Ahoy Nexians!

Time for your weekly dose of WildStar News!

 

Let’s start with the biggest news of the week… Beta Key Giveaways!!!

Yeah, you read that right.. the first beta key giveaways are underway.  Carbine has teamed up with some WildStar fan sites, to allow you the opportunity to win a beta key!  Now, because there are some…unsavory folks out there who may try and scam you out of your personal information…and not give you a key… Carbine has posted an official list of the sites participating in the giveaway.  Head over here, to view the list…then go try and get a key!

Official news from Carbine this week, was centered around the Guild System.  We got a shiny page describing the basics of the system.  Guilds in WildStar will be able to have all the ‘standard’ stuff (Guild banks, customizable ranks, optional guild tax, etc).  Plus, they’ll have the WildStar twist to guilds as well (because, really… if the news was ‘our guilds are just like everyone else’s, it’d boring).

We get Holomarks:

IN WILDSTAR, GUILDS WILL BE ABLE TO CREATE A HOLOMARK: A HOLOGRAPHIC EMBLEM PROJECTED IN THE AIR AROUND, OR ABOVE THE CHARACTER. YOU CAN SET THE VARIOUS ELEMENTS OF THE LOGO (WE’VE GOT 65 INNER AND 65 OUTER DESIGNS AT LAUNCH, WHICH MEANS AROUND 4225 POSSIBLE COMBINATIONS AT LAUNCH), AND THEN EACH PLAYER CAN DECIDE WHERE THEY WANT TO DISPLAY IT ON THEIR CHARACTER. SNAZZY!

This is, essentially, a guild tabard..but, done very differently.  The 4,225 possible combinations of elements (at launch), should reduce the chances of multiple guilds on the same server, having the same Holomark.  Which is good, because how many times did you see a guild tabard in WoW that had the identical image as 3, or 4 other guilds.  The added benefit to it being a holomark, and not a tabard, is also that it won’t cover up whatever armor/costume piece your character is wearing.

In a shot at the “blindly invite everyone you see that is unguided, but never actually play together’ type of guilds.. Carbine has added some…encouragement for you to actually… play with your guildies! (Shocking right?!?!  I mean, who wants to play with their guilds!)

This incentive comes in the form of Guild Influence, which can only be raised by grouping with your guildies, and playing the game with them.

WITH WILDSTAR, WE WANT GUILDS TO WANT TO PLAY TOGETHER, AND WE’RE GOING TO DO EVERYTHING WE CAN TO INCENTIVIZE THAT THROUGH A GUILD CURRENCY KNOWN AS INFLUENCE.

So, now we have this guild currency… what is it good for?  Influence can be spent in 3 major categories:

1. Guild unlocks (including additional bank vaults and player summoning)
2. Guild-wide buffs
3. Consumable guild items

The buffs are things like boosts to experience gain, reputation gain, etc.  Under this system, it looks like a small guild that plays together should be able to unlock just as many ‘perks’ as a guild of 500 people who rarely group together.

Jeremy Gaffney swung by the WildStar subreddit to provide a ‘state of the beta’ (that, should be appearing in some fashion on the official site soon too).

Here’s a quick version at least (yeah, we should do an official one, I agree, I’ll send this to Scooter):
Just did a big update (37 pages o patch notes if I recall). This was from our work in December, so it’s a 4 week update minus 2 weeks from most folks from holiday break.
Major foci:

• Doing a polish pass on the 15-35 content
• Polishing some of the 35-50 areas (which aren’t enabled yet for the CBT testers)
• Rebalancing class abilities across PVE and PVP (pretty good number of changes there, generally based on feedback or the data mining we’ve done)
• Bunch of new itemization in various areas

A ton more. Did we release those patch notes? I forget.
The other thing we added in the last patch (NOT in the patch notes) was about 6 different crash bugs (due to the way we did QA testing over the holiday break, we added in about 50 new QA testers and for various technical reasons this basically disguised a bunch of crash logs which we normally fix during the staging period before a build goes live; it was a combination of adding new QA folks and the fact that some of our technical guys were on the holiday break. Sorta ironic that adding testers added crashers, but there ya go)
So I believe as of right now, the crashers are licked, folks are back testing/playing more stably. The crashes sucked for about a week or so though, so that was a pain for the guys fixing and the beta folks.
Current things we’re currently looking at internally (based on implementation schedule, data, board feedback, or just playing and saying “we could do that better”) – these aren’t guaranteed to be in next update (or any if we find blockers) but are things we’re either working on or discussing:

• UI updates (we got some great new guys on our UI team) on many/most UIs, especially the obviously-placeholder ones
• Extending the cap to 50 for next update
• High level economies across the various elder content (level 50 playspaces, vet dungeons, raids, warplots, arenas, new content additions post launch)

Batting around ideas to help small-group play:

• a lot of people like playing in/near small groups, and some quests are set up well for it/some aren’t – we are fixing those
• Fighting in the outside world as a small group is often too trivial (some few monsters and challenges are aimed towards it, and but 2 or 3 people fighting a mob tuned for 1 person is awful easy). That sounds tricky to fix, but we actually have some ideas. Some of those might also make for some interesting variation in killing quests (something we aim for is to reduce kill grindiness whenever we can) But we’ll see, that’s all in discussion. Not guaranteed to go in, but Donatelli is examining.

So in net: Personally I’m relatively happy with where we’re at. Lot of pro and con feedback on the boards about some of the above issues (and others) but it feels IMO like a pretty healthy set of discussions and I love the team’s pace of new additions and polishing existing content right now.

 

Carbine is also seeking WildStar fan art submissions for possible featuring on their Social Media pages:

 

And that’s it for your Nexian News Wrap-up for this week!

It’s Stalker Time!

We got the long awaited Stalker live stream this week…and, the possibly even longer awaited Pappy vs Frost epic PvP battle!

Let’s jump into the stream, and then pick up the rest of the week’s tidbits.

The stream opened up with the Stalker DevSpeak, and since it’s been a bit since that one was released, here it is again:

The gameplay portion of the stream starts with a look at the single target DPS build for the Stalker.

We see the action set using abilities like Shred (basic attack), Impale, and Stagger (Stun).

The Stalker’s innate ability is stealth, and depending on the stance picked, provides differing bonuses.  Stealth can also be used in-combat.

 

Opening from stealth, using Analyze Health, and Impale was doing some serious damage to the mobs, most were going down to a little less than 50% health just after the opener.

As is normal, they did various short Q&A segments during the gameplay portions.

Q: Will Stalkers struggle to stay in Stealth? Creatures with AoEs?
A: Unlock AMP to keep damage from breaking stealth.. can avoid telegraphs
Q: What constitutes ‘behind’ target? Does flanking from the side count too
A: about the full 180* arc behind the target

Q: Relative position to enemy changes your chances of being detected?
A: Zone of awareness is pretty much the same for all players/creatures. You’ll see the icon over the head if you are in the zone. Based off levels, bonuses, etc..

After showing off a bit of the DPS roll, they moved into the Stormtalon dungeon, to show off some Stalker Tank play.

The tank build they’re using includes:

Whiplash (basic attack +25% threat), Nano field (life siphon), Stagger, Collapse, False retreat (jumps you back, use again to jump back forwards), reaver (taunt).

An interesting bit to note, is that the nameplates showed by the team during the stream aren’t the default ones, they’re actually using an add-on developed by one of the beta testers, they go on to talk about a DPS add one developed by another tester, that Carbine has been working with to refine further for internal testing too.

Q: What answers does Stalker bring to table, over classes that can kite more?
A: Pounce, (Pounce again, but described as a backwards version), Collapse (pulls in nearby enemies), various stuns, and snares.

Q: Stalker tanks have an ‘oh crap’ instant heal, or invulnerability button?
A: Steadfast increases deflect up to 60%, Stalker stance increases damage mitigation.

Q: Stalker Tanks get any use out of stealth?
A: Passive buffs from Stalker Stance

Q: Examples of tank traits in AMP system?
A: Deflect chance, health pool increase, some AMPs trigger off of deflecting attacks

 

While getting ready for the Pappy vs Frost cage match, the classes flick was shown again:

That’s always a fun video to watch.. poor guy is right.. there are a ton of those psychopathic Stalkers running around

After the class video ended, PvP design lead Jen Gordy joined the stream, to answer PvP questions while the Pappy vs Frost match was underway.

The plan is for Pappy and Frost to cycle through all the classes, so they can pick which class they play, but not play any class twice.

