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I wrote a reply to this a while ago... and got pretty into it. When I hit the "Submit" button, I realized I had auto-logged from the forums and was given a "You need to be logged in to use the forums" message. That was a bummer. So now I am re-writing this reply. :-P

While the "core elements" have already been taken and used; i.e.: Fire, Ice, Earth, Thunder, etc, there are many more possibilities for schools and spells of magic. They go outside the basic elements and become more exotic, more exlusive, and can feasably add quite an interesting "oomph" to the game. These are just a few "spur of the moment" ideas of mine, and I didnt take much time to think about them, but those will give you a general idea of what else could be brought into the game to spice up the life of the wizard.

Dream/Crystal: These exotic wizards use magic outside the basic elements, and delve into the more mysterious "ethereal" realm. Those wizards use the supernatural elements of different materials, from both the physical and magical world, to cast a variety of magic. They are perfectly capable on solo'ing on their own, but their true beauty shines in parties. They will have exclusive spells that buff the entire party and de-buff all the opponents at once. Some of their spells include "Ruby Shield" or "Ruby Weapon" to reflect a certain percentage of fire damage back at opponents that cast fire spells, and to inflict certain fire damage to opponents right on the spot when they cast fire spells. They will have party buff spells that slowly heal all party members over time, and include exclusive Dream/Crystal magic that will boost all party members' attributes. "Diamond Reflection" would decrease all damage dealt to players, while a spell such as "Magic Ascension" would increase all damage dealt by players.

Steel/Metal: An "element" I derived from the pokemon franchise, Steel/Metal wizards will use the physical properties of metal formed by their magic. They would be able to summon a sword as an attack, to summoning little wind up toys to their side. They could conjur up shields out of metal that would protect them from all elements at once, similiar to a -25% balance buff on an opponent, or similiar to the Ice shields. Tinker Wizards?

Evoker/Charm: These exotic wizards, similiar to Myth wizards, will summon monsters from their own spell cards as pets, to do their bidding, allowing a wide variety of companions, with a wide variety of effects and support. Perhaps they could lay "traps" for opponents, that traps their spell monsters when cast, and turns it into an ally.

Water: These wizards use water, although a different form of Ice. These wizards use the soothing effects of water, and can form and use it into exotic and awe inspiring attacks. Much like life wizards, they can use their own exclusive water magic to heal, although perhaps not as powerful as life magic. They can buff with a bubble, or attack with water serpents, or cast powerful water spouts and jet streams to handle their opposition.

Like I said before, these are all just spur of the moment ideas, but this just shows you that there are many more possible ideas out there that can be used to add different schools of magic.

Headmaster Ambrose hinted that he was working on the Astral Magics....
What they are or how they are suppossed to work I dont know. I'm only a simple storm student! :D

Anyways, maybe that's the answer you are looking for

Its possible that they will add some new schools of magic, but probably only one at a time, and only every few expansions. Adding new schools is difficult not only because they have to create a whole new array of spells that are balanced against the other exsisting schools, but also because they have to find a way to integrate it into the world so that it doesn't effect the game's continuity and "feel".

I like some of the ideas posted above. I think the most viable of them would be the dream/crystal school. Water wouldn't work because it would be an ice/life hybrid, and people generally dont like to play classes that do a couple things with mediocre ability, people would rather just play ice/life or life/ice wizard.

The metal sounds a little too much like myth. Myth is an odd school because it boasts summoning magic, but also uses earth attacks, which rules out earth as becomming its own school, which could have had a lot of possibilities. They could make some kind of stone school.

I would actually like to see a Mind School. The spells in this school would focus on debuffs and crowd control. Dealing little direct damage, the spells in this school would be very indirect. The damage dealing spells could be like Mind Wrack, a spell that disables the target from casting spells for a turn, and then deals X amount of damage over 3 turns. A debuff would be like Chaotic Visions which makes all the target's spells cost 1 more pip to cast. A buff would be like Ethereal Veil which would absorb the next incomming spell cast at the target (or counters the next spell the target casts). Another cool spell would be one like Sleep which makes the target unable to act for X +1 amount of turns where X is the amount of pips used to cast the spell divided by 2.

Whatever new class they decide to add in the future, it needs to have spells that break the mold and really set it apart.

Expansions also tend to break a lot of what was previously in the game. If you want to cite WoW, how often do people now do what was the end-game before the expansions? Rather, that's a fair bit of development time for stuff that people who pick up the game now can't properly experience. I guess in WoW's case, that's all right becuase the end game was so catastrophically abyssmal, but it's still development time wasted. A big budget game that spends $80 million before initial release can afford that, but Wizard101 doesn't strike me as the sort of game with that big of a budget.

It should also be noted that expansions exist for one reason and one reason only: to get people to buy a box again. If you have to pay $50 to buy a box and then $15/month to play after that, an expansion is there to make people pay $50 to buy another box in addition to the monthly fee.

