Quick Look: WildStar

I have to agree. MMOs just aren't my thing. I had a little fun with the DC MMO, but that was only when I had a close friend with me and because I liked the character customization.

I'm still playing Guild Wars 2

This may be the MMO for me.

They give Wildstar a pretty bad rap here, but I think its a quality of MMOs that makes a "quick look" almost impossible. MMOs are a genre that build up from being VERY simplistic at the early game to incredibly complicated at the end game.

If you show just the early game, they look pretty dull and boring and light on features. PvP, Warplots, Housing (which is HUGE), and the like weren't even shown here. Paths weren't even properly shown and that is a concept introduced pretty early on. Given how Brad says he likes to play MMOs, he would probably have loved Explorer if he went that way.

If you show a character at end game, it would be so inherently complicated that nobody watching except the most veteran players of the genre would probably understand. Even if they jumped in with my level 20 something, it would have way too much going on.

MMOs are constantly building on themselves over dozens of hours of playtime, that is why people suggesting a "end-game only" MMO would not remotely work. Wildstar innovates a LOT, and is a ton of fun for people who like the genre. It may not bring in people who don't like MMOs, but if it appealed to those people it probably wouldn't appeal to people who like the depth that a traditional MMO has.

Carbine tried really hard to get me to subscribe to Wildstar. I was in every beta from the start and yet here I sit, uninterested.

To be fair part of this disinterest is driven by being tired of the MMO genre entirely. After years of Everquest, then Warcraft, with pitstops in City of Heroes, Aion, Rift, and Star Wars: TOR, I'm just over the themepark MMO design. I'm equally tired of the "pay us up front then pay us monthly for access" model. As it is in real life, there comes a point where you become tired of chasing your own tail for small upgrades and that's basically what every MMO, including Wildstar, has turned into. Spend an inordinate amount of time grinding for a small upgrade just so you can do it all over again. I'm just not into that anymore.

I also take issue with the idea that this game is designed for the nostalgic "vanilla WoW" fans. I played vanilla WoW and have plenty of fond memories but all of the things I don't miss about vanilla WoW - dealing with the logistics of 40 man raiding, poorly optimized design for massive groups, having to worry about spreadsheets to min-max specific stats - are all considered selling points of this game. That baffles me because Warcraft exploded in popularity as those elements began to wane. Catering to that particular demographic essentially hamstrings their game from the start. Also, I found the UI to be utterly abysmal, to which everyone responded: Just use add-ons! I'm sorry but I expect the developer to make something decent out of the box, not cobble together something half ass with the expectation of the community to address the issues for them. This isn't Warcraft circa 2004 where development is still hit or miss in the genre.

I couldn't get into the locale or the design. The Exiles feel like someone wanted to make a cheesy space Western (a la Firefly) but lacked the writing chops to really pull it off. The characters are cliche and boring. The Dominion isn't much better. Classes feel interesting yet bland because there's nothing there any long time MMO player hasn't already seen before.

I figure Wildstar will always have a niche playerbase much as City of Heroes did; however, once Warlords of Draenor releases, most of the population of Wildstar will up and vanish back to the more familiar Warcraft.

I never played this game before seeing the quick look, but after fifteen minutes I could tell it wasn't going to be useful and stopped it. Seeing as Jeff was seeing it at the same time I was, he probably should have done the same.

"So you're telling me it's like WoW..."


lost all interest right there.

I've never played an MMO, but for some reason, MMO QLs/Vids on the site always entertain me the most. Maybe it's because I can't tell what it is that Brad is doing wrong? HEY-O...BAZINGA, etc etc sick burn. J/k, but not really(?)

This went about as well as Patrick's Guild Wars 2 Quicklook

None of them play MMOs enough to really give a deep review and opinion on.....well an MMO. Rorie is the closest person to someone who plays MMOs, and he just casually plays WoW, so of course they are just going to make WoW comparisons.

