Grace

After playing WildStar for a full year, I finally got myself attuned to the first raid, Genetic Archives. And by got myself attuned, I mean my loving guildies dragged me through the final few dungeons I needed to finish it. Before my hiatus, I had been moving ahead pretty quickly and trying to get into raiding as soon as I could. After I returned, though, I was much happier just doing dailies and contracts, and making some money. I felt rusty and slow, and didn’t want to need to be carried through things. As it turns out, those few weeks of going solo did help me ease back into the game enough to at least carry my own weight through the vet dungeons I needed. I had also jumped into a couple world boss groups, which meant as soon as I got to that point in the attunement chain I could immediately turn the quest back in. In short order I found myself around on a raid night with no excuses to keep me from being pulled into GA.

My first reaction was “this is very purple,” then “holy cow 20 people in a raid,” and “that’s a lot of telegraphs.” My raiding history has spanned several MMOs and raid sizes, but I always seem to prefer the smaller 8-10 person raids. As a healer it feels so much nicer to get to know the group and how they work together, and it feels like each player’s contribution matters more. For my first WildStar raid, however, I was extremely happy to be just one little DPS in a crowd. That way every time I got murdered it didn’t slow the group down too much! Logistically, recruiting and maintaining a 20+ person roster is much more of a nightmare for raid leading. I also think for a somewhat niche game like WildStar that asking guilds to maintain huge rosters to be able to raid is just not a great idea, which I guess is why they got rid of the 40-person size raids.

“But Gracie, we don’t care what you think about raid sizes, what were the encounters like?” Well, I was surprised at how…unsurprising they were. After getting to know the style of this game, and seeing the crazy vet dungeon encounters, I imagined all kinds of nightmarish possibilities for what the bosses would be like. Instead, the vet dungeons do a pretty great job of preparing you, and mechanics are similar to what you’d expect from any modern raid. There were definitely lots of telegraphs to dodge but everything seemed reasonable. I am certain it was helped by being in there with an established raid group that had cleared those bosses already.

I guess my assessment is: WildStar raiding is fun! If you are intimidated by the echos of “HARDCORE” and terrified of some sort of telegraph hell, don’t be! If you can make it through all the content for the attunement then you can definitely deal with what the first floor of GA will throw at you. What are you waiting for? Get to it cupcakes!

Source: Moonshine Mansion
Raiding!

 

The past few weeks have been a bit of a WildStar whirlwind for me. I had been on a bit of a hiatus for the beginning of this year, playing some WoW and mainly Final Fantasy XIV instead. But like everyone else on my friends list, I heard the announcement that WildStar is headed to F2P this fall and came back to poke around again.

The timing of this was perfect since it matched up with the anniversary event. Hooray for free pets and toys and such! I even got to participate in the “special event,” pictured above. It was amazing to see so many players in one place together, but I will never be able to un-hear the sound of 500 medics all casting at once. I think my computer still has nightmares about it.

I’m really excited about the transition to F2P. From the look of it, Carbine is being pretty generous about what bits of the game will be “free.” Even though I haven’t been playing constantly, I have been subscribed via CREDD since launch, which means I hopefully have some extra goodies heading my way when the transition happens.

The best thing about the announcement is simply that it brought me back to this game that I love. I’m finally caught up on all the changes that were made while I was away, and invested in my character and the world again. I even got raid attuned, with a lot of help and peer pressure from my wonderful guild. I can’t wait to tell you all about what raiding is like in WildStar!

Source: Moonshine Mansion
Zero to Hero

 

 

Happy New Year!

You may have noticed that it’s been awfully quiet around here lately. The truth is that I’ve been playing less WildStar. I resubbed to WoW because that is where a large number of my friends went. And then I spent the last month agonizing over that decision and hating myself and being annoyed and surly, even if I wasn’t always sure why I felt that way. Hopefully getting it out of my system in blog form will be cathartic for me and maybe either eye-opening for some folks or reassuring for others who might be going through a similar situation.

MMOs Warm Bodies and Betrayal

These games we love are only at their best when their virtual worlds are populated. While sometimes we might fantasize about playing a MMO completely solo, the truth is they just work better and feel more alive with bustling economies and people around to join in the fun. Since for most of us our free time and often our money are limiting resources, there’s not a lot of room for multiple time-consuming MMOs in our lives. There’s some room for multiple MMOs to exist in the market, but lots of discussion gets pinned on “WoW-killers” or “Next Great Thing” and doesn’t leave a lot of room for individual people to enjoy and be vocal about many games at once.

