WildStar uses the bold colours of Warcraft, but layers on the cartoony excess even more heavily

WildStar is a game about controlling a fantasy character (though actually, the troubled world of Nexus is one of both magic and high technology, its former rulers the Eldan having departed in mysterious circumstances) from a third-person perspective in an online world full of other players, fighting angry monsters in the hope of experience points and loot, and pressing number keys to activate special attacks.

Yep, tropes are tropes. It's also a game that offers you a theoretically profoundly different experience and even a different vision of itself, depending if you gravitate towards fighting, exploring, collecting or socialising.

If you're the kind of MMO player who couldn't give a hoot for world lore, nosing around distant caves or building communities, WildStar reckons you'll want to tread the path of Combat. Pick this one and your character, no matter their race or class, will be able to activate Horde Holdouts scattered across the world. 

Focusing in on this sort of combat is one of a handful of genuinely pinchable ideas that WildStar has added to the standard MMO design, in fact. That's how this sub-set of games often seems to evolve: you get new fiction, new lore, and new heroes each time, but what really matters are the little quirks. Nobody really dares deviate from the Warcraft template too much unless they're planning something really drastic or niche, so games become defined by the neat touches and clever embellishments. A stronger emphasis on telegraphing templates to add an extra spatial zing to battles? That sounds smart, and it turns out to be a good idea. Elsewhere, now that WildStar's lurching towards a 2013 release, we're starting to see other tweaks, too. Alongside the introduction of 'paths', a system that sees you picking a playstyle as well as a class and race and faction - focusing on exploration, say, or social stuff - PvPers can look forward to something called Warplots, which brings other games' housing systems into the mix in huge shared battlegrounds where groups can really put their stamp on their surroundings. That sounds pretty smart too, as does the plan to provide regular - monthly, hopefully - story content updates for end-gamers who have hit the level cap.

WildStar uses the bold colours of Warcraft, but layers on the cartoony excess even more heavily. The development team at Carbine describes the game as being "high personality" above all else, and in an area like this you can really see what they mean. Deradune's all savannahs and cliffs, golden grasses giving way to fat honey-coloured crags. The trees have wide canopies supported by trunks that trail and bunch like tentacles, and the buildings resemble exotic glass bottles flung into the sand of some day-dreamed beach.