So Lemuria is out, and it's been seen by many - thanks to streaming, anybody can watch it. It touches upon some of my favorite source material ever, and I had a lingering feeling early on that the players would have a wide range of opinions about it.
Was I right? What do you think of the world? Any questions about stuff I can answer? Any and all feedback is welcome, as we prepare to break ground on [REDACTED]!
As I mentioned previously, the transmogrification of the Paradox and Old One into the Nothing into Daesin is I think a bit much and rather confusing. I appreciate that you had Zander and some other characters try and explain that, but I just think it was still a bit much.
I liked how we had to Return to the Polaris Lab in the Prequest material. I appreciate getting to go back and explore old areas-it makes it so that they seem a bit more alive if you see other people running around doing their own quests in the background.
This however, sort of leads into my next point: I know it makes sense for Lemuria in a "world-building" (literally lol) sense to be an amalgamation of different worlds, but I didn't like how each area was SO distinct-like how Empyrea was. The problem that I have with them is that there is nothing visually that ties all of the areas together. Like in WZ-DS all of the sidewalks use the same material/were the same, in CL/KH there are ruins throughout each of the areas, in KT/Mirage there is sand and similar architecture across areas. In Lemuria, I felt like there wasn't anything that really tied each area together-like the Lab Areas or the Ruins in the Commons area, could have filled that roll, but they were lacking. Don't get me wrong, we don't want another Dragonspyre where every street is nothing but the same building and lava pool for miles, but having something that connects areas together I think would be appropriate. If you really want a "cold" area, I think it's fine to have us travel to a new area in Wintertusk, or Polaris instead of having to build an "Athanor" for the sake of having a cold area. (Not that Athanor wasn't cool/amazing). I guess what I'm saying, is I like the amalgamation idea, I just wish the areas were linked in some more obvious way and that we could spend more time in Worlds that we've visited (even if it's new areas in the Old Worlds).
I thought the references to He-Mander and Mandar were great. I wasn't familiar with some of the 70-80s pulp fiction such as Solomon Crane, and Duck Bronze, but I felt like they were generally good characters. The final fight was also a really fun idea, however, seemed completely out of left field story-wise. I don't understand why they suddenly had the change of heart and were against us-that just seemed weird and out of character and the few lines of dialogue before it happens seemed insufficient. So my question is: Why did the Heroes decide to turn against us?
I thought that the Old One themed spells were nice. I'm glad that they were not overtly silly, but just had silly undertones. I think that a lot of Wizards that are at "max" level want their spells to seem powerful and not throw-away jokes. I appreciate they had more emphasis on the school and less on the "people" of the current world.
Overall, I think Lemuria was a good addition. Can't wait so see how the story unfolds as we venture to [REDACTED].
Hey! I recently did Lemuria and enjoyed it, as someone whose never really felt the story for Wiz connect, this one worked really well for me, so major props for all involved in the world- personally, I think this one is my favorite of the newer worlds, maybe even on the top tier ones.
Was there a specific decision behind making the Old One and his experiences the main focus of the new world? That was probably my favorite aspect of the story, very unique for the game.
I loved the Lemuria storyline, but there was one instance that didn't "feel right". The ending fight, while truly epic, felt a bit off in terms of story tone. The heroes sudden turn on the Wizard seemed odd on how fast it occurred, only to be followed up by an even faster "oh we just tried to defeat you, but we like you again". The story was excellent until this very confusing portion of the storyline.
At least have them "enchanted" or something to explain the bizarre behavior of all eight heroes doing this, together....at the same time.
Is there something I missed that explains this bizarre behavior of the heroes for this very short timeframe? It just seemed the epicness (8v4) of the fight was driving the ending....not the story itself.
Again, the rest of the story was excellent...it just seemed to not make much sense at the very end.
So Lemuria is out, and it's been seen by many - thanks to streaming, anybody can watch it. It touches upon some of my favorite source material ever, and I had a lingering feeling early on that the players would have a wide range of opinions about it.
