Saturday, May 31, 2014

First Encounter

I've been looking forward to meeting the Lopp again. Paying more attention, seeing what I can learn about these little people. When I got to Woodhaven the Settlers had been hard at work and one of the improvements was the presence of a Lopp who is an "Apprentice Path Helper". When I talked to him I got a 9 minute buff for Xp gains on my Path.
Other comments were "Listen to Lopp, then search for shiny." "Here, here! Use technique. Now do better on Path."

Granted this isn't what I was looking for, but I'm happy all the same. I love the Lopps.

Friday, May 30, 2014

Once Upon a Beta

I stayed up until 2am my time to see the WildStar open beta servers come down for good. And I was tired, and then I was busy, and then I never finished this post. So I think I'll just dump in some pictures and see where it leads.
 
Chili and Cornbread Had a Dance Party
Giant Glowy Rowsdower Started the Event
Then a Seemingly Innocent (if large) Rowsdower Appeared
We Followed the Leader
Suddenly MORE Rowsdowers
It Was a Trap!
A Very Effective Trap
But the Caretaker Will Protect Us
No He Won't
Fin
There were many more bosses, many lamps, and even a duel between CRB_Grug and @Cougardc. It was such amazing fun. Tomorrow morning we get to start exploring Nexus for real, and for keeps. I'm so excited! See you there.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

WildStar Name Reservations

WildStar has given players who pre-order the game a chance to reserve a single name of their choice, to ensure it is theirs at launch. If there is a name that you are quite attached to, then I would suggest you make use of this service when you can.

The first thing that you will want to do, if you haven't previously, is to pre-order the game and apply that code to your NCsoft account. I have heard that there are times of peak activity when the codes take an hour or more to activate, so you may need a spot of patience.

Once you have that code on your account you can head over to the name reservation page. The page is working better than when it was a 404 earlier today, but is still straining under load.
If you aren't logged in then this is what you see. Below this big green login button (that didn't work for me when I tried it) there are details about what you can reserve, and for how long. Feel free to read this while you wait.

My experience was that it was better to go to the main page, log in and then go to the name page instead of trying to log in from the name page.
Once you visit the page and you are logged in that login button will instead say reserve and look like this:

Once you get the reserve button to accept your click. The first time I had no problems, but this time I clicked and just sat there waiting a long-ass time, and eventually it came up. You'll get a pop up window. You can choose a character name and a guild name.

You can see that I have reserved the character name I want most, and I have 8 minutes left to realize I spelled Jeff wrong. I have not reserved a guild name. If I decide I want to, I can choose to do that any time before May 23rd, which is the cut off. Type in a name that you want and hit save. Initially it may say "Editable for ??" which has been pretty much the standard experience. Just click the red button in the top right and close that window, you're good. I'm hearing you should sit there staring at ?? until it becomes a real number, and then you'll be safe.

If you are worried, which I was, just spend a few minutes a bit later and confirm that your name is still in that box.

I hope that this information is helpful to anyone who hasn't battled the F5 monster already.

Sunday, May 11, 2014

The Races of WildStar

The races in WildStar come from all over the place, universe? I don't know, many planets in a large amount of space. None of the races you can play in game are from Nexus, that is the name of the planet that you've come to fight over.

The 8 playable races are divided into the Dominion and Exiles. The factions are pretty self explanatory. The Dominion is the Empire (probably evil, but I suppose it's a matter of perspective) and the Exiles are the forces that oppose them. It's adorable that the devs prepose that they haven't created a good/evil divide in the factions, but truly Dominion forces are agressive oppressors that have created the opposing Exiles by trying to take over those races home planets and in the case of the Aurin pretty much destroying the planet because they were giving food to Exile Humans. (Ahem, evil.)

Anyway, you have to pick. Your character has to be something, and aside from the very cool and or cute aesthetics there are back stories to each of the races.
Image from WildStar-Online.com

As part of the Dominion you can play Cassian, Mechari, Draken, or Chua.
Cassian are "humans" born on Cassius and chosen by the Eldan* to establish the Dominion. They lead the Dominion and can play every class in the game.

