The area I played was a snowcarpeted valley in a blizzard. It looks like the planet is exploding in slow motion: craggy hunks of this blue crystal have ruptured the crust and dragged shrapnel twists of rock up into the air, where they hang impossibly. One chunk of the planet is being torn apart by Loftite: a lighter-than- air mineral that lies beneath the world's surface and threatens to burst out into space. It has all the character of classic handpainted animation. These mountains look like they were arced out by brushstrokes: their summits form sharp, jagged skylines, and their slopes curve like draped cloth. Game terrain tends to have a particular look to it: flat fields on which points have been reluctantly dragged into bumpy peaks by level-editing tools. The game's art style is a notch more cartoony than World of Warcraft, and that's actually an advantage. The game feels a little more fantasy than sci-fi overall, though: the other two classes I played were a sword-wielding warrior and a pure-magic illusionist. The Spellsinger class, for example, dual wields pistols and enchants them to inflict different damage types. In the case of the Eldan, they've left both technology and magic: WildStar fuses the two closely. Nexus is the home planet of one of those hyper-advanced races that are always vanishing and leaving their mysterious technology lying around videogame worlds. Explorers are mapping a new world, Soldiers are here to fight bad things and save good things, Settlers have come to make a home for themselves and their people, and Scientists are in it for the research. The character paths double as the explanation for what you're doing here, on the exotic planet Nexus.
Like the Settler, it wasn't in the build I played, so I can't judge how well it caters to that mindset in practice. It's for both story-junkies and compulsive completionists: if you've ever scoured an open-world game for the last collectible item you need for the 100% completion rating, you're a Scientist. The Scientist is an interesting hybrid: your quests involve collecting data from items and creatures in the world in order to learn more about its history. It's a path for those gamers who treat their MMORPG as a second home, and want to see that place grow and have a hand in shaping it. But only part of this path is dependent on other people: you're also helping the non-player characters of this world build villages and establish a society here. It wasn't available in the alpha version of the game I played, so I don't know much about how its premise of 'social challenges and social rewards' actually relates to other players in the game. You don't have to fight them alone, either: everyone in the vicinity can join in your heroic stand against the hordes, and help you survive it. It's not as hard as it sounds: each time I did one of these events, the attackers were much lower level than the roaming mobs of the area. Either way, you choose when to trigger the onslaught, and you then have to fight off wave after wave of enemies. Sometime's it's just a strategically important area, other times there's a group of civilians to be protected. Soldiers have a similar tracking device, but it locates outposts: areas that need to be defended from attacking enemies.
0 kommentar(er)
