Happy 10th Anniversary wizards! We officially crossed the 10 year mark this past Sunday, Sept. 2nd. Our team has been spending months in advance working up cool new content in the game to celebrate, including work on the 2nd part of Empyrea! Much more about Empyrea Part 2 was also on KI Live last week, which you can watch now on YouTube.
Another major announcement was the inclusion of the game on Steam! That’s right, we’re bringing in a wave of new players from this expansive platform. The exciting thing about players coming from Steam is that they will be right there with you in the same world, no separation of servers. Read more about the addition of Steam support in our Wizard101 Steam FAQ.
There’s so much more to talk about in this month’s newsletter, so let’s get to it!
What's New?
Wizard101 News
Let’s take a quick look at some of the neat things that have happened this past month:
10th anniversary events! See community section below for community run events
Birthday quest turned on and now with 10th Anniversary energy!
Wizard101 is now available on the Steam platform
The 10th Anniversary Storybook has been completed!
New Decade Pets! We picked some of our favorite classic (or just cool) pets and gave them a shine! There are some new, never before seen talents on these pets as well...
The 1.370 hotfix also included Mac users now being able to use Photomancy
Producer's Letter
My Dear Wizards,
TEN. Ten is a lot of just about anything. Ten Firecats can be a handful to keep track of and ten Fire Dragons will most certainly cause chaos! It’s also a wonderful and amazing amount of time to spend being a Professor in the Spiral, and we’re incredibly thrilled to be celebrating our TENTH ANNIVERSARY, well, all year, but officially next month on September 2nd. We would not be here without our fabulous and dedicated community, and we’re overjoyed to have you along for the ride, whether you’ve been around for ten days or all ten years!
We’ve been doing a whole lot of reminiscing at KingsIsle lately, and it’s crazy to think how much our little corner of the Spiral has evolved.
Worlds and Levels: The original game launched in 2008 with four worlds and a level cap of 50. We’re currently at thirteen main worlds, four side worlds (five if you count Wintertusk as its own area), and the level cap is 125 (and 130 is not too far away...).
Wizards Best Friends: The original game launched with purely cosmetic Pets. Now, they’re an integral part of life in the Spiral, they have their own pet park to train them, the Hatchery to hatch the perfect pet, and most recently what we call the “Amazon prime” of hatching, the Hatchmaking Kiosk!
Side System O’ Rama: Launched it in early 2009, PVP was the first side system we introduced. Since then, we’ve added crafting, housing, mounts, pets, gardening, housing games, castle magic, team up, fishing, socketing, daily assignments, Monstrology, and more.
Life in the Spiral: It’s much more convenient to be a Wizard now. Do you know that from September 2008 until April 2009 there was no Quest Helper? Can you imagine? Since then we’ve added a bunch of Quality of Life updates including Quest Finder, Photomancy, the Magic Mirror shop, the level 50 elixir, menu chat improvements/revamps, friends chat, equipment sets, deck sorting options, and so much more.
Talk To Me: The Spiral was much quieter back then. We added full voiceover starting in 2009. We experimented with a lot of different options before that, but we ultimately decided that the effort was important. I think it was worth it for the immersive experience!
Shop ‘Til You Drop: Shopping and storing your loot used to be much more difficult. We added both the bazaar and Crown Shop in 2009, as well as the shared bank. Since then we’ve increased the backpack, bank, and treasure card storage sizes, and offered various storage solutions like the Gear Vault, Seed Vault, and Mannequins. We also gave you decluttering options (which have become increasingly necessary as the Spiral adds more cool loot) with quick sell, and feed pet. To fuel those shopping habits, now you can earn Crowns with trivia, daily assignments, and by watching videos.
Wave Your Magic Wand: Your spell options used to be limited to your school and what you could train in Ravenwood. Now you can learn Celestial magic (sun, moon, and star school, originating in Celestia), and Shadow Magic (originating in Khrysalis). You can find spells on trainers all over the Spiral, as well as in various Lore CCG packs and on the Loremaster in Dragonspyre.
Member Benefits: Being a member now really has its perks. Since launch we’ve added extra backpack space and friends lists, faster crafting and hatching timers, faster energy regen, and all the temporary member benefits like double gardening, double pet xp, and more!
Missed last week's KI Live? Watch it now on YouTube! We covered a bunch of Wizard101 10th Anniversary content, some really cool updates to Pirate101, Animal Cove's global launch, and more!
Tom’s Top 10 KI Live Moments
For those of you who don’t know, KingsIsle Live is the monthly livestream where KingsIsle shares news about all of our games, MMO and mobile. To celebrate our 10th anniversary, we asked Tom and Leah (prolific KI Live hosts) what their 10 favorite KI Live moments are.
