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1st Agers. You gotta love them. No, actually, you don't. For those of you who don't know, a "1st Ager" is a term I use to describe someone who CLAIMS to be a Wizard101 fan, but only considers the first age of the game to be worth anything ( back when the level cap was 50 ). And while it's fine to have the opinion that the Wizard101 of 2008 and 2009 was the best, 1st Agers opinions are largely rooted in blind ignorance and even nostalgia. And I for one am sick and tired of listening to them bash modern Wizard101 for how much it's changed.

So, here's a little rundown of a few things these older players need to stop complaining about. Oh, and I won't be pulling any punches with my criticism here, so you know. VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED

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#5: "I only liked the original 5 worlds!"

So this is exactly the kind of thing you'd expect someone like a 1st Ager to say, right? After all, it's someone who only liked the game back when there were only 5 worlds. But what gets me here is the way they say "The original 5 worlds". It's a loaded term, and it's actually a little misleading, because by saying "the ORIGINAL worlds", they're implying that all the worlds that came after are unoriginal. That because Wizard City to Dragonspyre were the OG's, they're all better than Celestia to whatever the heck we're on now.

Truth be told, I'm only a fan of a handful of the first story arc worlds. MooShu never takes long to put me to sleep with it's quieter, more somber music tracks every time I replay it, which doesn't fit the war-oriented setting of the world at all, and Dragonspyre is just an irritating slog against boss monsters you most likely can't solo against on your first playthrough. They're probably the worlds I look forward to THE LEAST on repeat playthroughs, so I don't know why people are so quick to bash the newer worlds that came after. Some of them are nowhere near as difficult as Dragonspyre, they don't put you to sleep like MooShu, and a lot of them are really interesting to travel to and explore as you go through the game.

So take that with a grain of salt, 1st Agers. Your precious "ORIGINAL" worlds are not the best thing in Wizard101, and hating everything past that is just pure ignorance.

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#4: "Back in my day, we just had duels and didn't worry about all that 'MATH' stuff!"

This is some garbage you'd hear from a grouchy old man, yet it comes from people my age.

Listen, buddy: Back when Wizard101 was in it's infancy years, I was about your age, and maybe even older. And you don't see me complaining because I don't understand simple math.

Here's what they're complaining about: In today's modern Wizard101, there are many more blades, traps, and other things that affect the damage of a card quite drastically. Back in the Wiz of old, we had maybe, 2 blades and 2 traps, tops ( not counting Feint, Hex and Curse ), so it was pretty simple to calculate how much damage you were going to do if you put them all down. But today, when half a dozen blades and traps go down at once, and auras start popping up all over the place, it can be very difficult to calculate EXACTLY how much damage your going to do. Obviously, the process of trying to calculate if your spell is going to hit hard enough to kill the enemy or not is too much for some people to handle.

Of course, back when Wizard101 was still fresh and new, the games fanbase was still very young, much younger than today's fanbase, with people like me, who were in middle school at the time, near the top of the age group. So of course, all of us kids are just going to slap on a couple of blades, toss out a Sandstorm and have fun wrecking stuff. But do you really need to sit in front of a calculator all day trying to add up exactly how much damage your Efreet is going to do with 4 blades, 7 traps and an aura? NO! And you never will!

I don't understand where this misconception that you need to be a math major to enjoy Wizard101 comes from. Do you really thing young children, who make up a HUGE chunk of the games playerbase, are sitting around in front of a calculator trying to figure out how strong their spells are? NO!! They're just Meteor Striking and Storm Lording their way through all the content just like I did 11 years ago! You don't need to have a diploma in math to enjoy Wizard101, so just go play the game.

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#3: "This game will never be as good as it was in 2008!"

This statement is pure, %100, Grade A, nostalgic BALONEY!!

Even if your opinion is that Wizard101 was better back in the older days, we've got so much cool stuff today that makes the game so much more entertaining to play, having to settle for the bare-bones game we had in 2008 is something I will NEVER do again.

Want to talk about some of the things wrong with the OG Wiz101 of '08?

• Balance was completely unbalanced, because it was resisted by nothing but Tower Shield, and getting high enough resist to tank the attacks usually resulted in sacrificing damage, accuracy, and even health and mana!
• Pets did virtually nothing to help you in combat, including maycasts and stat bonuses.
• The games visuals were "PASSABLE" at best when it first launched.
• The Team Up! kiosk wasn't a thing, making it more annoying to find a team to help with a difficult dungeon.
• It was MUCH HARDER to grind for gold, since reagents, pet snacks, and about %90 of the Treasure Cards we have today didn't exist.
• The game didn't have voice acting, and even after it got voice acting, some of the original voicework that has since been replaced was BAAAAAAD!! Looking at you, Duncan Grimwater...

