So i played WoW a ton back in the Lich king days and got burned out on the whole raid thing, dont get me wrong its tons of fun but with work and other games id like to play i cant really dedicate myself to those crazy ass raid clans anymore. Plus WoWs end-game single player stuff sorta sucks, dailys were boring and a grind and even 5 mans started to become a chore for me when they made them a daily.

So basically what im asking as someone who hasn't followed this game at all is if this game is fun from a more casual perspective, and i dont mean that i wont play it a ton, but more or less is there something other then raids and pvp at the end game to keep you busy with suitable rewards besides rep or is everything still locked behind raids?

Seriously, Wow is such a buzz kill for me since they seem cater to people who play that game a ton (which is smart, i know), its hard to even get the story info if your not in a good raiding guild and i just dont have the time or energy for that kind of thing anymore. I do love the openness and feeling of accomplishment a MMO gives yea, and would like to dive back into one but dont really know if its for me. Thanks!

I've only played it for like...40 hours or something (I'm level 16 or so), but I've had more fun with Wildstar then I've had in an MMO in a long time. The world is very creative and interesting to explore (with some incentive to do so even), the game play feels frantic enough that it has remained exciting still, the controls feel good, the graphics and animation have been top notch that I've seen (it isn't distracting at least, although I do think the game looks really good), crafting is actually fun, gathering materials has an added element of interest (in that sometimes nodes try to escape or spawn enemies), the writing is fun in a saturday morning cartoon way, the acting is top notch (heard several of my favorite classic voice actors including Jim Cummings and Kath Soucie- just to name two), and the quests feel meaningful.

If I had to relate the game to something I'd say a mix of Ratchet and Clank meets Saints row with Everquest elements.

It's really not like other MMOs I've played (and I've played most all MMOs), but it has enough recognizable elements that it isn't difficult to understand for the most part(although cooking is still kind of confusing to me).

I really really like Wildstar, and while I can't speak for future me right now I am not running out of fun things to do. I didn't even feel that way about WoW when it came out- I almost quit WoW because even when it first came out the leveling was really dull.

I don't know what PvP, or end game is like (I haven't done those things), but where I'm at right now- I think Carbine is on to something with this game.

Edit: Oh, almost forgot. It has player housing as well which has been lost to MMOs for a while but has been slowly coming back over the last year or two. While it isn't open space housing (like star wars galaxies- which also showed why you cant realistically do that) it's still fun and has a ton of elements of creativity (on par with City of Heroes/Villains base design system) and customization.

Unlike Final Fantasy XIV, though, the housing is affordable from the time you are allowed to buy into it (which is level 15) and it doesn't take very long to get your own plot and start customizing it. It's so affordable I wasted all my money on it because I wasn't paying attention to what I was spending haha (that was entirely my fault).

Carbine was founded by of a bunch of original World of Warcraft devs and they specifically stated they wanted Wildstar to recapture the old vanilla WoW style of end game with large scale raiding and competitive PVP. That should tell you all you need to know to answer your question. There's a few solo things to do once you hit level 50 but they exist solely to get you in starter gear for 20/40 man raiding. Rep grinding is much the same. If you're not able (or willing) to invest in 20/40 man raiding or PVP your end game experience will be exceedingly limited and you'll end up just rolling new alts.

@captiosus: I remember them saying that they will continue to introduce 5 man dungeons for people not into raiding. Although that doesn't change the fact that it still an MMO you play for multiplayer content. They will add more solo content (they said so in the launch day stream) but they will probably focus more on group and PvP content.

If you do like that in an MMO though this is probably the best game available right now. The instanced content in this game is really fun and well designed.

So I love MMOs but rarely do I engage in either end-game content or party experiences. Call me crazy, which I am, but I just really like to jump into a huge universe when its fresh and somewhat raw and watch it evolve around its players. Having played Wildstar for a fair bit as a mostly solo experience, the game can often feel simultaneously really engaging and super dull.

On one hand the nature of the "telegraph" system forces you to pay attention to your character and positioning much more than other games of this ilk. Unlike Star Wars the Old Republic, where at some point I could go on autopilot in combat, Wildstar has killed me for failing to respect its system. This means that solo combat, at least up to level 17 doesn't feel like a grind against health bars, but rather a new area means I have to learn what moves the enemies have. Even if most of those moves are the same circles or straight lines, the extra obvious nature of the bright red warning lights makes fights rewarding.

That being said, the Old Republic and other MMOs built on established universes, kept me invested due to the nature of their stories. Wildstar has the both fortunate but daunting task to try and make you care about its universe. The writing can be sharp, but the lack of voiced dialogue after The Old Republic, made the game feel a bit old and also got me in the bad habit of skipping some or all of the text. Also the characters you take quests from often fail to give you a whole lot of background about what you're actually doing for them. So at the moment I have only a vague idea of what kind of things I actually did and really don't know if there is an overarching story or if its just a mis-mash of quests. That being said if you do engage with the lore and take time to really explore Wildstar can really be delightfully charming in some of its off beat narrative.

Hopefully this helps you some, I'm certainly not regretting the purchase, but am not really sure I would feel the need to ever roll a second character.

Cheers.