WildStar Preview

MMO fans might want to check this preview of Carbine Studios’ WildStar from Rock, Paper, Shotgun. The writer isn’t exactly overtly impressed with the title, though he concedes that the title isn’t targeted at him. Here’s a snip:

In my two-hour long session, I played as a Spellslinging Settler, whose role is to build structures in towns and activate little do-hickeys in each settlement to keep the place appearing functional. I would go around town maintaining the banners, torches and satellite dishes for small amounts of XP. These devices would reset to their ‘˜deactivated’ state within 5 minutes for me or another Settler to come and do it all again. NCSOFT say that, thus far, these maintenance jobs are purely for appearance the satellite dishes might whirr and rotate for a short time but they are more of a housekeeping activity and don’t currently help other players in any way.

There are some exceptions to this. Like when the Settler builds some sentry droids, which can guard the area and lend support in a fight. Or when you take on an ‘˜infrastructure’ mission. This is when you have to collect resources and build a hospital, prison, spaceport, or something else like that. Once constructed, these buildings will house new characters with quests for whoever wants to take them. The confusing catch being that the building will dissolve back into its unbuilt’ state after a few minutes to allow other Settlers to build for XP. Unless, that is, other players keep adding resources to it. In this case, the structure will remain.

However, the Settler also has some advantages in combat or when scouring new areas with a party of players. There are construction posts close to enemy-infested areas where the Settler can build machines that give a boost to speed or max health. There’s another that increases the XP earned within a certain bubble. The idea is that your party will be about to tackle a bunch of laser-wielding spacesuits or irradiated jabberwockys and the Settler can prep the area with all these different buffs before the fight occurs.

And when the fights do occur it is very MMO. There are spells, stuns, high damage attacks, flurries everything you might expect. But the Combat is also about range and positioning, with lots of wooden jumping, dodging, strafing, backflipping and double-jumping out of the big red glow of the enemy’s attack range. Simultaneously you want to make sure they remain within your damage-dealing ‘˜cone’. While this focus of constant movement will be refreshing to those looking for a little more dynamism in their dungeon, it can also feel a little cumbersome and took me some time to get used to. And, although the paths were the focus of the demo, most of my time was spent peppering generic bad dudes with bullets and leaping out of the way of their attacks, in order to rescue some prisoners from cages.