Was I right? What do you think of the world? Any questions about stuff I can answer? Any and all feedback is welcome, as we prepare to break ground on [REDACTED]!
Bring them questions on!
Hello, It’s always lovely to hear from you. I want to ask you about several different things in this update and a few other wrap-up questions from 2021.
1. It’s nice to see some old worlds have an appearance/mention. In Lemuria, we got to see old worlds differently, recycled, if you will. Heap was a great place to visit; it had that “Dick Tracy” feel. What was the thought process behind reusing old locations for the Old One’s master plan?
2. I wondered about this, and I hope you have an answer. The Ravenwood professors are currently offering the new PVP spells, including the level 120 spells. I thought this was a bit odd due to our wizard being well graduated by that time. Should the scholars offer spells past 100? Or perhaps the school trees?
3. We have to talk about the eight opponents. How much fun was that to make? What pushed the idea?
4. Since you’re here, I want to know if FTUE is officially complete? Will there be time to explore more of the first arc? Or perhaps the tutorial to get a repolish?
Alright! I've been waiting to ask my serious and silly questions for a while now. Initiating LookitLightQuestions.exe...
1: In the Old One's Laboratory in the Arcanum, Qyburn Stellargaze mentions that his people (I'm assuming the Celestians) studied the Nothing and what it could entail for the Spiral. This leaves me with questions, because as far as I know we were the first ones to interact with the Nothing in any capacity. Is it possible for this to be explained?
2: When we first enter Lemuria, it becomes apparent that releasing it from the Arcanum caused "The earth to shake and the sky to change colors." Might I ask, what did Lemuria's sky look like before we released it from the Old One's Office?
3: I'm not sure how many people have noticed this, but during certain pieces of the Lemuria quest line our Wizard uses emotes. For example, our Wizard bows when Stallion Quartermane introduces us, and uses the flex emote in the Hall of Heroes. To my knowledge, this is something that has not been done before. What inspired this?
4: I've noticed that many area layouts in Lemuria are borrowed from other areas of the Spiral. For example, the Night Forest has the same layout as Dun Dara in Avalon, the Badlands have the Kondha Desert's layout, Mandoria has the Tyrian Gorge's layout, and Heap has Aggrobah's layout. The Crypt of Tales also reuses areas from the Wizard City Catacombs. Is there any reason for these areas' layouts being reused in Lemuria?
5: I'll likely have more questions another time, but I'll close off for now with this; can you confirm or deny that Hierarch Lucien is a reference to King Julien? (Please say yes, please say yes, Lemuria wouldn't be complete without a King Julien reference...)
Oh boy, I've been waiting for another story thread. I actually have a lot of questions, as usual.
I can't help but be curious as to the inspiration behind writing about the Nothing, whose name I won't be spoiling. Their circumstances and nature remind me of a few different characters. Have you read or seen Flatland, by chance? I wondered if the inspiration behind describing them as a "point" was inspired by that, since there's another zero-dimensional figure there called the King of Pointland, who is similarly devoid of space and time, and assumes themselves to be the "universe". They also remind me of Marvel's "the Beyonder", who also believed themselves to be the totality of existence until a hole was torn through reality and allowed them to peek into the main Marvel multiverse.
I also can't help but remember an old side quest in Celestia involving the side boss named "Axenos". Axenos was said to be imprisoned by the Celestians inside "A Place That is Not a Place", also described as "an endless void". The seemingly-contradictory description for "The Place That is Not a Place" seems similar to how the Nothing is described, and I wondered if that might be the reason Qyburn knew about the Nothing?
Additionally, I was personally under the impression that the Nothing made its way through reality due to the Wizard visiting the Astral Realm through a portal that Qyburn created, however, that's been made false due to the revelation that it was done through a hole which the Wizard tore through during their battle with the Aethyr Titan. However, what's strange to me is that this isn't actually the first time a Wizard has pierced reality - they actually need to do that to summon the Storm Lord. So then, what's the difference here? Is the latter hole just bigger? Does every Wizard risk bringing forth their own "Nothing" while summoning their Titan?
