Finally back on terra firma, Gareth Harmer shares his experience of a weekend with WildStar.

Their large dimensions and sizeable hitpoint count made the Thundercall an ideal early-dungeon foe. It was simple to position and control them, with their telegraphed attacks easy to spot (and avoid). Too slow at moving? Here’s some savage damage to make you pay attention. That always felt like the trash mob lesson – straightforward enough to deal with, but get cocky and it’ll slap you.

Trash packs are fine, but it’s the main attractions that I was really looking forward to. There we were, first dungeon, first, boss, expecting to get pounded into the ground. The Invoker was standing proud in the center of a group of four Channelers, mocking our feeble efforts. We could have looked around, examined the room and planned ahead a little, but that’s not what actually happened. Instead we charged in, full of bravado, smacking steel and spells straight into the Invoker.

You might think you’ve seen telegraphs before, on those nice simple videos that Carbine has put out. They don’t prepare you for a boss that’s dishing out several different shapes that change over three phases of combat, or where attacks shift between him and his minions. I needed to adapt quickly, spot the rhythm, and dance. One moment I’d be standing tall to unload the big guns, another time I’d be dodging out of the way of spherical static charges or leaping into a green telegraph to suck up some healing.

For all his disco floor tricks, The Invoker was slowly brought down and we were victorious. And that was just the first of three bosses waiting in Stormtalon’s Lair.

That wasn’t the only first I managed to try out during Arkship. To the glee of Lead PvP Designer Jen Gordy, we were also going to have the world’s first WildStar PvP Tournament, featuring the Frontier Brawl Arena. This 3 versus 3 cage fight is filled with walls and other line-of-sight obstacles to let you get the jump on your opponents. That’s literally the case sometimes – a few of the walls are short enough to leap over with a double jump, as long as your timing is good.

Frontier Brawl itself is a twist on the traditional arena match. Instead of having the best of three bouts where the winner of each is the team left standing, Brawl gives each team six respawn lives. When a team member dies, he re-joins the match almost immediately but uses up a respawn life doing so. Run out of lives and your team stop respawning. It keeps the action flowing over a longer match, but there’s also a bit of ebb and flow – kill an enemy healer, and you’ve got a small window of opportunity to really capitalize on it. I also like that there’s a quick route to failure – an overwhelming team will win quickly, instead of matches dragging on for a fixed time.

The grey metal backgrounds of the arena bowl meant that potential targets really pop up in your vision, while telegraphs are cleanly displayed on the arena floor. It meant that combat tended to be tight and scrappy – it’s almost impossible to run out of someone’s field of vision without having some kind of sprint or teleport. The mix of walls also made line-of-sight play easy, with sneaky healers tucking behind a corner as their teammates carved up the opposition.

As the crowds gathered during the tournament, I also realized that the telegraph system makes WildStar PvP, great as a spectator sport. With game producer Stephan Frost providing commentary from the floor, it became easy to follow the tactics and plays as each arena bout played out. And while Jen Gordy has confirmed that full spectator modes aren’t likely to make it for launch, I’d argue that the game is already very watchable.

If anything though, WildStar’s Arkship is about the fans - meeting the people behind those forum nicknames can be the best part of any gathering. Listening to the founders of WildStar Roleplay as they shared their character plans, almost giddy with enthusiasm about the tidbits of lore that they’d managed to pry out of a developer. Debating class theory with some of the members of WildStar Central, while the developers themselves listened in with enigmatic smiles. Hearing the tales of when gamers first discovered WildStar and what attracted them to the world of Nexus.

But don’t just take my word for it – several other attendees have also shared their stories of Arkship. Carbine has also shared a mammoth Facebook gallery of the weekend’s events - just look at the number of machines set up and ready to play! With everything that went on during the three days we were there, stories are likely to be traded for some time.

For now though, the show must go on. Closed beta continues to roll in the US and is promised to arrive soon in the EU. More shows and expos are likely to fill up our calendar – I’m optimistic for a return to Gamescom this year. And then there’s launch, planned for later in 2013, where we can finally dive into the game and explore Nexus for real. I can hardly wait for that date to come around.

Gareth “Gazimoff” Harmer, Senior Contributing Editor