The match opens with Frost playing a Stalker (One of the classes he’s better at), and Pappy playing a SpellSlinger (a class he says he’s not very good at)…

Round 1 was over… quickly… Frost decimated Pappy that round…

Next up, Frost took the Warrior against Pappy’s Esper… and Pappy was typing in chat the whole time (so, 11122233222311131, etc..), and didn’t do very well (since it means none of the actions he was trying to use were used).. so they took pity, and had that match replayed… and Pappy still lost.

Couple of quick Q&As with Jen:

Q: World PvP objectives in contested zones?
A: Probably not for launch, want to see where people end up wanting to fight at

Q: Level up solely through PvP
A: After level 6, yes. Trying to make BG vs Quest XP equivalent.

Match 3 was Frost playing a Medic, and Pappy playing a Warrior… that match handily went to Pappy.

After those three 1v1 PvP matches, the focus shifted to some 2v2.  Pappy teamed up with Chris Lynch (Lead Combat Designer), to take on Frost, and his teammate Marc Matzenbacher  (Warrior/Medic class designer).

Match 1 was Engineer/Esper (Team Pappy) vs Engineer/Medic (Team Frost).

This match shows us that if you’re in a PvP zone, and both you and the other faction are flagged for PvP.. the silhouettes of the other team will be red from a distance..and as you close turn ‘normal’.

Frost went down first in this match, but Marc’s Medic showed some pretty decent survivability against Team Pappy… Team Pappy did take Match 1 though.

Q: Melee seems to be dominating ranged in these matches, do the metrics match?
A: Ranged classes aren’t doing a good job at staying at range in Pappy vs Frost

Q: Skill cooldowns differ from PvP to PvE
A: Skills don’t..but the breakout gameplay can impact them

Q: How will PvP queues match groups and solo players
A: Two different systems, arena will match on rating… open match on gear

This stream also gave us our first look at one of WildStar’s Arenas!

There will be two types of arenas in the game, open (level 30+), and rated (level 50).  Rated gives you team/personal rating towards arena rewards, and open is more of a ‘practice’ type environment.

Arenas have a shared pool of respawns per team.. so your team needs to manage that aspect as well (who will use the respawns, and when).  For example, it might be more beneficial to have your healer take one of the last respawns, than it would be to have a DPS take it.

For the 3v3 arena, the team makeup is:

• Team Pappy:  Hugh Shelton (Esper), Steven Ingle (Engineer), and Pappy (Medic).
• Team Frost:  Jen Bardic (Warrior), Jade (Stalker), and Frost on a SpellSlinger.

Team Pappy suffered from technical difficulties on attempt one (Hugh’s computer rebooted).  Team Frost ended up taking the match.

To settle things once and for all, one last 1v1 match was called..both Pappy, and Frost were able to pick their best class.

Pappy went Warrior, and Frost went Stalker… it was a close match, and Stephen Frost emerged victorious!

Congratulations Frost!  (I’m still Team Pappy!).

The other big news for the week, comes by way of Jeremy Gaffney in the comments section over on WildStar Fans.  In the comments to their article about the NDA related plans, JG swings by to shed some light on the pre-order situation.  Short version is, no pre-order information till more testing on elder game content.. but, head over to WildStar Fans to read the comment yourself.

There has been some discontent with the art style for female characters in WildStar.  Particularly, regarding their breast size.  Carbine has addressed this, by changing the breast size for the Humans, and Aurin, in the latest patch.  This reddit thread (some comments are very NSFW), has a decent side-by-side comparison of the Human appearance, before/after the change.

When he wasn’t practicing for the big PvP match, Stephen Frost swung by the MMORPG.com forums, for a Q&A session.

Here’s some highlights:

Q: How much true end game content will their be when the game launches? Or will we as players have to wait for multiple content releases?

A: * Raids are only available at level 50 * Warplots are only available at level 50 * Veteran Dungeons and Adventures * PVE zones * Level 50 content instances for PVE players * Housing Items * there’s a ton that is only available ONLY at level cap

Q: im just wondering if rp rule will be enforced on rp server, and if classes with the same possible job will have equal potential or if one will overshadow others. like medic healing better than spellslinger/esper?