Especially in the case of WildStar, which I’ve been an advocate for from the pre-launch hype through the highs and lows of launch and through the population decline and server merges, it feels like even admitting I also play WoW is some betrayal. That giving subscription dollars and my free time to both is somehow admitting the defeat of WildStar or kicking it while it is down. WildStar still seems to me to have plenty of happy players making it into a living world, but I’m sure that Carbine would be happier to see subscription numbers increasing. Since I want the game to succeed, I feel like a jerk for enjoying multiple games, instead of advocating for the one I like best.

Home is Where…?

The interesting thing is that playing both has made me love and appreciate WildStar even more, yet WoW is where I’ve been spending more time. I made up this quick list of things I like about each game:

WildStar –

World and Lore – I love sci-fi, I like this world, and I like being a part of the story as it develops. I absolutely can not wait to see what happens with Drusera and what other worlds we might visit next!

Art and Visuals – This game is beautiful. Every time I log in I can’t stop taking screenshots, or just running around my house looking at the sky.

Music – My favorite MMO soundtrack hands-down, and perhaps second only to Bastion as favorite video game music period. Like so much of WildStar for me, it wasn’t what I expected at all, and I love it!

Combat – The telegraphs and active combat do have a learning curve, but after you get used to it everything else seems incredibly boring by comparison.

Healing – Healing in WS is unlike any other MMO I’ve played, feels more like a natural extension of the combat instead of its own minigame.

Customizability – Character appearance, costumes, mounts, paths, the Limited Action Set, there’s just tons of options to really make your character your own.

Housing – In its own category from customization because it could be a whole game in itself. Any of you who’ve read this blog from the beginning know that it was housing which really sealed the deal for me with WildStar even though I hadn’t cared much for it in other games.

Zero-G Hoverboarding – ‘Nuff said.

 

World of Warcraft –

Ease of Access – Within a week or two of returning after a long absence I was able to catch up with my guild and start raiding. WoW is king of low-barrier-to-entry, for good or ill.

Personal History – It has been around 8 years since I first step foot on Azeroth, and that history is baked into my characters, and the lens through which I view that world. I also have a stable of alts ready to tackle pretty much any content I would like to do.

Time-appropriate Activities – WoW has so much content of different types that it is always easy to find something to do that feels like progress, even if it is just refreshing garrison missions. Raids and dungeons take appropriate amounts of time, varying with their difficulty.

Content – There’s 10 years worth of stuff to do.

Friends – I’ve made a lot of friends through WildStar, but the truth is most of my friends end up pulled back into WoW’s gravity well. This is really the biggest factor, and also the one that makes me wish there was some secret to convincing everyone to love WildStar as much as I do.

Given all those things to like about both games, what do I actually end up doing with my time? Do I spend time in WildStar enjoying the active combat, and focus on the accessible group content in WoW? Nope. In WildStar lately I just run around my house, sometimes doing my mini-instance and fussing with my decor. In WoW, outside of 4 hours of raid time per week I just end up sitting in my garrisons on my herd of alts, updating missions and fussing over follower gear. I never seem to feel like I have enough time to spend in WildStar to get over my inertia and go out into the world to do things. Meanwhile I feel like if I’m not constantly micromanaging my followers in WoW then I’m missing out on some theoretical benefit. The net result is that my MMO time lately feels incredibly unproductive. I get down on myself for not spending enough time in the game I like better, but when I do play WildStar I miss my friends or just don’t have the energy after a long day to engage with some of the content I enjoy.

The kicker is my love of raiding. I can raid LFR, normal, or hard mode in WoW after minimal spin-up time, but after playing WildStar since launch I am still not raid attuned, nor do I have a group of people I could even raid with. Even if I got over those hurdles, I get the impression that raiding in WildStar would probably require a lot more than 4 hours per week of effort. In fact if I could find a raiding guild in WildStar that would help get me up to speed, then I’d definitely have to leave WoW and those friends behind, which fills me with guilt and sadness.

In the end I certainly won’t be leaving WildStar anytime soon, but I don’t know what the future holds for WoW for me or what my play time will look like in the coming months. I know some folks manage to play multiple MMOs by scheduling separate days for each one, so maybe that’s something that would work for me. Do any of you play multiple MMOs with success? What are your secrets to making it work?

Source: Moonshine Mansion
Comings and Goings

 

 

Note: this post contains some spoilers for the story leading up to (but not including) Drop 3. Fairly warned be ye.

Even though Gracie is an explorer in-game, in real life I am a scientist. I generally have a love-hate relationship with the portrayal of science in video games, movies and television. This is due to the frequency with which several annoying stereotypes or tropes crop up, including the completely socially inept scientist, and the Frankenstein, “scientist tries to play god and causes destruction” trope. So I come to any sci-fi based game, especially one where “scientist” is player option for path content, with some trepidation.

WildStar definitely plays into some of the tropes that bother me so much. The two player races with the strongest scientific minds? The Mordesh, who have meddled trying to create immortality and thus unleashed the ravenous upon the world, and the Chua, who take science to mean weaponizing everything and experimenting without petty worries like ethics. That’s not a great start. Then we have the Eldan, who have done crazy things to Nexus, manipulated the genetics of sentient races because of petty interpersonal squabbles, and oh yeah, meddled by trying to create a god and thus unleashed a horror upon the universe. Because using that trope once just wasn’t enough. Don’t get me wrong I love the Mordesh and I’m engrossed in the world story, but I could use less of the Frankenstein trope.

On the “socially inept scientist” front WildStar does a bit better. Yes, some of the scientists are a bit overly focused on their work, but there are so many scientists in the game there is plenty of room for all kinds of characters. I especially like seeing scientists from the “non-sciency” races, for example the Granok lady scientist who gives you a quest in Crimson Badlands. My favorite is the Granok scientist in Whitevale, who rightly points out that just because he’s a big burly rock man doesn’t mean he can’t be a good scientist.

Now another peeve of mine is that the number of women scientists and their portrayal in fiction is lacking. So imagine my delight at the sheer quantity of lady scientists (and soldiers, and spies, and leaders, and farmers, and and and…) in WildStar. I love them. I love Belle Walker and her dual scanbots. Yes they’re silly, but this week I learned from a loading screen tooltip that she created them with differing personalities so that they’d help her understand things from several perspectives. I think that level of care is just amazing, and it changed my mind from “Belle is slightly flakey and impulsive” to “Belle is more cunning than anyone gives her credit for”. The writers are trying to create a complete person here. Belle is young and sometimes reckless to be sure, but she is also incredibly smart and capable too. I had an absolute blast running alongside her in the OMNICore1 instance.

Next up is another place where WildStar disappointed me. I love Lucy Lazarin, and I hated what happened to her in Blighthaven. If I could sit down with (Carbine Creative Director) Chad Moore and ask him one question, it would be: why couldn’t that have happened to Victor, and Lucy have been the one to carry on his research? Or maybe something else entirely could have happened there. I mean, imagine the crazy universe where women don’t have to have horrible things happen to them to fuel the plot motivation for the men in their lives. I’m not going to dwell on this too much here, but let’s just say that I threw my rowsdower plushie across the room when I played through that quest, and that Lucy had interesting potential as a character and deserved better.

I think that it is great that we get multiple father-daughter scientist or explorer teams in this game. Both Lucy and Belle fall into this category, and I can think of at least one more team (in Galeras) off the top of my head. Functional families that work together are not something you necessarily see a ton of in MMORPGs. However, it does strike me that we have 3 cases of father-daughter pairs. I would have really liked to see an instance where the senior person was a woman.

Women are underrepresented at the highest levels in most occupations, and scientists are no different. Young women enter academic science in approximately equal numbers to men, but there’s a large amount of attrition as you progress from postdoc to senior faculty. Unfortunately WildStar seems to mimic the real world in that sense. Having at least one of the family pairs with a mother taking the lead would have really meant a great deal to me, and would have sent a powerful message.

The one place where we get to see some hints of a mother scientist are with Elyona. She was the Eldan tasked with raising Drusera. Unfortunately, we don’t get to see their relationship in too much detail since it took place before we arrived on Nexus, and the Elyona we see has been corrupted by the Entity.

Overall WildStar certainly doesn’t do any worse than other media being produced right now. I feel like I am especially hard on it in some ways because it gets so much right and I want it to be even better. It makes me incredibly happy to be able to wander around in a world full of scientists of different races and genders. I hope this game keeps getting more thing right, and keeps feeling like a world that I want to be a part of. For Science.

Source: Moonshine Mansion
For Science