Wildstar Launch Thread - Server: Stormtalon | Faction: Dominion

its a pretty safe bet to assume the 99% mmo model: game sells enough box copies at launch to mostly cover development. half the players unsub by day 30. by day 90 half the staff is layed off, only one server is active and the rest are ghostlands. the team announces they are listening to the players and do a bunch of knee jerk shit like nerf everything to the ground and offer some shitty mounts to people who stay subbed.

at day 120 they announce game is going f2p, most of the team is working on the next MMO which "learns from their mistakes", and a small skeleton crew just releases cash shop patches for the next 5 years. By which time the game is wildly profitable but not talked about on any forum anywhere.

He's not really wrong though. That's no reason to stop enjoying the game for what it is. On the contrary, it's a reason to enjoy the game for exactly what it is. If you don't expect more than 1-3 months out of this game you'll enjoy it more.

Always jam tomorrow. Fuck that. JAM TODAY IF I'M PAYING YOU TODAY FOR JAM.

They already started pulling some of that sort at the end of the final closed beta.

Tonic_sl said:

Suggested Rerolled Server / Faction?

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They haven't announced release server names yet but a decent amount of us are on Nexus / Dominion. I know quite a few of us are planning on making a guild for release as well.

So, I decided to retry after my failed first attempt. I will say that after another 30 minutes of gameplay, I exited the 'tutorial' zone and the game picked up tremendously.

Pros:

• Music... seriously.
• Combat is WoW smooth.
• Quests seem to have more of a purpose within the scope of the area or zone. ESO was a huge ass disappointment, despite phasing, the storytelling was awful and largely irrelevant.
• Little 'challenge' quests with loot rolls are well placed and put a little urgency back into some quests.
• The 'role' specific bonus missions are fairly mundane, but topical and give good bonus rewards.
• Talent system has a TON of options... IE WoW 1.0 or D2, not the newer crap.
• The ability bloat is controlled from day 1.
• Environments are awesome.
• Telegraphing is so, so much better than generic cast animation and having to lean forward and read your mod alert to see what dumb spell is being wound up. Seriously, anyone that thinks telegraphs are 'stupid' can go fight a boss in WoW with a poorly scaled model and 9 warlocks using conflag... and then try and figure out what the spell spamming asshole is doing without reading your chat box.
• UI is very slick. Basic things that have been developed ages ago for WoW are actually basic in this game, like a single inventory where 'bags' just add to total slots, a 'delete item' drop box, a 'salvage all' button, etc. It's good to see that Carbine decided to take notice to 'silly' little convenience things.
• Trash loot is reduced, and loot drops spill out and there's a 'vacuum' loot button. You will see a little green outlined glove outlined if an uncommon pair of gloves drops, etc.

Cons:

• Graphics are a mixed bag. Poly count is WoW 1.0 bad... 'spheres' have less sides than a dodecohedron.
• Overbearing 'ADVENTURREEEEEEEE IN SPAAACE' theme. They sell it, so it isn't groanworthy as it could be, but it IS very blunt and always present. I could see growing tired of 'movie trailer narrator' and 'overexaggerated quest speech guy'.
• Stats and gear choices have the propensity to be very cumbersome later. There is a middleground between hiring statisticians to figure out the best boots at level 43 and '+gooder' like current WoW.
• Quest objects are often obscured by ludicrously cluttered surroundings. In some areas, everything 'pops' as interactive despite only certain objects being interactive. This is partly an issue due to the sci-fi/magic theme. It can be cumbersome to guess what an alien security terminal should look like versus a repairbot console. Then add 14 other little 'shiny' baubles along the wall, 6 mobs, 18 corpses, 4 people jumping about and an NPC with 4 flying camera NPCs buzzing around it and you are just surrounded by floating text and highlighted nodules which have zero distinction. It's a small issue, but it can get obnoxious at times.

Anyway, seriously considering buying it now even if it only lasts a little bit.

Reminds me a lot of WoW concepts in TBC-era in a new environment.