One last question: I noticed that the old quest from which Bartleby mentioned "the Creator" was removed during FTUE. I and a few of my friends are curious as to whether that's supposed to mean that there no longer is a "Creator" of Bartleby in canon, or if it was simply something that was overlooked.
I really enjoyed Lemuria's story, by the way, especially the character development involved!
I found it really engaging! Definitely one of the most memorable worlds in my opinion. Also, I had no idea until today that Lemuria was a theorized place in real-world history, so learning about those connections was fun too! It seemed like a perfect fit for the overarching story. Were there any other similarly-themed "lost" places from history considered, or was Lemuria always the top choice? Picturing Doggerland as a long-forgotten fragment of Marleybone (though I suppose Doggerland did exist at one point)
A fairly small question here, so I hope you are able to answer.
I absolutely LOVE what y'all did with Lemuria, releasing a prequest each update prior to the main world release. Will we be seeing this again in preparation for the next world coming this year? Since the ending of Lemuria was open-ended like Karamelle, I really hope that this is something you plan on doing once again. It definitely built up the hype and gave us a specific world to look forward to!
So Lemuria is out, and it's been seen by many - thanks to streaming, anybody can watch it. It touches upon some of my favorite source material ever, and I had a lingering feeling early on that the players would have a wide range of opinions about it.
Was I right? What do you think of the world? Any questions about stuff I can answer? Any and all feedback is welcome, as we prepare to break ground on [REDACTED]!
Bring them questions on!
Hi,
I’m not sure why my first message was rejected, I’ll let others ask you the questions I guess. Anyway, I really enjoyed Dog Tracy and how he was a reference from Dick Tracy’s comic strips! My dad and I loved those comics. Really enjoyed the eight opponents in one duel!
I've been waiting for this story thread since the last one! I loved Lemuria, it quickly became one of my favorite worlds in the entire game and I can't wait to see what happens next in this arc! Huge props to the writing team for everything that you do, I think you guys really hit it out of the park this time. Of course, with this being a story thread, I have some questions for you:
1. When we're just about to enter Killawahoo to save Tosh, Kit Bawker tells us about how the mantle of "The Bantam" was handed down from generation to generation. Similarly, Mandar is a descendant of the great He-Mander. Since we know the Heroes were forged from the template of Stallion Quartermane, would it be safe then to assume that all the Heroes we see in Lemuria are just the current incumbents for each of their respective roles? Was it part of the Old One's plan for there to always be dominant Heroes in each region for centuries to come so that one of them would eventually rise above their peers and become his Scion?
2. In the police station in Sky City you can find a board on the wall that has various characters from our Lemuria adventure included, but one sticks out. Belloq? When I noticed this for the first time, I had so many thoughts about what this could mean. Is there a story there that's so far been untold? Is this Belloq not actually Belloq but a copy, kind of like Preservationist Zach was (seemingly) a copy of Zeke? Or was this simply a fun easter egg for players to find and speculate about?
3. Is there any kind of connection between the Old One and the Call of Khrulhu spell? Considering they're both based on Cthulhu, it makes me wonder. I know that the Old One was referred to internally as "Khrulhu Lincoln" initially, so I was wondering if perhaps they have a common origin or belong to the same race of beings?
4. Could you elaborate on the Penguin Revolution in Pirate101 and how it's separate from the one the Wizard assists in Polaris? Also, why is there a different ruler than Napoleguin? Is this a regional difference in Polaris, or does it mean Napoleguin is dethroned again by that time? I often see people very confused about this and call it out as a plot hole for Pirate101.
5. In one of the old story threads on the Pirate101 message boards, you said that "Kane is stronger, faster, and smarter than every living being" in the Spiral, but this doesn't seem to be accurate when comparing characters from both games. Would you still stick to that description even now, and if so, could you elaborate on who/what counts as a "living" being?