A: Not sure on the RP server, actually. I’d have to chat with our live producer. Regarding healing, different classes have different spells and feel to them. Some people prefer the Esper, some the Medic and me, I like the Spellslinger healer. It’s a lot more precision based, and I like that gameplay style. It all depends on you.

Q: Are there going to be any mechanics which will allow me, once I reach max level and obtain the uberest of gear, to play with friends who are just starting? For instance, Guild Wars 2’s down-leveling (which is far from perfect). This seems to always be the biggest barrier to me getting my friends to try whatever game I’m playing. I hate rolling alts for this purpose. Also, beta key yada yada…

A: Yeah we have mentoring and rallying in our game. We wanted to make sure that you were able to play with your homies, even if they picked up the game after you did.

Q: just wondering about your WARPLOTS i watch every video about them but to this day i really want to know how do you create one meaning what level , how to upgrade in general everything regarding them. i was a stress tester for the winter beta but didnt reach that far , plus the game deleted my character so yhhhhh … PS: cant wait to see you & papi go @ it #TEAMFROST BTW can you hook a brother up on a beta key please just had to add that part in XD

A: Despite the fact that I said I wouldn’t talk about Warplots, I’ll answer a couple of questions here. You can create a Warplot ONLY at level 50, they are Elder Game content. You get upgrades by earning a currency within Warplots, I won’t say what those upgrades are, but you can use that currency to buy instruments of death. Also we’ve said that you can capture a raid boss and unleash them upon a rival team before… so… you can do that by getting a rare drop off of a boss in a dungeon or raid. Watching/playing that in playtests is pretty damned entertaining as they crush hordes of players. I’m extremely excited for the coming weeks and months ahead, because I think people are going to love seeing and playing this feature. 40 vs. 40 death fortress combat! What’s not to love? Also thanks for the #teamfrost support. I will eviscerate Pappy.

 

And that’s it for the week.. can’t wait to see what Carbine has in store for us next week!

Welcome to the first WildStar Wrap-up for 2014!  The Carbine team is back in the office, and things are chugging along.

The big news for this week was supposed to be the the Stalker Live Stream, and the long-awaited Pappy vs Frost PvP event.  Sadly, it  had to be pushed back a week due to illness.  So, we’ve got that coming next week (Go Pappy!!!).

That didn’t stop us from getting at least some news out of Carbine this week though.

David Bass chimed in on a reddit thread, asking about the future of WildStar Wednesdays:

I’ve now worked on two huge games that did weekly updates for the years leading up to launch, and I think this type of content rollout has its plusses and minuses. On the one hand, you establish a weekly rhythm that fans grow accustomed to and look forward to each week. However, as that community grows, the expectations for each weekly update grow larger and larger until we simply can’t match the fervor no matter what we do. Before the Chua and Mordesh were announced, every week everyone truly believe that was the week we’d reveal them, and they’d be disappointed when we didn’t. After Chua/Mordesh, it was Medic/Engineer. Now that those are done, we see “Pre-order announcement,” “Release date,” and “Warplots” as the big things everyone expects to see week after week.
So all that said, after two big projects with this content cycle, I’ve come around to thinking that while irregular updates mean we can’t give you a regular schedule to watch and get hyped for, we can promise that when we DO post something, it’ll be juicy, full of information and imagery, and not just something we put out because we have to post something that week.
Will we post things on Wednesdays going forward? Probably, because it’s a good day to publish things so that the most people see and share it. Will it be every Wednesday from now through launch? It’s unlikely, but I’m not going to commit either way. We’re just getting back into the swing of things from our holiday break, so you’ll definitely have to wait a bit before our next big thing, but I’ve seen some of the stuff the team is working on (Devspeak and Flick-wise) and we’re planning to start off strong.
Curious about your thoughts on this, though. What do you guys think?
PS. Of the top of my head, here are some (not all) of the major topics we definitely plan to cover in the next few months:
Customization (Character, Gear, Housing, and [REDACTED])
Adventures
Battlegrounds
Arenas
Raids
Warplots
Tradeskills
Guilds

 

I’d love more information on crafting, which isn’t on his list, along with other economy related information (gotta know if I can corner the market on widgets and build a fortune, retire, and never have to adventure again!).  I do get his point about how hard it is to always have something ‘new’ and noteworthy to release on Wednesdays, eventually you end up releasing information that your fans consider ‘pointless’, so it is a hard pace to keep up.

