Wizard101: Open Enrollment

By Mark David Magat @marki_bear

Imagine with me for a second. You’re back in 2008. It’s after school, you’re done with all of your homework. You prop a kitchen chair up to the family computer, and remember a little game you’ve been hearing about on TV. Some of your friends have tried it and it has become the talk of the playground, between all the running, screaming and little Johnny throwing tanbark at the teachers. So you ask your parents to make you an account for Wizard101. You don’t think much of it. It’s cute, It’s weird but nothing compared to your Xbox. But then you find you’ve been on it till 10pm and your mom is yelling at you to go to bed. “It’s a weeknight honey!” She screams. But you just need to go one more level. One more spell to learn. One more turn! It’s weird talking to friends about Wizard101 now as an adult, but it seems every- one around my age has at least tried the game. And even though it’s not in the mainstream eye as much as other online MMOs such as League of Legends or World of Warcraft, it doesn’t mean this little guy is dead. Far from it actually! It seems there’s a strong and dedicated community of young wizards who still log on. So will you join me through the world door and enter the spiral?

Wizarding basics:

When you begin the game, you’re asked to create a wizard and pick a school of magic to study, and the school you choose is actually very important. Some schools lend themselves to certain advantages that other schools don’t. Do you want to be a tank and be able to take a huge amount of damage? Go Ice or Balance. You want to hit hard in exchange for some durability? Go Storm. If you want to support with heals and keep the team alive; some of these fights will have even the best wizards bend to their knees, go life.

At its heart, Wizard101 is a turn based, combat oriented game. It’s about either rushing an enemy before they can build up a hit or building up a hit to hopefully oneshot the enemy. With how the game is structured,

there are a lot of tools at your disposal to build strategies for certain fights you’ll get into. From blade stacking to traps to useful buffs and debuffs to conserving pips for a strong hit, it all feeds into the strategies you’ll play.

For those of you who think a kids’ game wouldn’t require a lot of strategy, this game gets hard. There are some battles where you need a full team of varied magic schools and extensive knowledge of the battle to get by smoothly. The game is divided among arcs and the first arc is pretty easy, but arc two and three get up there in difficulty and the fourth arc from what little we’ve seen isn’t lightening up. In the second arc they introduce bosses who cheat and that is a total game changer for strategies going into the battles.

Group Work is a Majority of Your Grade:

If you choose the right school, you can solo most of the game and only need to team up for critical boss fights. But even then you’re going to need help with bosses giving you a hard time and having a few friends will most definitely help. Thankfully the game has a lot of mechanics to help you find friendly players.

Making friends in this game is actually really easy. A ton of wizards are very helpful and want to actively help you. I remember creating my fire wizard and starting the game. A few seasoned wizards were waiting at Unicorn Way, the starting area of the game, to give me free cards to use or sell. And there are a lot of these things throughout the game. Wizards wanting to hatch pets, share cards, help with dungeons or even just have a funny conversation.

And for those struggling to make friends or regular friends, the lon- gest running mechanic for teaming up has to be the Team Up Kiosk. If you stand in front of a battle entrance, or dungeon, you have the option to either press the X button and join whoever is going in at that time, or press the Team Up option to wait for another player to join the battle. You can control the number of players you’d want to join and to label if you’re doing a quest or farming a dungeon for gear or other wanted items. For major dungeons such as Darkmoor or last world dungeons, most of the time you don’t have to press the team up button and just join whoever is waiting there since there are usually a few wizards waiting for a full team. Now the newest addition to the game is friendly players tags. Let’s say you want to join an open fight due to a quest but don’t want to ask if you can join, with the friendly tag you can instantly see if they’re open to help or open for you joining. A fun feature of this is that you can look at a list of wizards in the current world you’re in, of all the friendly players and see what quests they’re currently on. So maybe you can join a random player who’s on the same quest as you and you just now made a new friend. But even with a team knowing what they’re doing, some dungeons are commitments. “A crazy dungeon run was my first time questing Darkmoor,” said Milena Skrobanovic, a New Jersey Wizard101 player. “The whole thing took hours, especially the final Malistaire battle which took 2-3 hours of struggling. My gear and experience was lacking at the time.” Granted, Darkmoor is one of the harder dungeons for the level you’re going into, but with the right team and right strategies, the gear is going to be very worth it.

Spells and Charms

So I love the game, but I have to admit that the gameplay does get a little repetitive, especially when you learn certain spells and get certain gear. But I think the main draw to this game has to be the charm of the story and the magic surrounding it all.

The lore with grandmother Raven, Grandfather Spider and the Great Tree is actually very deep for a kids’ game. In arc three you really get to see the relationship between all of them and get invested in the battle between them and hope for a non-violent conclusion.

