After about three years of development, developer Carbine Studios and publisher NC Soft have revealed their new MMO. It is called Wildstar, and it’s set in an artfully stylised sci-fi universe. It will be released for the PC and no date has been set at this point.<\/p>\n
The visuals are colourful and stylised to have a fresh, almost cartoonish appearance. One is immediately reminded of the subtle brushstrokes of digital concept art. The closest comparison that comes to mind is World of WarCraft, but Wildstar does retain it’s own distinct look.<\/p>\n
Not much of the story has been revealed thus far, but it looks as if the game is set in a fantasty sci-fi universe in which ships full of explorers, warriors, scientists and settlers travel the stars. Players will be part of one such convoy which has the misfortune of crash-landing on the Planet Nexus, where most of the game will take place. The brief look at the storyline and cutscenes show off good tongue-in-cheek humour mixed with melodrama and what carbine promises to be an epic story. Ancient alien technology will also feature, and undoubtedly there will be a vast story to uncover along the way.<\/p>\n
There are two factions involved – the Exiles and the Dominion, good guys and bad guys. We were shown a sample of Exile gameplay.<\/p>\n
Three races have been revealed: the brutish Grenok melee warrior; the dual- wielding Human Spell Slinger; and the Aurin Esper, a magic caster with a nature
affinity.<\/p>\n
Beyond the race selection, players can choose from four paths, each with their own unique gameplay responsibilities and user interface. These are the Explorer, the Scientist, the soldier, and the Settler.<\/p>\n
We were shown the Explorer, and the Soldier. The Explorer will run around placing signal beacons. The soldier will defend against waves of attacks, or timed attacks. In combination, these various races and paths will have gameplay implications for questing, as players will need to team up with others to complete the tricker objectives.<\/p>\n
Of course all races and paths can put up a good fight, so one needn’t feel that they are missing any action by placing a beacon – the soldier will definitely need help defeating successive waves of creatures. There will be collectibles and unique items for each race and path to keep individuals interested.<\/p>\n
The gameplay doesn’t appear to be breaking any moulds, but there are a few nice ideas, such as rewarding players the moment they complete a task, instead of sending them trekking back to hand in their quest. A highly functional map was also shown off, featuring good tracking of paths taken and waypoint assistance. Carbine explained that because the developers are hardcore gamers themselves, they knew which nuisances in gameplay design should be cut out of their game.<\/p>\n
Attacks are performed by using a combination of number keys, to which various attacks and abilities are equipped. This will be familiar to most players who have played a modern MMORPG. Attacks are stylish and well-animated, with great effects to keep things interesting. There are also dodging mechanics. Attacks require combat stamina, and as they are performed, so a power meter is filled. This meter can then be used to unleash ever more powerful combinations of attacks.<\/p>\n
The gameplay environment we had a look at showed of an icy landscapee beset by a blizzard. Local animal and plant life was abundant, and the resident yetis weren’t too pleased with the giant space ship that had crashed on their turf. The environment also proved to have a few dynamic threats such as rockslides and avalanches.<\/p>\n
Through player actions, the environment is visually transformed, going from a blizzard to a serence icy tundra. Stunning vistas were presented as the player character adventured around the landscape – Wildstar is looking to be a very visually attractive game, as well as an intriguing new MMO option an ever more crowded genre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From the publishers of Guild wars comes another MMO<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13516\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}