Palum_sl said:

So, I decided to retry after my failed first attempt. I will say that after another 30 minutes of gameplay, I exited the 'tutorial' zone and the game picked up tremendously.

Pros:

• Music... seriously.
• Combat is WoW smooth.
• Quests seem to have more of a purpose within the scope of the area or zone. ESO was a huge ass disappointment, despite phasing, the storytelling was awful and largely irrelevant.
• Little 'challenge' quests with loot rolls are well placed and put a little urgency back into some quests.
• The 'role' specific bonus missions are fairly mundane, but topical and give good bonus rewards.
• Talent system has a TON of options... IE WoW 1.0 or D2, not the newer crap.
• The ability bloat is controlled from day 1.
• Environments are awesome.
• Telegraphing is so, so much better than generic cast animation and having to lean forward and read your mod alert to see what dumb spell is being wound up. Seriously, anyone that thinks telegraphs are 'stupid' can go fight a boss in WoW with a poorly scaled model and 9 warlocks using conflag... and then try and figure out what the spell spamming asshole is doing without reading your chat box.
• UI is very slick. Basic things that have been developed ages ago for WoW are actually basic in this game, like a single inventory where 'bags' just add to total slots, a 'delete item' drop box, a 'salvage all' button, etc. It's good to see that Carbine decided to take notice to 'silly' little convenience things.
• Trash loot is reduced, and loot drops spill out and there's a 'vacuum' loot button. You will see a little green outlined glove outlined if an uncommon pair of gloves drops, etc.

Cons:

• Graphics are a mixed bag. Poly count is WoW 1.0 bad... 'spheres' have less sides than a dodecohedron.
• Overbearing 'ADVENTURREEEEEEEE IN SPAAACE' theme. They sell it, so it isn't groanworthy as it could be, but it IS very blunt and always present. I could see growing tired of 'movie trailer narrator' and 'overexaggerated quest speech guy'.
• Stats and gear choices have the propensity to be very cumbersome later. There is a middleground between hiring statisticians to figure out the best boots at level 43 and '+gooder' like current WoW.
• Quest objects are often obscured by ludicrously cluttered surroundings. In some areas, everything 'pops' as interactive despite only certain objects being interactive. This is partly an issue due to the sci-fi/magic theme. It can be cumbersome to guess what an alien security terminal should look like versus a repairbot console. Then add 14 other little 'shiny' baubles along the wall, 6 mobs, 18 corpses, 4 people jumping about and an NPC with 4 flying camera NPCs buzzing around it and you are just surrounded by floating text and highlighted nodules which have zero distinction. It's a small issue, but it can get obnoxious at times.

Anyway, seriously considering buying it now even if it only lasts a little bit.

Reminds me a lot of WoW concepts in TBC-era in a new environment.

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I approve of this review. To me this game will probably be a good 3-4 month romp then I'll switch to Archage. Or maybe I'll just hope between the two the whole time. I enjoy them both for different reasons and it's not like Archage costs money to play.

wildstar will be my pve game with some instanced pvp and AA will be my world pvp game with more sandbox type features, luckily I enjoy both, and running 2 subs is no big deal.

bayr_sl said:

I'm fairly sure it's going to flop a lot harder than Rift. Firing off a generic wow clone in 2011 is a lot different than doing it in 2014.

That's just my opinion and from gauging general reactions/interest. There doesn't seem to be that much interest lately, whether it's because it's now a game you can play instead of just listening to the hype, and people don't like what they've played, or ESO hangover or what.

Even this thread is pretty fucking quiet. I can hear the echos from the last time I posted that the game sucked

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Game is NOT similar to wow where it matters, the actual gameplay/combat systems are super different. The questing is generic and awful.

sticktastic_sl said:

So after playing it awhile......was the goal to make this game a updated graphics/combat system of wow? if so, then job well done.

Uhg. What a waste.

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See above.

General consensus on every other forum I read (including the official) and my own experience with myself and tons of ex-guildmates: Everyone that quits within the first hour or two ONLY sees it as a shitty wow-alike, because the tutorial zones are shit and the questing is absolutely generic wow clone. Everyone that makes it to like, 10+ LOVES the game because you start to see how engaging and difficult combat can be, and especially if you get to dungeons how fun those experiences are.

