Buy cheapest WildStar Gold - Nothing happens quickly in Wildstar

It's almost hard to believe, but it's been seven years since NCSoft acquired Carbine Studios who at the time was working on an unannounced MMO. Formed by a team of talent comprised of 17 original World of Warcraft development members, and an armada of other experienced programmers, artists, and designers, Carbine Studios quickly became the most promising studio in the MMO world. By 2011 it was finally revealed that the MMO was an ambitious game looking to move the genre to a new era. Called WildStar, it's finally here after years of painstaking labor and over a year of beta testing to reveal the vision of its veteran developer cast.
 
Apart from the vivid, saturated color scheme, first impressions aren't WildStar's strong suit, as any one of its aesthetic bullet points might turn you off. The whimsical, exaggerated, Ratchet & Clank-esque art style runs counter to the more realistic modeling of recent MMOs like Guild Wars 2, The Elder Scrolls Online, and Star Wars: The Old Republic. Some might expect much better textures and graphical detail given the game's minimum and recommended spec requirements. Some might not like its sci-fi universe as much as pure fantasy, the more traditional setting for an MMO. And some might not like the lack of voice-acting or the narrator who pokes fun at you every time you perish and respawn.
 
The more I play Wildstar, the more I lose patience with how slowly it progresses. I should be getting deeper and deeper into its gravity well by getting more and more invested. Instead, I’m just getting more restless. The character advancement is glacial and the resource sinks are abundant. Nothing happens quickly in Wildstar. I will not feel rich or powerful for a very long time, if ever. The combat is that same repetitive grinding away at bags of hit points, where every encounter is a done deal before it even starts, unless you accidentally aggro another creature, or maybe you fought something two levels higher than you because you weren’t really paying attention. You’ve been here before so many times. So many times. Do do that deja vu that you do so well. Wildstar is nothing if not familiar and methodical.
 
Luckily, WildStar has a few decent excuses. Firstly, it’s developer –Carbine –was founded by members of Blizzard’s core WoW team. Secondly, it’s not ploughing the same fantasy field as WoW, but moving into science fiction territory. In fact, it’s a bit of a genre mash-up, mixing space opera, fantasy and Western tropes, like a bizarre mix of Star Wars, Joss Whedon’s Firefly, Tolkien and WoW. You’ll also find odd influences from the gaming world. It’s not every MMO that has us thinking of Guild Wars one minute, then Fable, then Jak and Daxter or Ratchet and Clank the next, but somehow WildStar manages to do it.
 
While the trend may be shifting to free-to-play MMORPG releases, recent games such as The Elder Scrolls Online and WildStar itself are continuing the original monthly subscription model. WildStar provides a strong argument for the continued existence of the monthly subscription model by avoiding the constant advertising of premium currency seen in free-to-play games. WildStar feels like a complete gameplay experience in that none of the content is locked behind a premium paywall. It's up to players if they want to ultimately spend the money for a monthly subscription, but I will recommend that the content in WildStar is worth both the time commitment and purchase. WildStar is one of the best MMORPG releases in quite some time, not just for its highly entertaining content and humorous narrative elements, but for taking a risk in market often cluttered with genre clones.
 
It’s a difficult task to capture fully the experience of MMORPGs. The genre is predicated on tons of content intended to last players for months, if not years. It’s made even more difficult when a game like WildStar comes along, content-rich and incredibly varied in its well-balanced features. That’s why it is easy for me to recommend WildStar to new and old MMO fans alike, as well as to anyone looking to jump into their first MMO. The game literally has something for everyone and does everything incredibly well.
 
A copy of the game was purchased by the reviewer, but copies of the game were provided by the publisher for the purpose of our previous article. WildStar is available from the game's official website for $59.99.