WildStar's April Patch Notes are upon us, bringing along hefty changes to the game.

If you're like me and itching for some new WildStar information to sink your teeth into, I may have just the thing to whet your appetite. Starting PAX East week off with a bang, Carbine has released the April WildStar Beta Patch Notes to the public, and there's quite a few interesting bits of information to be seen this time around. While I won't be diving into every individual piece of information scattered across the 71 pages of patch notes, I will hit some of the major highlights players can expect to encounter in this upcoming beta weekend.

Without further delay, let's dive in!

User Interface 2.0

To many player's surprise, back in February Carbine revealed its plans for updating WildStar's User Interface across the board. This change would completely transform the previous clunky and blocky UI into something much more sleek, shiny and customizable. After months of having players rushing in to the game in order to see if their UI had finally acquired its new and improved look, the new UI appropriately dubbed "UI 2.0", will finally be making its way to the game with the April update.

While the arrival of UI 2.0 wasn't a surprise to the players that have been keeping up with the recent WildStar news, there were also a few quality of life changes and additions to come along as well. These include:

• Being able to report-spam by right clicking a message in chat
• Options to toggle cinematic subtitles on/off
• Improved UI responsiveness
• As well as additional bug fixed settings

Character Customization Changes

Changes that players weren't expecting–but rejoiced over all the same–were the updates to character customization. Along with the addition of new hair options, all races and genders now have various body types to choose from. While we don't know the extent of these new body type options just yet, the simple mention of the change itself was enough to make all of Nexus cheer like there's no tomorrow—seriously, I can still hear my Twitter feed going crazy.

If you're asking yourself why the response from this change was so dramatic, it's pretty simple. With WildStar being a new MMO, one of its biggest beta criticisms had to do with the fact that the game didn't offer multiple body types or sliders. With recent titles in the MMO genre, such as Guild Wars 2, The Elder Scrolls Online and Final FantasyXIV: ARR releasing with fairly robust body customization options, it's pretty much become the industry standard. This inevitably led to many players feeling let down by the fact that these options weren't included in WildStar's initial character customization process.

However, with the implementation of these options to the game's character creation with this months patch, one thing is for certain: the devs are listening.

Creatures, Items and Content

Lastly, I'll touch on a few of the other additions and changes, starting with creatures. While most creatures have received some balance passes, spell animation changes, or are simply less buggy overall, the addition of new higher difficulty creatures scattered throughout the world is probably what's going to impact players the most. These higher difficulty encounters will grant larger quest credit and XP to anyone able to go toe-to-toe with these bad boys and survive.

Why is this important? Well, if you think you've got what it takes to tackle these monsters, you can significantly increase the time it takes to complete quests due to the increased quest credit you'll be receiving. However, if you want to play it safe you can always continue going after the "underlings" to fill your quest completion percentage the old fashioned way.

Along with creatures seeing some significant changes, PvE gear, items, Runes and Rune Sets have all received some balance changes. These changes can, and probably will, impact your currently equipped gear, so be sure to review your equipment before heading out into battle or it might not go exactly how you think. Overall these changes serve to balance itemization a bit more and fix a plethora of item-related bugs.

Finally, we have content. A lot of the zones in the game are seeing some major changes to creature spawn times, quest tracking, bug fixes, as well as changes to improve "zone flow" for clearer starting zone navigation. Additionally, for those level 50 players in beta, the attunement quest line that enables players to get their "Security Clearance" for the 20-man Raid, "Genetic Archives", is now available for testing. For beta testing purposes, players will still have access to the 20-man instance even if they have not received their Security Clearance; however the devs encourage players to help test this epic questline.

To begin the attunement quest for Genetic Archives, you'll need to head to your capital city upon reaching level 50.

As usual, Carbine is not holding any punches when it comes to updating WildStar's beta. There are still plenty of patch notes go over, so if you're interested in seeing additional changes on things such as class balancing, housing changes, guilds and other information, be sure to view the full list of patch notes here. As always, keep it locked to ZAM for more WildStar news, updates and information.

I'll see you on Nexus!

Corey "Cyglaive" Jenkins

Follow Corey on Twitter @Cyglaive