Arena

Tomorrow, the first batch of Cult of the Dragon foundry quests will go live. I don’t know when mine will show, or if it will show. I kinda think the first few batches will have the advantage of player interest. I’ve been over and over the quest since the supposed deadline back on the 6th, ripping out stuff but more often, adding in new stuff. One disadvantage of coming up with the plot last is that by the time I figure out what the plot is, I’ve put too much work into the quest to make that plot clear to the player. ...

Vanity, thy name is Reman shields You can’t think of “Star Trek” and coliseums together without thinking immediately of the original series episodes “Bread and Circuses”, where the Enterprise crew beam into a 20th century version of the Roman Empire, and “Amok Time”, where Kirk and Spock battle to the death on the planet Vulcan. (The director of “Bread and Circuses”, Ralph Senensky, blogs about directing that episode – a must read! Includes bloopers!) ...

Well, given the state of PvP as aptly described by The Friendly Necromancer, where endless reshuffles and easy access by everyone to the most powerful healing spell in the entire game combine to make duels extremely lengthy affairs, I’m not sure how Wizard 101’s Season 1 Arena will work out, but they’re going to be having a go at it. Without the superior gear available as rewards from World of Warcraft’s arena battles, I’m not sure how many people will really want to do hours long duels (even the 2v2 I was doing with my balance wizard + random partners tended to last ages), but for good or ill, the promised arena battles and pvp ladders are coming today. The standings are by level and by overall success, and come with badges and rewards you can’t get any other way, so if you think you have a meaner killer instinct than your everyday, common, pig-zapping wizard, why not visit Diego in Unicorn Way and sign up? ...

I scurried my way to visit a housing turtle as soon as I finished patching Wizard 101. I wanted to get started decorating my house as soon as I could, but which? I’d been thinking about buying one of the Wizard City castles, but when I tried to decorate it one last time on the Test server, I found the outside difficult to work with. I talked it over with Kasul, and he convinced me to go with a Marleybone home. ...

High level players gathered at the duel masters Wizard 101’s surprise announcement of a full PvP Arena system to accompany the PvE-focused excitement of the next world, Dragonspyre, early next year shocked and electrified the community. It’s one thing to beat easy and predictable computer opponents in the W101 game of magical cards. Battling human players is a whole different story. You can’t truly say you’re a master wizard until you can beat human opponents. ...

Given a games company founded by the developers of the PvP-centric MMO Shadowbane, and the fragfest shooters DOOM and Wolfenstein 3D, making a game centered around a bloodless card game where kids could battle monsters with funny monsters of their own must have been a little tough. Stingite over at The Friendly Necromancer says that that’s all about to change. Just in time for Christmas, the small dueling arena (picture on top) is being entirely revamped. There will be leader boards, ladder, arena ranking, matches, betting, special PvP loot… This is all sounding so incredibly familiar. ...