From Esper to Medic
I enjoyed playing my Dominion Esper quite a bit, but once I reached 50 I decided it was time to make an alt and see how the Exiles play. It didn’t take long to fall in love with them. I’ve been leveling up a human medic this time around, and I’m just about level 50 on her too. It’s easy to see why some people may prefer Exiles to Dominion, but I think in the end I like both factions. I know there’s always a lot of discussion surrounding Exiles being more popular due to the Aurin race, but so far I haven’t made one. Maybe a future alt.
The medic class is a lot of fun. I’ve kept to a pretty simple DPS spec and I’ll branch into a healing spec when I’m level 50. I’ve been questing my way through Malgrave, which is a neat zone but unfortunately the regional story bugged for me so I can’t complete it. On Monday morning I didn’t have any of the lag issues that had plagued the release, and I managed to get a few more levels. The guild experience buff isn’t showing up on my buff icon for some reason, and I miss being able to get the buff from my housing plot. I also need to figure out how to revamp my housing plot now that they’re larger. Everything is pretty bunched up in the center and I’ll need to fix that. I do like the larger plots, but wish the fabkits you place were a bit more spread throughout.
One change that came with the F2P launch that I’m simply not a fan of is the change to Challenges. These used to be little mini events that you would do and then get a chance at a random item. The basic idea of the challenge is still there, the mini events, but now when you complete them you earn an amount of points that move up a line and unlock a specific goodie bag of your choice. Once you’ve unlocked three of the smaller goodie bags via points, you get to unlock a larger one. Gone are the awesome random prizes that we used to get a chance at winning, and instead there are three very drab choices. Aside from experience and achievements, I don’t see that big of a reason to complete these challenges any more. There’s no ‘good’ prizes, and I can certainly find better elsewhere.
Not all games get a second launch, and I think it’s a mistake to see WildStar as “just releasing”. Yes, everyone is working incredibly hard to get the issues taken care of, but treating it as a “new game launch” is ignoring the fact that the game has already been released, charging people to play, in the state it was in. I don’t expect people to be quite as patient with the issues that are occurring now and I think it’s understandable that folks would be frustrated. Of course how you demonstrate that frustration is another story. It’s not a reason to go out and treat people poorly, especially when they’re working incredibly hard. Just something to keep in mind.
As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!