This is a game I dropped within 3 hours my first time playing it back in november or october or something. Then tried again legitimately and it just clicked. I haven't been this hyped for an MMO launch in a while, completely honestly. It's LEGITIMATELY fun to fight things in this game. Basically, the combat is everything GW2 promised it was going to be (and wasn't), and the design philosophies are hardcore wow level TBC era stuff. So yeah, questing on rails wtb emergent EQ boohoo, but the dungeons and raids and all of that are as hard as anything wow ever had and they CLAIM they're not planning to make it easier cause fuck bads.

You can go stand at the attunement for the very first group content in the game (the level 15 adventure) and WATCH as people walk up, accept the quest, and fail repeatedly to even finish it. Not just shitty people, but everyone that hasn't been taking the combat seriously. The bad players literally cannot even get to the point where they're ALLOWED to join the adventure queue to play with you.

Good shit.

Palum_sl said:

So, I decided to retry after my failed first attempt. I will say that after another 30 minutes of gameplay, I exited the 'tutorial' zone and the game picked up tremendously.

Pros:

• Music... seriously.
• Combat is WoW smooth.
• Quests seem to have more of a purpose within the scope of the area or zone. ESO was a huge ass disappointment, despite phasing, the storytelling was awful and largely irrelevant.
• Little 'challenge' quests with loot rolls are well placed and put a little urgency back into some quests.
• The 'role' specific bonus missions are fairly mundane, but topical and give good bonus rewards.
• Talent system has a TON of options... IE WoW 1.0 or D2, not the newer crap.
• The ability bloat is controlled from day 1.
• Environments are awesome.
• Telegraphing is so, so much better than generic cast animation and having to lean forward and read your mod alert to see what dumb spell is being wound up. Seriously, anyone that thinks telegraphs are 'stupid' can go fight a boss in WoW with a poorly scaled model and 9 warlocks using conflag... and then try and figure out what the spell spamming asshole is doing without reading your chat box.
• UI is very slick. Basic things that have been developed ages ago for WoW are actually basic in this game, like a single inventory where 'bags' just add to total slots, a 'delete item' drop box, a 'salvage all' button, etc. It's good to see that Carbine decided to take notice to 'silly' little convenience things.
• Trash loot is reduced, and loot drops spill out and there's a 'vacuum' loot button. You will see a little green outlined glove outlined if an uncommon pair of gloves drops, etc.

Cons:

• Graphics are a mixed bag. Poly count is WoW 1.0 bad... 'spheres' have less sides than a dodecohedron.
• Overbearing 'ADVENTURREEEEEEEE IN SPAAACE' theme. They sell it, so it isn't groanworthy as it could be, but it IS very blunt and always present. I could see growing tired of 'movie trailer narrator' and 'overexaggerated quest speech guy'.
• Stats and gear choices have the propensity to be very cumbersome later. There is a middleground between hiring statisticians to figure out the best boots at level 43 and '+gooder' like current WoW.
• Quest objects are often obscured by ludicrously cluttered surroundings. In some areas, everything 'pops' as interactive despite only certain objects being interactive. This is partly an issue due to the sci-fi/magic theme. It can be cumbersome to guess what an alien security terminal should look like versus a repairbot console. Then add 14 other little 'shiny' baubles along the wall, 6 mobs, 18 corpses, 4 people jumping about and an NPC with 4 flying camera NPCs buzzing around it and you are just surrounded by floating text and highlighted nodules which have zero distinction. It's a small issue, but it can get obnoxious at times.

Anyway, seriously considering buying it now even if it only lasts a little bit.

Reminds me a lot of WoW concepts in TBC-era in a new environment.

Click to expand...

Pretty much agree. Lots of the stuff that pops as interactive, as you say, is usually related to the path items (scientist, soldier, etc.) at least this is what I've seen.
The fact it's sci-fi and doesn't take itself seriously with a lot of stuff is a big plus, the high fantasy theme has become stale for sure.

