Wildstar

I did play Wildstar once when it was still on the subscription model, as I managed to get a free 7-day trial. I don’t remember liking the game much, but neither did I dislike it. It was as generic an MMO as it could get. Recently, I started playing it because it went free to play.

What Is It?

Wildstar features action combat instead of the usual tab-targeting. So think of other similar MMOs like Guild Wars 2, TERA, Skyforge, and Neverwinter. However, combat here is closer to Guild Wars 2 than TERA or Neverwinter, without the tab targeting and lockon. The default camera movement is not locked to a reticle, and your mouse buttons perform no abilities at all. You will need to face your character to the target manually using the right mouse button, and perform attacks using the 1-8 keys. However there is an option to lock the camera so that it uses the mouse to look around, which enables combat similar to TERA and Neverwinter (using mouse buttons to fight). So use what you’re comfortable with.

Wildstar features two factions: Exiles and Dominion. The Exiles are often seen as the good guys, and the Dominion as the bad. However, neither of them are really good or bad; it’s something like the Alliance vs. Horde in World of Warcraft. From what I’ve been reading, the player numbers for the Exiles outnumber the Dominion in every server. Each faction has 4 unique races, and there are 6 classes in the game. Some races cannot be some classes.

These 6 classes are: Warrior, Stalker, Esper, Spellslinger, Medic, and Engineer. The Warrior is your typical warrior, and the Stalker is your typical rogue. The Esper and Spellslingers are mages that play differently, the Engineer is a pet class that uses robots, and the Medic is an oddball. In Wildstar, all classes can DPS, and all classes have a second role available to them. Warriors, Stalkers, and Engineers can be tanks, and Espers, Spellslingers, and Medics can heal. However, since DPS skills and tank/healing skills depend on different stats (assault power vs. support power), it’s not true to say that you can choose to perform whichever job you like to. Two sets of gear is still needed if you want to perform optimally.

Each class features its own set of skills (duh), and they also feature their own type of resource and special ability. The resources for each class is a generic one, either starting from maximum and getting used, or you generate it from 0 using builders before using it through spenders. Each class varies in the speed at which they generate resources, as well as the maximum amount of resources that they can carry. Classes like the Esper do varying amounts of damage depending on how much resources they have stocked up.

As for the special ability, it’s just another cooldown to use. It gives you a burst of power or survivability, with the exception of the Spellslinger whose special ability is a toggle which enables them to use their class resource to do more damage. Stalkers also use their special ability to go into stealth.

Combat Skills

When I first started out, I got confused with the way skills work in Wildstar. It didn’t help that Wildstar used mysterious terms like “Limited Action Set (LAS)” and “Action Set Builder”. Simply put, the Limited Action Set is your skill bar, and the Action Set Builder is simply an interface for you to add skill points, and choose which skills to put on your skill bar.

It’s very similar to the way skills work in Guild Wars 1. You can take a maximum of 8 skills along with you into combat, chosen from a pool of 30 or so skills. These 30 skills are separated into 3 categories - assault (DPS), support (heal/tank), and utility. Utility skills would be things like buffs, debuffs, and stuns.

You also gain ability tier points as you level, which you can use to improve your skills. See the tooltip that appears when you hover over the + sign in the image below (tier upgrades, tier major upgrades, blah blah). If you’re wondering what interrupt armor is, I’ll explain it in the dungeons section.

You also get AMP Power as you level. AMP Power are points that you can spend in a skill wheel shown below. The wheel has 6 sides to it, each one focusing on assault, support, etc. The first few nodes you unlock usually gives some sort of percentage based buff to your character, such as an assault power buff. Those further out give you more unique effects, such as buffing you with “empower” if an enemy is nearby, or buffing your assault power if your class resource is between 30-70%.

Combat

I’ve already mentioned that Wildstar features action combat. You would usually expect such games to have high-paced combat and non-stop action. However, this isn’t the case in Wildstar, especially while levelling.

While levelling, it takes a really long time to kill a mob. I’d say it takes approximately 10-15 seconds to kill each mob. I’m definitely spoilt after playing World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic, where mobs could be killed in 5 seconds or less. Some classes can even kill a pack of 4 mobs in that same 5 seconds. This makes levelling in Wildstar comparatively mundane and dull. It’s definitely not a game where you would want to level more characters after your first.

Fortunately, this problem isn’t present at all during dungeons since the need to get out of the fire always keeps you on your toes. I’ve also installed a DPS meter, which allows me to know that my DPS isn’t lacking at all. I admit that I’m not exactly playing a class that has lots of burst, but a slow killing speed while levelling is slow, and that’s that.

Dungeons

Wildstar is also known for catering to the hardcore, something which Carbine Studios has decided to tone down a little to attract a little more population. I’ve played the first three dungeons so far, and the biggest issue with completing dungeons is, as always, the people in your party.

