Magic Monday: Wildstar is here! (Sort of..)

So today marks the last day of the WildStar preorder head start with the games official release date tomorrow! Is WildStar the subscription based MMO the chosen one, finally able to live up to the name "WoW killer"?  Only time will tell but even with World of Warcrafts newest expansion on the horizon, WildStar is shaping up to be a whole new breed of MMO altogether.

  I was hoping this post would be a review piece but due to three or four unforeseen circumstances (work, family, queue times and complete and utter laptop failure) I haven't been able to play a single second of WildStar since the head start began Saturday morning at 8am when I was walking out of the door for work while my husband sat at his PC re-entering his login details over and over. It seemed that Carbine studios may have been far too humble when estimating just how many games had been preordered and therefore how many players would all be trying to log in at once for this headstart (ONE EN PVP server I tell you, ONE?!) and as a consequence servers quickly became full to capacity causing insanely long queue times hailing back to the vanilla World of Warcraft launch itself when Blizzard wrongly gauged the unrentling masses of players wanting to enter the online world of Azeroth. Also, like the fated WoW launch some of the  players who did manage to get in experienced huge spikes of lag and although due to the "loot vacuuming" system wildstar employs players were not quite yelling the infamous "kneel and loot stuff for half an hour" line it is extremely hard to deal with any amount of lag in a game where the combat system is heavily dependant on being able to "GET OUT OF THE FIRE!" (Well...enemy telegraphs in this case) it can easily make the game completely unplayable and very frustrating.

 For most who were up and at 'em at 8am (GMT) for the launch, Saturday 31st may shall now be know as the day of the formidable chupacabra login boss (due to the little hamster like chupacabra creature running in a wheel which is the loading animation for the game) or the day of the log in simulator as many are left hours and hours in queues waiting to log in. How does this bode for the official full release day coming our way tomorrow morning? I can happily say I'm at work so at least I can start queueing in the morning and when I come home from my nine hour shift I might be logged in. With any luck Carbine have now more than realised their capacity problems and are dealing with them appropriately as I am aware they are currently creating more servers to deal with the demand.

 All that said however this game is more than worth the wait, just from playing the Beta I can tell you that it's beautiful, funny, imaginitive, immersing and the combat system is one of the best I have ever played. It's such a refreshing feeling having to pay fierce attention while playing an MMO and not just button mashing the same rotation  over and over while watching My Little Pony, I feel like this really brings back how MMO's should be.Check out the video below for a bit of an explanation on how the movement/aiming system works.

I've fallen in love with the art and the style of the game as well, it's almost a mix of WoW and TeamFortress 2, semi realistic with plenty of cartoonish styles thrown in which I'm a huge fan of in any format, most of the landscapes are a pure joy to behold with bright and bold colours that really bring Nexus to life and sort of remind me of the planet of Pandora (from the Avatar film) where the beautiful plant and animal life is as likely to try and kill you as often as not.

Also this picture is actually a house you can live in, in game! That's right! There is a whole plot of land just for you and your fully customisable house! You can also get loads of loot throughout the game to customise your house and the land around it even more! You can ever have friends over for a party. It's pretty damn awesome. This game even makes questing with friends fun and really embodies the true spirit of an MMO. so if you haven't had a chance to check it out already mozzie on over to the wildstar website or youtube website, I highly reccomend the devspeak videos as a real look into the game and it's mechanics. The game officially launches tomorrow and I wouldn't want any of you to miss it!