In my extensive MMO experience, this one is pretty damn good

Oh I know he meant meme. I was just unsure if the editor specializing in grammar, vocabulary and spelling is doing a funny with that or he was being legitimately serious.

@ildon: Just wanted to know a little more about the guy's opinion, no need to attribute any more to it than that. I appreciate your take on it, but it's a big assumption to think that everyone looks at something the exact same way you do with no room for a more nuanced view.

You might be right in the end, but there's no harm in asking.

So, uh, does anyone else feel like the story/lore of this game is really, really poorly done and forced? I got a guest pass and started playing yesterday and even after going out of my way to look up background and lore I couldn't get into it because none of it seemed remotely reasonable to me.

I think what bothers me the most is the Dominion seem like they're dicks just to be dicks. I know the reasoning they hate the Exiles so much but the reasoning just seems so stupid. Especially after playing up to a point in both the Exile and Dominion paths it basically seems like it boils down to "these people hate trees and these other people love trees, fuck putting thought into this."

@white: meme-y, as in an adjective for a thing that is saturated with memes. Brad sucks and games but he's good at english! :P

Google says the adjective of "meme" is "memetic".

I've played the CBT last month and just couldn't get into it, don't know why, it's polished, has a nice look and combines alot of good features from other MMOs, but it didn't grab me at all, it certainly grabs me even less knowing that it has a monthly fee. Wildstar brings absolutely nothing new to the table, it feels like a F2P game already, which i think it will eventually become, or at least buy to play, like Guild Wars 2.

If there weren't FREE quality MMORPGs out there like Rift, Aion, Tera, Age of Wushu (guess what, aside from AoW, all mentioned had monthly fees as well), maybe i would consider subscribing, but why would i want to pay 15$ a month, when i can get the same features for free elsewhere?

Good quick look BTW. :)

Very frustrating to watch and uninformative (plenty of false info, though). I've never played the game, but from just watching the (many) trailers as they came out, I seem to know more about Wildstar than everyone in the room combined. Not asking that they play for 50+ hours, but at least one of them could've spent five minutes during research on what the game is- seeing how this is a video game site- or at least read some of that text on the screen. Did the same thing for ESO, so not surprised.

That said, a usually entertaining video, though still recovering from my face-palm when Brad referred to the Mordesh as " the Dark Elves."

Played a little of the open beta a few weeks ago and the terrible mini-map and the lame humor and writing quickly killed my interest in this.

I think at this point if we're to discuss the relative state and interest in a genre like MMO's, it's absolutely valuable to consider and maintain reference to the particular interaction between business models and game design/player experience. It's undeniable that the content glut and "depth" of MMO's are most certainly related to their particular interest in getting you in for the first month and then having enough to do to keep you coming back for a long time.

Considering they've complained, and largely rightly so, that being confronted with a purchasing decision woven in the player experience deters them from most free to play games, it holds that the particular design legacy of MMO's is similar tied to its business model. Otherwise, you'd get something that's a lot looser, weirder, or single-player. It makes me wonder then how much speculative cash has been dumped into the genre over the decades in chasing the dragon that is WoW compared to general interest. Certainly interest was there once prodded but without all this cash to justify competition and also-rans, I wonder how niche MMO's would have remained. Then again, I'm sure someone would have tried what WoW did and eventually get us back to the same place.

For full disclosure I'm quite negative of the formula myself and so I naturally have the bias that they're too much content of conversely lesser quality than a crafted single-player thing like Skyrim or Mass Effect. The exception to all of this is indeed the inter-player dynamics in MMO's both gameplay-wise and socially but by now things like guilds are an assumed part of the genre formula along with everything else.

Have to agree with the sentiment that you can't really tell much about an MMO in the first couple of hours. What was shown was essentially still the tutorial area - which is indeed easy (although Brad still managed to die there, bless him <3)

Seems pretty cool so far. The path system, telegraph/dodge system, and generally mobility make it a fun world to explore/fight in.

