I was pleasantly surprised by Wildstar. It really isn't doing anything new, and that's probably why I only played it for a couple weeks, but I wasn't expecting it to look as good or preform as well as it did. Some of the story was interesting, and I enjoyed the inherent difficulty of their dungeons in comparison to a few other MMO's. The housing system is crazy detailed, that was neat. Still, it doesn't quite hold my attention.
"This is life! We suffer and slave and expire. That's it!" -Bernard Black (Dylan Moran)
I beta tested the original game before release and whilst it had a few interesting things, it was so poorly optimised for AMD CPUs that I just couldn't ever get above 19fps so I didn't bother with the game at release.
I have recently given the F2P trial a go. This is the first time I've voluntarily played a F2P game, so it did well to even get me that far. And as far as F2P goes, I've actually been very surprised! Not a single popup to tell me to buy something. Not encountered any restrictions yet which is another bonus.
The game itself (im 15) has been OK. Whilst I don't like the art style, I do like the world building itself. The zones are a bit small so far and feel very channelled, but I love the interesting trees and plant life, I enjoy using double-jump to try to reach interesting places. There has also been good variety in quests in comparison to my previous MMOs and its probably one of the better questing experiences I've had in an MMO (I still dislike it, but its better than most). Just simply things like the platform / anti-grav puzzles are enough to make it better than most.
I've also been pleasantly surprised by the pvp. TTK seems very high at the lower levels, resulting in prolonged fights and more opportunities for teamwork.
However, the biggest things putting me off are the combat and the user interface. I'm just not a fan of action / twitch combat. Having examined the skills, chosen a decent action set, I just feel like I end up hitting a couple of skills as soon as they are off cooldown, then just spamming a few others all the time. No brainpower required, no real skill, just a lot of dodging, spamming with the occasional well timed CC.
For the UI, its just horrendous! It feels like everything just got dumped on screen and forgotten about. Its messy, unordered, unintuitive and ugly. I've search for decent addons to improve it but none seem to do a good job. The quest log in particular is horrific. I'm on a PvP server so have done a lot of PvP, so I'm 5 levels above the quests I've got. But I've no idea what I can skip, what i should follow etc.
I need to commit myself for a weekend to pushing into further zones. I need to experience the capitol city, a few dungeons and housing before I can make my final judgement, but the core experience (combat) just isnt fun at the moment.
Comments
"This is life! We suffer and slave and expire. That's it!" -Bernard Black (Dylan Moran)
I have recently given the F2P trial a go. This is the first time I've voluntarily played a F2P game, so it did well to even get me that far. And as far as F2P goes, I've actually been very surprised! Not a single popup to tell me to buy something. Not encountered any restrictions yet which is another bonus.
The game itself (im 15) has been OK. Whilst I don't like the art style, I do like the world building itself. The zones are a bit small so far and feel very channelled, but I love the interesting trees and plant life, I enjoy using double-jump to try to reach interesting places. There has also been good variety in quests in comparison to my previous MMOs and its probably one of the better questing experiences I've had in an MMO (I still dislike it, but its better than most). Just simply things like the platform / anti-grav puzzles are enough to make it better than most.
I've also been pleasantly surprised by the pvp. TTK seems very high at the lower levels, resulting in prolonged fights and more opportunities for teamwork.
However, the biggest things putting me off are the combat and the user interface. I'm just not a fan of action / twitch combat. Having examined the skills, chosen a decent action set, I just feel like I end up hitting a couple of skills as soon as they are off cooldown, then just spamming a few others all the time. No brainpower required, no real skill, just a lot of dodging, spamming with the occasional well timed CC.
For the UI, its just horrendous! It feels like everything just got dumped on screen and forgotten about. Its messy, unordered, unintuitive and ugly. I've search for decent addons to improve it but none seem to do a good job. The quest log in particular is horrific. I'm on a PvP server so have done a lot of PvP, so I'm 5 levels above the quests I've got. But I've no idea what I can skip, what i should follow etc.
I need to commit myself for a weekend to pushing into further zones. I need to experience the capitol city, a few dungeons and housing before I can make my final judgement, but the core experience (combat) just isnt fun at the moment.
What do you really expect? Something to blow you away?
Games don't do that anymore.