Road to Release – WildStar

Development for WildStar began much, much earlier than you might expect. Carbine Studios formed in 2005 by 17 former members of Blizzard Entertainment's ultra-popular World of Warcraft franchise, and over the course of the next decade, secured other developers from the likes of Fallout, Diablo II, Fallout, and Everquest. With such a lengthy and sustained investment by NCSoft, there must be incredible pressure for this sci-fi MMORPG to succeed in a highly competitive genre.

At the start, the vision for WildStar or whatever it was called before the name became official, it was to "do anything but WoW," according to Executive Producer Jeremy Gaffney in a Reddit AMA. In response, the team knew that it wanted to execute several design elements to distinguish WildStar from World of Warcraft: 

– Active combat against mobs of enemies

– Solo combat that feels more strategic and tactical; in this case, by using the telegraph system

– The choice of one of four Paths that cater to the player's style: Explorer, Soldier, Settler, and Scientist

– Frequent additional content for both the story and solo players

– 40-man raids and 40v40 PvP Warplots

The business model, centered around an in-game item called C.R.E.D.D., is another interesting aspect. Consuming C.R.E.D.D. grants players the equivalent of a 30-days subscription and can exchanged at the Commodities Exchange for in-game gold. This way, those who are dedicated to the game can continue to play relatively free while those who don't have much time to grind for gold can purchase it through buying C.R.E.D.D. and exchanging it with his peers.

Before delving head-on into the classes, let's examine some of the races and factions that will impact the player's choice of class. The Dominion represents the law of the WildStar universe who believe that the planet of Nexus is theirs by rightful legacy. Founded by the Eldan, the five races that comprise the Dominion – the chosen Cassian, the engineered Mechari, the bloodthirsty Draken, and the petite but crazy Chua – have no qualms knocking every persona, or vermin, out of their way.

On the other side are the Exiles, outcasts of the Dominion who have every reason to populate Nexus and keep it away from "those uptight asses." As outcasts and mercenaries, the four races of the Exiles wish to establish a home world: the Humans who are actually the same as the Cassians but have been exiled, the stone-golem Granoks, the spritely rogue-like forest-dwelling Aurin, and the zombie-like Mordesh.

Sometimes the race you choose for a character will limit the classes you can choose, or will make certain classes better suited to certain racial traits. But for the most part, you're free to use whichever one of the six following classes:

Warrior

Nothing like a power sword, connected to a fusion accelerator, to demolish everything with brute force. Serving as the usual tank of the group, the Warrior can wield wicked weapons, thermo-nuclear battle gauntlet arm cannons like the XL45 Hell Mitten, and wipe everything in the level with sheer power. As bruisers, juggernauts, or whatever word you want to call them, they are meant to generate threat in mobs, with their primary attributes focus on Moxie, Brutality, and Grit for power, health, and critical chance. Whether you choose a DPS or tank build, the Warrior is a class you don't want to mess with in close range.

Spellslinger

Using a mixture of magical sigils, evasive dexterity, and pistols, spellslingers do exactly that: sling spells. Duh! Perhaps channeling a cartwheeling Lara Croft, they love to dodge and fire twin pistols at poor enemies within range. These mag pistols manipulates magical sigils to add elemental damage, buffs for themselves, and debuffs on their foes. You can also fire healing bullets for good measure, making the spellslinger flexible as a DPS or medic build.

Esper

Transforming psychic energy into psyblades and projections, Espers can restore the health points and buff companions with beneficial illusions. If being healer doesn't float your boat, though, Espers can turn their psychic energy into nightmares, hexes that severely debuffs enemies. Illusions can even become sentient friends, like Reapers that can distract does and dish out additional damage.

Engineer

Best fit for either a DPS or Tank role, Engineers wield rocket launchers and can craft a crowd of bots that can repair you and your friends or wreak havoc on enemies. But that's not all! Engineers also have an exo-suit that can protect them from harm and negative effects, earning extra damage bonuses in Eradicate mode or more health and resistance in Provoke mode. Whether they're Diminisher Bots, Personal Defense Units, Bruiser Bots, and Artillery Bots, Engineers can generate plenty of friendlies for all kinds of benefits.

Stalker

An infiltrator of sorts, the Stalker is exactly what it sounds like: stealthy evisceration. Screw guns and people who don't have courage to deal damage up close. Wolverine-like claws are so much cooler. So is sabotage, with the ability to drop down spikes, mines, and darts. and a nano-skin suit with silent and deadly results. Nanotechnology to the rescue! Stalkers can analyze weaknesses, create clones, and become invisible until they're detected by foes.

Medic

Last but not least, Medics form the essential support for tanks and DPS killers. Using Shock Resonators to heal friends and boil foes, Medics aren't completely helpless, though they definitely don't want to be caught alone unless they tear into a DPS build with Technology, Moxie, and Brutality as primary stats. The Medic can use fields to heal, buff, and debuff, as well as summon probes to help allies.

 

Roaming about Nexus will of course net you plenty of quests where you'll mainly need to hack poor animals to earn experience and level up. But there's much more to complete than just fetch quests, and luckily there's plenty of other missions, like those based on the path you select for your character (Explorer, Scientist, Soldier, and Settler) and various challenges that you can find throughout the environment. Most of them require you to eradicate a certain number of a specific type of enemy within the time limit.

And you can't have PvE without public events occurring no matter what zone you're in. Plenty of bosses roam the world, in public events or dungeons, waiting for you and a random number of players to slam them back into the ground. Joining with friends, you can take on one of the six Shiphand Missions set in outer space.

