Stormtalon Wildstar Wednesday

Stormtalon

What is Wildstar Wednesday? For those following Wildstar avidly for months the answer is known, but for you folks just discovering this game let me explain what Wildstar Wednesday is. It is an article series created by Carbine where you can read stuff like Pope-a-telli (when referring to Mike Donatelli), where Notch is mentioned (developer of Minecraft) and where you find out that Poptart is the name of the first Wildstar closed beta test character (allegedly). All this and much more was related to us through the Wildstar Wednesday article posted on the official Wildstar website by none other than eremy “Gaffer” Gaffney. You can read the full article here and if you last ’till the end you’ll notice that the name of the first announced Wildstar dungeon is Stormtalon and those attending Arkship EU will get to play it (more about that in our next article)!


Arkship EU 2013 – Arrival

metalmaw down

I was able to finally realize that we are going to play Wildstar in the next 24 hours while boarding the airplane that will take us to London. Hours before that were filled with preparation, working on getting the last bits of Wildstar Life ready and general pre-travel anxiety, so I did not take the time to saver the fact that we are going to be among the first few thousand people in the world to play this great MMO.

Heathrow, London, is where we met up with people from other fansitest and what followed during our drive to Brighton hasn’t stopped throughout this whole experience so far – constant talk about Wildstar. Guys from http://www.wildstaronline.de/, a couple from gamegate French gaming portal and Wildstar RP French Forum owner were all riding with us and we covered everything from what will we see during the event up to what kind of payment model should Wildstar adopt.

We arrived to a surprisingly sunny Brighton and got settled in a seaside hotel. We just had enough time to gather ourselves before going down into the conference room where we finally got to meet all the attending Carbine and NCSoft staff. Next several hours made the following abundantly clear – they are very enthusiastic about their game and they were genuinely excited about things that were happening. Yes, there was gameplay, but, I have to tell you, we spent a lot of time just talking to the devs and picking their brains about all the different mechanics we were seeing. I was very surprised by the fact that once you sit down and play the game it exceeds any expectations you had and playing it live, instead of watching videos of it being played, is much better than I anticipated. In the end, we were treated with killing a “world boss” Metal Maw. Killing this monster, that was initially created by the community, during a community event, in presence of the people that created it, made my day.


A Look At The Engine Of WildStar

The folks over at ZAM recently sat down with WildStar’s Lead Software Engineer Steve Moret to talk about the engine that powers the WildStar world. The interview is quite extensive and gives a nice look into all the hard work the team is doing to give us players an amazing world to have fun in.

Even if you’re not familiar with code jargon yourself the interview is still worth a read, Steve does his best to keep his answers a streamlined as possible for those of us who only know that the long string of 1s and 0s that exist behind any program somehow let us do amazing things in game. It’s a great chance to see how the game engine combines with all other aspects of the game to bring the complete package together.

Check out the full interview over at ZAM.

 


Arkship Dungeons Interview with Christopher Behrens

As some of you might know we attended a gathering of Wildstar websites in Brighton, UK, called Arkship EU 2013. We took this awesome opportunity to meet and talk to several Carbine game developers and staff. All of them are really nice and very knowledgeable people and we took the opportunity to interview some of them. Since the overall theme of Arkship was the ability for us to play the newly announced dungeon, Stormtalon’s Lair, we talked dungeons with none other but Lead Systems Designer, Mr. Christopher Behrens. Here’s the video of the interview and you can find the full transcript bellow:

Click here to read the full interview transcript


WildStar Music Tracks Availible For Public Consumption

Are you one of the lucky people who has got a chance to play the WildStar beta? If you are then I’m pretty damn jealous, and I’m guessing I’m not the only one. Luckily those of us who have not got a chance to dive into WildStar can still immerse ourselves in a semblance of the game thanks to some free music tracks courtesy of the game’s composer, Jeff Kurtenacker.

12 tracks from the upcoming game have been posted over on SoundCloud. Some of the tracks have been released before, but it’s still nice to have a little collection of the music put together for players to enjoy. Check them out, and let us know how you think the game’s musical score is sounding in the comments below.


Thursday is the new Wednesday

Crimson Isle

Due to technical difficulties Carbine failed to release their Wildstar Wednesday news segment. They made more than up for it late night Thursday when they added information about Crimson Isle region to the official website.

Located off the coast of Deradune, Crimson Isle has been neither explored nor colonized by the Dominion because of its remote location, rocky terrain and deadly wildlife. But recent long-range scans from the Arkship Destiny have revealed some tantalizing details that may soon require further investigation.

Click here to read more Thursday news


Deradun – Gameplay Experience

It is one thing to watch an online video of a game being played and it is entirely different sitting down at a computer and actually experiencing it. When we first got a chance to play Wildstar at Arkship EU 2013 I saw that cutscene of a spaceship landing into Deradune on my computer screen (that we saw in the online video weeks before) and I got excited.

I have no idea

Deradun is a level 6-12 zone for the Dominion faction. You start out in a Draken village, which means you will do hunting and skull collecting right away. I started with a level 7 spellslinger and at first I felt a bit overwhelmed. I missed the introductory first levels and I felt like I had no idea what I was doing. There were quests to pick up and apparently some were part of special quests chains while others were your regular “run of the mill” quests. As soon as I exited the village I got more things to do in form of special Explorer missions and than there were challenge missions. Quite frankly I felt a bit overwhelmed at first. My OCD was telling me “DO ALL THE THINGS”, but within the first 15 minutes there were so many things to do that my poor brain felt a bit overloaded. Than I realized – I don’t have to do all the things. I can do the things I feel like doing at that moment.

Clcik here to read more about Deradune, exploration and overall impressions