Free-to-Play: Wildstar

DarkgarX and I tried the Wildstar free-to-play game recently, and yes, the servers were jammed nearly impossible to log into. A couple thoughts:

The graphics and factions are fun, and impossible not to like if you are a fan of Guardians of the Galaxy, and other similar out-there space opera style depictions of the universe. It is a wacky, pun-filled, silly, serious, and crazy place with a charm all its own. It is a fun place, full of in-jokes and whimsy, and I wish I could buy a pen-and-paper game based on this universe.

Seriously yes, I could play this on the tabletop if the humor was kept intact, kind of like the old Paranoia game with its frequent fits of black humor and outright and random fits of uncontrollable laughter. I wouldn't want black humor for this one, just that free-wheeling space exploration and danger with humorous and uncontrollably silly moments. They did a great job with the world, and it is worthy of a pen-and-paper game that captures the irreverent and silly high drama of this universe.

I liked the classes, and I felt they were imaginative and they broke the boring tab-target standard of the last generation of MMOs. Every ability is AoE or self, and you don't need to fiddle with a target indicator and end up healing the thing your fighting by accident. You just play, things move quickly, and it feels like an action game. They did a nice job here, the combat is fluid and dynamic, and the powers are cool and different.

What were they thinking following the old bang-to-bang quest model? Seriously, it feels like MMOs have got stuck in this Facebook game model where you just search a 3d world for exclamation marks, skip the quest text, and run off blindly chasing the next quest objective. I feel it hurts an otherwise fun and interesting game, and it doesn't really play to the game's strengths. In a game about freewheeling space adventure, putting the chains and cage of a traditional questing system on everybody locks down the fun, tells players "only quest content is important" and sucks the life out of the natural conflict the wonderful world has between these two factions.

It feels like MOBAs are so popular because they took the funnest part of MMOs (PvP) and just made a game around that. Everything else that MMOs traditionally do, from the slow grind to the endless questing, is unfun, and MMO designers feel they need to keep shipping this rote, uninteresting, copy-and-paste between games, honestly lazy content and they keep trying to improve it and wonder why a square wheel doesn't roll.

Wildstar is fun and cool-looking, and I love the world. I do not like the locked-into-it questing content. I hope this is just the introduction, but honestly, I wish it wasn't there and we were free to pursue player-created goals and user-created content. Yes, kind of like EVE, but with people instead of 3d starships. I want to fly a grav-ship around the planet as an explorer and discover new lands, to ply traderoutes with my atmospheric cargo ship, to participate in PvP wars as a soldier, or craft my butt off and discover and build things as a scientist to support the war effort.

I want to be forced to be a part of something bigger driven by the community, not be a mouse in a maze driven by developers. Yes, I know, EVE again, but I love that personal connection and 3d avatar-ness of Wildstar, especially in a sci-fi setting.

We shall see how this breaks out, and I am hoping it does, and my character can be a part of this larger struggle for freedom and independence of this far off world.