PAX Developer Interview: WildStar Dungeons Will Rock

Greg Tito

PR for Dungeons & Dragons
Sep 29, 2005
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PAX Developer Interview: WildStar Dungeons Will Rock



The WildStar team is confident dungeons will be super fun and engaging.

PAX Prime, the annual gamer haven in Seattle, is always about chasing your proverbial dragon. I've been lusting over the upcoming MMO from Carbine Studios and NC Soft pretty hardcore for the last few months, so I was very intersted in hearing from the devs on how WildStar was progressing. On hand was Stephan Frost, one of the Design Producers on the team and incidentally the narrator for the popular "Dev Speak" videos. He assured me the 4 dungeons and 2 raids designed by Brett Scheinert and available when the game launches will be challenging and active affairs.

"No 'cigarette' combat," he said, bringing his right hand up to his mouth and miming a drag. "You won't be able to smoke a cigarette with one hand while you're clicking away with the mouse. Sorry to make you play a videogame, you need to use two hands."

Frost and his team have accomplished that by liberally using "telegraphs" or large shapes and warning signs that show up in your UI on the ground. If you or your party ignore the flashing red, you will take massive damage, and there will be unpleasantness over voice chat.

The "telegraphs" force you to pay attention and stay active, but it goes beyond what you might see in other MMOs. First, the telegraphs constantly occur even in normal PvE fights across WildStar's world, but the shapes and timing is ramped up in the dungeon fights against bosses. Second, sometimes the telegraphs take up the whole room, and the only way to avoid taking the damage is to coordinate crowd control spells with all five members of your group. If all 5 of you hit the boss with CC, then the incoming damage spell will be lost.

"That goes for healers too. You can't just sit back and watch everyone's health bars go down," Frost said. "You have to move around like everyone else."

Frost also had a refreshing take on the difficulty of dungeons and the 40 man raids planned. Brett Scheinert is not pulling any punches, hardcore dungeon content is for players who want to devote time and energy to that content. "I hear players who say 'I don't have time to look for a group' and I say 'Well, sucks to be you,'" he admitted. "We will not be nerfing these dungeons at all."

As such, there will be no Looking for Raid tool to easily team up; you will need a guild of like-minded and scheduled players to tackle the high end dungeons. It will also take some time to even attempt the raids, as each dungeon has a "veteran" - read heroics from WoW - you'll need to run through in order to get the gear needed to be successful in the raids.

Frost did promise you will be able to level up after level 17 to the 50 level cap through dungeons and "adventures" - again, read scenarios - so if you love dungeon content you will have plenty at the ready once WildStar launches. "The raids and dungeons will be repeatable," he said. "There'll be different bosses in different wings. We want to get people to stick around." A Looking for Group tool is planned, so that you can quickly find a group to tackle content without losing time recruiting a party.

The dungeons Frost showed us in a video certainly looked dynamic, and the fights had characters moving all around the open spaces to avoid damage from the telegraphs of lightning bolts and dastardly spells. I just wish I could get into the closed beta test and tell you guys exactly how WildStar feels to play.

When will that happen?

"Soon." It seems Carbine Studios has learned the MMO space quite well.


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Saucycarpdog

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Sep 30, 2009
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I had high interest in this game but quickly lost it once it was announced to have a subscription model. But if the game gets glowing reviews and turns out to be amazing then I might just have to put money down for it.
 

Bigeyez

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Apr 26, 2009
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So their plan is not to imitate what wow is doing now but instead imitate what wow was like in 2006?.....Really?
 

Naqel

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Nov 21, 2009
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I'm hoping it fails, so that NC Soft abandons it and resumes work on an Exteel sequel.
 

daibakuha

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Aug 27, 2012
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Bigeyez said:
So their plan is not to imitate what wow is doing now but instead imitate what wow was like in 2006?.....Really?
Wow was a lot better in 2006 than it is now. So I don't see the problem with this.
 

Alfador_VII

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Nov 2, 2009
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Saucycarpdog said:
I had high interest in this game but quickly lost it once it was announced to have a subscription model. But if the game gets glowing reviews and turns out to be amazing then I might just have to put money down for it.

Don't worry I'm fairly sure it will be forced to go F2P within 6 months to a year. Quite a while since anyone's managed to successfully launch a subs MMO, and keep it that way
 

Shadow-Phoenix

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Mar 22, 2010
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Honestly this still seems appealing to me even after hearing about the subs and I really don't mind paying for the game since I play WoW and pay a regular cheap sub a month.
 

weirdee

Swamp Weather Balloon Gas
Apr 11, 2011
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this seems like it would be cool in theory, but in practice, lag will pretty much create massive discrepancies and cause more issues than i think such a system would be worth

in any case i am probably going to stick to warframe, albeit sadly since this game has some pretty crazy designs in it
 

GothmogII

Possessor Of Hats
Apr 6, 2008
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Saucycarpdog said:
I had high interest in this game but quickly lost it once it was announced to have a subscription model. But if the game gets glowing reviews and turns out to be amazing then I might just have to put money down for it.
Well, there's a few options: you can subscribe, buy game time -or- buy game time with in-game currency. It looks similar to EVE On-line's PLEX system, not quite free to play, but if you've got the gold pretty much the same thing.

Seems to work the other way around too, they're letting players sell their game-time for in-game currency...but I can imagine at exorbitant prices looking at most of the other MMO's auction house economies. :/