responsiveness of controls, but WS's isn't bad. Definitely better than SWtoR at release. Very similar to Tera. In fact, I'd say the whole game feels really similar to Tera in general.

I haven't gotten into the story at all yet. I intended to read all the quest text, take things slow and get immersed in the story. But there doesn't seem to be much, and it's so easy to skip, even accidentally. So I have no idea what the underlying story is. There's lots of "lore books" that you can click on to read, but fuck that. SWtoR beats it hands down on immersive story/questing. But it's early. Tera didn't hook me on story until maybe level 20, so we'll see.

The servers lagged to hell during prime time -- almost unplayably bad. But it got better as the night wore on. We'll see how the rest of the week goes.

Yea, I think the story is meant for the tl;dr generation, you get it mostly in snippets and it suffers (at least early) without any sort of exposition, but I do appreciate that you can generally follow it without having to read chapters at a time.

Yep, feel and control is one thing that no game has ever come close to WoW on in my experience, but this isn't a knock on the game like it is so many others (i.e. ESMMO which was probably the prime reason I didn't buy).

The early early game sucked royally. The starting zone is almost unbearably bad, fortunately it is brief. It really starts to get better by about the second zone on the planets though.

SW:TOR ruined text based story. At least it did for me.

I never played SWTOR but I'm guessing it was like guild wars 2 for storytelling.

Asano, you still playing Hello Hero?

Naa, I stopped playing a few months ago. It took forever to enhance 5-6 star heroes if you didn't want to pay money, so I got bored of it.

Got to level 15 tonight. 3 nights of playing -- 15 levels. So slow. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing. Quests have been more of the same. Nothing really special or interesting. There was a solo instance that was cool to see. Took about 15 mins to clear. And I did a world event with some other random person that was fun.

Then I got my house. Holy crap did they do housing right. From what little I've seen of WoW's upcoming garrisons, WS's housing absolutely blows it out of the water. You basically go into an instance where you have several plots of land on which to build your house and other fixtures. There is soooo many customization possibilities on both the inside and outside of your house, down to the damn sky (snowy, dark, outerspace, rainbows, stormy, underwater(!), etc). It's amazing, and will be a genius gold sink (everything costs money). Just really, really well done.

Level 21 now. The game is, indeed, getting better. There's still virtually no story to follow, but that's ok.

Did a world raid boss and my first 5-man dungeon tonight. World boss was kind of a snooze, but one thing they did that's kinda cool is they have a built-in dmg/healing/tanking scoreboard that shows up at the end of the event and based on how well you did, you'll get better rewards.

The dungeon, on the other hand, was not a snooze. It took quite a while since we wiped several times, and there's plenty of trash that doesn't die very quickly. The bosses were no joke considering it was the first dungeon of the game. Plenty of dodging, interrupting, and other interesting mechanics meant a quick wipe if people aren't paying attention. Gotta admit it was pretty fun.

Not sure which combat system I like better between Tera or WS. WS seems to require more interaction, but it would probably give me carpal tunnel if I was raiding for a full night. The healing in WS is *rough*. Lots of small area/cone heals means healing a raid is like herding cats. And maybe it's just the Esper class, but your healing resource (focus) depletes as you cast spells and is extremely slow to replenish. Maybe there's focus-regen gear, or maybe you just need to really ration your healing throughout the fight. Either way, I'm not a big fan. Tera healing had its quirks, but it was a lot more fun. I still find myself staring at unit frames/bars when healing, instead of the boss and the environment. (WoW's combat system sucks compared to both, so I won't even bring it up.)

Questing is still pretty bland. But I mix it up by keeping up with my path quests and gathering. If I was just rushing through the quests, I'd probably be a lot further along.

Level 31 now. Not sure why people raved about mid-late game questing because it still kinda blows. I wanted to get max level, but not sure I'll make it. Losing the desire to keep playing this game.

Sad, but believable. Thanks for the updates/info

Made it to level 36 before cancelling my subscription tonight. Final verdict: Wildstar is a solid game -- full featured and well polished for a new MMO -- but doesn't offer anything that you can't get elsewhere.

