I fire up the game and go to create a new character. First I need a race, there are two factions and each has different races. I find the one I want and then fiddle with it until I like the appearance. I also need to make sure the class I want to play is available for that race...annoying but traditional.
Ok done, slap on a name and I'm in a starting zone near some NPC with a marker over their head. Click..click..click, click, OMG who cares just give me the quest already.
Finally. Now I didn't read any of that crap so I'll need some context clues and the mini-log to figure what asinine task I need to complete to get me that much closer to getting out of this damned starting area.
A few hours later and I'm level 10 and finally in a big city. There are banks and auction houses and other stuff. I still need to grind a bit before I can start in with the small group stuff....and it's gonna be a loooong annoying grind until I can do large group content with my friends. But hey at least the country side is pretty.
So which game? Not EvE-online, that's about all you can say.
Yes Wildstar has shinny combat and tons of customization and spiffy spaceman themes (see waterson I did there?) but is it enough? Wildstar is innovative but under the hood it is still the same damn game we've been playing for years and years. Start off weak, do some boring quests that I have no investment in and omg if its the 5th time I've done them they are groan worthy, grind, grind, grind until I come to the "end game" and can finally start playing.
Worse, Wildstar is behind the tech with it's end game. Do raids scale from 20 to 40 or are they fixed in size? From what I can tell they are fixed and holy shit did Vanilla WoW not teach us that managing forty peoples schedules, availability, gear, consumables, skill, etc etc was a royal pain in the ass? WoW's Flex technology is the new gold standard leaving anyone doing fixed raid sizes in the dust. Sure I might have thirty people on but odds are some can't make it, in Warlords I need only a third of my team to show up and I'm good, unless I'm doing Mythic and then yes I need all 20.
Wildstar is for old school hardcore types though so yeah!
Ok I hear ya and thats fine so long as they are ok with subscriptions in the EvE size group and not the WoW size group.
And speaking of EvE, when are we going to see a wow style Dev group look towards the stars and say "Hey why do players have to grind forever to be part of massive end game?"
In eve a new player has a role in large fleet battles from the very beginning. A fact that Goon Swarm has hilariously exploited in the past. Another thing EvE does that WoW/EQ clones do not is allows you to play any race with any skill with any of your friends. Why not have Horde Gnomes (well why have gnomes at all yuck) or Exile Chua? Why not a Panada Paladin or Wildstar equivalently restricted class/race combo?
Unless Wildstar plans to serve a very small niche community, like EvE does, they will find a similar fate to SWTOR. Why? Because despite all of the pretty dressing we still have the exact same grisly meat and potatoes. Why are my bags still filled with junk? If its junk and you know I'm going to sell it anyway just me give me the damn cash! Wanna innovate? Make everything that I can pick up have some use somewhere. Maybe I don't want it but someone else might. Why do vendors sell absolute crap that is easily replaced with only a minimal amount of grinding? How about they only sell the "junk" or greens or whatever that players sell to them and then the player gets a small percentage when someone buys what I sold to the vendor? They are like mini-auto-priced-auctioneers. Why make me go through the beginner area everytime I start a new toon? I HATE the panda area and the Goblin area and even though I've only played one Chua and one other thing I already know I'm gonna hate redoing those damn zones again. Why not take WoW's proving grounds to the next level? If I've leveled up before just put me in the city where I can go to a dojo with a virtual group to test my healing or tanking and virtual baddies to play with my DPS, its not mandatory but it is available. Further if I do choose to go to the dojo give me an outward sign of how well I did so I can say "See healer Gold ON THIS SPECIFIC CLASS, I'm good to raid yes?".
When you look past the glitz and glamour you will see that Wildstar is...ok so the word clone is treacherous...similar to WoW...worse it's WoW during Cata not MoP. Stop changing WoWs clothes and claiming you are innovating, take some time to find out what players like and what annoys the shit out of them and fix that and then make your new innovative MMO. If you need some ideas go play EvE-online for a while and figure out how to integrate its good features with WoWs, slap on your snazzy graphics and different but not really that different combat system and put a game that makes me want to play it because its awesome and not because I really don't want to level a Druid for the fourth time...oh but its Raid Night, good bye Wildstar which my guild doesn't play and even if they did I still have a long grind until I'm leveled enough to raid, I may be tired of WoW but this is where my raid group is and where ten years of mounts and memories is and since Wildstar is basically the same but without my friends, my gear, my stuff, my investment, but all the same annoyances I'll just stick to WoW. Kthnks buy.
No comments:
Post a Comment