You see, Wildstar has a mechanic called interrupt armor, which is basically an armor given to a mob which protects its abilities from being interrupted. For example, if a boss is given 3 stacks of interrupt armor, then an interrupt armor removing ability needs to be used 3 times against it, and then a 4th ability will be able to interrupt the casting. For example, the NPC in the image below has 24 stacks of interrupt armor. The NPC is a town guard meant for a 40-man raid, so you could say that slightly more than half the people in the raid needs to interrupt her, or something really bad will happen.

The biggest hurdle I’ve seen so far in the first three dungeons that I’ve played would be using interrupts. Maybe this problem is more pronounced in the lower level dungeons, since I’ve never seen this mechanic used so liberally in any other MMO. In Wildstar, bosses usually use party wiping abilities once in a while (usually placed right after your interrupt skill’s cooldown has ended). These abilities need to be interrupted, and it usually requires more than one party member to interrupt the ability. Often, not enough people use their interrupts, and a wipe happens. I have to admit that I’m a serial offender here, since I never ever interrupt bosses in any other MMO that I’ve played, and my natural instinct is just to dodge and run away. As for “don’t stand in the fire” (known as telegraphs in Wildstar), Wildstar definitely employs this mechanic a lot more liberally than other MMOs. However, I’ve not seen it to be a very big problem for most of the party members I’ve played with, which can probably be attributed to the fact that almost any other MMORPG uses such mechanics.

Here’s what a telegraph looks like. Blue ones are your own, green ones are friendly healing spells, red ones are enemy damaging abilities, and purple ones are enemy abilities which would buff enemies.

Paths

Paths are sort of a side job that’s not crafting. There are 4 paths in Wildstar - Soldier, Scientist, Explorer, and Settler. These paths give you optional things to do in the world while you’re questing. For example, if you’re a Soldier, you’ll get quests to kill a specific target, or to hold out against waves of mobs. If you’re a Scientist, you have quests to scan objects or mobs with your science probe. If you’re an Explorer, you get to uncover hidden paths and do jumping puzzles. If you’re a Settler, you get to collect materials lying around in the world, and build improvements to towns and cities.

These paths also provide certain abilities when you’ve reached a certain path level (separate from character level). For example, the Scientist gets an ability to summon the whole raid or dungeon group, which is great for the Stalker who can stealth.

Levelling Experience

Levelling content has been very easy so far, albeit slow. It’s definitely easier than Skyforge (that’s not saying much though, if you knew Skyforge’s difficulty). The mobs you meet while levelling are as generic as it gets. Walk up to mob, attack it, mob dies. Mobs do use telegraphed attacks, but you have a choice on what you want to do. You could dodge it, interrupt it, or even eat the attack because you wouldn’t die even if you ate the hits. However if you do decide to pull more than 2 or 3 mobs, eating all the hits isn’t an option. I’m not sure how full tank or healer builds would fare.

I’ve played Wildstar as a medic to level 28 now, which is a little over halfway to the level cap of 50. I also have a level 22 engineer, who levelled from 15-22 purely through PvP with bots (more on that later). It’s been a long and slow process of levelling, which is not to my liking. While I don’t mind leveling in MMOs, it cannot feel too slow or feel like a chore. At approximately level 12 or so, I gave up reading every single quest. I just spoke to every NPC with a !, took the quest, ran to the quest marker, and killed or collected whatever I needed. It’s very mindless. Fortunately, Wildstar makes it easy to quest mindlessly, since every mob and item that is needed in quests is marked with a special quest symbol.

I would say that the current leveling speed in SWTOR is perfect. It doesn’t help that the classes you play in Wildstar never unlock most of their skills until you are around level 20. From what I’ve read, it takes approximately 100 hours to reach level 50, which is disgustingly long and prevents experimentation with various classes. I took 27 hours to reach level 28, so maybe the 100 hour estimate is a little outdated. Still, for an altoholic like me, it pains me to think that I need to play each class for 10 hours or so before I can get a proper feel of it.

The UI for the quest tracker is also convoluted. It’s complicated and overly messy, which can be confusing for new players. I would attribute this to how there are too many things to do while levelling, many of which are unimportant. There’s challenges, path quests, events, world story quests, regional story quests, and tasks. Where to start? What to do? Should I skip anything? What a mess. Just look at the quest tracker on the right in the image below (below the minimap). Here’s something to laugh about: nothing on the quest tracker are actual quests. They’re all optional fluff. It takes up so much space, yet displaying absolutely nothing useful. Wildstar has got to be the first game where I actually have to scroll in the quest tracker.

Honestly, Wildstar’s UI is pretty abysmal. It looks good, but the user experience isn’t there. It’s not straightforward, and it doesn’t feed on the player’s past knowledge or instincts.

Anyway, while levelling you will also encounter many challenges in the world. These challenges are often 2 types - kill, or loot. Basically, you’ve given a set amount of time to kill or loot a certain number of mobs or items, and based on the result, you get either bronze, silver, or gold rewards. The reward is challenge points, which goes towards a meter for unlocking more substantial rewards, such as gear, crafting materials, and dye.

