With a rather cinematic trailer heralding its appearance, Carbine Studios' Action MMO Wildstar is now in open beta from May 8th to the 18th.  With less than a month to go before the open launch of the title, the timing does seem appropriate, if a bit rushed, for an open stress test of the servers and to get some feedback about the game itself. During open beta, players can earn a few exclusive items, and experience the levelling content up until 30, though players who passed this level cap during the Winter Beta test will be able to experience the content that lies beyond. While characters from beta tests after November of 2013 have persisted, past this open beta period, all data will be wiped to provide an even playing field for launch. 

With an aesthetic style echoing back to World of Warcraft's mix of cartoony and realistic visuals, along with combat that wouldn't be out of place in Tera Online, and battles on the scale seen in Guild Wars 2, nevertheless, Wildstar seems to be looking to engage players socially beyond the formulaic MMO. Beyond classes and class-specific abilities, one of the features is a further specialization for characters, which allow players to experience a story on a more personal level, as opposed to finding meaning behind columns and columns of text. 

While Carbine Studios is certainly taking a risk by adopting a pay-to-play plan, it would appear as though they've got enough content and features to make it more than the average WoW clone. Though I haven't played the game myself, and I've no plans to, if you're looking to see if this might be an experience you'd enjoy, you can sign up and request a beta key for your appropriate region on the website.