I’d much rather see slower releases, but with ‘bigger’ topics, so it’ll be interesting to see what they end up doing.

Via the WildStar twitter, we got confirmation that Beta invites are going out weekly now, so make sure you’re checking your inboxes regularly!

Jeremy Gaffney also swung by reddit to answer some questions regarding the NDA:

We do hang out here though. By the way, thanks mods for all the work!
After the holiday break we’re working now on updating our plans for extending testing in various ways (making sure we get as much elder game testing as possible, planning on various short- and long-term testing cycles) as well as the order for what the next sets of reveals/deep dives will be, etc.
Re: the NDA – we’re still planning when to raise the level limits for the press, when we drop the NDA for non-press, all that. So while we have some planned dates in mind, we’re still bouncing schedules off the various groups involved (dev folks, Scooter, the video guys, etc.) so nothing final to announce.
Also, we learned a lot by dropping the press NDA from 1-15 and we like to take what we learn to modify our old plans, so plans shift (example: we’re factoring plans for twitch/streamers/etc better into our plans than we were before)
We’re actually kinda anti-NDA in many ways (obviously the game is pretty fun for most folks I think from all the footage that’s gone out even in mid-beta stage, it’s not like we’re trying to hide too much, and I think as devs it’s pretty obvious that we’re on the casual side) but it does let us stage out reveals over time to hold up some hype for near launch while simultaneously letting us actually get testing and iteration done.
Also, IMO we still have work to do on some things (some of the early tradeskills IMO need a pass now that we have more data on em, capital cities could use some loving, lots of UI tuning to do, class tuning, work on group play in the early zones, etc.) And so how much do we want out there on systems that we’re changing? What if (say) a tradeskill specialist checks out early footage and decides to pass before we react to feedback? Or what if a fan falls in love with a system we then decide to change and feels screwed?
So we debate that a lot on spreading info vs. feeling locked in via public disclosure. We’ll see.

 

Looking forward to a more relaxed NDA, and it will be interesting to see if the ‘press’ NDA is raised to cover additional levels, or if the NDA drops in whole first.

Speaking of press.. MOGNation now has permission to stream the 1-15 content, so if you’re looking for a WildStar stream to check out, head over to the MOGNation twitch channel!

 

Welcome to the final weekly wrap-up of WildStar news for 2013.  I’m taking next week off, and spending time with family, and all that fun stuff (playing video games, of course!).  So, unless there is some earth shattering WildStar news, like a surprise release date drop… I won’t be doing a wrap-up next week.

 

The big news for WildStar this week, was another Stress Test conducted starting Friday evening… no tweets about melted RAM, melted Devs, or anything like that.. so it sounds like the test is going well.  The WildStar team did warn people watching streams that since the stress test was ongoing this weekend, they could see a large number of disconnects, lag, etc.

Friday night, stress testers were apparently treated to a little Monster Bash.  From the description (and pictures) over on Wildstar Fans, it looks like it was a huge draw..lots of people crammed into the same spot.. which is exactly what you want for a stress test.  Must have been crazy having the Devs spawn those monsters on top of huge crowds of low level folks.

The main news out of Carbine directly this week… was the announcement of the winners of the WildStar Vine contest (winners will receive a Beta key… lucky cupcakes!).  Here’s my favorite winner:

Since the level 1-15 NDA drop, there has been a lot of good information coming out from the various fan sites (and, of course, ‘real’ media like MMORPG.com).  While I’m sure there’s been articles, or videos that I haven’t seen… here’s the highlights of what I have seen this week:

• Alice over at the Nexus Report, has started a series of zone spotlights.  This week’s zone, is Algoroc.  Enjoy the tour of this low level Exile zone.  The scenery looks great, but I would have liked to have also gotten some more information from Alice about the zone in the video, like what’s up with the giant robot at 4:00 into the video?
• WildStar Fans has a nice write up about questing in WildStar.  I like the way they broke down the various sources for quests at early levels.
• WarCry provides us with their take on the Engineer Class, combined with the Explorer path.
• JB and crew join in the Engineer love as well, with this week’s WildCast.

 

That’s it for the week.. a bit light, but with no new classes left to be revealed, and with Christmas coming up, that’s to be expected.  There’s a ton of folks streaming WildStar still, thanks to the partial NDA drop for select sites.  So, if you’re looking for something to do, head over to twitch and watch some game play!

