Hey everyone! Today we have a ton of news on our new favorite game, Wildstar! I am just going to jump right in.
Biobreak
Sypster over at Biobreak had a neat Top 40 article on Wildstar. He writes for Massively, so he was likely part of or privy to information from the press event a few weeks ago.
This article links to several other articles in the news network, but it also has pulled some of Sypster’s favorite things from those articles (and some of mine too, as it turns out).
Hit the jump for more articles and news….
ZAM
Another new article was one on ZAM that has some really cool information. It was an interview with Wildstar’s Executive Producer, Jeremy Gaffney. Let me just pull some of my favorite quotes out of it, but you should go read it yourself, as it is just chock-full of information.
He started talking about gear and stats, and he compared it to Diablo.
Let’s go back to Diablo 1 or Diablo 2. When your Strength goes up from 10 to 11, it gives you a bit of a boost but not that noticeable, but if you have a sword sitting there that needs 15 Strength to wield, then going from 14 to 15 is a big potential leap for you. That is a noticeable leap. Well, that is, and they’re good designers so I’d imagine it is probably done intentionally – that gives you a staggered stair step where every +1 matters, but then some +1s matter a lot more than other ones.
He later elaborated that they want to take it even farther by incorporating more of these milestones into existing abilities.
…you should be really looking forward to “Oh if I fiddle with my stats and I cast this buff and I did this thing, wata!” Now my jump goes twice as far and I feel a big impact. But that’s the intent of that system where it’s really trying to drive is to give you that kind of feel and to build that sort of staggered stair step into your thing. So when you find a +3 sword, it might not always really matter, but sometimes it really matters and you’re really stoked to find that new item that’s in exactly the right configuration, both at the low levels and at the high end – you know, it’s very powerful. So that’s where Milestones are going and they’re part of the way there, but there’s probably not all of the way there.
And finally, like I referenced in our latest podcast (which will be published soon), hybrid builds are difficult to do when you allow for total freedom in stat builds. They realize this and had this to say about that problem:
…what our designers have been working toward is more sort of making some interesting hybrid points along the middle that are valuable too.
Talking about one of my favorite Wildstarian things, Paths, Jeremy Gaffney revealed a high-level unlock for the Explorer path.
The most fun ones I’ve bumped into in the game so far are temp abilities or daily ability boosts. For instance, as a high level Explorer, getting a once-a-day jetpack…You get a bank of different abilities or different skills or some can even be items that in general are supporting the kind of things you want to do. The jetpack’s a great example because Explorers love movement and often, if I have a particularly tough jump puzzle, well if once a day I can solve the jump puzzle by saying “screw this I’m getting out the jetpack”, then that’s very valuable to you… and maybe it’s even useful in combat once or twice for getting away from a tough enemy. But they’re infrequent use things, so it’s not like trivializing what you can do.
He confirms that not only will Paths affect instances, but they will have a use in PvP as well! This blew my mind, and so did another quote for which I literally jumped up and down for joy.
And similarly in PvP, we generally give you powers and if you successfully use those powers in a good way, then you earn yourself Path XP. Because if you’ve leveled up entirely by PvP, we don’t want you having top level in your class but having a Path level of 3 because you didn’t have any way of advancing things. (emphasis mine)
That phrase “if you’ve leveled up entirely by PvP” may earn this game top-spot for me, thank you very much.
Massively
This article was another interview of Jeremy Gaffney, and it started with a great phrase: “Jeremy Gaffney runs on Diet Coke.” My kinda developer! Just a few sentences later, Jeremy drops a bold statement: “MMOs have probably failed you.”
This statement, coupled with all of the things talked about in this article, really does indicate that Wildstar is taking a different track than their predecessors. On quote that was particularly pithy and amusing was the following:
if you reward people for doing fun things, they’ll do more fun things, but if you reward people for doing boring things, they’ll do more boring things.
While a “duh” kinda statement to some people, I think it is very insightful for them to get this. No other company seems to get this.
This is one of those articles that is so full of information, I would just end up quoting most of it. Instead of that, I will tell you what to expect, then you will go read it. Deal?
- Sandbox vs. Themepark vs. Sandpark
- Really awesome competitive and not-repetitive raiding
- Story progression continues at endgame. In fact, think of leveling as the “Prologue”
- Monthly (!) content
- Hint at more news about Warplots, i.e. housing used for PvP (two of my favorite things! TOGETHER!)
- Details hooks on outside and no-hooks on inside with housing
- Living, breathing zones
- Telegraphing system details
- Combat opinion from Bree (writer of the article/editor-in-chief of Massively)
Videos
Also released today were three new videos. They were linked in the Wildstar Wednesday update which is also worth a read.
Stay tuned to Wildstar Radio for more updates on the news as it releases!