Also, I have an i5 quadcore with 8 gb ram and a 770gtx, game runs from 40 to 60 fps with everything maxed out. Frame rate drops to 30ish when there are a fuckton of models and effects around, but is still quite playable. 1920x1080 reso.

So wait, you are saying good game design is not preparing your player base for content that increases in difficulty, then calling them bad because they can't accomplish it at level 15? wtf...

That's the dumbest shit I've ever heard in my life.

Column_sl said:

So wait, you are saying good game design is not preparing your player base for content that increases in difficulty, then calling them bad because they can't accomplish it at level 15? wtf...

That's the dumbest shit I've ever heard in my life.

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No? Are you fucking retarded? The game does plenty to teach you how to play it. I'm saying they aren't dumbing the design down to the point that you don't have to actually learn in order to achieve all of your goals however. IE: Most games since wow, where only the absolute cutting edge is anything beyond braindead.

This game IS NOT FUN when it's easy. Period. The entire combat system is predicated upon you actually bothering to move and avoid things. If you didn't have to do that, it would just be wow, which is why so many people play for 45 minutes, get to level 2, and go "WTF THIS GAME IS JUST WOW" as evidenced by yourself and other complete dipshits in this very thread. It's almost like MMO veterans would know better than to expect the game to do anything to challenge them at level 1. It actually has all of the pieces there for you right from the beginning, and shows you how to use them during the tutorial, but it slowly ramps up how much they actually matter.

The difference between ignoring what enemies do and reacting and aiming appropriately is the difference between HAVING to avoid attacks to not die. Ergo, it stops letting you do that at some point between say, level 6 and level 20. I died to that adventure attunement the first time because I'd gotten flat out lazy while questing at times, and I got smoked. I buffed up, went back in, and actually fought like I gave a shit, almost like it was a little solo raid, and it wasn't undoable by any stretch of the imagination. If someone is unable to do THAT, I don't want them in my fucking random group.

Your apparent answer would be to remove the quest, LET them in my random group, and then just make the content bullshit pointless easy so that we can complete it while carrying the dregs of humanity along with us. No thanks.

This is the shit you don't expect to have to explain on this board, but let's break it down:
Yes, questing is like wow.
The 'way' the game is laid out is like BC era wow. in terms of raids, roles, pvp bgs, etc.
There are more 'types' of content than wow had in BC, more similar to how it is now. You can play this GW style and you won't get the best gear btu you'll have shit to do.
Combat is NOT AT ALL like wow. It has hotkeys, but it's definitely action based in a way that GW2 promised and failed to deliver. Expect to run around and dodge shit a lot, jump around, aim, etc.
You don't even need to target shit unless you want to look at its buffs or interrupt armor or whatever.
It's difficult. Really difficult. If you don't like that, you won't be doing dungeons or raids.
The tutorial teaches you a lot of these things, but it lets you slide on actually doing them. Cause it's a tutorial. this is the part where 99% of people that didn't like the game quit. If you quit here, I'd give it another go, but you don't have to it's your life whatever.
Watch a video of a high level dungeon if you're curious what it's like later.

No? Are you fucking retarded? The game does plenty to teach you how to play it.

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It absolutely does not. I'm the cutting edge. I poopsock through every MMO ever created, and I'm telling you it does not prepare new players for anything but Elitist bads like yourself to call new players bads...

That has nothing to do with being easy. MMO's should ramp you up steadily into the endgame through forced grouping, and a steep level curve.
Wildstar absolutely fails at that, they can't even get the first 15 levels right.

FF14 ,as bad as it was did this perfectly. It made people learn the game mechanics through its story mode. Forced grouping early, introducing a new gameplay mechanic each boss. No way to progress without completing the previous step.

There was no end game so it failed miserably on that, but teaching players how to group, and raid started very early until they introduced that fate farming bullshit...