 

Team WildStar has announced the winners of the Vine contest they ran on Twitter for the last week or so.

They’ve posted their list of winners here.  They’re all pretty good (they seem to mistakenly believe that Stephan Frost will be able to beat Pappy in their inevitable duel though… which is weird.. because Pappy is gonna totally win that).  Here’s my favorite:

Head over, and check out the winners!

If you were concerned there might be a slowdown in WildStar news, now that the last class was getting it’s turn… you’d be wrong.  In addition to being the week of the Engineer… there was also a limited drop in the NDA for the media (real media, not me).  Let’s talk all things Engineer first, then we’ll talk about the NDA drop, okay?

Engineer week started, as all class weeks have, with the DevSpeak:

Quick notes from the DevSpeak:

The disclaimer this week, reminds us that we should not give the WildStar dev team with sports cars, cookies, World Cup tickets, Star Wars film props, or a Soda Fountain.  So, please call and cancel that order for 300 pounds of cookies delivered by Ferrari.

• The Engineer is a heavy armor wearing, ranged tank class…. with Bots, and gadgets.
• It’s a pet class, but doesn’t play like a pet class.
• Class Features are:
  • Heavy Armor
  • Launchers
  • Bots
  • Exo Suit (innate ability)
• Has DPS, CC, Tank, and Healing bots.

 

The shiny new Engineer page, tells us that the race breakdown for Engineers is:

• Exile:
  • Human
  • Granok
  • Mordesh
• Dominion:
  • Cassian
  • Chua
  • Mechari

So, a fairly even distribution there.  Little surprised that the pug sized Chua will be wandering around in Heavy armor, but hey.. it worked for Gnomes in WoW..so why not?

The Engineer AMA over on Reddit brought us some good Q&A, here’s my favorites:

Q: Plans to add customization for Engineer bots? (colors, names, skins, etc..)
A: (Disclaimer: Bot customization kinda falls outside of the Class Design Team department since that requires Art and UI support) We have definitely talked about that sort of thing here at the studio. But for launch, I can’t say for sure. Someday I do hope I can give my Bruiser Bot a scarf and glasses …

Q: As a long ranged class (in contrast to the short-mid ranged Medic) with heavy armour, what trade-offs does the Engineer have in exchange for his “safety”?
A: When trying to max out your DPS as an Engineer, you’re going to want to be in your “ExoSuit: Eradication Mode.” This mode sacrifices a large amount of your survivability to increase your outgoing damage. Also, all of your cast time abilities slow your movement by 30%. This means you won’t be able to kite quite as well as some of the other ranged classes.

Q: If Warriors are the archetypal “mitigation tanks” and Stalkers the “avoidance tanks”, then what niche will the Engineer fill? – will a skilled engineer for example be swapping threat from himself to the Bruiser Bot to mitigate spikes in damage?
A: I wouldn’t go so far as to say Warriors are just “Mitigation Tanks” or that Stalkers are just “Avoidance Tanks.” Both of those classes excel at those to gameplay styles, but they have a lot more to them as can be seen through the DevSpeaks/Livestreams/Class Pages. So as for the Engineer, they are ranged tanks with a bunch of mitigation, bots for distraction, they pack a number of group utility abilities, plus more that you can see in this weekend’s Livestream!

Q: How will the engineer be able to control his bots to prevent them from dying in raids?
A: We have a ground targeted “go to location”. Once used you pick a spot using your mouse cursor to command your bots to move to the location. Beyond that, we are still doing raid testing and tracking how well the bots stay alive and perform in those raid environments. Based on those results we may look to raising survivability through health or mitigation adjustments. We are taking it slow with the changes because we want the bots to be fun in all situations.

Q: Good evening! I would like to know how the healing bot works, i’ve saw it works with hots but it heals for a percentage? it does only that? Thanks
A: The Repair Bot, once summoned, gives you access to “Shield Restore”. The ability “Shield Restore” is granted on your action bar and replaces the Repair Bot summoning ability, while the Repair Bot is alive. Now that you have your Repair Bot summoned, you can command it to attack a single target or command it to use “Shield Restore” by using the action bar ability. Using the “Shield Restore” causes the Repair Bot channels a Shield Capacity restore to allies in an area around it. The Shield Capacity restore scales with Support Power on the bot and the bot inherits their stats from the Engineer. And I love quotations because that ability name could change in the future.

