Over at GamesCom for our first meeting on day one we met the guys from NCSoft to see what was happening with WildStar, their sci-fi meets fantasy MMORPG that is gearing up to turn free to play. The presentation and hands on demo we got to check out was very much geared towards this transition, the sudden change primarily being to make the game more accessible and bring in more players; according to the team business has still been good and so hopefully this isn’t a red flag that we should be worried. With any look WildStar will see the sudden bump in numbers and success that we saw when Star Wars: The Old Republic switched to its free to play model, however the guys at WildStar assure us they don’t intend to try and nickle and dime every element of the game like EA have.

So what can we expect from this new F2P model? Well firstly the game will essentially play the same as it always has, the CREDD system is still in place as a premium currency to buy cool stuff, but essentially the game is now completely free to play. The main changes are coming in the form of the new player experience; with the free to play switch the guys at NCSoft are most definitely making sure that the influx of new players they’re expecting will have an easy time getting into the game and fun for long enough to get them hooked and staying with the game for the long run.

First and foremost is simplifying; starting with character creation we now have videos for all the classes/careers and paths, demonstrating just exactly what they do and what you can expect when playing them. Furthermore with characters is the simplifying of the attributes to come in line with references players are more familiar with; whilst “Moxie” might be a unique little attribute for WildStar as often as not players don’t really know whether they need it for their class.

Second of all is players identifying how experienced they are with MMORPGs, having the option to choose whether they are a Novice, an Intermediate or if they are an Advanced player; the choice they make will determine where they start in the game. Selecting a Novice takes players into a virtual reality simulator style environment; really basic as you are walked through the ropes of moving, jumping, fighting and interacting with NPCs. From here players are transported to the Arkship, the original starting point for new players in the previous version of the game, and the place where players will start if they select that they are an Intermediate player so that they get to experience what is essentially a new player tutorial zone. At the end of the zone, as was always the case, players are transported down to the planet Nexus and it is here where Advanced users will also log in straight away with their character already at level 3 and ready to play the game to its fullest.

Many of these changes are community feedback driven, as ever the WildStar devs do a great job of listening to and acting on their communities opinions, as always seems to have been the case even way back before the game had launched. As part of this we’ll see an earlier solo instance dungeon known as the Alpha Sanctum, accessible at level 15 is gives early level a taster of a dungeon so that they have a better idea of what to expect further down the road. Similarly we shall see a new PVP arena called the Cryo-Plex, here players will battle it out over a frozen arena that adds plenty of cover and line of sight blocking mechanics along with upper platforms for some verticality and added strategy.

Anyone wanting to check out the new changes can head to the official website and sign up to the closed beta which is already well under way.

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2015 at 1:32 pm and is filed under Articles, MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.