Carbine Studios’ WildStar is joining in on the Black Friday celebrations (or sales rampage, whatever one would like to call it) by discounting its Standard and Deluxe Editions by 50 percent.

If you head to the game’s official store, you’ll be able to pick up the Standard Edition for $19.99 and the Deluxe Edition for $27.49. The game is subscription-based though so be prepared to fork over money for that down the road (though there are several alternatives to purchasing game time like CREDD).

The discounts will be running for a short time so grab them while you can. WildStar has already seen several content drops in the past few months with the latest one adding a brand new story for single-player gamers, fixes, new Zones and much more. Let us know what you think of the deal in the comments and stay tuned for more Black Friday discounts in the coming days.

Perhaps that it’s super serious while not asking you to take things so seriously. That and the all-encompassing atmosphere of adventure, raucous animated abandon and pure fun that dictates this all too grave war.

"Playing on the Exile side, you're introduced to a motley set of characters fairly quickly and while they may not immediately captivate you, they grow on you quickly."

Essentially, WildStar is an MMORPG like World of Warcraft, who’s artistic style and gameplay quests you’ll immediately be reminded of. However, WildStar packs so much nuance and identity into its visuals and visualization, with its characters bounding to life from the get-go. You play as either an Exile or Dominion citizen that is engaged in battle with the other side. For the Exiles, this means trying to survive long enough to eventually make it to the surface of Nexus, an indigenous planet full of wild Ravagers and mutant plant life. The objective? Find the ancient technology of The Eldan and put a stop to the Dominion once and for all.

Playing on the Exile side, you’re introduced to a motley set of characters fairly quickly and while they may not immediately captivate you, they grow on you quickly. From there, it’s fighting off the evil Dominion soldiers trying to board your base ship before heading to Nexus, meeting the Elderoot, fighting widespread forest fires, bashing up slave trader cartels and…the list goes on really.

Like any self-respecting MMO, WildStar allows for a variety of classes. You can pick the tough as nails Warrior for maximum sword swinging or dual wield as a Spellslinger. Maybe you like killing stuff with psychokinetic powers? The Esper’s got you covered. Even the Medics in the game aren’t meant to be taken lightly as they can literally microwave an enemy’s insides. Further expanding on these classes, for which you can choose different races (and these races vary depending on which side you choose), there are different Paths to pursue.

Paths are additional missions which lend different benefits to your class – for example, the Soldier path offers the Bailout ability to help you run in the midst of combat. For the less combat minded, there are Paths for discovering new places, setting up different settlements and much more.

"This all sounds fine and dandy but what exactly can you do in WildStar? The real question would be to ask what you can't do."

But what really set WildStar and its varying classes/abilities apart is the combat. Unlike other MMOs, WildStar takes a decidedly dynamic approach to real-time combat with Telegraphs. Each attack you perform has a shaded area that indicates its hit radius. This applies for normal as well and special attacks – any enemies that fall within that area will fall prey to your attacks. Likewise, enemies will have Telegraphs for their own attacks. This is where things get interesting as you can see these Telegraphs and effectively dodge enemy attacks.

These Telegraphs are decidedly complex – it’s not simply a matter of observing and dodging. Sometimes you may need to dodge just so you don’t take the brunt of the attack or the full combo. You can also cancel an enemy’s attacks with knockdowns and grapples, and the Telegraph system tells you just the right time to hit them (you can also adjust your own Telegraphs by holding the ability key down and positioning yourself carefully). It’s an incredibly addictive system that helps alleviate much of the monotony of combat. It also puts battles down to skill as much as statistics – you being more powerful than an enemy will mean nothing if you don’t correctly react to his Telegraphs and take advantage of your own.

