by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

In my last article, I asked what World of Warcraft can learn from its newest rival – Carbine’s upcoming sci-fi MMO, Wildstar. While the game includes a lot of MMO staples – group quests, levels, dungeons and raids – it takes a new tack in its implementation.

Wildstar has other positives that weren’t covered last time, but I’ve also included the game’s negative aspects – some of which would be very familiar to a vanilla WoW player.

Side-note: Since my last article on Wildstar, I took part in the Easter open beta weekend.

7. Paths

Path of the Titans (PotT) was a system of character progression that was originally going to be part of the Cataclysm expansion. It was a way to increase character power through regular activities, like questing, PvP and professions, and to make you different from Mage #30,463.

While PotT was cancelled, Wildstar has a similar system – although unrelated to character power – called Paths. Players pick a Path – Settler, Solder, Scientist or Explorer – on character creation, so unlike PotT it is not a max-level only feature. In fact, it is more about how you like to play the game – Carbine promises to provide plenty of content based around your Path. If you’re all about the killing, go Soldier; if you enjoy finding hidden areas, go Explorer. Scientists are lore buffs and Settlers can build structures (buff stations, hospitals, quest givers, etc) to help people.

There are all sorts of ways to get Path experience and as the Path is levelled, players gain access to different rewards, including new abilities – for instance, Settlers can make a portal to their house, while Scientists can summon their group (RIP Have Group, Will Travel).

The Path system is tied in to how a player likes to play. Different Paths can approach a situation in different ways – for instance, a Scientist might find a sparking wire to shock a group of enemies, while an Explorer could climb a ridge and place a beacon to call in sniper support.

In contrast, everyone in WoW really levels the same way: questing, dungeons or PvP – all of which would fall under the Soldier path. There are a few who level through professions (Settler), but exploration and lore-nerding aren’t rewarded, or really supported, in any great way.

Having choices like these would help to break up the monotony of levelling through Hellfire for the umpteenth time (especially for those who don’t have the money to burn on boosts).

8. Character customisation

As WoW has aged, it has received criticism for its character models. These are receiving a much-needed update in Warlords of Draenor, but still won’t approach the level of customisation that Wildstar provides, which is more like Skyrim or Mass Effect.

Players can change the standard options like hair, skin tone and facial features, but also things like eye height, eye colour and chin shape. The most stand-out option, to me, was the different body models: a telekinetic Esper doesn’t have to look the same as a beefy Warrior.

I can only imagine the amount of coding and art that went in to make sure all of the game’s armour fits onto all the different races and body shapes – as mentioned at the game’s panel at PAX East, it was absolutely a non-trivial amount of work.

Other things that can be customised include player housing – to a much greater extent than our Garrisons will be, by the look of things – and mounts. Unfortunately for the WoW crowd, Wildstar has been designed from the ground up to accommodate a massive level of player-modification, so I don’t expect to see options like this in WoW any time soon, if ever.

9. Scope of the world

Wildstar caters to the explorers among us (and not just those who choose it as a Path). The planet Nexus is full of crevices, crannies, mines and mountains that can be traversed, delved and scaled. The game’s innate movement abilities like sprint and double-jump come into this – they can be used to reach a ledge to avoid a group of NPCs, for example. During the beta weekend, I was hugely impressed by how rewarding venturing off the beaten path could be – I managed to find a cave referencing Alice in Wonderland, complete with size-changing mushrooms and a hookah-smoking caterpillar (aka Splorg)!

Blizzard began to move towards a world that rewards exploration with the introduction of the Timeless Isle in patch 5.4, and we can expect to see the trend continued in WoD. The ban on flying mounts will play into this; making your way up Mount Neverest is significantly less exciting after you hit level 90 and can simply fly there. Without flying the world feels both larger and more dangerous, which is why I’m excited to see how the change plays out.

10. Imbuements

Imbuements are a form of equipment progression taking a more interesting form than simply spending Valour Points. It can appear on weapons or armour and asks you to complete a specific task (or tasks) to unlock the item’s full power. For example, a sword might get a passive ability to put a bleed effect on an enemy. As mentioned at PAX East, certain items could keep having Imbuements added if the devs want them to remain relevant.