While the idea of challenges seems to make the levelling experience more engaging and fulfilling, I just got sick of it eventually. It pops up every 10 minutes while you’re levelling, and some challenges are just too annoying to do. The items are hidden behind hostile and aggressive mobs, or you have to kill an absurd number of mobs.

Lag Issues

Using abilities in Wildstar is non-responsive and laggy. It probably has something to do with my ping, which is around 225ms. This is perfectly normal ping for a connection from Singapore to US West, and I play all my games this way. However, abilities in Wildstar seem to have some sort of inertia, where the skill will continue to keep casting even after you’ve released the key. Why is this important? Well, many abilities in Wildstar are used by pressing and holding a key down, continuously casting the ability again and again. All classes have some sort of builder ability that builds resources, which can be spent on other abilities. Because of this, it’s only natural to want to stop casting once you’ve built up your resources to the maximum, so that you can start spending it. While it’s not that bad after a while since you learn to release the key earlier than needed, it still ruins the combat experience and makes the game feel more clunky than it should. If it was my ping that caused the problem, then I would experience this in Neverwinter, Guild Wars 2, Skyforge, and Warframe. But I don’t. These MMOs all feature action combat, and all of them are highly responsive.

Population Issues

Wildstar probably went free-to-play because it had a lack of population, and while it had an amazing surge of players at the start, the population has dwindled. On the weekdays, it’s so quiet that it feels as though I’m playing a single player game. There’s barely any chatter in the main city, and the global LFG channel can go over 10 minutes without a single word uttered. This is how the most popular auction house in the main city of Thayd looks like on a Monday afternoon:

The population situation is far better on the weekends, to the point where it feels as though I’m playing an entirely different game. Queues for dungeons actually pop, and the LFG channel has people chatting. However, it’s still nowhere near the level of chat that you’ll find in a healthy MMO. I’ve yet to encounter Barrens chat in the game, which is something I enjoy reading.

I managed to get into a few PvP matches, thanks to the presence of bots. I think if the bots didn’t exist, the queue would never have popped, since it requires 20 people between level 15 and 29. I tried queuing for PvP in the level 6-14 bracket, but the queue never popped even after 2 hours. I guess there weren’t any bots.

Forum Attitudes, Player Attitudes

Never have I seen a forum that’s more vitriolic than in Wildstar. During my research about the game, I’ve come across many topics asking for help, or talking about problems in Wildstar. In these topics, the replies are almost always negative. No one takes it seriously, and they all proceed to diss the person. “Don’t like it? Leave”. These topics usually complain about the difficulty of the game, or how the game is really different in terms of mechanics. On one hand, it’s baffling because Wildstar needs all the players they can get. It’s a game that’s on the decline, and they could do with a population boost. On the other hand, some of these complainers are really beyond hope, and if they were to progress further into the game, they would just be a burden to the party that they join.

It’s sort of a “tough love” situation here, since Wildstar is an unforgiving MMO by design. While levelling in Rift, I always topped the DPS meters in dungeons. Always, without exception. Sometimes I even lead the next DPSer by 10% damage done. However, the dungeons always gets completed eventually without problems. That’s because the dungeons are easy and forgiving. People can play badly, and still complete the dungeon. While playing WoW, you frequently meet tanks who have no idea how to generate aggro properly. But that’s fine too, because the DPSers can run around like headless chickens, kiting the mobs, and the healer can keep everyone alive. But in Wildstar, there’s no room for complacency or error. If your performance isn’t up to par, the team will not make it. If too many people die, then there won’t be enough people to interrupt the boss. Your previous mindset from other MMOs will not stand in Wildstar. It’s elitist, and unfortunately, it’s also needed to a certain extent. Tread carefully.

I’ve also seen this behaviour outside of the forums, but it’s a lot less. Granted, my social experience is very limited due to the low population in-game, And I’ve not done many dungeons due to the terrible queue times. So far, I’ve met one person who left because people didn’t know how to interrupt in a tutorial dungeon, and one person who seemed like he was dying on purpose to avoid contribution. He even sneered at how people don’t know how to interrupt, and when I checked the combat logs, he never interrupted anything either.

In Closing

Wildstar had a lot of potential, but obviously that potential never got it anywhere. A terrible tutorial dungeon for an introduction, as well as a needlessly messy user interface turns new players off the game from the very beginning. The difficulty of the game makes players more elitist than the average MMORPG player, which makes the game even harder to enter for newbies.

Carbine isn’t doing enough to keep the game’s health in check. For example, Wildstar’s PvP battlegrounds has been plagued by bots for approximately 3 months now, and nothing has been done by Carbine to solve the issue. Wildstar doesn’t seem to have had new content for about 1.5 years (I’ve not researched this properly, but I’ve seen it mentioned by 2 different people).

In short, the future looks bleak for Wildstar. In my opinion, Wildstar isn’t an MMO that you want to start investing your time into. Good luck Wildstar, you’re going to need lots of it.