Wizard101

I was thinking about some of the things we know about Star Wars: The Old Republic. It’s going to be a subscription game. It cost a hell of a lot to produce – perhaps more than $100 million. And yet they think they’re gonna have no trouble making their money back even if they have less than a million subscribers. It’s no secret. I can do the math. They’re gonna be bleeding their subscribers absolutely friggin’ dry in the Bioware cash shop. But that’s okay! That would have really bothered me a couple years ago, but now – I’m buying space ships in STO and pets in Wizard101 and heck, EQ2 is even taking the bloodsucking thing to a whole new level by adding a new Vampire race to their cash shop. ...

There’s a Rift Beta event this weekend, and that’s about all you’ll ever hear of the beta from this site at least. To call their license agreement secretive would be an understatement. In Rift, you start out dead, and then are sent into the past to, I guess, prevent the events that led to your death from occurring, or something. Best let them explain it: Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the survivors from the desolate future of Telara have resurrected champions and sent them into the past to prevent the dystopia caused by the Bloodstorm and the blindly faithful Guardians. Join the techno-magical Defiant in their fight to change the course of history! ...

I was grinding my way through the Howling Fjord quests in World of Warcraft today, just minding my own business, keeping an eye out for stray turkeys to kill (I don’t know why, @Longasc hinted that I should kill them). I’ve been staging a one-gnome assault on a nearby village of giants; I’ve fought their champions in the arena, stolen artifacts from beneath the noses of a hundred million undead, freed prisoners and in all ways made myself something of a pest. ...

It’s been a busy day at my Wizard101 garden, on the test server. I was tending my plants and harvesting when, after a 5xp harvest from a Honeysickle, I unexpectedly leveled to rank 2. That meant I could train up in the advanced bug be-gone spell and get rid of the persistent insect infestation that had sprung up around one of my Dandelions. The gnomes seemed please to be done with all the buzzing; they need quiet for their work. Not that the Boomshrooms let anything get any rest. ...

It has not been a happy day for the Boomshrooms in my Wizard101 garden on the test server. Rank 2 bugs have moved in, and are buzzing around it, disturbing its rest. The Boomshroom is a difficulty 2 plant, even though it is only rank 1. I guess that means the bugs it gets can’t be driven away by the rank 1 spells. ...

Yesterday, I played in Wizard101’s test server for a time, hoping to figure out Gardening’s strange attraction. That, and to figure just how you got experience in gardening! Well, I wasn’t able to make any progress – I remain one bubble into Rank 1, precisely where I started after talking to Farley, the Golem Court mole who teaches the skill. Nonetheless, I pulled on my work gloves and got to digging. I bought two medium pots from Farley in which to grow Honeysickles – the spell to prepare medium-sized plots of land is rank 2, but you can buy a medium pot at any level. ...

Q. Why is that farmer so famous? A. Because he is out standing in his field! KingsIsle today dropped a little bit of dirt, some seeds, a bit of warm rain and a little sun into Wizard City today. On the Test Realm, Life professor Moolinda Wu is just udderly bursting with good news! Gardening has come to the Spiral, and it is the job of good wizards everywhere to plant a flower to replace every lotus blossom they pick. It’s part of the “Ravenwood Gives Back” program. ...

We’ve been through the Stellarium, the Lunarium, the Floating Island, the Celestia Base Camp, the Grotto and half a dozen other mini-worlds in Celestia. Quests have been shoveling experience points at us, and we’re level 56 and starting to get some gear upgrades – most recently, school-specific wands that add an incredible boost to the new stat, Crit. Is Celestia everything I thought it would be? I’d have to say yes – a qualified yes. And I say qualified, because I’m not really sure what expect from expansions. ...

Around the end of October each year, every game world is taken over by the dimly remembered remainders of an old harvest festival, All Hallow’s Eve, AKA Hallowe’en. The ancients sucked at making abbreviations. Star Trek Online wants to remind us that there’s something scarier than the spectre it might join its cousin, Champions Online, in the “Freemium” payment model. The third episode of the Devidian arc, ominously titled “What Lies Beneath”, comes out Saturday afternoon, on the day before Hallowe’en (AKA Halloweeneen, I guess). Should be a fun adventure tramping around in the bowels of an ancient space station looking for blue, soul-sucking ghosts. ...

After spending a couple of weeks soaking on the Wizard101 Test server, KingsIsle yesterday released the underwater-themed expansion to the wider world. By the time I logged in, there were already many wizards halfway through the run from level 50 to level 60, and every world and every zone of Celestia was filled with spells and wandfire and confused, dazed looking monsters with WTF? looks on their carapaced faces. ...