I think it is about time I said something about this, seeing as I've played a few beta weekends and there is no NDA anymore.
LotRO, hobbit banjo player and before I have even entered combat I have replaced my stabby thing and a hat - replaced.
Wildstar I have no hat, I have no stabby thing, I don't even have a banjo. You start with nothing, and a series of quests will eventually grant you the gear that you need to procede on to planet nexus. Thats not to say that there won't be combat involved, but you will be given a weapon quest before you go near anything that might hurt you...ok, well, not quite but environmental hazards don't count.
WoW: Space Goats, Night Elves, Humans, Midgets, Smaller Midgets (fuck off pandas you cunts)
Orks, Trolls, More magical Elves, Talking Cows and Green Midgets
Wildstar: Good Space Humans, The result of a Space Human fucking a rabbit, Space Golem, Space Zombie
Bad Space Human, Angry Space Hamster, Angry Robot, Angry Space Demon Goats
I'm going to stop doing that comparrisson thing now, it doesn't really work past those examples and you can get generic info like that from their
website.
Graphically speaking Wildstar is very appealing, it reminds me of SWTOR but without trying to be serious like that game was. The world is big and bold and colourful and it is a nice place to wander around, like WoW there are loads of little things going on in the background which add a little bit of flavour.
The factions feel very different to each other, the Dominion feel very dominion-y and the Exiles feel very good guy space cowboy (not in a Be-Bop way, nothing could be THAT good) From the few betas I have been in it seems to me that the bad guys (and there is no grey area, they ARE the bad guys) are a lot more entertaining, the scripts seem funnier and the general feel is a bit less serious. The Exiles feel a bit serious for my taste, you start by racing to save some guys pregnant wife ffs - dominioneers start by interviewing people with a cattle prod.
Combat wise this is not WoW, this is not Guild Wars, this is not SWTOR this is NOT a EQ clone. You can't stand still and expect to progress at any speed, it's not that you won't survive a fight if you just stand there and press buttons but you will have to eat between every single fight to regain health and a fight with multiple mobs with definately end in death. Enemies telegraph large attacks with big red aoe indicators of where they are going to attack, get out of these areas to avoid big damage or nasty status effects. Chain several kills together quickly and you will be rewarded with extra XP for the difficulty in doing so, the majority of classes main attack is a cone so you should be able to take on at least two at once, I've been playing as a Stalker and 3 or 4 are quite manageable.
Questing is a questing, it's a fucking MMO. Handily you don't have to go back to the quest giver to complete ALL the missions, but some do require you to.
On top of your classes (spellslinger, esper, medic, engineer, stalker and warrior) you get to choose a path. Your path dictates what kind of side missions you can do, scientists like to scan things and are good for those of you who like lore, explorers like jumping puzzles, settlers can build upgrades to outposts and warriors get to kill waves of enemies. Your path will level up seperately to your characters level and will provide you with path specific abilities like slow fall for explorers or the ability to grant your party motorbikes to ride around on for settlers.
Classes are as you would expect, they all have some kind of support or utility role on top of their damage role. These vary with your class, the warriors support is a tank role, the medics support is a healer, etc..Many classes fill the same role - I believe engineer and stalker are also tanks and esper and spellsinger are also medics.
Crafting is different, instead of just having a list of recipes to learn you have to master making the lower level items of a specific item before you can make better ones. Lets say I am a weaponsmith and I made a shit tonne of bladed claws (think wolverine or the tiger) my bladed claws are going to be really good, I have probably learned to make some pretty badass claws - but the other stuff I create is shit, until I make a shit tonne of them too. You can also choose what stats you might want on these weapons and the quality of them not only depends on your skill but also on the quality of the components you used too - like Anarchy Online if anyone played it.
Levelling is slower, you won't level as fast as you did in WoW, unless you can remember Vanilla days in which case it is just like that.
The world is well designed, the three or four areas I have been in feel pretty unique and are enjoyable to explore. You can't just wander from one to the other though. Each area is a separate instance you can't just wander from one area to another - you will have a loading screen in the middle.
Thats about all I can think of right now, if there is anything anyone wants to know just ask. I can't be the only one that has been playing (looking at you Joose, you're as much a MMOHolic as me)
Oh, one thing that did piss me off and I realise how stupid this is:
I took a taxi from one outpost to another. The Taxi was blue and it had a robot-torso for a driver - yes I know, a nod to Total Recall - then I noticed that the robot was a hologram WHY THE FUCK MAKE IT A HOLOGRAM? IF IT HAS TO BE A HOLOGRAM WHY NOT A PERSON?!
I have no idea why that gets under my skin, but it does.