No, 2008's Wizard101 is a dumpster fire compared to the game we have today, so just get over your nostalgia and use common sense.

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#2: "They're really running out of ideas!"

OH MY GOSH, I hear this one so often, and it makes me want to facepalm every single time.

It's usually in reference to one of the later worlds in the game, such as the upcoming Karamelle.

"UGH, A CANDY WORLD!? They must really be running out of ideas!"

So if that were the case, wouldn't that mean that every world to come out after would be worse, since they've literally exhausted every idea that's better than a box of chocolates?

I mentioned this to a friend of mine about a week back in reference to wands that resemble Tetris blocks. People weren't complaining about KingsIsle running out of ideas back in 2008 and 2009, but that's because stupid ideas have been around since the start.

You could argue that things in this game based on famous things or franchises like Tetris are pretty dumb, and I'll accept your opinion, but they're obviously not running out of ideas.

Just stop, people. I'm done with this one. MOVING ON.

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#1: "I can't keep up with all this new content!"

This one. Oh my gosh, I am so sick and tired of hearing this one. It sounds harmless, sure, because Wizard is filled to the breaking point with all kinds of content, but it's always the context in which it's used that sends me over the edge.

This is how the conversation usually goes:

"So, what do you do for a living, dude?"

"Oh, I play internet games for YouTube and Twitch and stuff."

"Oh yeah, what kind of games?"

"Oh, a lot of MMORPG's, mainly Wizard101."

"Oh, dude, I used to play Wizard so much back in the day. It was so legit."

"Dude, you should totally get back into it. It's better than it's ever been."

AND HERE IT COMES...

"I just can't keep up with all this new CONTENT!!"

"... ... ..." *Sips drink, puts on sunglasses, and walks away*

Gee, thanks. Thank you for dismissing my suggestion. I guess this conversation is over.

Why do people think it's a requirement to have to keep up with all the content in Wizard101 in order to enjoy it? There's not a test on what content is in a game before you play it. I don't have to memorize every element on planet Earth in order to go outside and breath whatever is in the air, so what gives?

I actually kind of enjoy the sense of seeing a bunch of new content for the first time. Isn't that what made our first playthrough's of Wizard back in 2008 so much fun in the first place? All these different monsters, and we didn't know what a single one of them did until we fought with them!

Oh, and you know something else? You absolutely can keep up with all this content in Wizard. Evidence of this is simply my brain. I mean, show me any monster in this game, and I can tell you how much health it has, it's resistance, it's spells, and maybe even more, depending on what monster it is.

Oh, and if you wanna get all "SCIENCE MAN" for a second, the human brain can hold about a million gigabytes of information. That's more than enough to hold the entirety of the Wizard101 wiki. So your wrong, you absolutely can keep up with all this content.

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So stop sounding like a grumpy old man and give one of the best online games of all time a fair chance. Don't get rooted down by blind nostalgia about what you remember from 11 years ago. Just have fun.

I suppose I fall into the category of longtime players.

Analyzing your list, I can see that all of your points are valid. I am not a fan of biased opinions without first taking the time to research. These statements have no supporting evidence and cannot have any.

Don't think this game is as good as it once was? Go find something else, I dunno why you're still here. Can't keep up wit the content? It's OK, take your time learning it all, it's not like you're in a rush.

While I have never personally witnessed anyone make these claims, I do think that this post provides a solid rebuttal.

I started playing in 2010, and while I took a several year break and only play from time to time now, I have to say that these complaints didn't resonate with me either. Not that they aren't valid, because I'm sure some people are like this. I think you explained each one well, and I chuckled at your hypothetical conversation under bullet point #1.

Speaking of new content, do you know what online game has too much new content?

Webkinz.

I logged on about a year ago just for nostalgia's sake, and oh my goodness, I could NOT keep up with how many new features they added. It was extremely overwhelming and almost appeared to make the game lag.

FWIW, I think most of the new content W101 has added has been for the better. I love just about all the new worlds, and the Team Up! feature has saved me so many times when questing.

What an interesting read.

I really do love the first 5 worlds.

They have something special about them, they have a wonderful quality that all the later
worlds do not.