1: In the first Lemuria pre-quest "Old is New Again," Bartle mentions seeing, at one point in time. "An island, a land of Lemurs." This was, obviously, before the Old One up and took the entire thing with his cosmic yoink machine, but there was a land of Lemurs before Lemuria itself. My question; where is this land now? Is it Telos or another location in Lemuria?
2: More than any other world I've seen, Lemuria has so, so many references to famous cultural media. To name a few, there are references to Penguins of Madagascar, The Phantom, The Shadow, Conan the Barbarian, Masters of the Universe, 'inhales', Power Rangers, Frozen, Baby Shark, The Giving Tree, Solomon Kane, and if I know anything there's a dozen others I haven't spotted yet. How did you possibly manage to squish so many references into only a couple quest lines?
3: I know this is a question thread, but I wanna say really quick that I quite enjoyed the look of Sky City. It has that perfect appearance of 'what the 1970's would imagine the future to be like,' and it's hilarious for that. But, moving into the actual question here, I cannot for the life of me pin down what your inspiration might have been. What inspired Sky City and its appearance?
4: There's something I noticed during questing that I wanted to point out. In one of the Old One's Laboratories (I believe it's the one in Killawahoo Volcano), the Old One recording mentions that the Scion of Bartleby is "essential for the creation of a new First World." After that, we get no further elaboration on what that means. No matter how much I know you'll respond with your iconic phrase, what does this entail?
Although I don't usually pay too much attention to story, I will say that the gameplay aspect was pretty nice. I loved the areas, the fights were fun and not too challenging, and it was overall a good time I had with it. I will also say that I enjoyed it significantly more than Karamelle.
My only question is: Why wasn't Headmaster Ambrose involved in the storyline?
I understand that we are now members of the Arcanum and do not necessarily answer to him but I liked in previous storylines when we would go and ask him questions and he was still a part of the storyline. Without Merle, a little bit of nostalgia is lost for me...
I loved Lemuria. It was very awesome to quest in a laboratory-created world. It gives Lemuria a unique feel unlike any other world and it was really cool to see how each area related to the Old One. I've noticed the ending has also been criticized in this thread but I actually liked it and I think the betrayal was hinted at throughout Lemuria's questline. You see, the heroes, even though they were good people, were all portrayed as being very egotistical and self-important. So I think when they finally get their hands on the World Synthesizer, it makes perfect sense that the power got to their heads.
There is something I will criticize about the ending though. There's a mechanic in the final battle where you only get a pip every other round instead of every single round like normal. I think this should be changed so you get a pip every single round. The slower pip gain does nothing to increase the difficulty, it just draws the battle out for longer than it should be and makes it very grating to do, especially for me since I start out with 4 pips instead of 5.
Finally, I loved Dasein's character but his origin story doesn't make much sense and I hope it's fleshed out more in the next world. Where did he come from? What exactly was he before becoming Dasein? Sure he was "the Nothing" but that doesn't tell us much. After all, what is "the Nothing"? And of course, how did the Nothing become something?
@EXP613 Sorry the transformation of Dasein didn't gran you. When we first set out on the brainstorms for Arc 4, we decided we wanted to do something different. The Nothing was an concept we'd been kicking around for a while, and it changed and evolved over time until we knew we wanted to make the fourth arc about it. But we didn't want just another big bad trying to wreck the Spiral: we wanted to find a different way to interact with the Other. We also wanted to make the 4th Arc a direct consequence of the events of the 3rd Arc, and so we hit upon the idea of the Paradox breaking through to Something (or, rather, Nothing) Else. The second world was going to be about it getting to know the Nothing, or, since it was really a blank slate, it would be getting to know us.
To string the plot together we got very existential. Literally. We had always been concerned we might go too far and make something too abstract for players to like, and it looks like we may have missed the mark with regards to your enjoyment, but I'm glad we did it. It's definitely different.
After we made Empyrea I swore I never make another "potpourri" world where every zone was wildly different, but then here we are. When we hit upon The Pulps as our primary inspiration, that pretty much demanded a variety of locales to demonstrate the wide variety of source material. And I think you're right, a common element to tie all the zones together would have been a good thing. We'll try to do better in the future.
