WildStar Previews

We have rounded up a small batch of new previews for Carbine Studios’ recently announced WildStar, which, from these early looks, seems to be a title MMO fans should keep an eye on.

GamePro:

I took on the role of an Explorer. Explorers’ primary responsibility is the location of places to put down beacons. Early in the game, these positions are introduced through questlines, but later in the game you’ll have to carefully explore the zones and make use of the interface to locate them yourselves. They’re often in seemingly inaccessible areas, which brings another of the Explorer’s key abilities into play — the ability to discern and use hidden paths. Spotting one marked with an icon and interacting with it causes new platforms to appear, allowing the explorer to reach otherwise unreachable positions.

The Explorer also has an eye for the unusual. Occasionally simply while wandering around, you’ll get a “sub-mission” quest pop up prompting you to investigate something nearby. In the case of the demo, investigating some wreckage revealed a subspace anomaly which the player had to chase, making use of the residual gravity-defying anomalies it left behind to make some physically-impossible huge jumps and gathering data using the scanner.

GameSpy:

“It’s about your character’s motivations but it’s also about you. What’s your play-style and what motivates you to play games?” Gaffney explained. Instead of the usual DPS, Tank, and Healer classes, Player Paths in Wildstar are built around the ways people play games. Do you prefer to spend your MMO time exploring the world around you, rather than scrapping in the PvP arenas? The explorer class is tailor-made for you. Or perhaps you’re a combat-junkie who wants to kill everything in sight? Hit the barracks, Soldier. Are you the obsessive-compulsive type who refuses to rest till they’ve earned every achievement conceivable? Do you crave lore the way a sweet-tooth craves cake? The Scientist Path is definitely the way to go.

While those three classes sound interesting, it’s the last Path that excited me most. Gaffney revealed the Settler, saying, “The Settler is a social class. You help other people, you get rewards. You help a town’s economy; a new vendor shows up. You help its security, somehow. A new guard appears.” I’m not one to sit around and build walls all day but I know people who are. These players will love the fact that they don’t have to go out and kill things, spending their time fussing over their towns instead. After having chosen my Path, it was time to get my hands dirty with the demo. Courtesy of the usual text quest info box, I was informed that I was part of a rescue team that had been assigned to rescue the victims of a spaceship crash. The scene shifted, revealing a massive valley engulfed by a blizzard, and filled with smoldering wreckage, hostile creatures and screaming settlers. In the middle of this mayhem stood a malfunctioning weather control tower, the source of the weather woes. Unsurprisingly, it was my job to fix the tower and rescue everyone nearby.

It was then that I noticed the healthy range of skills that Wildstar dishes out from the get-go. Without having to unlock skills through quests, my tough mercenary was already able to charge targets from afar, attack them with a buzzsaw and ignite the ground under their feet. It was an interesting change from the norm where you’re expected to wait until you’ve reached a respectable level before you can do anything but auto-attack with a stick. The actual combat mechanics didn’t deviate too far from the standard formula though: target a creature, use attacks in a creative manner and deal more damage when you combo your abilities in a proper manner. There’s also an evade button that you can use to avoid special attacks from your foe.

Lazygamer:

(Nexus is a unique and dangerous planet, that used to be home to the Eldan, the most technologically advanced race in the universe. But they’re gone now, having vanished, leaving their planet behind with all their relics and technology. But what ever caused the extinction of the Eldan is still out there, and players will discover what that threat is exactly).

(What we wanted to do visually, is create a unique art style for WildStar, and place characters in an evocative setting, which is how we came up with Nexus. The planet is there for you to do what you want with it, but we want you to play it the way you want to play it. You can explore, exploit or conquer, which is why the game offers several unique player paths to choose).

(You’re going to set your own momentum, and play the game in your own style. Which is why we’re going to show you four of the paths that you can choose today). The first one we see is the explorer, a path designed for players who want to uncover every square inch of the map. (As the explorer, you’ll get rewards for climbing over mountains and uncovering hidden caves. You’ve got a special locater device that lights up points of interest, but nothing is stopping you from ignoring that and going off on your own path).