That is the magical quality of being able to skip them thanks to the level 50 elixir.

Math is not my favourite subject but I have never worried about that I just blade and trap until
I hit with mostly an over kill.

I was not here in 2008 so I can not say whether it was better back then. But I do know that me
in 2020 is a more improved person than I was in 2008. So maybe the game is in a similar place.

I wish that the game makers were running out of ideas, as they manage to find out of the square boss
fights in each new world that often makes me want to shout and scream and vent. It is having too many
new ideas that is heart breaking.

All this new content is something that is hard to keep up with, they introduce new events and all those new
spells that wizards magically begin using. You then have to ask them where they got that spell and then off
I teleport to some new boss battle to get my new spell added to my spell deck. And now a new world that will
keep me busy to the end of the year trying to get all my wizards through it and allowing me to feel that I will
have by then kept up with the new content.

Thanks for an interesting post.

I've been playing since Celestia was the top world, and (IMO) the newer worlds beat the pants off the 5 original worlds. Also, the graphic changes to environment and our characters gave a needed freshening to the game.
I do agree that there is now a lot of new content, but, you know what? If it bothers you or destroys your enjoyment, you don't need to do it.

Most of this is side content that can be ignored and the game easily played without it.
And, Kyle U., if this bothers you that badly, ignore them and port away.

So, this is basically an, "Okay, Boomer!" thread?

It's great to support KI and say, "Just play the game!". Nothing wrong with that. What you're hand-waving away, though, is the fact that "the good old days" aren't just about the first five worlds or whatever - It's about how the way to play the game has changed over the years. The focus of the game, the balance between the various schools, and the constant treadmill are all different than what the "first agers" are all remembering. Pretending that the "boomers" are just grouchy oldsters marks you as being just as prejudiced as you claim them to be.

The truth, IMO, is that KI is experiencing the same issues with game content that companies like Blizzard and Arenanet have had to address when they created a monolothic "XP Pyramid" and locked all the content behind a never-ending XP grind from the bottom to the top.

Eventually, KI is going to have to address HOW the game is played. It took all of two days for max-level players to play all the way through Karamelle. Two. Days.

So, when some level 140 says, "Man, I remember when I worked my butt off to get through Dragonspyre alive!", are you going to just "Okay, Boomer!" him or are you going to ask yourself, "What should new content from KI be like in 2021?"

Now, in fairness, KI deliberately made Karamelle "easy", in that they designed it to be doable by an average player instead of tuning it to be something only a top-end twinked and tricked out 1-per-center could finish.

The real issue is that KI needs to look at how the MMORPG field has changed in the last few years and embrace the idea that maybe the "top" shouldn't be some level 1000 world in five years but instead that maybe there should be a series of "tracks" that parallel each other and let the player choose her path from the "bottom" to the "top" so that "top" means whatever the player most enjoys.

Of course, that could be a problem for you, OP, since now you'd have five different brands of "boomers" all complaining about the good ol' days as they each individually remember them. C'est le vie.

In the end, maybe YOU need to make like a duck and just let it roll off and "just play the game".

DanTheTerrible on Nov 24, 2020 wrote:

I've been playing since 2009.

I get you, and people who bash newer content because it's not old are just rude. Though to be honest I rarely hear stuff like that.

It does bother me that some of the newer content seems awfully useless. Fishing? Monstrology? Why? Ok, I can ignore it, except the annoying reminders keep popping up.

If I had one complaint about the game, it is that so much of the content is useless. Moon school spells anybody? The game is fun, but I really wish Kingsisle would do a major overhaul and rebalance, making more stuff useful and ditching most useless content.. I think its time for wizard 102.

After the horrid difficulty of Empyrea, an average "easy" world sounds blissful!

Oran of Urz on Nov 30, 2020 wrote:

I've honestly never seen those complaints from old players.....at all.

The only complaint from "1st Agers" I've consistently seen is about PvP "back in the day" and how it was better than today's PvP. KI even created special tournaments (no pets, etc) to accomodate.

Perhaps it was better. As I remember, finding matches wasn't an issue back in the pre-age PvP era.
I actually can't find Ranked PvP anymore as a level 50 private. I sit in Queue all day for nadda.

I mean good luck finding a Ranked 4v4, those practically don't exist in this age.
you have to go tourney or practice for PvP, but those are full of silly gamemodes.
and tournaments don't gain you rank, so ranked pvp is for all purposes dead