Rocket House

Beard Reset

beardreset Last night I went after work to get my hair cut, as I was in pretty dire need of one.  While I was there I did something rather drastic, I hit the reset button on my beard.  Usually during the winter I grow my beard out to combat the cold, and then during the summer I trim it back up…  sometimes even trimming it down to a Vandyke.  This time I opted to keep it a full beard but just bring it down to something more manageable.  Over the last several weeks as the heat has risen, our evening walks had become more and more frustrating.  Sunday night I had reached a sort of critical mass as I got so freaking hot during the walk that I took a dip in the pool the moment I got back to the house.  While I may mourn the loss of my big bushy beard…  I realize that it was only about six months of growth and by the time winter rolls around again it will be back with a vengeance.  One of the good and bad things is that I grow beard hair extremely quickly.

Rocket House

WildStar64 2014-06-03 06-14-42-986 The highlight of last nights play time was finally unlocking the ability to have a house.  I have long been a sucker for housing in any game that happens to have it, and the Wildstar model seemed extremely intriguing in beta…  but I never actually managed to get a character high enough to unlock it.  Apparently you can get your housing quest completed at level 14, and after running around all night myself, Tam and Ashgar all went off to Illium to do just that.  I’ve not really spent much effort and more importantly money on the house yet, but I am sure it will become quite the gold sink for me.  At this moment I have the Rocket Ship house that came with preordering the game, as well I managed to pick up a few decor items in my travels and mostly have just wanted a place to stash all of it.

WildStar64 2014-06-03 06-28-58-469

One of the more interesting things that I have managed to pick up is a Meteor Crater kit.  I added it to my plot but I am not really sure if I will keep it.  Honestly I have no clue what I will be doing with my place at all to be honest.  Right now it is mostly a dumping ground of various decor items I pick up in my travels.  The cool thing is that already I have access to several rather nice buffs, including a 5% quest and monster xp one that I will likely start using while playing.  At this point my goal in life is to get 2+ more gold I need for a mount at level 15.  At the end of the night I was roughly 1/3 of the way into 14, so I don’t really have a ton more time to accumulate it.  My theory is that I will go find some mobs that drop good stuff and blow them to smithereens.

WildStar64 2014-06-03 06-10-51-881 I wish I had done a better job of documenting our travels last night, because we ended up doing several really cool things.  Firstly the three of us did the level 13ish ship mission where we investigated the asteroids and what was killing the miners.  I had managed to do this in beta and it was one of those points that made me re-evaluate how I felt about the game.  The mission is extremely cool, and really shows off what the game can be.  While wandering around Ellevar we managed to stumble across a world boss that was unlocked by the explorer path.  Both Tam and I are explorers so ran around this circle unlocking the six locks on the cage.  What spawned as a result was this massive void walker looking thing that was extremely difficult.  I have a whole new respect for their encounter design after seeing this guy.

I have no clue what this guy was even called, because the shit hit the fan almost immediately after starting it.  For starters he dealt massive damage to me as the tank, and kept dropping this crazy latticework of laser beams on the ground that I would have to dodge out of quickly.  It seemed as though he was also leaving a green mist on the ground.  The main problem was that none of us were really prepared for a dungeon style encounter, as no one was really set up to be the primary healer… and I honestly was not really configured to be the primary tank.  I had to self rez about halfway through the fight but we managed to hold on long enough to take the guy out.  As the fight continued he split into two, that became four, that finally became eight individual mobs.  All I know is the overall experience was insane… and makes me want to find more of these unlockable bosses.

Growing On Me

WildStar64 2014-06-02 19-26-10-560 I have to say the game is inexplicably growing on me.  We were talking last night, and really Wildstar is like Guild Wars 2… but with a purpose.  The big problem I had with GW2 was that nothing I did felt like it actually mattered.  I wandered through the zones completing mini objectives, but nothing really felt that important.  Wildstar feels like taking the Guild Wars 2 “so many things to do” model and wrapping it around a solid questing model with interesting storyline.  The entire world feels so feature rich that it was absolutely overwhelming during beta after coming from the much more sedate and Spartan Elder Scrolls Online.   I feel completely inundated with things to do, and little side missions to complete, especially when you factor in all of my explorer path content.

The content density is crazy, but as I am starting to get accustomed to it… I am enjoying it more and more.  The overall game feels like a love song for Vanilla and Burning Crusade era World of Warcraft, but updated and modernized and packed with an insane number of features and baubles and widgets.  As much as I don’t think there really is such a thing as a “WoW Killer”, this game probably has as close of a shot as any.  There have been so many players that have lamented the changes that World of Warcraft has made over the last several years, and this is a game almost entirely for them.  After fighting the summoned world boss last night… I am actually looking forward to seeing what their dungeon and raid content looks like.  I don’t think I will ever again be a serious raider, but this game might make it happen more than anything I’ve experienced to date.

Not Leaving Elder Scrolls

eso 2014-05-29 06-28-21-264 While I have spent a lot of time talking about Wildstar lately, because it is shiny and new and I am finally starting to see what other folks have seen… this does not mean that Elder Scrolls Online has been tarnished at all for me.  The two games are so drastically different that they don’t even occupy the same space for me.  I am slowly working my way through the Auridon content, and I even logged in last night for a few minutes.  I have a feeling since today is the official launch day for Wildstar, that it will likely be completely unplayable… and as a result I may just take the more relaxing route and play some Elder Scrolls.  On twitter there has been a lot of talk about leaving Elder Scrolls, and this is definitely not me.  In fact I am probably bumping my subscription up from 3 months at a time to 6 months at a time.  I tend to play all the games at the same time… but there is a point where I could see myself maybe setting down to just Elder Scrolls Online, Wildstar and Landmark (if the landmark combat ends up being great).  As it stands now however I am not abandoning anything for the time being.

#Wildstar #WorldBoss #Housing #ElderScrollsOnline #ESO

8 thoughts on “Rocket House”

  1. I’ve done so many different things in my 4 days and 11 levels of playing WildStar I just can’t stop blogging about them! I’m loving it so very much. And totally agree with your take on the feel of the game. I said myself it feels like a cross between “WoW-done-right” as I have heard it said (though not saying I agree with the exact sentiment), GW2, and some new ideas. LOVE it.

  2. I had a mixed evening in Wildstar last night. I actually logged in before dinner (a rare opportunity for me) and had a really off-putting exchange in the zone chat. I need to thicken my skin by about 1000% because I really thought about uninstalling Wildstar after that.

    But then I went and had dinner and watched some Orphan Black and later came back fresh and had a good time. I said on my blog I had only died once and the game was really easy…well that has changed and the challenge has ramped up, thankfully!

    Next I tried to take on a 5-man quest with a PUG. Forming up the group was pretty quick, no one was a jerk…but sadly the quest mob (the Spider Queen) was bugged so we couldn’t complete it. But at least I felt better about the community after that.

  3. I broke down and did a last minute Wildstar preorder last night with a credit I had at Gamestop. Why? Because of what you said – these games occupy completely different spaces / genres as MMORPGs. Besides I need to give it a shot to see wtf all this yapping is about.

    Disclaimer: I have a 6-mo ESO subscription and had a bad experience with Wildstar in beta.

Comments are closed.