WildStar Casual Friday with Chad Moore
This was originally posted on QueueTimes on 12 October 2015. It is being re-posted here to archive the work I have done in case the original website ever shuts down.
Lore is the foundation of every awesome game experience that you ever have. If you ain’t got lore, you ain’t got nothin’. – Chad “Pappy” Moore, October 9, 2015
On Friday October 9th, the Wildstar Casual Friday stream focused on Chad “Pappy” Moore going around and playing a bit on his Dominion toon, with Micah Whipple asking him questions about lore, and questions posed in the Twitch chat. Before this, however, Chris Thomas (@CRB_Buiden on Twitter), Lead Software Engineer, came on for a short time to give an update on the server stability issues that were plaguing the game at launch.
Chris said that while the game is getting more people, the additional servers have been helping a great deal. There have been no real queues since Wednesday, and the reports of lag are decreasing significantly. The extra realms are still just temporary relief for queues, lag, and helping to squash any bugs currently being found, and are helping the Developers get close to the stability and play experience that they want everybody to have.
Chris could only stay for a few minutes as he is still very busy trying to keep everything up and running well, but Pappy wanted to give a big “hats off” to the engineering team, “who’s really stepped up and gotten it done in the past week”.
Micah asked Chris when he planned on merging the servers. Chris replied that they definitely still plan to do so, but they don’t want to put a timer on it, yet. The goal at the moment is to provide a great play experience for everybody in the stability department, and make sure that this stability does not change when the servers merge together. As such, once they feel they reach this point, the servers will merge back together.
An FAQ was also launched recently on the WildStar Knowledge Base on how to remove Two Factor Authentication without Customer Service. While the article was mentioned on the stream, it was not mentioned that if you do remove the authenticator from your account, you will lose the bonuses attached to it (the free mount and XP bonus). Before leaving, Chris let everyone know that if you have lag, or are running into other bugs, it’s important for you to report these so things so they can be taken care of ASAP.
After Chris left, Pappy transitioned to the Casual Stream by stating that he was, “going to show you what an actual player does!”, picking on Micah for having only a low-level toon. Pappy was playing a female Mechari Stalker who was currently level 23 out in Auroria. He was about to jump into war with the Osun at the Fort Glory quest hub. Pappy had decided to roll up a Dominion toon because it was finally time to, “go out and take care of business”.
Micah posed various questions from the chat to Pappy throughout the stream, including the following exchange regarding his Vindball shirt:
Micah: Can we buy your t-shirt?
Pappy: This t-shirt is actually a limited edition 2009 Whitevale Walatusks Special Vindball Champions shirt from back in the day.
Micah: What is Vindball?
Pappy: A sport played on Nexus that may or may not actually become a reality at some point in the future.
Micah: By reality you mean…?
Pappy: I don’t know what I mean but that’s all I’m going to say about it!
Since Pappy was questing in the Osun area, Micah asked Pappy a bit about the lore of the Osun themselves. As you’re questing, you will find that the Osun were a creation of the Eldan, and something catastrophic happened to their civilization long ago. However, now that people are showing up on Nexus, they are coming out of hiding and trying to reclaim their civilization and their ancient secrets. Which we, the players, will need to stop or else things could get bad.
A viewer asked if it was possible to cure soulrot. Pappy answered that soulrot can be cured, although it is extremely difficult to do so, and most of the time it’s not something you can come back from. For those that didn’t know what soulrot was, Pappy explained it as an elixir created by the Osun Dark Witches to enslave the people they conquer, which you will run across multiple times throughout the course of the game.
In the spirit of banter (and probably just to give Pappy a hard time) Micah pointed out at this time Pappy had failed his challenge and “didn’t even get Bronze”, and Pappy argued that he was distracted by answering questions and talking about lore.
Other questions in the stream included the following.
Q: Are there any plans on future content?
A: They can’t announce that on stream, but they do have some planned events coming up. There is the Hoverboard zPrix Invitational coming up on October 21st, which may or may not line up with a date from a film intentionally. Pappy exclaimed, “It was just a coincidence that it just happens to be the same time!” There is no Thanksgiving event this year, and no current plans to do so, however any holiday could be turned into a game personification if there was enough interest in it. Micah also mentioned that Shade’s Eve is coming up starting on October 19th, and there were other events going on that you could find at the article on their website.
Q: When can I play as a Lopp?