Tough crowd :/, to each his own though I supposed.

I'm still digging the hell out of it though!

I picked it up today. So far i am enjoying it. Very WoW esqe but very polished. I loved the concept of Tera and i have enjoyed WoW so these aspects increase my enjoyment so far.

Only a few hours in i will keep an open mind and post more.

How's it going so far, Gron? What server you playing on?

I am on Talon something, I can't remember the name right now. I have started a few characters trying to get a feel for what i want to play. Started off melee as i usually do. However, with the aiming of the skills the way it is, i really like ranged. I haven't got anyone past 15 yet.

Oddly enough my biggest hurdle is getting the interface and key binds just the right way. If i can get it perfectly the way i want, i know i will enjoy it even more. I am so spoiled with WoW and all the addons i use it is hard sometimes to get a game just the way i want. It may seem stupid but that was why i couldn't get into Tera and Guild Wars, but why i still will play SW:ToR.

I really like the game, it has a lot of charm, just like WoW did back when i first started. It may not be as pretty as a Tera, or as story driven as a SW:ToR. For what it lacks there, it makes up to me with its charm factor and it is very smooth, and overall just fun to play.

It does seem a little grindy but i don't mind right now as i am still trying to learn the ropes. Once i get used to everything and tinker around to get my UI and binds the right way i will probably settle on a class and focus on that.

Overall i like it and i have high hopes!

I got used to the keybinds in Wildstar pretty quick. When I went back to SWtoR this weekend I kept hitting 'F' to interact with NPCs and picking up loot with 'V'. It was annoying having to click on everything again.

Well, keep us posted on your progress.

Funny how quickly Wildstar fizzled out given all the pre-launch hype.

It really worries me about the future of MMO's. This is what the 5th? big "wow killer" that never took off. Companies are going to stop making them. It is all up to EQN.

Yeah, I really think the MMO market is "dead". That is to say, nothing will supplant WoW until the "next big thing" in gaming (Oculus VR maybe?). Like you said, given Wildstar's failure and the many other AAA studio failures, e.g. star wars, TESO, FF, etc, it just doesn't seem like good business sense to try and create another big MMO.

WoW subs may be steadily declining (and I really don't think it'll ever get better), but the fact that it still has 7+ million subs is a testament to how many things they've done right over the years.

I was really excited about EQN too, but I don't think even they can do it at this point.

It'll be really interesting to see what the next big thing will be.

I don't know how Blizzard does it (or even if they're the ones primarily responsible), but in my opinion the reason Blizz games stick is because of the depth to the community. You guys were the reason I stuck with WoW for so long (even if a bunch of you were/are dicks!). There are so many different outlets that let you get plugged into a community that never really sleeps. I never found that with WS, Rift, Warhammer or any of the others that I tried. GW was the best of the rest in my experience, but it's a very distant second. Playing with other people is what keeps me going, other games seem to marginalize players so they're not much more than a more situationally aware (hopefully) NPC.

Try explaining that to somebody that doesn't game...bound to get a few crazy looks.

Blizzard cancelling Titan seems to be more evidence that new MMOs simply won't be a success. I'd bet the reason the dev team didn't find the "fun" or "passion" in Titan is because it's not about the game's features or graphics or gameplay, but rather in the shared experiences of discovering and exploring something novel with friends. Every new MMO is "fun" for a month or two, but the novelty wears off pretty quick because it's still just another MMO and we've been playing those for 10-20 years now.

I agree, you can't target the 25+ demographic because all of them that play RPGs did uo/eq/daoc/wow and are past the age of developing new communities. The real think is the interest of new gamers is not rpgs., they did not grow playing FF, tactics orge, diablo, BG. They played mobas, console fps, and adventure games. I think destiny has the best shot if they build a community because it plays to the interest of the 15-25 crowd. I only feel eq next has a slight chance because it grabs the Minecraft people. Only time will tell

As predicted by pretty much everyone except the diehard fans, Wildstar is going free-to-play this fall:

http://massivelyop.com/2015/05/28/wi...y-this-autumn/