The head start period for publisher NCSoft’s newest and developer Carbine Studios’ first MMO title, WildStar, has officially ended, opening up the floodgates to anyone interested in playing the game. Today’s launch has also brought a host of new features to the game for those already playing, including the option to transfer to and from select servers for free to alleviate issues with long queue times on more popular destinations and the ability to play both of the game’s factions on PvP servers. The launch day patch also brings some optimizations for certain hardware and a handful of fixes for bugs discovered by head start players during the past few days.

In a statement to the community on WildStar’s official forums, Executive Producer Jeremy Gaffney said, “[he’s] really proud to be one of the team here, and … to launch WildStar.” Gaffney remains hopeful for the game’s future and “truly proud of what we’ve done,” but went on to say that “if we’re going to play with the big boys, we have to earn the right to be one of the few MMOs that can not just draw gamers in, but can earn those gamers’ loyalty over time.” In a genre that earns almost all its revenue not from day one sales but rather from subscription fees or cash shop purchases of loyal players over periods of years this attitude is sure to serve the game well if Carbine keeps their promises.

Official critical reviews for the game have not yet come in, but the response from beta testers and early players in the game’s head start period have been extremely positive. It seems almost certain that WildStar has cemented a place in the list of MMO genre titans for at leas the next few years, but in an industry which has all too often strayed from Gaffney’s philosophy and seen games fail because of it anything is possible. At the very least, despite some troubles with server stability and overpopulation during the head start period, WildStar has hit the ground running.

Carbine Studios released a new trailer for WildStar along with the official launch, which highlights some aspects of the story as well as revealing a not-yet-seen antagonist to players. If you’re interested, you can watch it below or on YouTube.