Adventures

Likewise, you and a group can accept Adventures, controlled by a schizophrenic AI construct known as The Caretaker who wishes to test his subjects (or should I say, corpses). Apparently, when the Eldan mysteriously disappeared from Nexus, the Caretaker experienced various instabilities but perhaps you can help him by completing the digital simulations of his Advanced Diagnostic Virtual Environment Neuro-Tactile Universal Research Experiment. These ADVENTUREs are not for the faint of heart and will require a well-coordinated group of heroes to finish.

The Adventures that are accessible at lower levels serve as a good warm-up. For instance, in Riot in the Void, you must take back control of the Astrovoid prison from three convicts who have initiated a full-scale prison break. Or in War of the Wilds, your team must destroy Skeech legions to dominate the artic frontier. But if you reach a high-enough level, you can access an Oregon Trail-inspired Aventure called The Malgrave Trail, featuring numerous diverging paths for protecting your caravan as it rolls along to the city. I tested this out personally during a WildStar event and it was extremely challenging but incredibly rewarding.

Bette yet, Adventures are endlessly replayable. Not only do the later Adventures provide plentiful options for player choice, but playing them over on veteran difficulty will grant much better loot and experience.

Raids

If Adventures aren't enough to satisfy your appetite, then 20-man—even 40-man—Raids will be your main course. And if you think that safety in numbers will help you, think again. In fact, it may only take one Leeroy Jenkins idiot to demolish the entire team. I mean, it's taken almost a decade for WildStar to finish development, so Carbine Studios isn't going to push out some weak-ass raids. Groups will need to coordinate with each other for perfect timing, preparation, and formation.

Raid bosses tend to have ridiculous telegraphs that seem inspired by bullet-hell shmups. Reaching the boss can be different with each attempt as well, with levels that not only transform but with mini-bosses alternating locations on the map. Just getting to the raid bosses can be difficult enough, with some bosses fighting on top of collapsible platforms or with some bridges covered in eggs that will explode on contact.

Not only that, but every week raid bosses will learn from their own mistakes levelling up the challenge and protecting its loot ever more tightly. Only the strongest teams will be able to reap the rewards from raids on a consistent basis. Are you up to the challenge?​

Housing

Though not really PvE, we would be remiss to excluse housing from the experience. After purchasing a plot of land for a Proto-star specialist available fairly early in the game, you can begin creating a housing area to your specifications. You can follow a straightfoward design with walls, roofs, doors, wallpapers, and furniture, but you can expand, rotate, and place them as you see fit. Housing items can be found as drops and quest rewars, or crafted from materials.

Depending on the rarity of the items in your house, you'll earn Rest XP when you log off in your home and then log back on. The plot of housing land can also be customized via plug-ins (as in Warplots) with various mines and farms to harvest resources, and you hop to a friend's housing plot and help them harvest resources as well. Even better, you can plug-in expeditions that act as dungeons that you can enter with your friends. As just for fun, you can plop in a BBQ pit, a Cute Date Spot, or a Ferris Wheel.

 

Given the animosity between the Exiles and the Dominion, the battlefield for PvP is ripe and ready for action. Sometimes you'll meet enemies in the open world, sometimes you'll take the time for a one-on-one duel, but our bet is that PvP nuts will spend a good amount of time facing off in Arenas, Battlegrounds, and the more-than-epic Warplots.

It's important to note that playing PvP is just as viable an option as getting through the PvE. Players can level to the endgame just by raging through the PvP modes without even touching the majority of the main worlds. In addition, by earning Prestige through kills, they can purchase weaposn and gear at their level so that they don't fall behind their PvE peers. Then at Level 50, PvP will match players not by level but by gear score.

Arenas & Battlegrounds

Arenas may not be as expansive as the 40v40 Warplots, but they're meant for tighter firefights between squads who do best in team deathmatch. Available once players reach Level 30 and also available in 2v2, 3v3, and 5v5 variations, Arenas pit teams against each other in eSports-like engagements for bragging rights and higher ranking points on the leaderboard.

Instead of single-elimination rules, each team has a limited number of respawns, giving equal weight between offense and defense. Also since players are matched in Arenas by their Elo rating, expect several occasions when teams will compete against each other in uneven numbers.

Slightly more lax but equally as competitive as Arenas, Battlegrounds focus on objective-based PvP. In one jungle map called Walatiki Temple, teams need to carry masks from the island center of the map reachable only by four bridges back to their home base. Of course, players can also try pilfering masks from the opposing team by sneaking in or going in full force, so there needs to be a strategic balance between aggression and protection.

Warplots

The Level 50 McDaddy of Wildstar PvP is none other than Warplots, a full-on barrage between two 40-man teams craeated by single guild or alliance or multiple smaller groups fused together. Whether it's Exile vs. Dominion or one faction against itself, Warplots features a combination of defensive real-time strategy games and MOBAs where the object is to capture shrines between bases, conquer the obstacles in the other team's base, and obliterate the creeps and players of the other team.

The leader controls not only the ranks and permissions of the team's members, but has the enviable (and uneviable) task of building the defense of the team's titular warplot by placing seven plug-ins, out the current pool of about 120 of them, meant to stall invaders, whether they're passive buffs, maze-like obstacles, or even in-game bosses. Defeating a raid or adventure boss will sometimes drop a token of its likeness, allowing you to summon the boss as a defense in a warplot against the enemy. If these plug-ins become damaged, they can be repaired during the match or between matches.

However, each plug-in drains the team's total energy pool the longer the match lasts, so you will likely need to conserve energy before it reaches zero and give the enemy a win by default. Of course, if you're playing fast and loose, you'd better invade the enemy's warplot and smash of its generators quickly before your energy pool drains all the way down. Whatever the case, Warplots will be the unique mode that will separate it from other MMOs and engage the PvP community like nothing else.