"All good things must come to an end, which doesn't speak very well of your character"
-Gravekeeper

I'm gonna miss you WildStar.

OVERVIEW
Pros: Dungeons, Raids, Combat, Housing, Roleplaying, Battlegrounds, Class Balance/Diversity, Cash Shop

Cons: Leveling**, Crafting, Relatively small player base, Lack of fulfilling open-world content

This is my first srs review so apologies if formatting is horrible or it just turns into a bunch of rambling.
I’m going to try breaking the game down into the parts I think most people look at when deciding if this game is for them. I have been playing since beta and have poked around in just about everything, but most of my experience is in dungeons and raids. If you're someone who is looking to get into group PvE content, this is the game for you!
Seriously, there is nothing better out there in terms of combat, dungeon, and raid quality. If you can find a progression guild that fits you, you are going to have a ton of fun. Anyways, here we go!

CASH SHOP
tl;dr: No P2W, can acquire 100% of the items in the cash shop without spending a dime

Probably one of the best F2P models we have available right now. All items are cosmetic/convenience like costumes, character slots, bank slots, mounts, etc. As you play, you’ll build gain currency called Omnibits, which can be used to purchase anything in the store you would otherwise have to use real money on. There is a weekly limit to the amount of Omnibits you can acquire, but it is something like the equivalent of $10 that you get for just playing the game! Additionally, the you can get the subscription benefits which includes things like increased XP, Omnibits dropped, currency gained…by purchasing C.R.E.D.D. from players off the market using platinum (like gold but better!).

CLASSES
tl;dr: Hurray for balance!

My first thought when trying out a new MMO is ‘what do I want to play and is it actually going to be viable’. Fortunately, class balance is pretty darn good! If you read up on a class and it sounds fun, you can be sure that you can top those dps charts/hold aggro/keep the party alive just as good as anyone else.

LEVELING
tl:dr: It gets better I promise!

Leveling really isn’t Wildstar’s strong suit, and for most it’ll probably feel like a chore and a grind. Due to population levels, you probably shouldn’t expect to see sub-50 instance queues to be popping in any meaningful time, and for the most part expect leveling to be a solo experience. Fortunately, leveling is also pretty fast and it isn’t too hard to hit the cap in a few days, especially with friends.

**Edit: Steam release has brought quite a few more new players in than I was expecting so if you're just starting out, there is a good chance your leveling experience won't feel so empty after all!

DUNGEONS
tl;dr: Find a group of people to learn dungeons with and it’ll be the best thing ever

Now we’re talking! Dungeons were what sold me on the game when I started playing and if you manage to get into one while leveling you’ll probably see why. Dungeons have two modes: normal and veteran. Normal is just the sub-50 version where players are scaled (somewhat poorly) to match its level and the encounters are a bit easier with more forgiving/missing mechanics than you would find in the veteran versions. Veteran dungeons are where most of the action is at. Sadly, there has been a fair amount of power creep and it’s pretty easy to just steamroll everything and bypass all the fun mechanics with high enough gear. There are enough players out there that are still new to dungeons though that it shouldn’t be too hard to put a group together and experience it in all its glory.

RAIDS
tl;dr: Like dungeons, but better! And new raid releasing soon so we can all learn together \o/

Like I said, I’ve been around since beta and have even been in the same guild this entire time. And yet, despite being a raiding guild, we still haven’t downed the final boss in Datascape. This isn’t necessarily because we’re all terrible players (okay maybe a little), but raids are hard! In the good way! There are lots of other guilds out there who *have* cleared everything and are just waiting around for the next raid to release, but progression guilds still very much exist and if you can find one that matches up well with your schedule, you’re in for a lot of fun. And pain.

PVP
tl;dr: Mostly just battlegrounds, relatively balanced, usually limited to certain days and times

World PvP might happen here and there but is definitely not something you’ll see that often. Battlegrounds are where the bulk of the PvP is at, though even those tend to require coordination on queue times to get consistent matches. Arenas happen on something like 1 or 2 days a week through coordinated efforts. Warplots are even less common but tend to happen on same nights as battlegrounds if there are enough people.

HOUSING
tl;dr: Did I really just spend the last 6 hours on this plushie mountain?

This is something I personally have trouble getting into due to having the creativity of a piece of cardboard. For those more artistically minded however, you can create just about anything you set your mind to and make it look awesome. There is also a variety of ‘plugs’ you can install that serve as little minigames or instances with their own unique rewards, or teleporters to your favorite zone/raid, or your own garden because you can never have too much Heartichoke.

EXPEDITIONS AND ADVENTURES
tl;dr: Fun to see/experience, but no tangible benefit to doing them

Expeditions are basically solo instances that you can do while leveling and have a veteran version at lv 50 as well. Adventures are also available as you level and have veteran equivalents, but are notably easier than dungeons. I grouped these together because aside from running them a few times just to see it for fun (and they definitely can be fun!), there isn’t really much point to them. At one point, the progression path looked something like Expeditions->Adventures->Dungeons->Raids. But today you can jump into the open world content like Arcterra or world bosses and get gear that blows anything you’d get from expeditions/adventures out of the water.

OPEN WORLD
tl;dr: Large amount of content with (mostly) low replayability

Once you hit 50 you have quite a few new open world zones/objectives available to you. You have your standard daily zones for gold, some zones that feel a lot like leveling zones but are more story driven, a constant event-driven zone that gives some decent gear and gold, some events that happen every hour or couple hours that tend to require a raid to complete, and there is usually a group somewhere farming items to summon world bosses which gives the best pre-raid gear. It is actually quite a bit of content available but I still consider open world to be a con in this game. Most of it is enjoyable for the first round or two, but things get a bit repetitive after a while. As a result, most of the open world players stick to farming world bosses and keep the event-driven zone going, with other time-based events going largely ignored.

CRAFTING
tl;dr: Armor/weapon crafting largely unnecessary. Consumable crafting remains viable but unrewarding.

Most of the new content that gets added seems to make it easier and easier to get solid gear, and as a result the crafting professions that produce gear/weapons don’t have much use except for those at the raid tier (though even those are fairly situational). Consumable crafters are still a necessity to provide boosts and food for raids, but it isn’t the most exciting or rewarding job. Crafting materials are also pretty endless in supply with gaining them through item salvage, housing plugs, and natural abundance in the world.