A: Pappy said that he honestly never thought that the Lopp would have become as popular as they have been. He wants to personally have a Kurg mount so that he can hardcore RP his own Lopp Fur Trader vibe. Pappy also encouraged viewers to start a #KurgMount movement on social media, because he knows some people that might be able to, “make it happen”.
Q: Are there Aurin scratching posts?
A: Pappy wanted to know if the viewer was asking because “you’re an Aurin, or because you’re Dominion and trying to put the Aurin down?”
Q: Are you playing on a PvP or PvE server?
A: Pappy replied, “I don’t want that PvP stuff to get in the way of my story!”
Q: Which Lore is cooler–Exile or Dominion?
A: Pappy admitted that he thought Dominion lore is cooler, if he had to choose between just the two factions. “It’s super deep, if you really dig into it, it ties the story of Nexus together.”
Q: Are male Aurins the flashier of the sexes to attract mates?
A: Pappy said that Aurin males are the more hot-headed of the genders. The female Aurin are more of the, “Hey, let’s chill out and hang and have fun and be positive” while the males are more “OCD”. Male Aurins like to puff up their chests a little bit. He concluded that, “yeah, they might be a little bit like that”. Pappy himself has never played an Aurin male, though he does have an Aurin female Esper he got to about level 3. He mainly plays Granok Males for “obvious reasons”.
Some more banter ensued between Micah and Pappy, and various notes popped up during this banter.
- They have new plans to feature the Cryoplex Arena SOON™. The arena itself is currently out, however they’ve made some changes to it, and the new “actual” version will be ready in a future patch.
- Pappy feels that Kurtenacker is the most talented composer “maybe in the entire world, but definitely in the business”. There are more than nine hours of original music in WildStar, and you hear it all the time. Lots of players have mentioned that WildStar is the only game where they “leave the music on” because it’s just so inspiring, and every zone is so different.
- Pappy explained what Tales Keys were as he picked one up. They are pieces of lore for in-game “pulp novels” called Tales From Beyond the Fringe that are all about the “cool stories that have taken place in the WildStar universe”. You can collect these throughout the world, and they all have custom covers done by the “super-awesome-super-talented concept team”. They also unlock posters in your housing decor.
Jeff Kurtenacker happened to be in-house, so he was brought onto the stream. He talked about how he loved writing and continuing the write music for the game, because it was such a diverse universe. “Where else can you write quirky user salesman car music versus epic space themes?” Jeff asked.
Pappy and Micah both had questions for Jeff, and Jeff provided some pretty interesting answers.
Q: What are some of the musical inspirations of Auroria and the Osun?
A: Jeff described the Osun theme as a lot of big, low brass. It’s slow and lumbering with lots of trombones and tubas, and meant to be powerful and dark when you encounter the Osun for the first time.
Q: When you’re creating music, are there any other ways to layer it depending on the situation?
A: Jeff explained there will be times when the Osun and Eldan themes get merged together that kind of depends on what’s happening based on the lore. The Eldan theme does appear in the Osun theme because they were created by the Eldan. Using crossover themes and weaving themes together from a lore standpoint is important to tell the stories musically. To tell where they came from. Jeff joked he also does this, “just to make sure I don’t get fired!” He also mentioned that the Mechari have Eldan themes woven into their music.
Q: Tell us about the Shade’s Eve music?
A: Jeff admitted that the Shade’s Eve music was one of the most fun things he’s ever worked on, especially since he got to express his “Inner Danny Elfman”, because The Nightmare Before Christmas is one of this favorite movies. He was able to take the Dominion and Exile themes and make them sort of “Halloween-i-fied”, which was a “real, fun challenge”. He was also able to give Shade’s Eve its own theme, so that the capital cities get their own music, and the actual Shade’s Eve Instance gets its own music. Jeff explained that it was fun to do something “different, creepy, and quirky” which isn’t something he gets to do very often.
Playtesting one of the new zones incoming to #WildStar My engineer pet is still a better tank then @Pappylicious pic.twitter.com/1xKemugqwF
— Dapperdon (@DapperDonatelli) October 8, 2015
The stream wrapped up with one final question for Jeff on what he’s been working on lately. He mentioned “Donatelli’s leaky tweet” where he posted a screenshot of “something he shouldn’t have”. He’s been creating some music for that that’s “mysteriously beautiful with dissonant tones,” and mentioned that “if you like the music from Farside”, which he described as spacey and ambinet, that you are “going to like this, because it’s like [Farside] but with a little more adventure.”