Column_sl said:

It absolutely does not. I'm the cutting edge. I poopsock through every MMO ever created, and I'm telling you it does not prepare new players for anything but Elitist bads like yourself to call new players bads...

That has nothing to do with being easy. MMO's should ramp you up steadily into the endgame through forced grouping, and a steep level curve.
Wildstar absolutely fails at that, they can't even get the first 15 levels right.

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Poopsocking doesn't have anything to do with being shit or not. It tells you about enemy telegraphs within the first 5 minutes of playing. It tells you about aiming and moving. It slowly ramps up how much doing any of these things actually matters to successfully killing something. The simple fact is, you quit before you get to the point where it matters and you declare it a wow clone, then you come here telling me it doesn't hold your hand enough? Eat several of the most gigantic dicks available to you sir.

You don't need to force grouping in order to force a player to have to learn how to play the game. You can absolutely force people to learn how to play if they want the privilege of grouping with others though rather than wasting their time, which this game does in spades. You can teach people how to play the game as they level, rather than making it take forever and have to sit around waiting for a cleric or whatever the fuck you seem to think is the ideal answer (since you're clearly channelling EQ here). Would I play EQ again where I'm forced to group? Sure. I can take that, I'd roll a tank and laugh at all the fucking rogues and shit that are /lfg all the time. On the flipside, I recognize that it's entirely possible that a game can be challenging without it forcing me to group to extend its life. There were shitloads of bad players at max level in EQ, because actually PLAYING eq was easy as dirt. That has nothing to do with forced grouping or a steep curve, it has to do with the actual difficulty curve of the game. This game has one. Sorry you played level 1-3 and associated it with levels 15-50. Pretty sure if I did that in EQ1 I would've assumed I'd just be autoattacking and hoping I didn't die for the next 4000 hours.

You don't need to force grouping in order to force a player to have to learn how to play the game. You can absolutely force people to learn how to play if they want the privilege of grouping with others though rather than wasting their time, which this game does in spades. You can teach people how to play the game as they level, rather than making it take forever and have to sit around waiting for a cleric or whatever the fuck you seem to think is the ideal answer (since you're clearly channelling EQ here). Would I play EQ again where I'm forced to group? Sure. I can take that, I'd roll a tank and laugh at all the fucking rogues and shit that are /lfg all the time. On the flipside, I recognize that it's entirely possible that a game can be challenging without it forcing me to group to extend its life. There were shitloads of bad players at max level in EQ, because actually PLAYING eq was easy as dirt. That has nothing to do with forced grouping or a steep curve, it has to do with the actual difficulty curve of the game. This game has one. Sorry you played level 1-3 and associated it with levels 15-50. Pretty sure if I did that in EQ1 I would've assumed I'd just be autoattacking and hoping I didn't die for the next 4000 hours.

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First thing Wildstar isn't that difficult for people that have been playing MMO's for years. You kid yourself with that elitist crap.

To me you are the worst MMO player, and I've met your type many times from EQ on. You are the anti social douche bag, that wants everything just for you and your nerd friends.
The poopsockers are usually the better players because they are doing content first ( You would know this if you were ever cutting edge like you claim). I've seen this in every MMO to date.

I've been in so many server first guilds it's not even funny. They all have shit bags like yourself in them that claim they are so good, but are mediocre at best.
Coincidentally the better players seem to be the more humble ones, and honestly the best guilds have strong leaders, and good followers.

The worst players no matter how good they are, are the ones like yourself that spread their toxic bullshit.

Wildstar should pace and teach new players into the endgame, and it fails on that. It's an endgame based game. Making level 15 content hard as shit just so you can say your game is hard is retarded.
The fact you brag that is good game design makes you a dumb ass.

Yes perfect, lets make the game so hard at 15 that people don't even give it a chance. Tell me how that works out for you when It goes free to play..

As a cutting edge, you shouldn't care about anything, but getting level capped first, and that the game is extremely hard for raiders. That is what WOW excelled at.
Your bullshit about early game, and how much better you are then the other level 15's is laughable.

