And then summer happened

Been quiet here for the past few weeks but again, I’m not dead. Between Real life being a dick, steam sales and sunny weather, I haven’t had much time to give to MMOs and Wildstar in particular. My character is still a way from max level (27 atm) and I’m taking my sweet time getting through Whitevale.

On the whole I still like the game a lot even though the new game smell is gone. I wish I had more time to devote to it and could make some real progress but it seems that for now I’ll have to go at it at a slow pace which might be a good thing in the long run. I guess time will tell. I have to admit that I’m missing FF14 a bit but there’s no way I can play two MMOs at once right now so I guess this will have to wait.

I suppose that’s pretty much it for now. Nothing special to report.

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Real life and deadly plagues, some Wildstar too

I don’t usualy talk much about real life on this blog because I figure that people are not reading my blog to know what I had for dinner and because I like my privacy. That said, I had a craptacular confluence of real life events happen to me and my family in the past weeks and while I’m okay, I got bruised. Needless to say, blogging and gaming were close to non-existent beyond a few quick sessions here and there to pass the time between hospital visits or just to keep my mind off things.

Fittingly enough, one of the games I discovered was Plague Inc: Evolved, a game where you try to create and evolve a super virus/bacteria/killer nano bots/etc… to wipe off the human race off the earth. It’s incredibly adictive while at the same time being crazy morbid. I mean, you win by extinguishing the human race… There’s likely a few books to be written about abstraction in videogames based on this game alone.

Wildstar on the other hand has suffered greatly in the upheaval. When I play Wildstar, I like to have a good chunk of time to devote to it before playing. Maybe it’s just me but super short sessions are just not that fun to me. Since I’ve had very little continuous time these past few weeks…. Wildstar suffered.

Now that the game has been out for a while, I’m more ambivalent on Wildstar future. I still believe it’s an awesome game and I still think that aiming for more challenge is a good call… for an MMO that is. What I’m wondering though is if old style MMOs have still a place. I’m wondering how much of the old hardcore, play everynight, type of players are still around.  My gut feeling tells me not so many…

Anyways, that will be a topic for a later post.

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What I learned in Wildstar first dungeons

So after a quite a few pugs, I have successfully tanked both Kel Voreth and StormTalon, Wildstar first two dungeons. It wasn’t easy and it took a guild group to overcome StormTalon but it is finally done. I learned quite a bit beating my head against the wall but I’m more amazed than frustrated that Wildstar had me research and try out a lot of things just to beat those two dungeons. It may look like it but Wildstar is not WoW or any other MMO I’ve come across so far.

So with the hope of maybe helping out a few other tanks out there, here’s a quick list of random thoughts and tips.

• StormTalon is by far the worst of the two starting dungeons to Pug. Not because of the encounters but because it’s the first choice of most players and every run there’s at least one or two person who runs in thinking it’s going to be like WoW. Rude awakenings follow.
• Kel Voreth last boss is something special. He even features a bullet hell phase. I was floored by how fun (and chaotic) that fight was.
• Tank stat building. I made the mistake of going in with a heavy focus on Tech in order to get as much Support power as I could. Big mistake. Unlike other MMOs where you focus on a single stat, a balance of support and health was necessary here.
• Both instances are tuned for level 20 players in level 20 gear. Don’t go in with your questing greens expecting to tank and have no issues.
• Damage reduction talents, life stealing amps and shield regen talents are your friends. Take them, use them.
• Having a guild team makes all the difference in the world. It’s like running two different dungeons.

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First forays into Stormtalon

Yesterday I finally got to try Stormtalon, one of the first proper Wildstar dungeons and I did so with a bit of apprehension to be honest. I kept reading how hard it was and how it was turning people away from the game and so on. I did some research on the instance to prepare myself and took the plunge with a good old pug. How did it go? Not so well if you consider that I didn’t get to complete the place in either of my two runs but I still had fun and I believe the problem here lies more with the players than the game.

But first a quick recap.

• Run 1 was a short affair. The dps insisted on running the place WoW style and just face pulled everything, paid no attention to target priority, interrupts or even dodging telegraphs. After it became obvious that they wouldn’t listen, me and the healer left.
• Run 2 was a lot better but in the end the healer just couldn’t keep up with the damage of the second boss. This run was a lot of fun and most of us were learning the fights and the details as we went along. The healer gave up after a few tries on Aethros, saying he didn’t feel like he could heal it. It was getting late so I was fine with things as they stood and figured I’d try again soon enough.

Teaching the players

So is Stormtalon hardcore? Nope, not at all. Is it harder than Ragefire Chasm? Of course it is, way harder, but that’s because Ragefire Chasm is ridiculously easy. The mechanics I’ve encountered in Stormtalon were dodging bad stuff on the ground, giving priority to a mob over another, pulling carefully, using my cooldowns to reduce damange and placing an AoE under a boss.

These are all mechanics we’ve seen before multiple times in WoW and other MMOs. It might surprise people to find them in the very first dungeon but I think it’s great. Realm Reborn did the same thing and by level 20 you had a proper raid fight with Ifrit as part of the storyline. Looking back now it was easy but for the first timers it felt like a real challenge. And the difficulty kept going up from there so that by level cap players were familiar with rather complex fight mechanics that you would see only in the harder raids in WoW.

What I’m saying is that people will learn. What seems super hard now will become easy as people learn to deal with the mechanics. Then as they progress and the mechanics keep getting harder, they will keep learning and it could just be that by the time they get to max level they will be able to handle really complex fights. Don’t underestimate players, they can and will learn if given the chance.

However, if someone idea of a good raid is only facepulling everything without any thought to strategy and tactics then I’m fine with them leaving. I don’t want my MMO to be dumbed down to that level.

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That lack of time-travelling cars

Lately, to my great surprise, I’ve been defending Wildstar decisions a lot and not only on this blog (in fact it’s been mostly out of this blog). The discussion also usually revolves around the same points, the game is too hard, long, hardcore with me replying, of course it is and that’s a good thing.

Then follows a longer convo about how a game doesn’t need to be for everyone, how it’s important not to try to please everyone and end up pleasing no one and how copying WoW endgame setup might not be the best idea. Mind you, this is coming from people not playing WoW because it’s too easy, casual, dumb, boring, etc…

I feel like the arguments have been laid out here and elsewhere and now we’ll have to wait to see if Wildstar gamble will pay off. Nobody, not even Carbine or Blizzard, has a crystal ball or a time travelling DeLorean and while they can make educated guesses, no guarantees as Cataclysm so aptly proved.

At long last we have a MMO made by a good team, who has all the required quality of life improvements, who has raiding, pvp, housing and tons of stuff and who has made a statement about taking it’s endgame in a different direction than WoW. How come people are not cheering for it?

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