@tenorsounds: So you can't even provide your own "nuanced" view, even when directly prompted? Doesn't that tell you something?

@ildon: Literally my first comment on Giant Bomb and I'm being hounded for asking a simple question. What's your problem, dude?

@ares42: It is absolutely ludicrous to me that any one person thinks they can speak for a group as diverse as "the MMO player base."

There are people who love raiding, and people who hate raiding. People who think they should be able to solo everything, people who think everything should require a group. People who love PvP, people who loathe PvP. People who just want to explore an open world, people who want a tightly spun narrative with highly directed questing. People who want a more "actiony" game that requires good reflexes and people who want to be able to play while watching a movie. People who think every decision you make should be permanent and character-defining, and people who want to be able to respec/reroll even their class/race/gender on the same character.

Literally any opinion or position you can have regarding MMO game design, you can find a significant number of people on either side of the issue (often with seemingly contradictory positions on different subjects).

So I kind of fail to see how Rorie's opinion is any more or less valid than your own or some MMO-specific site's reviewer.

It's kinda interesting on here how fractured people are about MMOs are on GB. Seems to be either love it or hate it and how close it is to WoW.

Also seemed kinda weird when Brad was saying he was looking for a Elder Scrolls/Fallout experience from an MMO. I kinda thought ESO would be sorta like that, and to a minimal degree, sorta had some of that. But then I realized that having that stuff in an MMO is pointless. Like having that experience in a large multiplayer setting wouldn't really work or be fun. I can't imagine MMOs ever going in that direction.

@ildon: MMOs have one central feature that in some way speaks to pretty much anyone that sticks around with them for a long time, persistance. No matter what kinda content you enjoy or what playstyle you like, the reason you come back to MMOs is because you enjoy the fact that you have built something up and it gives you goals to keep building.

They are not games about instant gratification (although there is some of that in there as well), they are games about gratification through achievement. And that is the part that they (and most of the negative comments here) don't connect with.

Last time that happened we got the FFXIV Quick Look, which was infuriating. It's not WOW. I get it.

Only played in a few of the Wildstar betas and have no intention of buying it (it really is just another WoW-style MMO when you get right down to it), but Holy Fuck this QL made it look worse than it is.

The combat is meant to be all about movement, dodging enemy cones of damage while lining up as many enemies as you can in your cone of damage. It's dynamic, it's fast, it's tactical, it's fun.

Brad admitted that he "sleep walked" through the early easy parts, which explains why he got destroyed in this video by not engaging with the mechanics. It's not rocket science (avoid the red ground, get as many red things as you can in the blue ground) but you'd god-damn well think it was watching this.

In summary: Wildstar not very good, this QL even worse.

The month of FFXIV I was able to play completely ruined me on MMOs. Free-to-play is inherently low bar and games that require you to buy and then pay a subscription fee is just too much for me to sustain. 14 had a level of polish and customization that just set it far above anything else I've played. "Raids" don't require you to be max level and jump through a ton of hoops to unlock, you're allowed to create a mage and later on if you decide this is no fun can simply talk to the axeman and he'll let you be a warrior now. There is a healthy amount of ways to level up and even when you're gearing up for your max level dreams, there's a variety of things to do that keep you from being too bored.

It's a model I don't expect any other MMO to adapt and it makes it really hard for me to look at new ones and go yes, this is truly what I desire. Furthermore it doesn't help that a lot of games model after WoW to this day when.. that model of MMO is severely outdated, despite being an "easy nostalgia" hook.

Didn't everybody agree that WoW was a horrible mistake and they were all so ashamed they'd never speak of it, or play anything like it, again?

Or was that that dream I had where we live in an honorable and just society instead of... well, a society where people choose to play WoW and WoW-alikes.

