Wildstar is a really colorful MMO with cartoon-like graphics, but don’t let that fool you into believing it doesn’t have the hardcore chops we crave. According to their developer, it’s a mix of Sci-fi and fantasy in terms of setting. We were shown a quite impressive CGI trailer as the reveal at their world reveal presentation, which NCsoft along with Carbine Studios held on Wednesday the 17th August, around 9.15am. They choose to reveal their new so-called "organic" MMORPG during Gamescom due to it being by far the largest gaming convention in the world. My guess is that they also felt WildStar had enough polish to finally see the light of day: a perfect combination.
A phrase that kept on returning at their presentation was "let gamers play how they want to play" also Carbine Studios Jeremy who's telling us about their new game repeats how different Wildstar is compared to other MMO's on the market. So the story behind this WildStar demo is that the players crash-land on a quite unusual planet and need to choose their path towards survival. We have the usual race, class and faction choices, but we also get asked why we're coming to the planet.
As to choosing your path, you can either explore, conquer or perhaps you even want to build yourself a new home? Maybe be a scientist? Carbine wants the player to really dig into the mystery of the world, and the first path is just one of the many layers WildStar has to offer. To elaborate more, Carbine told us a lot of things about just how deeply the layers of these “paths” go, and that they're also really dynamic in terms of presentation. This is quite interesting, especially since WildStar is also story driven.
Their goal is to offer the gaming world the "deepest and richest MMORPG" ever. Let's hope they can live up to this promise… because so many have tried and failed.
Combat in WildStar was shown quite a bit and it's a system they call momentum. The idea is that you can gain better rewards the faster you kill things. You can also interact with the surroundings in a very pleasant way; we were shown how the player dodged a cascading avalanche, so there's quite a bit of flexibility in your character’s movements and actions. Another interesting and returning phrase is that we were told WildStar really is an MMORPG which you play at your own pace. They don’t want there to be the usual “rush to end-game”. So casual players: you can rejoice!
All in all I feel that WildStar has promise and we were shown a fully playable MMORPG on a very vibrant, mysterious and unexplored planet. It seems to have come far in development and both Carbine and NCsoft seem passionate about the game. Unfortunately the presentation had a few issues with framerate, but we assume that is being worked on. We can’t wait to see more of how this all-star team of developers pulls together to create their sci-fi fantasy epic.