But before then, arc one has such a compelling story with It’s main villain, and the poster boy of the game, Malistaire. You can empathize with his motives while not justifying his actions. And arc two lacks a bit with the overall story but still has a compelling villain, amazing characters and introducing game changing mechanics. But in between fighting these larger-than-life villains, you meet so many colorful characters from such imaginative worlds. From the interesting Sherlock Bones in Marleybone to the charming Dyvim Whiteheart in Khrysalis to the ever so funny Captain James Pork in Empyrea, you’ll meet so many funny and colorful characters that you can’t help but fall in love with this cast.

But the characters are only a product of the worlds they live in and the worlds are so imaginative. Some have obvious inspirations from classic stories from King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table to even 101 Arabian Nights, but some are just so out there that It’s just cool to be a part of it all. Of course some aren’t all hits, but that’s mostly due to the gameplay showing It’s weaknesses. A lot of the least liked worlds’ complaints come from lackluster gameplay but most of their time has nothing to do with their charm and inspiration. “My favorite world was Krokotopia when I first played at 14,” said Skrobanovic. “ I love anything ancient Egypt. But now after playing all the worlds I would say Wizard City is the best….I think It’s just diverse and the original and It’s very nostalgic for me.” A lot of these areas are very nostalgic for people. Like Marelybone with its Charles Dickens-esq vision of London to Avalon and the fairy tales our parents used to tell us as kids, it all feeds into the vibe of the game.

But even though I have said the gameplay gets repetitive, it doesn’t mean the gameplay has no character. Most if not all of the spells have a lot of character. Most of the main spells are very cinematic. Playing a mid level wizard and playing with a seasoned one will motivate you to get better mostly due to seeing the cool higher level spells. Like I have a fire wizard but he’s also a healer, and seeing a healing spell as funny as Pigsey was something I wanted to get to. And that kind of fun spell cinematics are all over the game from the modest fire cat to the crazy Karamelle marshfellow, all the spells have this life to them that it’s nearly impossible to brush them off.

The Spiral Campus:

But a shockingly massive part of the game is It’s community. Outside the game there are communities on social media discussing new updates, asking for help with dungeons and gear and just sharing their experience over the game. On Youtube there’s plenty of updated channels such as Formal Phantom and BlazeLifeHammer discussing updates or random pieces of trivia about the game. Overall the social aspect of the game is very strong outside of the game itself. But in the game It’s even better. Yes you can find friendly players willing to help with quests and other game activities but you can find a lot of players in the common areas just discussing random things about their lives and more than open to people joining. And yes It’s more adult that the game developers would like and some are on the trolley side, but all are in the name of good fun and most of the time there’s no malicious intent. Like nothing beats joining the Ambrose server at 2am and having a discussion on drugs and other adult things, or even joining a Gobbler cult and recruiting more to the side of the great Gobbler King. If you want a laugh, I’d say joining in on random conversations with strangers in the game is the best way to get it.

Making lifelong friends and memories is a massive part of this game.

“Back when I originally played a lot,” said Ryan Moore, a California resident and Wizard101 player, “My friend had also played and we would both be on our laptops beside each other, playing Wizard101.” Many people such as myself, have made tons of friends just roaming and asking for help or vice versa. Like Moore, I used to have LAN parties with my cousin playing this game and having intense dungeon runs going up until 2am during sleep overs.

And even if you don’t take part in it, seeing other players just conversing with each other about random things, mostly non-game related topics, adds to the atmosphere of the game.

“I haven’t really got into conversations with people in groups,” said Skrobanovic. “I always like seeing people conversing with each other and communicating. A lot of interesting conversations obviously happen there. Good and bad.”

Enrollment and Beyond:

So yeah, you can join the Spiral for free now and get a small introduction to the game. But if you want the full story, you’ll have to pay around $70 for a year of membership. But to me It’s pretty worth it. I didn’t play religiously for my year membership, far from it, but I was able to complete all three current, complete arcs and managed to finish the first world of the fourth arc with a lot of time to spare to do whatever in the paid areas. If a year is too much, you can opt out to six or even one month. And with the second world for the fourth arc coming out this fall, you can bet I’m signing up for a membership for that.

And for a lot of people, myself included, the game has such a charm that keeps players hooked. Yes, it overly feeds off our nostalgia, yes it’s pretty expensive, and yes It’s a game targeted at kids, but the game has a right to be played at least once due to its charm and community. The worlds of the Spiral are placed in beautiful lands among colorful characters, NPCs and real people alike.

I’ve made a ton of great friends along my journey through the Spiral and hope to meet some new ones. So will you extend me a hand and join me through the world door into a magical world of wonder?