WildStar Flick “The Strain” shows off the first content update

Now that WildStar has been out a few weeks and some players are settling in at level 50, it's time to start looking toward the post-launch content drops.

The first content drop, The Strain, will be releasing the week of June 30th, with the precise date to be announced later. The Strain brings a new Elder zone, new solo content, new gear, housing items, costumes, mounts, and existing areas will be altered. What is The Strain? It's a virulent biological anomaly that has begun to spread across Nexus. It changes lifeforms into terrifying, mutated abominations.

The new zone is called Blighthaven. It's a massive area that includes the Cankertube swamp and the gastrointestinal terrors of the Globellum. During E3 when we had a chance to speak with Jeremy Gaffney, president of Carbine Studios, he took us on a tour of the new area. One exciting quest had players jumping into huge goo globules that looked like the blob, then swimming around in them doing quests.

Some of the new solo content tackles a different genre of games. Guardians of the Grove is a new group event that plays like a tower defense game, where you're trying to prevent enemies from attacking nodes. If they do take over, you'll switch roles and have to fight through the enemy defenses to gain control again. There's also a dungeon-like area for group combat called The Nursery that is home to a Boos fight against the Strain-corrupted Elyona the Mad. Usually a place like this would be instanced, but The Nursery isn't.

In addition to this stuff, there's a bunch of Strain-themed gear, costumes, mounts and housing items coming. The costumes I saw makes characters look like they're infected by the Strain. Also, everyone gets a Strain-themed emote.

There's so much more coming in later updates. Stay tuned for even more details on The Strain, as well as our interview from E3 with Jeremy Gaffney, coming later this week.

You can follow Senior Editor Lance Liebl on Twitter @Lance_GZ. Or you can email him at LLiebl@GameZone.com.