Today’s post is a top 10 list from the man himself, Tom Purdue! He sent over his favorite moments and his explanations for why they’re his favorites. We’ve added links so you don’t have to hunt through hours and hours of KingsIsle Live. Get ready to laugh, cry, and… who am I kidding? You’ll mostly be laughing!
MMORPG.com: Interview with the Devs
From MMORPG.com: "Well, it's not every day that you see an MMO turn 10 years old. Wizard101's community made sure to celebrate the grand occasion by participating in in-game events, sending appreciation messages to KingsIsle, and visiting their favorite professors in Ravenwood. In other words, September 2nd was certainly a busy day for the spiral's wizards. With Wizard101's Steam launch inching closer and closer, the spiral is only expected to get even bigger. To gain some insight on this amazing milestone (and see what's coming up in the game's future), I caught up with Senior Creative Designer of MMO Content, Leah Ruben, and Lead Wizard101 Creative Designer, Sam Johnson. KingsIsle community members would better know Leah Ruben as Professor Falmea and Sam Johnson as Blind Mew."
Location: The Pet Pavilion is connected to the Commons in Wizard City.
Description: Added to Wizard City and connected to The Commons on May 26th, 2010, the Pet Pavilion is the central hub in Wizard City for everything Pet-related. Wizards can train their Pets from Baby all the way to Ultra, and they can hatch Pets with themselves or other Wizards with new configurations of Pet abilities.
When a Pet reaches the age of Teen, then it can participate in the Pet Derby races. Ranked and Practice Pet Derby races take place here. Winners in first and second place receive Arena tickets, but only when participating in a Ranked race.
The Games: There are several fun and challenging games that will get your pet leveled up in no time! Here is a brief description of the highlights:
Cannon Game: Fire your pet at the target, adjusting direction, angle and power. Bypass obstacles and adjust for wind speed to keep on target.
Dance Game: Repeat the arrow sequence from the screen bottom. Each round the sequence gets longer. The game ends after 5 rounds or 3 failures.
Gobbler Drop: Pick a food and guide your pet to catch as much as it can before time runs out. Avoid falling dangers and try for bonus items!
Grumpy Gobblers: Fire your pet, adjusting the direction, angle and power. Try using Spell Effects on matching blocks. Knock everything down to score a victory!
Maze Game: Lead your pet through the maze, avoid the ghosts and collect as much food as you can before time runs out. A score of 70 snacks or more awards all 4 attribute points.
Way of the Ninja Pig: Reach the end of the course before time expires. Be careful of obstacles to avoid getting knocked off the track.
And of course, the Pet Derby!
Who’s That Boss? Since the Pet Pavilion is a no-combat zone, you won’t be fighting any bosses here, but you will see numerous and fascinating pets coming and going as they are trained up by their masters!
Screenshot of the Month
Fan Screenshot
We love to see your screenshots every month! Photomancy is now live with thousands of Wizards capturing unique instances of their gameplay experiences! Send us your best (three max please) screenshots every month to community@wizard101.com. We can’t wait to see what you capture!
This month’s Screenshot of the Month comes from Amber Hawksong, who captured this great image of her group hanging out in front of one of their homes:
We’ll be uploading all the screenshots received over the past month to Facebook soon. Thanks!
Community Spotlight
Fan Art
This summer has seen a good increase in fan art with some amazing works submitted to us on a daily basis! Our spotlight this month goes to Michelle Spiritwhisper for this fantastic concept art of her Triple Crowns hat:
Michelle adds, “The new crowns hat is exactly what a posh wizard like me was looking for!”
And, just because it was so cool, we wanted to show you this anniversary picture again, and give credit to the amazing Victoria Thundershard!
This is fabulous work from both of you. Thank you for sharing with the community!
We need to see more art from our fans! Do you have something to share? Send it to us in an email to community@Wizard101.com ASAP! We’re always in need of more fan art. Thanks!
What's Up in the Community?
Community News
Here are a bunch of upcoming events by the community!
Blaze Lifehammer explored two very impressive castles filled with creative uses of castle magic including one with mini movies and another one with an ocean aquarium.
The unaffiliated-with-KingsIsle “Community Newsletter” had a great selection of Wizard101-related links this month from around the web. NOTE: Be sure to visit and follow their Twitter page for more information. To subscribe to their newsletter, send a Direct Message to them over Twitter inquiring to be added or email them at community.newsletter.101@gmail.com. You can unsubscribe at any time by sending them an email with the phrase “UNSUB”
Follow Wizard101!
Be sure to follow the game and its community on social media!
