Wildstar is in open beta now until the 18th. You should just go grab it right now. Seriously go start the download now and then come back and finish reading this post when you’re done. I’ll wait.

Okay is it downloading? Good.

I got access to Wildstar a long long time ago when it was still ridiculously early. Even at that stage of the game I knew it was awesome. It was so awesome in fact that I decided to stop playing it. I decided that the game was so good I wanted to save it. I knew anything I did at the time would get wiped out and I’d lose all my progress. Even then I would jump in every couple months just to see how it was shaping up. I was constantly impressed.

As a person who tends to play games for the art I just want to eat this game with a knife and fork. It’s so goddamned beautiful I can hardly believe it. It has style piled on top of style. That by itself would probably be enough to carry me through months of play but it’s also crazy fun. They have a really slick take on MMO combat that includes a lot of movement and skill shots. It’s a fun game to “play” and that’s not always something you can say about an MMO.

The only bad thing is that the open beta has shown me that my aging Alienware gaming laptop just isn’t going to cut it for Wildstar. I think computer years function something like dog years. I’m not sure of the exact multiplier but a 4 or 5 year old machine is essentially ancient. I also have my Surface Pro which is a kick ass little laptop/tablet. In fact just recently I drew the entire Hearthstone comic on it while sick in bed. It is amazing for drawing and it’s a decent gaming machine. I can play WOW on it, and even LoL. It will run a lot of stuff surprisingly well for such a tiny machine. It will even sort of do Wildstar at the lowest settings but that’s not how I want to play Wildstar. This game is pretty and I want to see it on a big screen running with all the bells and whistles jacked up to 11. I’m a laptop guy though and so I am on the hunt for a gaming laptop that will give me the Wildstar experience I’m after as well as set me up to play all the other cool PC games on the horizon. I’ve had good luck with Alienware computers in the past but the new Razer Blade Pro is damn sexy.

If you have experience with either of these or something else I should know about please shoot me an email. I’d love to hear some personal recommendations.

-Gabe out