Out of Pod Experience

Got a Wildstar beta invite for this weekend. Anyone else try this game out yet?

I dont think the graphics are too demanding. Reminds me of the old N64 Mario games. Cartoony but with a modern look.

EDIT: make sure to download the game in advance. Took a few hours for me.

check out these dev vidoes:

linky

I'll post after the beta about my expereince with it.

Yep, that's the one.

It's the game play mechanics I mostly interested in. I dont care if my toon has bunny ears (there are also humanoids btw). If the game is fun to play my toon can have a pecker head for all I care.

I've been playing Wildstar for a while, and honestly, for what is essentially a themepark MMO it's actually pretty fun.

In particular, the combat is quite a bit more satisfying than I expected, I really think Carbine has hit on something with their telegraph system.

In PvP in particular the telegraph system adds some depth to combat that I haven't really seen before. Area denial featuring primarily among them.

The graphics are well polished without being graphics card melting, and the game has a fairly good upper bound without hurting accessibility too much. In particular, the artistic style evokes some of the wackiness of the Borderlands series, the lighthearted hilarity of violence, without being excessively gory.

As for character customization. Each class can only use one weapon type, they're locked into that, and they are also unable to change their armor category. You either get heavy, medium, or light.

The true customization options open up with the action bar and the "Amp" (talent point) system. First the action bar. You are limited to a fairly small amount of skills you can put on the bar, but you have a vast array of skills to choose from. This manages to both reduce UI clutter (the UI needs some work, but honestly it's functional without getting in the player's way too much) as well as to allow for a wide variety of potential builds, and to tailor your skillset for the situation. It works.

The Amp system is rather interesting as well, it is a grid based system rather than a static selection of a "specialization" tree. This allows, once again, for a wide variety of hybrid builds as well as just picking straight up deeps or support points.

The entire running theme is player choice. There are TONS of options, something that has been lost in recent years of gaming.

Does preordering get you anything important that waiting a week/month after release and seeing what other people think of it will not ?

Or is it just the usual stuff that doesn't matter in the long run ?

Yes, Wildstar does look interesting to me. But after playing though GW2's launch and being told that it was a good MMO launch, I've decided that I never want to play an MMO on launch. I'll wait till the launch issues are fixed. I'll give time for the guilds who form before release with people who keep jumping between MMOs to fall apart as most of their membership leaves for other games*.

If I wait a month or three I won't be missing out on anything important.

*Especially the people who pay real money to get themselves power levelled, then complain about the lack of content.

The biggest hurdle I see that could stop me playing Wildstar is that it's a subscription game. Which means it's going to need to be significantly better than GW2 to justify the subscription. Just being slightly better will not be enough.
I know that they are copying Eve's Plex system. But I can't see myself having enough time to pay for that.

I did, yes. I have plenty of disposable income, and I tend to give things a try unless they look as godawful as ESO.

I figure a pre order gives 30 days of game time, plus the 30 I already signed for. Even with my work schedule I ought to be able to give it a thumbs up or thumbs down by then.

Honestly can't wait til it comes out, I love their combat system so far. If they can balance out the 40v40 PvP zones (they're too small right now, too zergy) then I will be pretty happy with it.

I have press credentials thanks to having worked for a gaming magazine before, so I got in on the ground floor of that because I have played Elder Scrolls games since Morrowind.

I was hard pressed not to break the NDA by warning people off of playing ESO. Because... yikes. They ****ed up that one bad.

Eh, I've signed enough of those in my time to not try and tiptoe around it. I let them find out for themselves.

As far as the cosmetic stuff goes, I don't actually think there is a microtransaction store. If there is I haven't noticed it yet, and I've been playing the beta for weeks.