Category: WildStar

WildStar has been out for some time, but in September, they changed to Free to Play. While they talk about being able to experience all the content, they have a long list of caveats on their Free to Play page. This is an interesting contrast with Tera, which is Free to Play with a Premium option which basically gives you an XP and Gold boost and a fancy mount. Tera’s list of caveats are the feature list for Premium which costs $15 / mo rather than a list of Don’t-Gets for the WildStar free-2-play choice. Anyway, with all that aside, I gave it a try and bottom line – I’m impressed. This is not a complete review, I’m sure you can find a ton of those out there, and since it’s F2P, you can try it yourself and see. I’ll do quick comparison with some observations compared with Wow, Tera and some other games I’ve played recently.

So what does WildStar have going for it? Yes, it’s a Wow Clone. No bones about it. Two factions vying for dominance on the ancient planet of Nexus and the technology of the Eldans who have disappeared. Well, its a start. But recall that Wow has had since 2004 to build their brand.

Not that Big Really

The first thing one notices about WildStar is the small size of the download – 12 GB. What! Only 12 GB?? Wow is 40GB and Tera is more than 30 GB. And you’d be right. WildStar is just starting out as a franchise and the size of the download shows it. The environments feel a little cramped and a little same ole same ole as you move around. But not claustrophobic, just not wide open like Wow or Tera. But the character models are detailed. So they are not going to have to backfill with new character models later like Wow has had to do. Update: Actually, the environments from level 6 or so on feel very spacious. There are long vistas and while the mountains and foliage is stylized, nothing feels cramped in those areas.

Continue reading “WildStar – Fun, Engaging, and Free to Play”