Wildstar is a new type of MMO adventure, one that will take you deep within the Planet Nexus.
Story 8
Wildstar has a story unlike any other, it’s not just about two opposing factions going to war and whichever faction you choose ends up being the winner.It’s about discovering a planet called Nexus, where none of the two factions have been to it before. This sparks conflict in attempt to boot the other faction off the planet, I know it sounds like a typical story but here’s what makes it different. Your chosen faction has no idea what kind of a wild life is on this planet.
Having to choose a faction means you play a different story from the other faction and depending on the race you choose you will be unveiling a personal story. Collecting Data cubes tells you the stories of the eldan, invoking questions like what were they doing? what did they build? who are they? Trying to figure all that out along with their mysterious disappearance from the planet makes the game much more interesting than the average MMO!
Gameplay 9
Wildstar’s gameplay is fun. Is that it? of course not, Wildstar takes MMO combat into a different kind of fun, it’s not just attacking constantly and when you finally fall low on health you turn around and run, it gives you more excitement with their Telegraph system. The telegraph system is basically seeing telegraphs on the ground that you need to avoid and those telegraphs are usually skills not auto-attacks! now you’d think that avoiding those telegraphs would be easy because you can see where the enemy would attack and what kind of an attack it would be so it’s easier to avoid it, I saaaaaay no it isn’t. If anything it’s actually quite harder than you’d expect, at the beginning of the game you’re getting attacked with easy & slow skills to give you a chance to be able to move away from such attacks, but later in the game enemy attacks are sometimes faster and stronger so you’d really need to react fast and think on your toes regarding where to move. Sometimes attacks are just a row, might be fast or may be slow, that you’d never know (did that just rhyme? I think it did).
The game has different paths, which kinda play out like side missions. You can choose a settler and help people out by building XP or Speed boosts. Alternatively you can choose an explorer if you like puzzles and exploring areas exclusive to this path. Scientists, give a greater insight about the lore in Nexus. Lastly, you can just opt for Soldier if you just feel like killing monsters. Each path comes with it’s own set of path skills, not much, but they’re quite useful sometimes.
Of course like any other MMO out there you have classes to choose from, all classes come with different sets of abilities categorized under “Assault, Support & Utility”. For example if chose a Medic it doesn’t mean you can’t play him as a DPS, on the other hand a Spellslinger can also be played as a healer. This further gives you the ability to build your class differently from others.
AMPs are also a very important part of building a good character granting you different abilities and buffs that you could use to further build your character. Choose your Gear, abilities & AMPs wisely and you just might become the most powerful character your server has ever known. A few balancing issues regarding character classes in PVP keep this game from my perfect MMO.
Graphics 8
The different environments in the game show you how beautiful the game is. While not the most beautiful game out there, it still gives you all the different zones to play in from Deserts to forests. You even get to play some quests on the moon (at least I think it was a moon). Despite all that beauty the game really lacks shadows, you don’t see a lot of shadows in the game and I know people sometimes say that “you don’t need shadows” But sometimes shadows are what make the game look even more beautiful. The forests are detailed with creatures in water, land and even flying across the skies of Nexus. Most abilities look amazing but the others are just meh not so great!
You won’t see the same weapons over and over again, whether by crafting or loot, they all look different and never really the same. This avoids the tediousness you feel from acquiring the same looking weapon over and over in games such as TERA.
WildStar is an amazing MMO, and I believe if they keep updating content with new missions and areas, it would be the best MMO to play right now. See you in Nexus!