Yes, Still Playing WildStar…

.. and my highest character is only level 18.

This is where the sub fee can be frustrating - especially in a game branding itself as “hardcore” and not alt-character friendly. It is a long journey in WildStar and my limited playtime and wanting to understand WHERE to invest my time has lead me to a whole lot of levelling and not much playing. You could call those the same thing, but I am playing EXPLORATORY (what class/path combination) and not actually playing. I am already repeating starter, primary and secondary zones. There is nothing new.

Not only are their 6 classes but also 4 paths.  My highest level character, the Medic, is a Scientist as his path – and I am already loathing it. Because WildStar is “hardcore” my choice is to learn to love the path, abandon my character altogether and re-roll, or skip out on levelling the path altogether. It is a pretty big part of the game and none of those sound like fun.

Why not one free respec? How could that possibly hurt anyone?

I have a few more levels to get my Stalker to 15 and haven’t even started the Engineer yet. So far, I think the Stalker is the route I’ll take but I really did love the Medic (but not enough to start all over). It’s been two months and I’ve barely seen the game.

Yes, all of that is my “fault”. I get it. I could work less, or spend less time with my family, or pray for more rain. It is *my* lifestyle that probably doesn’t fit WildStar and it’s a shame that they don’t want people like me as paying customers. I’d guess you need a solid 10-15 hour per week investment in it to feel like you are in the groove.

Hopefully, there are plenty others willing to do the old grinds in the old attunement paths in the old ways. If you read the forums they are pretty doom and gloom about empty servers and bugs. Complaints that clearly this game was made by WoW designers – the kind of design choices that WoW has spent the last four years changing to be more customer friendly. The few friends I had on my friends list are long gone and the areas I am still playing in are completely dead – hard to find a helping hand for the harder group quests (reintroduced with WildStar, long gone in WoW..).

Again, this is my fault because not only did I choose the unpopular faction (Dominion) but I am levelling slowly, so what players are still playing are ahead of me. All of this on one of the three or so “Medium” population servers.

I am sure this sounds whiny, and it’s not meant to be. There are problems with WildStar for sure, but it is a fascinating world and play style that I certainly enjoy. Any whining you may be sensing isn’t whining at all – it is frustration that I can no longer immerse myself in an MMO like the good old days ™ and I’m just hoping for that feeling of belonging in a game and having fun with friends.  Since none of my old gaming friends are really playing, I need to make new friends. That’s a lot harder in an MMO now, with cross server instant-queues for group content,  empty servers for non instanced content, and less time to play than probably needed to make meaningful connections.

I have committed to playing through August and I really need to grab a main, find a guild, and take a run at it. If not, not only will I miss out on a world story I want to enjoy, but WildStar will lose another subscription.

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