WildStar Devs talk about Raiding

The guys over at Carbine Studious just released a new update, covering the details on Raiding in their upcoming MMO, WildStar.  There hasn’t been a lot about raids mentioned so far, aside from the fact that they will be in game, and there will be content for large groups of players to clear, as well as extra content for people playing by themselves.

The lead developer on the team, Jeremy Gaffney, seemed really excited to talk about them. He says he wants, “Old School, big ass raids. Tough raids, raids you have to earn your way into beating.” That grabbed my attention right away, as one of my personal turn offs from World of Warcraft was how easy and automated the raiding scene has been getting. Promising to make encounters difficult, and only lowering the difficulty after it’s been taken care of is a much better form of progression.

The three things Carbine is looking to accomplish

Afterwards, Jeremy passed it on to a fellow Dev, by the name of Timetravel. TT had a bit to say, but said he wanted to focus on 3 main goals in terms of where they wanted to take raiding. Originally it was four, but sadly he can’t tell us about itemization just yet.

Adaptation to the action style combat

Unlike most MMOs of today, WildStar uses an action based combat system that revolves around constant movement, enemy and player telegraphs, and free-form targeting. What that ends up meaning is that while core concepts are going to stay familiar, hopefully the battles themselves will be more involved instead of the usual hotkey macro style many other MMOs seem content with.

Variance in Encounters

WildStar doesn’t want raiding to feel like the slog it usually is, so they’ve done their best to mix things up. Wanting player to look forward to dungeons and raids, Carbine Studios tried to add some random factors to their raids. The devs also wanted the various class abilities to play important roles in specific fights and sequences, which will go a long way in having the players of that class feeling necessary.

Challenge, Achievement, and Progression

The last, and in my opinion, most important part of raiding TT touched on was how challenge mattered. They wanted their raids to be hard, so that when you did manage to clear it, it felt good. You felt like you had come in and kicked this big dude’s butt, and it was tough, and you felt like a badass. And what made me laugh was when TT said they had a meeting that was “Only for experienced raiders” to discuss how their stuff would work, and half the company wound up attending. It’s a good sign for an MMO, no doubt.

Those are all great points, especially the last one. One of the reasons I got sick of a lot of MMOs was raiding felt boring, and started to get the feeling of just being gear check after gear check. And while raiding is stated to be “Not the endgame, just an endgame” for WildStar, if it’s as good as it’s starting to look and sound, I will love it.