The core heroes of the world are, of course, references to the classic pulps of the 20s and 30s. There were remakes in the 70s and 80s, but I really wanted to riff on these heroes in the hope that some of our not old players might seek them out. Pop culture as we know it owes a HUGE debt to the pulps. There would be no Batman without the Shadow, there would arguably be no Superman without Doc Savage, and George Lucas only invented Star Wars because he couldn't get the rights to Flash Gordon. Those old-school notions of Heroism! defined these guys - they're all larger than life, to the point where they might come off as naïve or clueless. They are certain that there is an absolute Right and an absolute Wrong, and anything they feel is good is by definition Right.
That's the root of the final fight. A huge theme of the world is how intentions can go bad - the Old One's relatively noble aim of rebuilding the first world was marred by the ethical implications of all his choices. Order can turn into tyranny, as we see in Dark Forest. Harmony can be a horrible thing when it arises from stolen agency. So our Heroes, when presented with an object that could re-write reality, don't see any danger in it: they see a tool for absolute Good, never considering the idea that destroying everything that is to build something better might be a bad move. When the Wizard and Dasein tell them in no uncertain terms that we will fight them rather than let them use the Synthesizer, they fight us. And Dasein's sacrifice makes them realize how wrong they were.
Glad you liked the spells! They were awesome to come up with and storyboard.
Thanks for the feedback and the kind words! As for [REDACTED], it's going to be a direct consequence of what happened in Lemuria. And it might not be the last world of the arc: we're going to let the arc go as long as it needs to: I'm not going to pad a world in to get it up to 5 worlds, and I'm not going to jam-pack a final world to keep it to 3.
@BESTKOGANA Thanks, man! The response to Lemuria has been very rewarding to us writers.
@BAMA365 Yeah, we always get blasted by some for not having hard content, and it's not really a good idea to have the mainline be too hard because then people can get blocked on it and not see all the content we worked so hard to build. So over the last few updates we're been trending for harder side content. But I think it's pretty clear there needs to be more of a mix than we have now. We're also working with Design to see if we can find new ways to make side quests worth doing.
@THEMANCERLEGEND There was indeed a decision, and it came early on in the process. See my first post for how our intentions evolved over the course of preproduction, but basically we wanted Part 1 to be learning that the Nothing exists, and Part 2 to be learning about it and figuring out what it is. There was a point in brainstorming when one of the writers inverted the idea, and instead of us learning about the Nothing the Nothing was learning what Something is, and what it means to be a good part of it. That idea really brought the through line for Lemuria into focus.
@ORAN OF URZ As fir the final fight, see above. It seems now we didn't have enough build up to it - the idea that Power Corrupts was a big part of it, but you hadn't seen it affect the Heroes at all.
@LOOKIT LIGHT 1) Um... not at this time.
2) The sky was very silver, with a bright light directly overhead and a darkening shadow at the horizon. They were seeing the Old One's Lab, but from a very tiny perspective.
3) It actually arose from some tools improvements that gave us the ability to make NPCs kick off specific talk animations at specific times. When we realized we could have the wizard do it too, it was a no-brainer. We are constantly on the lookout for ways to make our dialogue sequences more dynamic.
4) The story version: The Old One knit Lemuria together out of the pieces of the world of the Spiral, so some echoes of existing places resonate here and there. The practical version: time. Reuse of an environment means we get that environment in much less time than we otherwise would. You're right to note that it's the layout we re-use, not the whole zone - weeks of work go into even a reused zone. Once we hit upon the pulps as our inspiration, we knew we'd want a lot of zones to show off a lot of heroes. We worked very closely with the Art Director to get as much of the story as we wanted within the time and artist bandwidth we had available. Our Art Director and I talked about this at length on the most recent KI Live - he says it a lot better than I can.
Lemuria has been one of my favorite worlds so far! I have a few questions though: 1. When we recovered the World Synthesizer, we learned that it was designed to play the song of creation. He seemed to be able to achieve this all on his own without the Lords of Night to help unlike with Morganthe. How powerful is the Old One compared to Morganthe?
