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Carbine's Chad Moore on WildStar's fresh focus on lore

Sure, you could make some jokes about corresponding events, but that just seems like a series of cheap shots.

There's a big focus on WildStar's lore recently. Aside from the big lore drops, dubbed "Loremageddon" by Carbine Studios, the game's official site has begun releasing a series of short stories detailing important moments in the game's history, from the first space voyage of the Cassian people to dealing with the Genesis Prime now. That's a lot of storytelling, the sort that should be continuing on well into next year.

We had a chance to sit down and ask a few questions of creative director Chad Moore regarding what we've seen thus far for the game and what the goals are with this renewed focus on the game's setting and story. If you'd like to know a little more about the setting and what players can expect from the ongoing history lesson, check out the interview just past the break. There's also a new story available today detailing the first contact between the Cassians and the Eldan.



People of wherever, we come to you in... um... hey, Lou.  Was this one of the planets we came to make peace with or conquer?  I forgot to double-check the list.

Massively: Is the lore revealed in these stories meant to tie directly into the events currently occurring in-game, or just to elaborate on the events players are already familiar with?

Chad Moore: These stories will serve both purposes. First, they will offer completely new stories that have never been released -- Voyage of the Nomad is an example of this. Second, they will offer additional details about stories that we have already talked about in the past, such as in our second installment, Rise of the Cassians. All of them have relevance to the game itself, whether in existing content or in content that we will be releasing in the future.

How much lore material is written that players haven't yet seen?

Quite a bit, actually. The story of the Nomad has existed in our lore for quite a long time, but we are just now releasing it to the public. As you might imagine, there is a lot of lore in our archives that will become important and relevant as the story of WildStar progresses, and we're looking forward to releasing it when the time is right.

Faster-than-light travel has been explained, but how reliable is faster-than-light communication? If someone on Nexus has an urgent message for those on Cassus, is there an alternative to just flying back?

Until the formation of the Dominion, communication between the far-flung reaches of the galaxy was limited by the same physical laws that defined sub-lightspeed travel. But the Eldan shared technology with the Cassians that made instantaneous communication across the stars possible, and in time that technology spread throughout the rest of the galaxy. Now such technology is taken for granted, although few individuals actually understand how it works. As far as the technical details? Sounds like a good Loremageddon question.

It seems like Dominion technology hasn't advanced much since the voyage of the Nomad; is the empire technologically stagnant, or are the advances simply ones that aren't immediately obvious to observers?

Taking the previous question into account, I think that there have been many major advances in technology that have happened since the time of the Nomad. Teleportation technology would be one good example, as is the nano-technology utilized by Stalkers. And of course, the Chua have been instrumental in developing military (and other hyper-destructive) technology that far exceeds the capabilities of the pre-Dominion Cassians.

There's a long gap between the story of uplifting the Chua and the war on Gnox; was it simply an uneventful period of the Dominion's history?

This was a time when the empire was in a state of expansion and development, both from a military standpoint and a technological standpoint. The Chua served as a catalyst for developing the technological infrastructure that would allow the Dominion to claim and conquer worlds and then utilize their resources for further imperial growth. I see it as a time when the empire really came into its own.



Darn it, I told them to remove the ravenous undead monster sequence before this drug went on the market!  Wait, no, I didn't.  I meant to tell them.

The loose outlines of events have been known by players since launch; what is the team hoping to improve with more stories focused around the game's history?

A lot of the information in these stories was presented in the months leading up to launch, which means that new players who come to WildStar would never have been able to enjoy it. My hope with both the Loremageddon initiative and the interactive timeline was to create a permanent home for our lore, presented in a compelling way that can be enjoyed by both new players and old. My feeling is that this kind of content is vital to building and maintaining a thriving community. As a company, we are focused on that.

At a schedule of release every two weeks, the stories should wrap up in mid-April. Anything particularly special about that timeframe?

Nothing to speak of. There will be a lot of new content that we will be releasing next year, and these stories are just one facet of that. For me, they represent a great way to keep our community engaged as the game evolves. I look forward to sharing the rest of them.

Thank you for your time!

When readers want the scoop on a launch or a patch (or even a brewing fiasco), Massively goes right to the source to interview the developers themselves. Be they John Smedley or Chris Roberts or anyone in between, we ask the devs the hard questions. Of course, whether they tell us the truth or not is up to them!