Q: I really liked the look of the gun in the class drop trailer, it seemed much different then anything we saw the engineer using in any other footage though, it looked like a shotgun rather than a launcher. Do these smaller weapons exist for the engineer? Is it race based?
A: There are a ton of new launcher models going in every day and there is a huge amount of variety in how they look. I don’t believe we have any race-specific models at this time.

Be sure to read the full AMA when you have time, since there is some good information in there.

Saturday brought us the Engineer Livestream.  The stream is currently archived on Twitch if you haven’t seen it yet.  Part 1 is here, and part 2 is here.

Here’s the notes I took, including some of the Q&A that occurred during the stream.

• Stalker Livestream is not forgotten, it will be happening early next year (they’re going to be taking a break for the Holidays).
• Hugh has been “photobombing” some of the media who have been live streaming this week.. he’s been having fun dropping in and playing with people.
• We got introduced to Steven Ingle the Engineer’s class designer (and the guy who will be playing the Engineer for today’s stream).
• The Engineer will have a little lower DPS than a SpellSlinger or Esper, due to having heavy armor to help them soak more damage.
• We got a peek at one of the ‘ship hand’ missions.. it looked fun.  The ship they were on had obviously been damaged, they had to run around fixing holes in the hull.
• Bots have a 15 second cool down before being resummoned after they go boom.
• Target Acquisition/Tactical Strike.. marks mobs you hit with it (very narrow area).. mobs are subject to heavy damage strike at the end (Orbital Bombardment!)
• Most Engineer abilities seem to have a max range of 20-25 meters.
• Engineer class innate ability is the Exosuit!  (Improves damage output for DPS, increases damage reduction for Tanks).
• Once bot is summoned, that key on your action bar tells the bot to use it’s main attack
• Showing off a botless build now. Engineer viable with/without bots
• Sprinting/dashing will stop charge/release spells from charging.

2v2 PvP Time..our hero the Engineer is working with a Medic, against a Warrior/SpellSlinger team.  Steven is currently using a tank build on the Engineer, to show PvP is viable in that setup.

• Warrior/SpellSlinger took round 1.  We did get to see the ‘blind CC’ being used agains the Engineer.. whole screen went mostly black..neat way of implementing it.
• Our Heroes came back with a vengeance, and handily took round 2.  They took round 3 as well.. everyone else started fighting while Steven was trying to switch the Engineer’s action set to a be a botless build and show off the taunts.
• 4th round went to the villainous Warrior/SpellSlinger team..though it was incredibly close.

After the PvP showcasing, they headed off to a dungeon.  We’re getting a look at a different dungeon from the previous streams, today we got to see Kel’Voreth.

• There is a bone trap mechanic in the first area, that is really neat.  When someone (player, NPC, or mob) gets too close, the trap activates, holds whoever it got, and does some damage to them as well.  Can be used to kill ‘weaker’ mobs.
• They mentioned that there are too many active abilities on the bar currently, for purposes of the livestream, they added more to have a good variety of skills to show off.
• Showed a different area of the dungeon, with laser beams moving around the floor.. pulled mobs through the beams, they got damaged.  Pay attention, use the environment against your enemies!

We got a brief overview of the AMP system:

• Customize your character, make it a bit more unique
• increase stats
• unlock abilities
• unlock proc events

Available at level 6, gain an AMP point a level after that, more during Elder game.

They currently have 1000 different spell files (including various tiers) to balance/manage.

Here’s the Q&A I wrote down during the stream:

Q: Engineers seem less mobile than other classes, for dps that don’t get benefits from being tanky, what skills are available to control a fight, or gain breathing room
A: Can cast on the move, heavy armor lets it soak some of that extra damage, urgent withdrawal

Q: Does Bruiser Bot’s taunt work on players?
A: Yes, Taunts in W* mean taunted does reduced damage to all players except whoever did the taunt..same applies to bruiser

Q: PvP escapes?
A: Urgent Withdrawal

Q: Downsides/limitations of Exo suit use
A: Pretty awesome right now.. not much down side. Innates getting things added to balance more.. Exosuit will reduce speed by 30%

Q: Bots controllable by player? or do their own thing?
A: Both..

