Wildstar went free to play late last week. I did what I never expected myself to do and Bootcamped my old Mac to get Windows on it. I’m surprised my poor old computer could handle it, because it’s certainly on its way out. But for now, she’s doing well! I forked out the $20 to buy Wildstar before it went free to play as there were a number of bonuses for having paid for Wildstar in advance (such as extra character slots, priority in queues etc.) so I did that then got to downloading the game itself.

After very little deliberation, I have made myself an Aurin Esper. I think she’s a total cutie!! (here is info about all the classes available, and here’s some info about the races. I strongly recommend checking these out before you make your toon!)

I spent a lot of time in character creation. There are SO many options to personalise your character. One of my favourites is the ability to choose the body type. I like that I can make a curvy character! She’s not big by any means, but compared to the other size options she certainly is! I like that I had the choice though. And I think she looks fantastic.

There are the usual options, such as hair style and colour, face type, skin colour etc. There’s also the option to completely personalise the face. Each element on the face has its own slider that you can use to change how the face looks. You can make the eyes larger, closer together, smaller lips, bigger nose, make the nose point out more, have a pointed chin etc. It was a little overwhelming the first time to be honest! But it did let me feel like my character was mine. I didn’t make too many changes to her face – just made her face a little rounder, her eyes a little smaller and her nose just a little bigger. I think she looks great 🙂 And even better – you can save a string of the options you have chosen for your character. So if you think you like what you’ve come up with, but want to try a different look (or need to recreate your character because you’re a numpty!), you can essentially save the look you’ve made and try something else. It’s a brilliant feature!

I actually had to make my character twice. See, when you create your characters in Wildstar, not only do you choose a class, but you also choose a path. The path is an extra thing that determines how you engage with the world around you and how you play the game. (You can read about each of the paths here if you’re interested). I’m the type of person who likes to explore the world around them – I’m always seeing something interesting and wondering off in the complete opposite direction to where I should be going for quests, just to see what’s there. So I thought Explorer would be the best path for me. I was very wrong. Whilst you get to run around and see every corner of the world, it also requires you to be good at jumping puzzles. Which I am not. I discovered just how bad I was at these when I spent almost an hour stuck on one of them. I was frustrated beyond belief, but was still trying to do it because I didn’t want to delete the character. You see mounts aren’t generally account wide in Wildstar. And Thor had been so generous and had given me a totally awesome hoverboard mount that he had one in a surprise box that I was unable to move to another character should I change it. In the end Thor insisted I create a new character and start again with a different path. It was definitely the right decision, even though I felt awful about having wasted the mount. But Thor being the wonderfully generous man he is had another hoverboard that he gave to my new character. How spoiled am I?! Second time around I made her a Scientist, which is actually really great – I get to run around and scan all these random things in the world and catalogue them, so I still get to explore the world, I just don’t have to do jumping puzzles to do it.

The gameplay is fantastic. Moving around took a little getting used to because you move so quickly compared to WoW. And that double jump… well now I understand what everyone was going on about! Double jump is the best! combat is really great too. It uses the Telegraph Combat, which basically shoots out the shape of your ability in front of you as you cast, and then out pops your spell. It makes combat really engaging because you need to actually target and face your enemies. And my favourite thing of all – you can cast and move. I can’t tell you how much I love that. So much fun!

The Esper is a dps/healer role, so the spells are a combination of ass kicking and helping spells, which means I’m a bit more survivable out in the world (so far anyway!) You also have the ability to make certain spells stronger, so if you want to focus mostly on doing damage, you can make your damage spells stronger, and the same for healing. It’s a bit overwhelming at the moment, but I’m sure I’ll figure it all out later on when I get in to dungeons and what not.

The only downside to the game has been the lag and the constant downtime. But it’s just been relaunched and there are a lot of people wanting to get in and play the game, so it’s to be expected. I’m only at level 8 as a result of the lag/disconnects and having to make my character twice. I didn’t play yesterday because I was getting too frustrated so I stopped. But hopefully tonight it should be quieter and I can get a good run of quests done.

Is anyone else playing Wildstar? Are you enjoying it?