So, it looks like I'm getting Wildstar. The first time I was able to try the beta, it was a horrible juttery unplayable mess, and given how generic the entire thing looked I was ready to give it a pass. A lot of the selling points seemed like gimmicks, and I had no reason to believe it wasn't gonna be just another two-month flash in the pan. It turns out my graphics card drivers were the problem, and at the end of the open beta I've finally had a chance to give it a proper go.
I think Wildstar comes at just the right time, though, for me to 'get' it. The last month or so I've been furiously trying to get 'stuck' on a game and failing. See, I've always loved the idea of MMOs. Virtual reality in general is incredibly exciting to me, and though I don't play EVE I love reading the stories of what are essentially worlds within our world, bound by different laws. I played WoW when it was first released, and my best memories are the ones of hanging out with friends, forming massive raid parties to 'take over' Alliance lands just for the fun of it. I drank up Ready Player One, Sword Art Online, Tron and Log Horizon, even if they weren't necessarily the best of writing, because they fed my fantasies of what could happen in an online space.
And it's only in this last month, six years or so on, that I finally returned to give WoW another go. Because after trying every other contender, I was ready to see if it had improved. But something was missing. Still missing. In the interim, there have been several games I'd thought would go on to beat WoW. The Old Republic took steps forward in so many ways, and was fun to play for a while. TERA was my favourite - it was as visceral and reactive as playing a fighting game, but in an MMO world. Guild Wars 2 seemed revolutionary when I jumped into it, with perhaps less impact than TERA's fighting system but undeniably a jump forward with its action-based mechanics. Finally, Diablo 3 seemed like it could hook me, until the unfortunate lack of depth at the end broke the illusion. I even gave the Elder Scrolls Online a shot. Enough said on that.
Wildstar was just another WoW clone with pretty graphics, an awareness of its userbase and some nice, cool features that didn't actually change the core game. I had good reason to doubt it.
But now that it's up and running, I can see what the fuss is about. Wildstar is NOT revolutionary. No single component is brand new. The dodge mechanic is just like Guild Wars 2, and the exploratory, open-quested nature of the Path quests seem very reminiscent of the jumping puzzles and open quests of that game. The limited action sets and abilities feel a lot like Diablo 3's very-fun-to-tinker-with system, but expanded for greater options in battle. The classes all have at least two role options, just like SWTOR's, with lots of fun-to-use abilities. Like TERA, you fight big mobs out in the world, and you can also find packs of weaklings that are fun to kill. All of these are good ideas. What Wildstar does it take all of these and put them together in one highly entertaining package, for the first time.
I've barely scratched the game, and so there's not a lot I can say about its problems or failings. Certainly there's lots of features I haven't had a chance to try out yet. But the important thing is that I can now see why people are excited about it. It's not going to lead the MMO revolution - for one, the server shard system is still as outdated as WoW's (which is one thing that the Elder Scrolls Online did better than most MMOs), and I still can't play with my American friends. And there will still be the problem that half of my friends prefer a different faction. But it seems like we're moving forward, and for now, this is the benchmark.
