Ding! Virika and I managed to hit level 50 before we signed out last night. Though we played quite a bit this weekend, we didn't devote as much time to Wildstar as we had planned. We decided to focus on leveling up the rest of the way to 50 and bypassed any adventures or dungeons this time. There was another awesome shiphand mission that I recorded (maybe I will upload that later). It had had us battling in a deadly game show and endorsing silly products. Nor did I get into any PvP like I had planned. Oh well, at least we have a plan for next Beta weekend.
Our toons had already quested their way though the Wilderrun zone before this weekend began. Although it wasn't as novel as Farside, the lore and story was excellent. The major story line follows Tresayne Toria and her Torine sisterhood. These girls are the amazon warriors of Nexus and they would give Xena a run for her money. Completing the quests in this zone rewards the player with heaps of lore about the Eldan and how the Torine came to be. Toss in a couple of cut scenes and some gruesome monsters twisted by dangerous Eldan technology, Wildstar delivers several hours of immensely entertaining questing. Really, I am actually enjoying questing... a lot! And I only ever dabbled in RP very briefly on a WoW realm and I probably won't in Wildstar. But when I encounter a character like Tresayne Toria with such a rich back story, I feel like RP will be really amazing in the Wildstar setting. We rushed through Malgrave. Though this zone had it's merits, it was more bland than the zones that preceded and followed it. Grimvault came next and it was another truly epic zone. The southern portion of the zone was actually a bit buggy. There were lots of places where we'd freeze and get killed by mobs and certain mechanics seem to boot us from the game. After a rather frustrating hour or so, we made it to the north and all was right with the world. The zone had a truly epic quest line with a very satisfying conclusion. I found it challenging.
Within Grimvault is a crashed Dominion ship called the Aziron that provides the setting for some of my favorite quests in the game. Players start out stumbling through the dark barely able see 10 meters in front of them. After some exploring and combat there is a short puzzle quest that upon completion, turns the power and lights back. It was quite a wow moment when I turned my toon around and looked over at the huge space I'd been running around in... there was so much more to go. The details and the vastness of it really blew me away.
After completing Grimvault, we were both just a few bubbles from 50. We headed to the Badlands but didn't take it in. We hit 50 and pretty much called it a night. Having made the journey all the way from wee level one, overall the leveling experience was much more fun than I thought it could be. Wildstar at it's heart is an MMO. In the end, players who like this type of game will find a lot that is familiar and expected. However, the nuances of gameplay, the sci-fi comical setting, and the level and quality of detail provide a fresh experience. I do see one major flaw that could hurt the Wildstar's longevity, which I will discuss in my next post. For now here is some video of my levelups. I love the narrator!
For years I watched Virika invest way too much time doing what I thought of as gimmicks and time sinks in WoW. She participated in every holiday event and collected every battle pet she could get her hands on. She coveted achievement points so much she would travel to every corner of the pixelated landscape in order to find every critter in the game and show them that she /loved them. I'm not saying I didn't participate in any of these "collection" activities at all. I mean what WoW player didn't put at least a little time into getting a cool transmog outfit or get those heroic achievements done in order to ride a cool mount that showed everyone else what a bad ass player you were? But collecting recipes and hunting down rares mobs with ridiculous spawn timers and spending hours searching for the elusive time-lost protodarake... not my thing.
One of the Wildstar gimmicks that a lot of people seemed excited about was the player housing. From the beginning, this sounded utterly ridiculous to me. Friends who played MMO's that had housing options could never convey to me what was so cool about it. I just thought, "who's honestly going to hang out in their imaginary house and arrange furniture instead of, you know, playing the actual game?" When my Dominion toon got to level 14 and made her way to the capital city of Illium, I honestly could care less about playing house in an mmo. But I had heard something in chat about a boost to your rest bonus associated with housing so I found the Protostar showroom and got my house. I hate myself for how quickly I got hooked. After spending a couple of hours questing and leveling, I couldn't ever get my ass to bed before tinkering with my house just a little bit more.
There are more than a few things that make this housing cool. First off, the most obvious and expected thing is that there are a lot of neat "decor" items to collect and decorate your house with. Some of them are things you find randomly, others are earned through rep and questing, winning drops in instances, and some are crafted. There are also things players can buy from the housing vendor with gold or an in-game currency called "renown", which is mostly earned by participating in group activities. Throughout the game, players can also collect lore items fragments of stories called "Tales from Beyond the Fringe". Anyone who collects all the fragments for a particular story can buy portrait of the cover to hang on the wall. Finally, some of the coolest decor I saw, came from completing various challenges in the game.
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| Time for a nap. |
The housing interface is awesome. Not only does it allow the player to position decor exactly as desired, it allows players to preview items not yet purchased to see how they will look. Different decor items increase the quality of the house in terms of things like comfort, lighting, aroma, ambiance and pride. The more of each a house has, the more rest bonus a player will gain when logging from the house. Another neat thing about housing that I didn't expect was that it is very easy to visit other players houses. Players have options to become neighbors with someone or roommates. Being roommates allows Virika and I to decorate each others homes. In the pic below, you can see me placing a pine tree in the middle of her house... I am sure that she will love it! (Don't worry. She can put it back in her crate later)
In addition to decor items, their are FABkits to collect. These fit into landscape slots on the players property. Examples are functional things like gardens which allow you to plant seeds and grow plants used when crafting. There are purely decorative kits like hot springs and kiddie pools. There are others like my moonshine cabin that allow the player and their guests to participate in a challenge. Stomp the grapes and work the controls to make your hooch. The loot rewards for completing it include some nice decor items and small amount of renown. The challenge can be repeated every half hour in order to collect all the items. I also won a FABkit from one of the instances I did called Kel Voreth. Not only does it look incredible on my landscape, it has a portal to the instance!
In the end, housing is definitely a time sink and probably most appealing to casual players and RPers. That being said, I'm sure that there will be a fair amount of hardcore raiders and PvPers spending their time straitening picture frames and shopping for furniture. Mainly, because the housing is really fun, but also because it feels like a worthwhile reward that you can show off to your friends. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I have.
