Earlier today, Mike Donatelli posted the second part of WildStar's State of the Game, an update to the previous version we saw two weeks ago. In the second State address, Donatelli expands upon WildStar's upcoming Ultra Drop and what to expect in it. Not only is this address full of drop details, but there is a good deal of changes coming to WildStar as a whole, which Donatelli goes over. I'm going to go over some of this, as well, but with my own dumb opinionated slant on it. Does anyone find it interesting that Donatelli never mentions the name of Drop 3 in either State of the Game?

The Mystery of the Genesis Prime (that's the name of Drop 3, according to the PTR notes, that Donatelli doesn't seem to mention) will bring two new chapters to the world story for players to experience, which includes solo content, 5-man group content, and 20-man public quests. With this comes a whole lot more lore, which includes brand new cinematics and fully-voiced quests. Reading the lore paragraph sounds like Carbine put a ton of ambition into this drop, which makes it being held back understandable. Players will also have plenty of “new datacubes, quests, collectibles and places to discover.”

The second point on how the game is changing for the better isn't exactly something I agree with: “We’re making edits to lower levels (6 – 14) like adding rental mount vendors for low level zones and adding more runecrafting stations and lesser runes to increase player power and decrease levelling time during the early hours.” Having the option to get from the main town to a quest hub half way across the zone isn't a bad thing. You get there faster, rather than hitting autorun and tabbing out for five minutes. Introducing runecrafting earlier seems like a waste of money to me. At these earlier levels, you're switching out gear with nearly every quest hand-in, so why would you bother runing your items? You're wasting materials, resources, and cash, which makes runecrafting early on just a greater money sink. Maybe Lewis can correct me here, since I haven't played WildStar in close to a month.

I do like their first point, though: “With this new update, you can now skip the tutorial in case you’re rolling alts but don’t want to sit through stuff you’re already familiar with.” The Arkships have been one of WildStar's largest criticisms, as many people feel they are dull new player experiences. When you've gone through the content a few times, it's a mindnumbing experience. I can breeze through either faction's Arkship area without much thought now. Another part that has me jumping for joy is: “More gold will be rewarded for activities at the lower levels, giving players more currency to play with, buying new housing items, gear and other fancy doodads.” Because who enjoys deciding between buying a new ability or buying maintenance for your garden?

The final point made gave me a bit of false hope when I began reading the statement. I love housing in WildStar, but I'm not sure this is something I would use or even want: “Housing will also be getting a great new feature, as now players will be able to not only remodel their home but also the music that plays on their housing plots.” This reminds me of the late 90s when having autoplay music on your Angelfire-hosted personalized webpage was all the rage. I hated it. I was in a guild once and our guild master put autoplay music on the front page. He thought it was neat and used a lot of exclaimation points to tell us about it. The rest of us disagreed. He thought it was the choice of music. I hate autoplay anything, and I resent Steam for making me need to futz with my browser settings because they're stuck in 1999. Other highlighted points from the address include:

  • We’re also adjusting ELO matching, decreasing the amount of rating you and your party loses after being defeated.
  • We’re updating the rune system by giving the ability to unlock and reroll slots, and making some tweaks to the randomness of drops.
  • We’re reducing dye costs as well, meaning that players will get more opportunities to utilize the dye system and customize their character.

From today's press release that accompanied Donatelli's post, the Mystery of the Genesis Prime will have:

  • New Content – Level 50 players can experience 2 zones, the Defile (Mystery of the Genesis Prime) and Datascape (Journey to OMNIcore-1).
  • New Lore – As players make their way through the new zones they will unearth lore in the form of new datacubes, quests, collectibles and places to discover.
  • New Features and Improvements – Carbine has included some key improvements, including tutorial skips, edits to lower level, greater gold rewards and more!
  • Bug Fixes and Tweaks – The next update will include plenty of bug fixes for issues the fans have been asking for. Fixes include major housecleaning to areas like UI, balancing, game performance, tradeskills, housing, adventures and much more.

In closing, Donatelli invites anyone who wants to know exactly what is coming with Drop 3 to see the one hundred pages of notes posted to the PTR forums. The Mystery of the Genesis Prime is currently available for testing.


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our WildStar Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

About The Author

Vendolyn's been playing MMOs since 1999, although Vendolyn in-game often becomes a long-term shelved alt. When she's not gaming, she's likely marathoning some questionable TV show or babbling about music to no end. She really likes goats.

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