Such a system could easily become part a future legendary chain. I actually assumed we’d be doing something similar in Mists, when I first saw the Sha-Touched weapons from ToES.

What about the bad stuff?

That escalated quickly

Wildstar makes its share of mistakes – not unlike WoW at launch. In fact the game feels like vanilla in several ways.

1. Catering to the 1%

Wildstar is aimed at newcomers to the MMO genre, just like WoW, but the developers have been very clear that its end-game raids are difficult – they will kill you if you don’t know your sh*t. They also incorporate another feature that WoW has dropped: 40-player raids.

Although epic, WoW’s 40-man raids were clearly aimed at the hardcore. It felt awesome to burst into a dungeon with an army, but you quickly had to come to terms with the fact that roughly a third of that army was AFK, downloading porn or playing with their cat (not a euphemism). Speaking as raid leader in classic, controlling a group of 40 people is like trying to herd blind ferrets. There’s a reason WoW doesn’t enforce this group sizes any more, and it’s not just framerate issues.

Asking for 40 people to be brought together to complete difficult raids is also assuming that Wildstar will be popular enough at launch that large-scale recruitment won’t be problem. There’s nothing to say here other than ‘Wait and see’.

2. Non-optimal UI

Both WoW and Wildstar have suffered from this. Wildstar has a LOT going on at once, and it’s easy to lose track of things in the heat of combat. Lore pop-ups, loot prompts, tutorials and quest dialogue all open near the middle of the screen, while things like debuff tracking are more marginal. The UI is fully moddable – in fact, Carbine built it as a series of addons – and I get the feeling that very few people will be playing with the default layout. Much like WoW today, in fact.

3. AMPs

The concept of AMPs (Ability Modification Points) will be familiar to anyone who played WoW between vanilla and Cataclysm – it is basically a talent tree. Carbine’s implementation has some good points – the ‘trees’ are divided into different sections like PvE Assault (for damage), PvE Support (for healing/tanking) and PvP versions of the same – but where it falls down is in the bonuses themselves.

Basic AMPs become available as you level up and increase things like Strikethrough chance and Critical damage. These are the types of talents Blizzard ditched when moving to the new talent system in Mists of Pandaria – because they’re boring. 2% critical damage or 0.1 more Focus/second are not noticeable, and cookie cutter builds have already started to appear (likewise with the game’s limited action set, which caps players at eight out of 30 possible skills). The interesting AMPs, granting new active and passive abilities, are unlocked through items found through various methods.

In my experience, the majority of players will not be interested in the stat-affecting AMPs; they’ll be after the abilities. Blizzard learned this and did away with its old talent trees in MoP, instead baking the stat changes into the classes and making talent choices change the way in which you play the game.

4. Pace

This might have been a personal problem, but I found that I completed Wildstar’s quest hubs too quickly to familiarise myself with an area. There were the occasional locations where I’d stay for longer or fight my way from hub to hub, giving a real sense of progress; those were the ones that stood out. For the rest, though, I couldn’t tell you where I was in a zone or even what the zone was called; the locations were all a bit samey. This might change at higher levels (from what I’ve seen, it does), but the lower levels are just as important – maybe more, for a new MMO.

5. Telegraphs

Yes, Wildstar’s first positive is also its final negative. WoW relies on spell graphics to show players where not to stand, what will do damage and what will heal or buff them; however, Wildstar suffers from an over-reliance on its telegraph system. Players focus on those red and green circles, cones and squares much more often than they’re paying attention to the flashy spells they’re actually casting. It removes some of the feeling of power experienced when throwing a Pyroblast or hurling a Chaos Bolt.

The future?

Wildstar has generated a lot of buzz since it was first available to play in 2011, and is definitely set to be very popular (especially for those of us who always wanted a Ratchet & Clank MMO). Like WoW, it will not be perfect at launch; what remains to be seen is whether Carbine can replicate Blizzard’s success (the devs already appear to have a very open relationship with the community) and whether the two games – so similar in so many ways – can learn lessons from each other.

What do you think WoW can learn from Wildstar, and vice versa? Let us know in the comments.

Featured image courtesy of Carbine, with tweaks by Cantor (again).