Q: Bots healable.buffable? can they tank in a group?
A: Not in a dungeon (kinda distract mobs for a little), dungeon bosses especially will tear through a bot

Q: Ranged tank..boss positioning meelee/dps
A: DPS needs to be aware of where the tank is.

Q: Will the engineer rely on constant kiting or can they take a hit as well as a warrior?
A: Heavy armor, they don’t need to kite, can soak up the hits.

Q: Will engineer have a bigger shield than other tanks?
A: By default, no.. possibly with AMP

Q: Range increase?
A: Not currently via AMP or Tier

Q: 2 engineers in pvp group, stack taunts to reduce damage to each other, and everyone else?
A: Some taunts will stack, some won’t.

Q: Can bots be healed by other classes, shown on raid UI?
A: Not shown on default raid UI. Healers can heal them.  Heals are prioritized to players over Bots.

 

That covers the Engineer reveal (no more [REDACTED] at all now, class wise!).  But, that wasn’t all the of the news from WildStar this week!  Carbine set us up to have a very WildStar Holiday season…

We got a new Comic “The B Team” featuring the Bots for a, as yet, unnamed Engineer.  Episode 1 introduces us to our cast of Bots (Tank, Arty, 4K, and the new guy, known only as ‘Kid’ so far).

And, the Big, Big, Big, news for the week…  Carbine held a media event last week in San Francisco (and London).  The folks invited to those events (a mixture of ‘real’ media, and fan sites) have had the NDA dropped!  For Levels 1-15 ONLY.  They can talk about them, they can stream them, they can write weird fan fiction about them… whatever they want!

For everyone that is NOT one of the above groups… The NDA is still in place.  I found this post over on Reddit reminding people of that (ironically, using what appears to be a leaked post from the beta forums to do so).

Hey everyone,
Having gone through this a couple times before, I know a press embargo lift can be a little confusing for beta testers. This post should hopefully clear up a couple common questions and concerns about it for everyone in the beta!
Has the WildStar NDA been lifted? No, the NDA is still in effect. You may not discuss, stream, post images and video, or share any information about the content that you’ve experienced in beta.
So why can some website talk about the game? Last week we held press events in San Francisco and London to show off the game to press, and allowed them to play the level 1-15 experience in order to post game previews beginning today (December 12th). The press were also granted limited access to the beta in order to continue playing for more coverage. Some outlets have been granted permission to livestream the game as well, however these are limited in scope and do not include everyone.
What can a beta tester talk about publicly now? Anything you see covered in press articles can be discussed, however you must still keep your involvement in the beta a secret. Feel free to share your excitement for WildStar, watch livestreams, discuss the things that are now public, etc, but make sure you’re not leaking anything directly from the beta!
When will the NDA be lifted/when can I talk about my game experiences publicly? We’ll let you know when this happens, but I think it’s safe to say that the plan is to lift the NDA early next year. We want to ensure there is plenty of time between the NDA lifting and launch for everyone to get hyped up about WildStar, preorder the game, and join us for beta!
Hopefully this clears up the most common questions, but if you have any additional ones, let us know!

So, if you’re in the Beta.. be mindful of that NDA! Don’t assume because these media/fan sites got permission to, that you can too!

WildStar Fans has done a GREAT job putting together a list of links covering everything that’s come out from the limited NDA drop.  Rather than try and compete with that list… I’m just going to link it here.. it’s got everything I was able to find on it anyway.  So, go HERE for the mega list of levels 1-15 coverage!

I will tell you that my favorite tidbit released so far, is gameskinny’s footage of the character generation for all races/classes.  I’ve never heard of them before.. but these videos seem pretty well done, and do a good job showing off the current options.

 

So…that’s the crazy, news filled week in Nexus.  There is no shortage of game related information out there now.. All 6 classes have been revealed, so it’s time to start planning what you’re going to play!  I’ll be rolling an Aurin SpellSlinger, though I haven’t decided on a path yet..

 

What about you Cupcake, what are you gonna do?

Oh yeah! We also got to see a Lizard mount via the WildStar Vine feed.

Ok..I think that’s it…for real now… see you next week! If you need more WildStar goodness before then.. Make sure you’re checking out WildCast.. the MOGNation WildStar Podcast!