I guess one could argue that expansions also add more content, which means it takes longer before players run out of content, and thus they get players to pay the monthly fee more times. Simply adding content as it is ready does that, too, however. In the case of games without a monthly fee (often single-player), an expansion to make players buy a box again is the only way the company gets money on further development, so they're kind of forced to go that route.

Wizard101 doesn't make you buy a box, but only charges a monthly fee. As such, it would make more sense to simply add content as it is ready than to save up a ton at once and call it an expansion. Indeed, that's what they just did with Dragonspyre. For that matter, that's what other games that charge only a monthly fee tend to do, and for the same reasons.

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If they're planning on adding several classes to the game, it would make sense to do those all at once, not just one at a time. If you add three classes one at a time, then you have to go in and rebalance all of the existing content three times, or else have it seem rather goofy and ill-designed to people who first play the game later. If you add the classes all at once, you only have to rebalance things once.

Note that right now, the classes are mostly paired. Fire does extra damage versus ice mobs and vice versa. The same happens with the storm/myth pairs and the life/death pairs. Balance doesn't get anything like that, but that's kind of the whole point of the class. If they add only one new class, does it get paired with Balance? Paired with nothing, making Balance lose its distinctiveness? For that matter, adding three classes at once would create something like this problem, too.

One thing I think is very important about adding classes is, if you're going to add them, make sure they have a point. I really hate it when games have sets of classes that are pretty much interchangeable. If you can play as class A as though you were class B and vice versa and do just fine either way, then one of those classes is redundant and should have been cut from the game.

They've done a good job of making each of the classes in the game pretty distinctive. The more classes a game has, the harder that is to do. Adding new classes would probably require adding new game mechanics to give the new classes a point. While that can be done, it might require rebalancing a lot of existing content to make sure that everything still works out right for all of the new classes.

i heard headmaster ambrose say something about astral magics.i think its stars, moon, and sun.

Shiningfantasia wrote:

I wrote a reply to this a while ago... and got pretty into it. When I hit the "Submit" button, I realized I had auto-logged from the forums and was given a "You need to be logged in to use the forums" message. That was a bummer. So now I am re-writing this reply. :P

While the "core elements" have already been taken and used; i.e.: Fire, Ice, Earth, Thunder, etc, there are many more possibilities for schools and spells of magic. They go outside the basic elements and become more exotic, more exlusive, and can feasably add quite an interesting "oomph" to the game. These are just a few "spur of the moment" ideas of mine, and I didnt take much time to think about them, but those will give you a general idea of what else could be brought into the game to spice up the life of the wizard.

Dream/Crystal: These exotic wizards use magic outside the basic elements, and delve into the more mysterious "ethereal" realm. Those wizards use the supernatural elements of different materials, from both the physical and magical world, to cast a variety of magic. They are perfectly capable on solo'ing on their own, but their true beauty shines in parties. They will have exclusive spells that buff the entire party and de-buff all the opponents at once. Some of their spells include "Ruby Shield" or "Ruby Weapon" to reflect a certain percentage of fire damage back at opponents that cast fire spells, and to inflict certain fire damage to opponents right on the spot when they cast fire spells. They will have party buff spells that slowly heal all party members over time, and include exclusive Dream/Crystal magic that will boost all party members' attributes. "Diamond Reflection" would decrease all damage dealt to players, while a spell such as "Magic Ascension" would increase all damage dealt by players.

Steel/Metal: An "element" I derived from the pokemon franchise, Steel/Metal wizards will use the physical properties of metal formed by their magic. They would be able to summon a sword as an attack, to summoning little wind up toys to their side. They could conjur up shields out of metal that would protect them from all elements at once, similiar to a -25% balance buff on an opponent, or similiar to the Ice shields. Tinker Wizards?

Evoker/Charm: These exotic wizards, similiar to Myth wizards, will summon monsters from their own spell cards as pets, to do their bidding, allowing a wide variety of companions, with a wide variety of effects and support. Perhaps they could lay "traps" for opponents, that traps their spell monsters when cast, and turns it into an ally.

Water: These wizards use water, although a different form of Ice. These wizards use the soothing effects of water, and can form and use it into exotic and awe inspiring attacks. Much like life wizards, they can use their own exclusive water magic to heal, although perhaps not as powerful as life magic. They can buff with a bubble, or attack with water serpents, or cast powerful water spouts and jet streams to handle their opposition.

Like I said before, these are all just spur of the moment ideas, but this just shows you that there are many more possible ideas out there that can be used to add different schools of magic.

I like your ideas, but i have to point something out.

The Steel/Metal ideas are like turning inanimate objects into an animated object, which i see is myth. So really its like a re make of myth.

In my opinion, they should just make more levels like up to 60 or 70 or something, and just add a lot more spells to the current schools, not make new ones.