2. In the Heap, i noticed that wizard city houses were used for that area. Did the Old One travel at wizard city at one point to steal fragments from there as well? Or was it the world synthesizer randomly picking areas from every world?
Overall probably my favorite world in this arc! We will see how nice the final world for this arc is. Im excited
1: I have noticed that the Heroes of Lemuria, throughout our questing there, boldly and plainly represent certain character archetypes and/or qualities. For example, the Bantam represents the role of the Outlaw, The Shadoe is a character with Empathy, and Stallion Quartermane is an Explorer and Adventurer. As a matter of fact, a crucial part of the story of Mandoria revolves around the idea of Duck Savage (representing Intellect) and Mandar (representing Barbarism) being able to reconcile their differences and work together.
Yet for all their differences, they all share some common traits. All of the Heroes have Bravery, for example, and Courage to fight off their enemies. I'm well aware that this is is because of Stallion Quartermane's template, but I feel that behind the screen there was some intense thinking behind doing this. Why choose to have so many different character archetypes in a single world? (Not that I'm complaining, quite the opposite. The results came out great.)
2: You may not exactly be the right person for this kind of discussion, but I wanted to mention it while the Forums has your ear. Over in The Dorms, a user by the name of Undead Redhead has a thread going discussing how the flashing elements in modern-day Wizard101 make the game risky for play for people vulnerable to seizures. I agreed with the points being raised and have a bit of a concern myself, so I wanted to raise the question: are there any plans to have some sort of option that makes Wizard101 safer for epileptics and other seizure-vulnerable people?
@BENSTORMDUST Glad you dig the Nothing. Yes, there was more than a little Flatland going on, and the Beyonder did inspire one aspect of the story: in Secret Wars II when the Beyonder first showed up in Molecule Man's apartment he manifested as an amalgam of all the superheroes who "beat" him. Having the Nothing appear as the Paradox was definitely influenced by that idea.
As for Axenos, he was definitely paced in his own pocket dimension Outside the Spiral. But it wasn't mono-dimensional - it was big enough for Axenos to run around in. I hadn't intended for there to be a direct connection, but yes - I can easily imagine that Celestian studies of dimensional spaces Outside would have touched on our Nothing and been instrumental in finding others to use as prisons. The biggest difference here is that the monodimension of Nothing is sentient. It has awareness and volition. It just never had anything to be aware of, until recently...
The disruption at the end of Empyrea was an order f magnitude bigger than the Storm Lord summoning. The use of extreme Light and Shadow power shook the pillars of heaven, so to speak.
The Creator text was a very very old set of quests that were written extremely early on, before the story had really taken shape. We'd veered away from a lot of those ideas, so rather than leave something we'd never clarify we opted to put down some hints at bigger things to come so new players would be forewarned about some of the major story stuff to come.
So glad you liked it! I was concerned when we first came up with the idea for Dasein that the concept would be too abstract to make for good gameplay and dialogue, but he ultimately came together really well. I'm very proud of the arc we gave Mellori in Empyrea, and I think Dasein ended up having as much development crammed into a single world. Happy to see it appreciated.
@NATHANIEL OGREBLADE Lemuria was pretty much the name we wanted to use from the beginning, and no, none of the other lost continents have presented themselves to us as good story hooks yet. Yet. Who knows what the future will bring? As I've always said, I was planning to be an educator before I got into game writing, and I I can get players to read up on stuff and learn something they never knew before, then I've done my job. Who knows what the future will bring? I can say one thing though... Strange as some of Lemuria was with the existentialism, I don't think we're done with weird just yet.
@BLAZE03554 The Dick Tracy research was great fun - we looked at the old black and white movie serials in addition to the comic strips. Glad we could remind you of good things!
@CJFIRE8 1. Yes, that's exactly right - if a Hero doesn't achieve his destiny, the Synthesizer will make sure Lemuria produces another down the line. All of our heroes are the current crop of incarnations.