This all sounds fine and dandy but what exactly can you do in WildStar? The real question would be to ask what you can’t do. There are story-based Adventures to embark on with friends to amass powerful loot; dangerous Bounties to kill and high-powered bosses to beat; oodles and oodles of side-quests and missions, not including the different Path missions; Hobbies like cooking, crafting and mining which allow you to further customize what your character can create and equip; the ability to customize your own Home Base, which is almost a separate game unto itself; PvP combat; and don’t even get us started on end-game content like the 20-person Raids full of numerous sub-bosses and bosses with Telegraphs for days. Nexus itself comes to life in amazing detail with plenty of lore, information, characters and back-story to explore…or not, if you’re just interested in hitting things. Rest assured there are plenty of things to hit.

"WildStar isn't for everybody but that's only because the MMORPG genre itself isn't for everybody."

The cartoony style of WildStar may turn some players off but compared to the dull, grimy visuals of The Elder Scrolls Online, it’s an excellent aesthetic choice. Mountains and aurora borealis come to life in startling detail with ample particle effects, detailed animations and beautiful character designs. It also fits the adventurous, Treasure Planet-feel of the game – the battles in WildStar are darker than the little forest critters armed with plasma guns will lead on. Even as you scrounge the planet, murdering anything that opposes you, you can’t help but feel that you’re just trespassing on a peaceful planet once inhabited by powerful beings that is all but subject to your petty war.

Enough can’t be said about the game’s soundtrack as well, which goes the full symphonic route and changes dynamically depending on the atmosphere. One moment you could be walking through the woods, collecting fireflies as the forest seemingly sings a little jig, and the next you’re racing to a pounding score, struggling to reach your objective in time.

WildStar isn’t for everybody but that’s only because the MMORPG genre itself isn’t for everybody. This isn’t to say that Carbine Studios’ magnum opus falls prey to too many of the genre’s imperfections though. If anything, it skillfully navigates around them while bringing out their best strengths to deliver a compelling experience. If you’ve always wanted a sprawling online adventure full of loot and pretty locales to do whatever – and we really mean whatever – you please while fighting like a bad-ass in the process, WildStar’s got what you need.

This game was reviewed on PC.

Speaking to OXM, Hines stated that, “We feel like most people such as yourself currently pay that subscription not to pay a game, but to play all games online. So in that sense, when I’m playing Call of Duty online I don’t feel like I’m paying my monthly Xbox Live sub for Call of Duty – I’m just paying it because that’s a thing that I do, and whatever game I’m playing at the time is the one that benefits.

“Having said that, we have been in talks with Microsoft about that very thing, and seeing whether or not there’s any room to change their minds about that, for folks who are only paying The Elder Scrolls Online and don’t want to pay for an Xbox Live Gold subscription, just to pay the Elder Scrolls Online.

“The answer right now is that’s the way it works, but it’s something that we’re aware of and we keep pushing on, to see if there’s something that can be done. We’ll let you know if there’s movement there.”

Now the hilarious part: Why doesn’t The Elder Scrolls Online just go free to play like the majority of MMOs have these days? It’s understandable if they want all the cash from playing the game to go to them rather than Microsoft, though we doubt it could’ve been phrased in the same way.

It’s his strongest and most detailed argument yet.

“Multiplayer online game play is as strong as ever, with an estimated 15 million people spending an average of 10 hours a week playing games such as Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, Halo 3, Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Red Dead Redemption,” he said in a note to investors.

“While downloadable content (DLC) sales have been strong (we estimate that Activision has sold 8m map packs at $15 in the first half of the year), revenues from DLC are insufficient to offset the declines in packaged goods sales resulting from the online multiplayer time vacuum created.

“In our view, it is likely that multiplayer online game play will continue to be offered for free, but we expect the publishers, led by Activision, to devise a way to extract value from consumers who are playing online.

“We estimate that four billion hours of game play have been spent on Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 online multiplayer alone. 20 million game purchasers would have spent around 250 million hours finishing the single player and co-op campaign modes. The incremental 3.75 billion hours spent playing online multiplayer dwarfs this figure, and represents the equivalent of 15 full-game equivalents that were not purchased from any publisher.”

He doesn’t stop there- Pachter believes many of the big titles releasing in 2011 will feature subsciptions in some form or other.

