Lone Star: Soloing Wildstar (Part 1)

Please note this is not a review diary or any form of critique. Another writer will be providing such things for us very soon. This is me bimbling about in Wildstar on my lonesome and sharing my experiences in character. That said, one piece of critique - I'm skipping all mention of what I got up to in the over-long and extremely dull tutorial.

My name is Ambus. I am a malevolent one-eyed rat-thing which students of alternative universes have cryptically described as the ugly result of a cross-breeding experiment between a Warhammer Skaven and a Warcraft Gnome. I wield two pistols and some basic magic, and while I look as though I could be crushed by a medium-sized cat, it seems I am feared. I am considered dangerous, feral, untrustworthy. If you like, but right now all I care about is finding a new pair of trousers.

I scan the canyons and scorpion warrens and warbot factories that sprawl out ahead of me. Here be trousers, I just know it. All my other clothes glow softly with gentle mystical infusions, but my trousers are oh-so-plain. I shall fight, endlessly, until my short, squat, hairy legs are clad in a finer cloth.

Time passes in a dizzying blur. My communicator sounds again and again, like a smartphone whose user hasn't turned off Twitter notifications, announcing challenges offered and completed, targets to hunt, mountains to climb, warbot factories to demolish, hidden caves to tumble into, messages from an unseen man who keeps calling me 'cupcake.'

This place of islands and canyons is locked in war without end, but hell, it's a theme park. Every time I set out to do something, I find myself distracted by three other things I ran into en route. Maybe theme park is wrong - anti-boredom concentration camp says it better. I WILL ENJOY MYSELF AND I WILL NOT RUN OUT OF THINGS TO DO AND BIG NOISY THINGS WILL HAPPEN AROUND ME.

No arguments here, especially because so far I haven't had to talk to anyone else for any of this to happen. I'm a lone wolf, baby. A lone rat-thing, anyway. I skip through chaos at my own distracted rate, as my attention ping-pongs wildly between mass giant spider genocide and scouring cliffsides for secret thoroughfares. I can double-jump, I can dash, I can take out up to five spiders/scorpions/warbots/miscellaneous men-with-guns at once. I'm a tiny little death machine. I even took out a 100 foot tall mutanty-bot-thing, but mysteriously it wasn't much tougher than your average man-with-gun.

It's almost as if someone wanted me to immediately feel good about myself, rather than like a puny servant miserably squashing rats (real rats, rather than impressively destructive, double-jumping talking rat-things like me. I feel no kinship with my scuttling relatives. I'd kill a rat if I had to, but I'm relieved I haven't had to). It sort of works, but I also feel like a kid who's just realised that his dad is letting him win at Connect-4. Yeah, get me out of these training grounds, I'm ready for some real toughening up, dammit. If you're going to throw a 100-foot tall robo-mutant at me, I really want it to take my face off.

I have to admit, I found quite a few pairs of trousers in the end. They didn't make me look any more mighty, but I could tell they were a little bit magic. I'm happy with even entry-level magic trousers, me. I found gloves too. A shirt or two, I think. No hats yet, which is extremely disappointing. Hey, at least I have an overriding purpose again. Hat-quest is on.