WildStar

Gave the beta weekend a try, got to level 10, felt an awful lot like TERA in the sense its incredibly grindy. Anyone else feeling this or does it get better as you progress?

Open beta announcement

Runs from 8th to 18th

Open beta is live!

Click the above link then click "Play now" to get your beta key, I had trouble using chrome so try a different browser if it doesnt work.

Been playing both exiles and dominion. Kinda prefer the exile areas so far, you can also pvp as early as level 6 which is pretty awesome, so i have been trying out almost all the classes in the 6-15 level range, its just a zerg match with little to no coordination but its fun just killing things and trying out the different classes.

Its pretty much diablo with 1-2 resource builder abilities a few resource spender ones coupled with a bunch of other on 10-30 second cooldowns. Almost all abilities are targeted manually through telegraphs, the size and shape of which is pretty important. This is because many classes are very mobile and can not only dash but blink and quickly run circles around you as you are trying to target them.

Spellslinger: great mobility, really tricky to lock down, really long range telegraphs, some pretty great burst if you use your R effectively. Probably one of the safest choices, void shift is awesome as most people will ignore you right after you trigger it, you can play most pvp games without dying while ranking up a lot of kills along the way. The most popular class for a reason.

Medic: pretty solid choice, really mobile, short telegraphs but they are all really wide and all mobile, they make team fighting a joy as you always try to fit more people in. The disengage is really solid, short cooldown and teleports you pretty far. Their damage is pretty low though pre-level 13 as the 3 beam resource ability is pretty hard to hit a single target with and doesn't work well on groups. However one you hit level 13 this all changes with quantum cascade, its got crazy high damage, a crazy big telegraph and is practically instant damage. Medic is pretty much god mode level 13-14 you can take on big groups and cripple them with this one ability.

Warrior: really a pain to play, you basically have to go all in, your disengage is also your charge. Since very few people are healing at this range, even fewer with the skills they need you don't have anything to support you. Damage is pretty good and you can really stick to people, but you need to get so close to do so and it doesn't help when you get stun locked and blasted with 4 quantum cascades.

Esper: Really high damage, and an awesome smackdown stun. horrible mobility though and doesn't have a proper disengage, like at all. Really fun if people ignore you or fight in smaller groups, Not fun in most situations since you'll get mobbed.

Stalker: pretty much a warrior except has a proper disengage, and is really great at sniping medics and especially espers. The rogue you know and love from other games. Falls apart in larger groups, but you wont mind.

Engineer: One class i haven't tried yet, looks pretty solid though. No disengage but really long range and very mobile.

This is all from a solo viewpoint, i haven't teamed up with a group. Team play would definitively change things, like an esper with people pealing for her puts out some crazy numbers, warrior with at least one healer in the group does pretty well just the nature of the game, but expect little to no cooperation at this range.

I urge new players to give the pvp a shot, its the earliest glimpse of what the game has to offer, the dungeons at 20 are awesome but most wont stick it out till then without a hook, definitively worked for me.

You can also level pretty fast through pvp alone.

Let me try to explain this, some attacks are pretty hard to avoid, they are a wide cone around the player, if you get caught in them you will take some damage, it CAN be channeled so when i start taking damage i know where its coming from and i choose the best direction to get out of it, the other player can track me however, so its basically up to both of us to manoeuvre around each other.

Most attacks however are instant, i have no change to avoid the damage IF the enemy player aimed it correctly. However i can very clearly see a quick telegraph letting me know something did in fact chunk me, i can see the range of the attack and try to get away.

Another telegraph is channeled/release where i can see the telegraph charging, i can see when its charged, but i don't know when he's going to release it.

The "smart" part comes when i see a spellslinger, i know he's got some abilities that i cant avoid, and one or two that i can. I have 2 dodge charges which will get me out of the way easily if he lines up a channeled/release shot, though he can just as easily bait me and not release immediately.

I know the attack is coming but i don't know when, conversely he doesn't know when i'm going to dodge. Movement is another resource, i have a finite set of dodge charges and abilities that displace me, so i must use them wisely.

If you ever played wow arena, theres a little more going on here than executing a rotation and trying to line of sight your opponent.

Finally got to 20 and tackled the first dungeon, stormtalon's lair. The hype isn't too far fetched, its pretty epic. You are constantly moving, dodging damage and throwing out rotations, its a lot to take it if you are used to standard MMO dungeons in wow,swotor, ESO, even TERA. Despite the difficulty none of my 3 groups disbanded over a wipe (10+ in some cases), we all just wanted to do better next time. You should check out some videos.

You can enter the first dungeon as early as level 17 but you cant queue for it till level 20, which you definitively should wait for.