Column_sl said:

That has nothing to do with being easy. MMO's should ramp you up steadily into the endgame through forced grouping, and a steep level curve.
Wildstar absolutely fails at that, they can't even get the first 15 levels right.

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Dunno i kinda disagree with that. Ive levelled 2 50s, done every adventure/dungeons in the game both on normal and veteran mode, and imho ws has that ramp up difficulty from start to endgame. Not just with group content but with normal mob's telegraphs too. Problem is not on the game side, but on the players's side. We are given the tools as a players, but ppl always take the path with less resistence? so if i can survive a telegraph while dodging? if i can survive this why interrupting, and then by lvl 20 ppl crying out loud that the game its too hard..they join a dungeon and have no clue what a Moo is and have zero interrupts on their bar, because ''its useless lol im a dps/tank/healer lol''. You cant blame stupidity/lazyness on a game...that is all on people.

Game imho will be very difficult for many gamers, probably too difficult to be successfull to the masses. Im ok with that tbh.

Game imho will be very difficult for many gamers, probably too difficult to be successfull to the masses. Im ok with that tbh.

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Heres my question why would you even care about what goes on from 1-50 if your whole point is to reach the raiding content first for the real game.
The level 1-50 process should be for new MMO players that teaches them steadly to become good raiders, and a shot to app to a good guild.

I could give two shits on what happens to any MMO till I get cap. You are not going to teach me anything new at this point.
If anything I want the game to be accessible to casuals to the level cap, and make the real game tough as shit.

If so, you will not be playing the game you want for very long, because every MMO that has gone free to play fires their core team, and starts making content for their cash shops.

So I played tera for several months, enjoyed the (at the time somewhat new and interesting) 'action-combat' feel to the game, especially soloing the BAMs, it felt like i was playing bayonetta the MMO or something. But it gets pretty dull after a while. Does the combat in this game offer anything new or interesting, or is it just another iteration on 'action-combat but worse than TERA'? Having played both tera and ffxiv a lot, i doubt I will have much of a hard-on for telegraphing so there has to be something else worthwhile.

Wildstar Impressions ? Level 1-49 ? Is Wildstar Just Another WoW Clone? - YouTube

the guy in that video gives the game a rave review but in the video he has, i'm watching and all i see is just constant red circles and squares on the ground. I just cannot fathom how that won't get old after a (short) while, and its definitely not a new 'feature' in these games either.

Column_sl said:

First thing Wildstar isn't that difficult for people that have been playing MMO's for years. You kid yourself with that elitist crap.

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Well kinda hard to be objective on a subjective thing. What is hard for me could be piss easy for you, and vice versa ya? Ive played most of mmo since eq, and i can say ws veterans are one of the hardest thing i ve done in any game. Original rift hard mode dungeon were close, but imho wildstar's one is leap n bound harder. Fun wise? It is not something i would ever do in a pug...EVER, but doing em with guldies i had tons of fun.

Also, i have no clue how u can say lvl 15 content is hard as shit, and say that ws isnt difficult for mmo's veterans. I dunno but the content ive lvled with was pretty much easy (at least for me) all up to 50. Only hard stuff pre 50 id say was certain 2/3+ boss ive soloed that were definitely challenging, and 1 boss worm in Fairside that was underconned imho. Rest was as easy as any other mmos. Dungeons were nother story, specially if i pugged it, but with guildies it was as easy as anything else (For reference ive levelled a warrior and a stalker). Whats hard on Ws is endgame imho (especially due to coordination/knowledge required), but as ive said before, grade of difficulties are subjective..this is a game after all, its not quantum physics. For 1-50 content, game is as easy (and boring), as any other, granted the player use the tools he been given.

Also, i have no clue how u can say lvl 15 content is hard as shit, and say that ws isnt difficult for mmo's veterans.

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I never claimed it was hard , That was Yanger braggin about it earlier, and how much better he was then all the other level 15's, AND that he was glad the game punished them so early on.

Like you said, what is hard is subjective. I haven't seen anything hard yet from 1-30. I play with my gaming group of 15 years tho, so I have no idea what a pug is like in this game.