Be Excellent To Each Other

http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/openbeta/

Interesting, I might give it a go. Rumours abound that it is actually quite good, and they are aiming the game at ex-mmo players who burnt out on WoW.

Let me know when you play!

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2 ... _wildstar/

Dude in charge did a great reddit too.

Will do, i'll kick off the download tonight I expect, so it should be ready to go by the weekend

The password restrictions are fucking hateful.

Let me know how big the install is, would you.

It's released 31st May, and i'm home for two weeks at the start of June after having my tonsils out. Hmmmm......

Looks like a 4.3GB download - Reddit thinks it's a 17GB install, though

2% downloaded!

Because I'm far too busy to click on one link* - sell this game to me in one sentence!

Is it just another MMO, or does it have a unique hook?




* Playing Heathstone.

Copied from the reddit:

Key features n' stuff?
Action combat - simple at the start, insane [2] by mid/late game
Housing - Deepest since Ultima Online, IMO. Check out vids that beta players have made; they're pretty nuts.
Warplots[3] - that housing stuff on steroids; where you instead build a 40v40 PVP battle fortress, including capturing raid bosses to help you.
Paths - unique system where you tell us what kind of player you are (Combat, Story, Explorer, Socializer/builder) and we make about 20% of the content be about that, with benefits for doing it with other players. Video shows it in-game here [4] .
Hoverboards and other customizable mounts
Adventures are a new kind of player-choice based dungeon. Devspeak[5] and Flick[6] .
Oh, our Raids don't suck either

It's basically WoW, but set in a sci-fi western, with humour, created by a dev team who seem to actually listen and respond to the players.

Hmmm cheers Trooper sounds interesting at least.

I'll wait to hear back with you and Grim's... initial thoughts before committing to the download, and scrabbling around for space on my SSD to make room for the install.......

TBH though I've always found that WoW is a very well written game in the main, managing to juggle humour, drama, pathos, excitement etc pretty well.

16%! Somehow I doubt i'll be playing this tonight...

It's alright, the combat is pretty good, but on the whole it's WoW. With messier progression and UI.

Just had a very quick go and I totally agree at the moment. The UI is awful, I found it very difficult to know what was going on a lot of the time.
Luckily that is all completely mod-able, i'll have a play around wit the UI a bit when I get a chance.

My real issue with the combat is that it is based on movement and dodging, yet you move around using WASD as usual, but all your attacks are on left hand key bindings as well by default. It's a choice between moving and shooting at the moment. I'll drag out my gaming keyboard add-on thing and see if that works with it.

Played for about an hour this morning.

Hmmm... It's competent enough, but it has some serious flaws.

1) The combat, it's biggest selling point, is difficult to control efficiently. Real time action combat while using the age old MMO control scheme, not a good set of bedfellows. Without some serious key config playing around, your left hand has to move, dodge, sprint, jump and attack, all at the same time. Even with my gaming keyboard addon with thumbstick for movement, it was still a bit of an arse.
2) The UI is just awful, and the current set of mods don't fix that enough. Dialog boxes, cues, quest boxes etc... all just seem to pop up at random locations on the screen,
3) The whole environment of the game is also very messy, too busy, too garish, difficult to see what is going on or where you need to be. Coupled with the locations being generic and uninspiring, I just had no real idea of where I was in the game.
4) The storyline may be good, but like the rest of it, it is poorly presented and incoherent in the main.
5) Unexplained gaming mechanics. I'm a seasoned MMO'er, I know how they work. Yet I had no idea what I needed in terms of stats for my character, or what to do with the stuff I picked up, or what all the "path" nonsense was about really. I can go and read online what I need to focus on for my medic, i'm sure, but that should really be explained in the game itself.

Granted I'm still very low level, and apparently it gets much better past L15, but i'm not sure i'll bother getting to that point.
If it was free, then it would be a great free mmo, as you can look past those flaws.
Being as it costs £40, plus £10 a month, it really needs to be a lot more polished than it currently is. Let's see what the final product is like, but it is certainly not a pre-order for me!