Linking Steam and WildStar

If you didn't know, WildStar released on Steam today! There's quite a few players who want to link their Steam and WildStar accounts, so I made up a quick how-to guide to do so.

First, a quick list of some benefits for linking the two.

• Hours played from playing on Steam show up, providing an indication of how popular the game is
• You get Steam Trading Cards, Badges, and your Achievements link—EPEEN!
• Easier upload of screenshots to the Steam servers, also showing off the creativity of the community and enticing more people to play
• On the Community page, there's a nifty little counter saying how many people are in-game at the time—a great way to show that yes, people still play this, and yes, there is a population for people to come hang out with

So obviously, you want to link it now, right? RIGHT!

Note: You can click the images to make them larger if needed.

First, if you already have WildStar installed on your computer, you need to uninstall it. Once you've initiated an uninstall, the window below appears. If you want to keep your settings (%appdata%), addons, screenshots, and chat logs leave the options alone. Once you've selected what data you want to remove (if any), click Uninstall.

Double check you've done things correctly, and then click OK. If you misclicked, click Cancel and try again.

The launcher appears and uninstalls the game. When finished, click Close.

Open your Steam application and login. Find WildStar in the store and choose the game to open the page. To add the game to your Library and initiate the download, click Play Game.

A pop-up window appears. Select whether you want to create a desktop shortcut and/or start menu shortcut. Click Next when ready to proceed.

Steam processes some things...

...and starts the download. You can view your download using Manage Downloads.

If you close the pop-up and want to check the download status later, select the Library header, and then select the Downloads option from the drop-down menu.

This opens your Download Manager, where you can check the status of your download. (All said, it didn't even take fifteen minutes, despite estimating four hours.) You can select Play from here if you like.

More often than not, you will instead access WildStar from your Games Library. Select the Library header, and then select Games.

Choose WildStar from your list and click Play. (Your list will not look like mine, because I use categories to sort my games.)

The game boots up. The first time you play you need to accept the User Agreement. It's always a good idea to read through these. You can choose your language from the drop-down box at the top. When finished, click I Accept.

Select the Language and Game Region for your installation. Then click Install.

The game begins installing. This is the part where you link your current account with Steam. Click the box at the top that says Log in with your NCSoft account to link with the currently active Steam account.

A new window appears. Enter your login information, and select whether you want the launcher to remember your email. Click Submit when finished.

Your game is now ready to play! Congratulations, Steam will now spam you with achievements!