Mechari are actual robots made by the Eldan. Literally killing machines. Mechari can play Warrior, Engineer, Medic, Stalker

Draken look demony, and are "savage, blood thirsty and brutal". They are a vital part of the Dominion military force. Draken can play Warrior, Stalker, Spellslinger

Chua are adorable or scary as heck. They don't have a gender, so you can't choose male or female. The Chua love science. Chua can play Engineer, Esper, Medic, Spellslinger


As part of the Exile you can play Human, Granok, Aurin, or Mordesh
Humans are "Cassians" that have fled Dominion's totalitarian rule. Just like Cassians they can play every class in the game.

Granok are living moving rock people. They like a good fight and to drink beer. Granok can play Warrior, Engineer, Medic

Aurin are just cute as heck, from the tops of their ears to the tips of their tails. They are also quite capable fighters. Aurin can play Esper, Stalker, Spellslinger

Mordesh are space zombies. They have robotic bits which help deliver the Vitalus Serum to their bodies, to stop them from trying to eat their friend's brains. Mordesh can play Warrior, Engineer, Medic, Stalker, Spellslinger


*I don't know much about the Eldan, so don't feel bad if you don't either. Seems they disappeared a long ass time ago and faded into myth, until Nexus was found. Nexus is the Eldan home world and filled with technology that each side wants to use and not be killed by. (maybe?)

Saturday, May 10, 2014

WildStar Class Breakdown

You can find all sorts of technical breakdowns of what the different classes are, I'm sure. I haven't really looked. In fact at this point the only thing that I reference when trying out a new class is this page that a guild member linked me to. If you look at that page you'll see there are 6 classes. 3 classes can chose to be DPS (damage dealing) or Tank (damage taking) and the other 3 can choose to DPS or Heal (fix those booboos).

The Tank/DPS class choices are Warrior, Engineer, and Stalker. The Heal/DPS classes are Esper, Medic, and Spellslinger.

I'm using what's left of open beta to try out various classes and feel them out. Next to each class type I am noting the max level I've achieved on that class, since it does matter, as different abilities open up at different times.

Warrior (12): Warrior SMASH! At level 9 you you get Whirlwind, and it's seriously fun as you use attacks to generate Kinetic Energy (aka Angry Red Face) then unleash that energy to become a spinning sword of death. The R button ability puts you in Overdrive, aka you get swole and smash dudes even better.

Engineer (7): Big guns and robot minions, what could be better? I haven't leveled very far but I have one robot to help DPS down the bad guys, and another to help by tanking them so my insides don't get on my outsides. I have a really really big gun.

Stalker (14): Slash Slash Jumpity Slash! This melee feels very nimble and aggressive, quite different than the warrior. As someone who is map challenged I also appreciate the stealth, it gives me time to look around and get my bearings without ending up in combat every few seconds.

Esper (8): The spell effects on this class are really cool. Mind daggers and psychic bird attacks! The hardest thing to adjust to was not being able to use my main attack on the move. I've still been enjoying the class, and it is still highly mobile which is good given the importance of dodging enemy attacks.


Medic (3): This is not a class that I've managed to get into yet, though I am going to keep trying a bit. I think I might like it when I can try out healing? It is kind of hilarious to shoot electric charges out of my defibrillators though.

Spellslinger (4): This is the class that I understand and like the least. The one probably leads to the other. I thought I would like shooting spells from pistols, but not yet. The resource build up is similar to warrior where you build up energy, but this time you hit R when it's full to power up your spells.

I'm not sure how much more time I'm going to spend on other classes prior to launch. I haven't played my engineer since my first beta weekend, so I'll probably give that a bit more time. Right now I'm  leaning heavily towards playing a Warrior or Stalker in live. I've had the most fun with those classes. I feel I should try a few more levels on the Medic and Spellslinger to see if a new spell really changes them, but on the other hand if I'm having a blast dicing baddies up on my Stalker, then why worry.