"More than League of Legends" in reference to Wildstars number of battleground maps, which was said to be 2, is false. League of Legends has 4 maps: Summoners Rift, Twisted Treeline, Howling Abyss, and the Crystal Scar, so that is 4 maps. If you said DOTA 2 then you'd be right. Also the statement was highly irrelevant Rorie....which is just like Rorie.

I started it last night and kinda dig it. When I get to dungeons I'll try streaming some.

During this Quick Look, inside of 30 seconds, Alex repeated exactly what I had said out loud to no one twice. The first time wasn't a big surprise as "Capital City?" seems like a pretty common reference to me, but when it was immediately followed up with the portmanteau "Bilz-zm" I was a little overwhelmed by the sympatico nature of the situation.

I dug the Nom Nom Nom... people need to stop being too serious at some point.

Is it me or does Jeff sound genuinely interested in trying this. He is always so negative about MMOs! Anyway, I played the Beta.. it is actually quite good and very much the same but also not as WoW... hard to explain. They seem to have taken what WoW had from TBC and taken it a different (maybe what a lot of people are missing from WoW) route. Will buy this after the summer, for sure.

level 10 is very early in the starting zone. getting to 15+ is super faster.

WARNING: Game of Thrones spoilers in chat on the video. First noticed it around the 31-32 minute mark. DO NOT WATCH FULLSCREEN IF YOU CARE ABOUT GoT. The internet at large has been fucking me relentlessly over the past few days regarding this show. People are assholes. /groan

One thing for me that kills interest in MMOs like this is the art style, glad GB took a look at this as definitely not getting this as it just looks too cartoony.

Alex... The characters style are no more exaggerated (in the waist) than in The Incredibles movie. Were you irked by that movie too?

Brad. Brad! That pronunciation of meme!

I never play MMO's, but I think this actually looks pretty cool. Too bad its 60 bucks plus a subscription. That is asking a lot for a game I am not even sure I will like.

Looks like a good MMO. If the biggest complaint that people have about it is that it's not drastically different than other mmos, that's fine by me. I never cared about too many fetch/kill quests, because that's not why I play MMOs, and that's not where I spend most of my time. I care about raiding, and that seems to be great in WildStar. When I played beta, PvP was fun, but kind of all over the place. That probably needs work. If I wanted to play an MMO, WildStar seems like a great one to play.

Also, it's kind of silly to quick look the early parts of an MMO. Maybe they'll revisit this and do some actual dungeons and PvP?

seems like an awful lot of money to ask for a game like this. the general design and even the gfx look 5-10 years old.

WILDSTAR HIP HOP

Man. The "humor" in this game is fucking grating. Probably still going to try it with a few friends just to see if it's tolerable.

I played through the beta, which was fun but a number of issues hurt the enjoyment. Started FFXIV recently to which might mean I'll give this one a miss.

The guys were actually a lot less harsh than I thought they would be...near the end even Jeff said this looks alright. Sure, there was dismissive comments throughout, but IMO it's warranted because this does nothing to push the genre forward

Besides, if they don't cover the genre then people will bitch for not giving it a chance. Then the guys give it a chance and it's not their cup of tea and the fans bitch anyways. No pleasing fans of a certain genre or game unless the guys absolutely love it. And even then someone will bitch that they liked that game over some other game.

Welcome to the internet. It's a vicious cycle

Can you play a paladin? A space paladin?

I love this game.

Good effort to become a Wildstar hating beacon.

The funny part about that is Jeff will spend countless hours doing exactly that in Animal Crossing....

As for understanding the attraction, people have different tastes and some people like me even enjoying "grinding" sometimes because they like multitasking. I haven't played a proper MMO in years now but I had fun while I did play them and sometimes I just want a game with somewhat mindless grinding so I can watch Netflix or listen to a podcast at the same time, I'm an obsessive multitasker who sometimes gets bored focusing on only one thing at a time so sometimes a "grind" is a perfect secondary activity to occupy my hands and part of my brain and scratches a certain itch. Plus of course there's great multiplayer experiences to be had if you find the right group of people to play with.