Well, last night it finally happened: I was allowed to get beaten up in WildStar by all rules of the art and helplessly watch as my colleagues, the developers from Carbine and my boss himself were trampled into the ground – my First Aid was just a drop in the bucket.
To give it some meaning: Yesterday, several members of the European press were invited to test the new battleground Dolchsteinpass along with the developers, ask questions, and simply see what the “Content Drop 2” has to offer. Meanwhile, all other players had the chance to play in the opposing team and show us where the dragon has its horns.
The Press Event – The Flesh is Willing, Technology is Buggy
At exactly 5:45 PM I was ready to go – as it should be, my Cortyn was already leveled to 50, had somewhat suitable equipment, all VIPs assigned, all healing and pushing spells ready (in WildStar, you can practically play as a pacifist – at least as an Esper) and the Skype conference was also on time. The starting signal was supposed to be given at 6 PM; unfortunately, it didn’t happen.
Technical problems prevented joining a queue on the test realm. That was annoying and visibly uncomfortable for the brave guys from Carbine, but ultimately not a big problem: It led to a small Q&A session that even turned into small talk and lightened the whole atmosphere. About half an hour later, we were finally allowed to dive into the fray and to make it short: We were mercilessly defeated in both battles despite the competent guidance of the PvP lead developer “Kevin Lee”.
By the way, that was only because I had to play Dominion this time and had nothing to do with my missing tail causing me to confuse “right” and “left”! Fortunately, the German community manager “Bronn” was there to assist us and could at least iron out the most significant of my healing mistakes. By the way, he is the only Chua I wouldn’t push around. At least not often.
The oft-repeated mantra “The devs are listening” felt incredibly real. But the developers didn’t just listen; they talked a lot and didn’t hold back. They spoke very casually about future plans and upcoming changes, where employees from other companies would have to think about whether they might be breaking some confidentiality clause. Either these gentlemen are incredibly experienced, or – much more likely – they are just open-hearted sympathizers who have an incredibly great corporate policy behind them. I simply can’t say a bad word about them (and not just because I would like to participate in something like this again. So believe me!… honestly!). But back to the actual battlefield…
Dolchsteinpass – Great Atmosphere!
The new PvP map is significantly larger and also a bit more complex than the previous battlegrounds. Played with 15 players on each side, the primary goal is clear: reduce the HP display of the opposing fusion core from 100 to 0. Similar to the “Blood Oath Halls”, this can be achieved by having your team take control of up to three “Uplinks”. Each of these secondary objectives ensures that every few seconds an airstrike hits the enemy bunker, slowly but surely eroding the remaining hit points.
Destroying the bunker goes noticeably faster when you manage to bring a bomb from your base to the enemy’s and place it directly on their fusion core. If done successfully, the opposing team loses 10 hit points immediately. But that’s easier said than done: Delivering the bomb is not that easy!
You will need an escort, as the bomb carrier will be marked clearly visible on the map, and furthermore the bomb has a time limit – sooner or later it will explode, no matter how far you managed to deliver it. But that’s not the whole deal: If you manage to kill an enemy bomb carrier, you can pick up the bomb yourself and promptly carry it back to your fusion core. Anyone just wanting to stir up some chaos can let the bomb timer run down and throw themselves into the enemy hordes at the last moment, taking entire groups with them into data nirvana; characters caught in the explosion die immediately. Only a rogue would think about blowing up their own team…
But who could summarize that better for you than the ever-popular “Mr. Frost” from Carbine, who humorously summarizes everything in the latest DevSpeak:
PvP Fine-Tuning and E-Sports
Also, the “surroundings” of PvP are actively being worked on to provide all players with the greatest fun possible; the most important change obviously concerns healers: So far, the battleground equipment was only somewhat worthwhile, as “PvP Offensive” and “PvP Defensive” did increase the damage dealt and reduce the damage taken, but healing remained entirely unaffected. In the current version of the game, healers mainly use PvE gear from veteran instances.
This issue will be resolved with the following change: “PvP Offensive” will be renamed to “PvP Power” and will now influence both offensive and supportive abilities.
Furthermore, the values on the existing battleground armor sets will be massively reduced, as the “soft cap” for these attributes could already be reached with 3-4 items – with the patch, wearing a complete PvP set will always make sense.
Towards the end, the question came up about what the future of E-Sports in WildStar would look like and whether there were already concrete plans in that regard. This was denied; there are no concrete plans yet, although the telegraph system certainly offers an excellent basis for fair competitions. They may return to that in the future.
In short, it was a truly interesting day filled with many exciting revelations, and even PvP skeptics should slowly consider whether they should take a look after all. I would almost skip role-playing for that. But only almost!