2. It was a bit of fun we had making that area. As to significance, I fear there's Nothing more I can say.
3. There's do direct connection, other than they are both inspired by Lovecraft's great creation. He was always Cthulhu Lincoln to us back in the Pirate days. The spell seems like a much more primal being, not at all dapper and polished like the Old One. If the creatures are related, I'd say it's only very distantly.
4. Ah yes, Wizard vs. Pirate Polaris. It's a tangle - in most places we were very careful to try to keep the games in sync with each other, but Polaris got away from me. I'd rather not dig too far into it. Hopefully, I'll get a chance to touch upon all that again and put it in a better place soon.
5. I think when I was talking about Kane I meant to say he's superior to humans or our human-adjacent animal folk. I was thinking of a more more limited definition of "being." My bad. Still, I expect Kane likes to think that even the big statement is true...
@ LOOKIT LIGHT (The Sequel!) 1. The Isle of Lemurs Bartleby was talking about was transplanted to Lemuria and became Telos - there really wasn't much left. There may still be some Lemurs out there, but I don't see them showing up too soon.
2. How do we manage to squish so many references in? My friend, let me tell you about a little game called Pirate101... I'm still getting used to Wizard, and we're just warming up! I kid. The trick is to really research the source material and keep your minds open for the jokes. A lot of it arises from just riffing in brainstorm sessions. Somebody in a discussion said "He-Mander" and I yelled YES!
3. Sky City is technically more mid-century than it is 70s (which was the decline of that style). The direct inspiration that our Art Director fired up the artists with is the city of Brasilia, in Brazil. It was an artificial city intended to serve as a hyper modern capitol, and the architecture was set out to be as futuristic as could be imagined. I's an amazing place, and I'm glad we got to homage it.
4. That would be telling. You were expecting a different answer?
@Matthew Red Staff About Mr. Ambrose: ever since the beginning of Polaris we've tried to step away from Merle - the Wizard is a graduate, after all. We brought him back in a big way in Empyrea because the stakes mandated it, but so far there's not much he could have done for us in Arc 4 beyond say "Hmmmmm... I don't know!" Heck, Bartleby couldn't even help us out that much!
@Fable Finder Thanks for the kind word - very glad you liked the world! And yes, the notion of Power Corrupting is definitely a theme we wanted to pursue: you see the Old One's motivations gradually turn into something less than noble, and the Heroes are not immune.
As for the pip mechanics in the final fight, that's a Design thing - I have very very little understanding of any of that stuff! Direct your feedback to Ratbeard.
@DWORGYNFAN17 1. The Synthesizer was essentially taking the place of the Lords of the Night - an artificial version of them. As t relative power levels, I don't like to make comparisons: they're both really powerful, and would have had enough respect for each others' power never to directly combat each other. So why didn't the Old One do anything about Morganthe's plan, you ask. Who says he didn't?
2. There was definitely pinpointed choice involved in the taking of world pieces - the Old One had specific goals he was aiming for in specific areas (see Mandoria). Now, just because they look like Wizard City buildings doesn't necessarily mean they're from Wizard City...
Glad you liked it! The next chapter in the arc is going to be... interesting.
@FABLE FINDER I forgot to answer your last question! Dasein's saga in a long story, and a bit hard to explain. But there's somebody out there who wrote up something that sums it up really well - I couldn't have said it better myself. Google Wizard101 Much Ado About Nothing and you'll find it. That about sums it up. The Nothing simply Was. Then it realized there was more. And thanks to the World Synthesizer, he's on an all new, even crazier journey.
As to the Old One's motives for returning to save Lemuria, I'd like to leave that open to interpretation. Was it selfishness that drove him to want to regain control of Lemuria, or was it compassion? Who knows?
I loved Lemuria, it quickly became one of my favorite worlds in the entire game and I can't wait to see what happens next in this arc! Huge props to the writing team for everything that you do, I think you guys really hit it out of the park this time. Of course, with this being a story thread, I have some questions for you:
