Alpha Sanctum

This post has minor spoilers for and images of Alpha Sanctum, the level 15 lore instance. Fairly warned be ye.

Alpha Sanctum

This place is just beautiful

I purposefully held off on doing the Alpha Sanctum during beta. I wanted to wait and experience it for the first time on live servers, and I don’t regret that. It was a pleasant diversion to escape the chaos of launch week, hop on my lowbie dommie spellslinger, and score some sweet sweet lore.

Alpha Sanctum

Lore is the shiniest of shinies.

The instance itself is straightforward, as befitting its low level introductory status. It gave some nice background on the primal elements and the different groups of Eldan participating in the Nexus project without giving too much away. There wasn’t too much in the way of new information for a veteran player, but it was nice to see it all laid out plainly instead of gathered in bits and pieces from data cubes scattered around the world.

Alpha Sanctum

Even good old you-know-who put in an appearance

Overall I enjoyed the experience. I hope that this earlier introduction to the Eldan and their “great work” helps get even more people hooked on the lore of WildStar.


Alpha Sanctum

Day 1 All Over Again

I had a productive evening in WildStar last night, even though I didn’t do many of my usual activities. My server was quite laggy, so combat was difficult. It felt very strange experiencing launch day woes like over-taxed servers for a game I’ve been playing steadily for over a year. On the flip side, I am thrilled to see all the excitement about the game on social media right now, and crowded servers mean lots of people eager to play. I trust the devs to sort out the technical issues.

Day 1 All Over Again

Looking pretty good for only using vendor dyes!

Unfortunately the lag was bad enough that after getting bronze on one vet shiphand  expedition (and dying a lot) I decided to do more peaceful activities. I poked around at my house for a while, then decided to get a status update on some of my alts. It turns out that several of them were wearing mostly crafted gear. This meant that they were now wandering around partially naked at best, and at worst, well, take a look at my Granok lady here.

Day 1 All Over Again

At least she still has her boots.

So I spent the rest of the night at the crafting station and in the holo-wardrobe, trying to make things right. My Aurin turned out cute at least. The Granok lady? Still a work in progress.


Day 1 All Over Again

RELOADED

RELOADED

Fancy Bug Mount

Last night I dutifully logged into the WildStar stream to join in the fun and hype in the last hours before launch. My plan was to hang out until the cinematic was revealed, then head to bed. Yes, it is kinda sad, but being an adult is often sad. However, one of the giveaways on the stream turned out to be a chance to access the game an hour early. I and 999 other folks from the Twitch chat were able to log in and beat the rush.

I ended up using that hour mostly to claim all the goodies I had unlocked, and to get all my rune tokens out of the mail. Not the most exciting thing, but it needed to be done. Plus I got to run around in the crawler mount pictured above an hour early. Totally worth it.

RELOADED

Disco snail gets me

Instead of going to bed like an adult, I ended up playing not just for my bonus hour, but another whole hour after the actual launch time. There were definitely some rocky patches to this launch. Once the servers were truly opened the lag got quite bad at times. While expected, that was still disappointing. Worse though, was the bug that caused some guilds to completely disappear. Folks who logged in planning to chat with friends and guildies all night found themselves suddenly alone. That was being addressed in an emergency maintenance as I was getting ready to leave this morning, so no WildStar for me until I get home from work!

Hopefully they get all the bugs sorted. The WildStar hype is real right now and I want it to translate into tons of new players, not internet rants about a rough launch. I know I’ll be eager to hop back in after work. Hopefully coffee and excitement can compensate for my lack of sleep until then!


RELOADED

Countdown to WildStar: Reloaded

Less than 24 hours until WildStar goes Free to Play! If you’re reading this on September 28, the patch is now available for download!

I’ve been mostly avoiding WildStar for the past week or two. I tried to get my affairs in order as much as I could, and once the market board was shut down I figured that was a good sign that I could step away and refresh. This way I will be at maximum hype levels when the patch hits and the world changes.

Countdown to WildStar: Reloaded

The Farewell To Evindra dance party

The last time our little world got upended this much was for the Megaserver merger. This screenie is from the night before the merge. (Shoutout to all my Evindra friends!) Coincidentally, it was also the night where I got recruited into my current guild.

Countdown to WildStar: Reloaded

Last night’s party at an even fancier club

The party last night was fittingly even bigger than that one. Which makes sense since we’re welcoming a ton of great new updates instead of saying goodbye to our server. I’m feeling similar nervousness about this big change though. We’re about to be the center of attention for a while. Soon tons more people will be running around checking out this awesome game. I’m hoping that the trolls move along quickly, and that the game ends up getting a huge boost. WildStar is my main MMO, and I’m looking forward to being able to share my love with even more people. I know a bunch of my friends who tried it and left are planning to come check it out again and I can’t wait to play with them after months of absence.

No matter what happens, I’m excited as hell. See you on Nexus, cupcakes.


Countdown to WildStar: Reloaded