I think WildStar is shaping up to be a truly challenging MMO. I might not have said that back in September when I first started testing, but now that I've had a chance to explore a rather broad swathe of its content, and seen demonstrations of what I haven't, my tune has changed. The crafting isn't necessarily time consuming, but the "minigame" nature of crafting an item is certainly a far cry from "click craft to make" (and, though infuriating at times, it's a heck of a lot more interesting than FFXIV's >_<). The combat as you level builds in a really smooth difficulty curve, but still has a number of "spikes" where you can test your mettle - in group mobs (that are legitimately difficult even when you're not trying to solo them), world bosses, and dungeons. The dungeons... well, I don't think I had to give a single thought to a dungeon in FFXIV while leveling; they were pretty much uniformly mindless. That's certainly not the case in WildStar. Even just picking out your arrangement of skills for the LAS, skill points, and AMPs could be considered a "challenge" in that you've got a lot of very good choices that you have to whittle down to what is suitable for your current play. The path system also offers a rather unique set of challenges that you might not necessarily get in other MMOs. Many of the puzzles you have to solve on scientist are serious brain teasers, and locating all the data cubes is both an exercise in patience and at times requires cooperative play; it can be quite a task figuring out how to scale that cliff or waterfall or whatever to get to your explorer point, or solving riddles for a scavenger hunt. And then there are the very aptly named "Challenges", which are spontaneously initiated open world "minigames".
I mean, I guess the game doesn't have permadeath. You don't drop your inventory when you die, or lose XP, or any of the other common "Back in the old days..." gripes. But those are just annoyances, not challenge.
I mean, I guess the game doesn't have permadeath. You don't drop your inventory when you die, or lose XP, or any of the other common "Back in the old days..." gripes. But those are just annoyances, not challenge.
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"Song dogs barking at the break of dawn, lightning pushes the edges of a thunderstorm; and these streets, quiet as a sleeping army, send their battered dreams to heaven."
Hipparion Tribe (Sagolii)Â - Â Antimony Jhanhi's Wiki
