Join Cyglaive as he recaps his journey to Planet Nexus

Those of you who have been reading my WildStar content here on ZAM have probably figured out that I’m a pretty big fan of the game. If the “See you on Nexus” closing to most of my WildStar articles wasn’t a big enough hint, I’m sure that you’ll be able to fit the pieces together once you’ve finished tuning in this time around.

After years of researching this upcoming Sci-fi MMO, which eventually lead to day-dreaming about bringing my guild to the surface of planet Nexus--hey don’t judge me--I finally got the opportunity to embark on an epic journey of my own.  Last week the awesome folks at Carbine Studios and NCSOFT invited members of the press, including myself, to fly to California and check out the game first hand. And, while trying to remain as professional as possible and resist the urge to jump up and down like a crazed Chua who had just been handed a new radioactive gatling laser, I gladly accepted the offer and headed out to San Francisco to hang with the Carbine team.

Making the Journey

The first night there the other press members and I who were invited to the event got to head out to dinner with a few of the Carbine developers including WildStar’s Design Director, Mike Donatelli, its Public Relations Manager, Michael Shelling and its Lead Content Producer aka the voice of the WildStar Devspeak videos, Stephan Frost. While at the restaurant we ate and, well, talked some WildStar.

From the moment we left the hotel through the moment we all finished our meals, you could tell that these guys were pretty excited to talk about their game, get feedback from us and engage in any questions that we had in relation to the upcoming MMO that they have spent the last few years working on. From a fan perspective, it was great to realize that the team making this game was not only comprised of experienced and passionate game developers, but also fellow gamers.

However, the fun didn’t stop there. The next day was the press event where we were also joined by WildStar’s senior community manager, David Bass, aka Scooter. The team began by opening up with the Medic video which was shown last week, followed up by a sneak peak at the Engineer video that most of you have probably seen by now.  Even though these two classes were probably the worst kept secret ever, seeing them in action sure did put a grin on a lot of people’s faces, including my own. With the new Healer/dps and Tank/dps revealed, we had finally completed our WildStar combat sandwich, which many of you might be familiar with from the Devspeak video series. Mmmm this is a really great sandwich guys.

Exterior Decoration
Moving away from classes a bit, the team showed us a few new things they have been working on for the housing system. If you’ve been following WildStar for a while, you’re probably familiar with its robust housing system which was introduced in the housing Devspeak video. If you haven't’ seen it yet, I urge you to check out the video below.

Originally housing had a few limitations on it, specifically when placing objects. If you were working inside of your home you were free to let your creativity run as wild and rampant as you wanted. With free-form placement and sizing, you could make some pretty wacky things such as second level made completely out of bookcases or even a miniature version of your house, inside of your original home--both of which, according to the team, have already been done by players in beta.

Now outside of your house was a different story. Due to technical limitations, any objects placed on the outside of your home had to be aligned to specific “hooks” or slots that allowed objects to be placed on them, instead of the free-form placement that interior decorating offered. Well I’m happy to say that, for all of you interior designers out there, the rest of your land can now look just as wacky as that second floor bookcase set up you have going on inside. That’s right, free-form placement will also be available on the outside of your house come launch. You’ll be able to position each individual object, bench or flower just the way you want. Make a flower bed--and then jump on it. Because you can.

Exterior free-form placement may have been the biggest update to housing, but it definitely wasn’t the only one. A few decorations have also been added to the game including the newly introduced manikins. Manikins, like the ones you may see at your local clothing store, do exactly what you’re thinking. They allow you to dress them up with a weapon and that shiny armor set you found while being completely awesome on Planet Nexus.

Not sure what to do with your recently replaced Tier 1 raiding set? Put it on your manikin so you can show it off to your guests and tell them that when the 40-man raid was first cleared--you were there.

Overall, the housing additions and changes looked really solid. I’ll be the first one to admit disappointment with MMOs as of late due to the lack of emphasis on these types of social systems. Social systems need to be near the top of the development list because at the end of the day, when you’re tired of running dungeons, when you’re tired of PvP, when you’re tired of questing or farming, that “social stickiness” is what keeps players playing a game for years on end. Thankfully, it looks like WildStar isn’t shying away from these features one bit.

The Landing>>