Tobold's Blog
Saturday, May 31, 2014
 
Wildstar Journal - Day 1

Due to popular request, I'll log my activities in Wildstar for some days. Day one started badly, at the time where the head start officially started there was no way of getting into the game. Carbine says they were targeted by a DDOS, but you could say that every MMORPG launch is a DDOS, so I'm not sure what really happened. Anyway, it took me an hour and a half to log into Wildstar.

I am trying to hook up with my guild, but my chat isn't working. The pre-order bonuses and boom boxes aren't working either. That remains an ongoing theme for the day: The rewards appear at some point, only to disappear again later. Disappearing items in my inventory make me nervous. As there is nothing else to do, I play through the first 3 tutorial levels, which takes me a bit over half an hour. Then it takes me an hour and a half to go through the second tutorial zone and up to level 7.

So now my draken warrior is in Deradune. Which makes for a striking similarity to my troll warrior in the Barrens nine years ago, same class, similar look, similar landscape. I log out for lunch, which of course is a mistake. First I can't get back in at all, some network error. Then I'm in a queue, at low priority, because the game mistakenly believes that I have a guest account.

The levels just fly by. At 4 hours /played I'm level 9 and decide to take a break from questing and leveling. Instead I take a taxi to Illium the capital, and do the guided tour quest there which rewards me with a daily teleport to Illium spell. I have a look at the auction house, but there isn't much happening there yet. As most players only go to the capital at level 14 and there aren't many that high yet, I have the city for myself. So for a change I can do challenges in the city and succeed, while all day long other players in Deradune cause me to fail most challenges. Worst feature ever, making you hate your fellow players. I don't go straight back, but first visit the other level 7-14 zone, Ellevar, to tag the flight path to there. Then I hearth back to Deradune.

At level 10 I learn mining and weaponsmithing. That allows me to directly make a better sword for my warrior, plus another one in reserve for level 12. Big improvement over crafting in World of Warcraft. I make it to level 12 by evening, and notice that my 10-slot bag pre-order bonus has disappeared, together with all other pre-order bonuses and boom boxes. Part of my inventory is now inaccessible, although I can still see the healing potions I have in there through the special healing item hotkey menu. I decide to not fiddle with my inventory while it is broken and call it a night.

Comments:
That sure makes the case for not playing a MMO on launch day or headstart, whatever they call it for marketing purposes.

The issue with challenges has been flagged many times.
 
Thanks and good luck!


 
I played 3 times today:
> once at around lunchtime: got in instantly and had no problems but didn't stay long after creating my toon on a medium pop server
> once at around 3pm where I had to wait 15 minutes to get in but everything was fine for the 2 hours I played
> once at night - had to wait 15 minutes in a queue (which popped in about 5 minutes tbh) and played for roughly 3 hours and got kicked by a hotfix.

Overall, this is one of the better early starts I've seen and they're clearly gearing up for the launch proper.
 
I had a fairly smooth first day. Originally I rolled on Stormtalon, but then rethought my decision since it was 6am my time and already high pop. So I rerolled on Evindra which has not had queues yet.

Saw in chat that the preorder item were not behaving, so I did not bother to claim them yet. Took my Granok Engineer to level 9, casually leveling and working on map completion & lore on my way. So far, seems like the typically MMO launch, not perfect but not too bad (unless you pick a popular server).

It'll settle down in a week or so though.
 
I still am puzzled you chose WildStar over ESO...

But lots of things puzzle me.
 
Post a Comment

<< Home
Newer›  ‹Older

  Powered by Blogger   Free Page Rank Tool