Assorted Wolcen Thoughts

As I wrote yesterday, Wolcen finally released and I have to say it has improved significantly even from when I last played it. It has been interesting to see game evolve from something that felt very ramshackle and sandboxy to what we have today. Wolcen feels like the love child of Diablo 3 and Path of Exile, having points that fans of both series would ultimately enjoy. From Diablo 3 it gained gorgeous animations and a fast pace style of combat that isn’t just hitting things with a broken chunk of wood for 10 levels. From Path of Exile it gained the sphere grid, albeit a way more sane and rational version of it. Each pick on the sphere grid feels like it is significant, rather than just having an excessive number of picks that felt so incremental that it was hard to notice any difference.

Something I noticed that I did not on previous play time was how much the Diablo 3 style of encounters seemed to be infused with them game. The path you are taking as part of the quest is littered with mini-dungeons that allow you to venture forth and take down what is likely a mini-boss for some loot opportunities. These are like the shacks and caves that you encounter in D3 and are roughly the same length with a warp at the end that takes you back outside. I also encountered my first version of this games Treasure Goblin, which was effectively a glowing beetle that scurried around dropping gold and trying to get away from me. When I finally did manage to kill it, it dropped about the same amount of loot that you would expect from a Goblin with a similar spread of rarities.

I also noticed the game had a bunch of little mini-games out in the world like kill these monsters that just spawned in order to unlock a treasure chest. I’m not really sure the breadth of these but so far the one or two I encountered felt more like Path of Exile shrines than they did Diablo style cursed chests. Another thing that I don’t think I remember from before is that you can learn all of the abilities that you encounter, not just the ones that you can currently equip. This allowed me to fill my bar early on and get some levels in the starter abilities for other builds not just the ones that matched the equipment setup that I happened to be using. The spell vendor seems to more expensive than I remember it being before, but thankfully the game was pretty generous with dropping ones that were usable by me. I now have a full bar worth of abilities that are usable and one or two alternates to swap to as I see fit.

One thing that I did not get to play with but I noticed was happening was the collection of items for the cosmetic system. Apparently you access this in game by hitting the B key and it brings up the interface shown in the above cosmetic preview video. While roaming around the world I kept noticing that every time I picked up an item I had not encountered before it was telling me that I was collecting its appearance. Then when taking down bosses in the game occasionally they would drop a dye pot, which unlocks that color permanently. So already they are on the right foot because I would rather build up a stable of armor tint options than having to keep around a bunch of expendable items to dye my armor. Additionally I love systems that collect appearances as I play the game without having to put a focus on specifically doing something else to override an items appearance.

I saw reports from friends that they were encountering issues playing last night, and thankfully I personally didn’t have any of these. That said I also didn’t really get settled in to play until around 8 pm last night, so potentially after any initial problems that they might have had. I know that they patched a few times, and this morning I attempted to pop in for a screenshot or two of the cosmetic system and I am getting game service timeout errors. You can check out the official Twitter to see the random problems they encountered throughout the night so it is in fact an MMORPG launch fraught with the same sort of issues that you have with those. You can play in offline mode but apparently there are issues with playing in Offline mode if you don’t have the latest version of the game, so I have just been sticking to online personally.

I did not make it super far last night, because the maps themselves are rather large when it comes to traversing them. Again this is one of those things that I would connect more to Path of Exile than Diablo 3. Still however I didn’t find myself getting frustrated by the slog and looking like a dirty hermit like I do with PoE. All in all I am digging what I am experiencing and I think this might be the game that scratches that “waiting for Diablo 4” itch for me. I’m actually looking forward to getting home tonight and playing some more which is usually a good sign for me and a game. So the question is… did you manage to get in last night? What are your own thoughts? Drop me a line in the comments below.