“The premium services that we expect to be monetized are the sale of virtual goods, the opportunity to play in tournaments, the maintenance of achievements, the creation of ladders and leader boards, and access to value-added content,” Pachter added.

“We are not sure which direction that monetization will take, but expect to hear about future plans for charging for premium services some time between this earnings cycle and early 2011. We think that scheduled releases like Call of Duty Black Ops, Medal of Honor and Halo Reach, and unscheduled releases like Grand Theft Auto 5 all will contain the opportunity for gamers to pay more to the publishers. While we don’t think that anyone will be compelled to pay for premium content, we think that it is highly likely that the content will be offered for a fee, and that as a result, fewer hours will be spent playing these games for free than has been spent on their prior versions.”

Critics of Pachter’s theory argue that customers who have become accustomed to years of free console multiplayer will react in horror at the introduction of a new fee-based structure. Even if that is the case, the analyst argues that the model remains sound.

“Charging for premium content is important for two reasons: first, it should drive higher revenues and profits for the publishers who charge; and second, it is likely that the creation of premium content will limit the number of hours spent playing multiplayer games for free, thereby disaggregating a large number of consumers who will likely begin purchasing packaged products again,” he explains.

“At the margin, we expect somewhere around half of the current 15 million online game players to pay something for premium content, and expect the other half to play fewer hours online if the free experience is slightly less robust in the future. Should the 7.5 million people who choose to pay generate only $5.00 per month (around 11.5¢ per hour), publisher revenues and operating profits would increase by $450 million; should the other 7.5 million people purchase only one additional game per year to make up for fewer hours spent online, publisher revenues would grow by another $450 million.”

Pachter then goes on to conclude that the introduction of such fees could actually emerge as the catalyst that lifts gaming out of its current market slump.

“We think that premium online multiplayer content will be the event that turns the negative tide of industry sales around,” he blieves. “In our view, investors value recurring revenue streams far more than those from “hit driven” packaged products sales, and we think that once a premium service is established, likely by Activision, other publishers will quickly follow suit.

“As we said above, we do not think that charges for premium content will be mandatory, and we expect the publishers to continue to provide some form of online multiplayer for free. However, we think that the opportunity to charge something is too great to be overlooked by the publishers for much longer, and we expect to see Activision lead the way by creating a new system some time before the end of the year.”

Despite Pachter’s predictions, Treyarch have denied that there will be any form of fees in Call of Duty Black Ops.

Infinity Ward developer and community manager tweeted;

“For the record, nobody has to pay to play COD or MW2 multiplayer, nor will they.”

This was followed up by a message from Josh Olin, Treyach community boss and developer behind the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops.

“No, you will not have to ‘Pay to Play’ #CODBlackOps Multiplayer either. Rumor -> Squashed.”

This contradicts the video leaked onto Youtube yesterday, which appeared to show a subscription plan for Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, payable by Microsoft Points.

However, the statements do not mention anything about the next generation of the first person shooter.

Famous last words?

A member on 360Junkies posted the video in the site’s forums, and assuming that it is not fake- it does indeed look like we may soon have to pay for the privelige of playing Call of Duty online.

The video appears to show that the subscription will be payed in Microsoft Points on the Xbox.

Update: Video is no longer available.

I was trying to join a friend’s session on MW2 the other day and had this screen pop up. It clearly says at the top of this menu: “Modern Warfare 2 Membersh”, in which we can confidently assume that the last word is “Memberships”. If you’ll notice at the bottom is an option to “Add Microsoft Points”, clearly indicating that this was intended to be a menu for purchasing different levels of Membership, presumably memberships would have been offered in a variety of durations.

The rumor isn’t without basis either- Michael Pachter recently stated that he believes subscription models should be added to online games, with Activision and Call of Duty as the pioneers.

The statements followed after the NPD results released at the beginning of July showed a 6% decrease in video game revenue.

“We think that the overall decline was due to a very large number of people playing multiplayer online games for free on PlayStation Network, and for an annual fee with unlimited game play on Xbox Live,” said Pachter.

It shall remain to be seen how the public react to pay-per-play subscriptions for their favourite online games