Greetings, fellow Wizards!
It's hard to believe that 2021 is already coming to a close. We're deep into the
12 Days of the Spiral where many Wizards are experiencing the benefits of
free membership for a limited time, and we have our traditional Charity mount available in the Crown Shop to spread holiday cheer!
There have been a whirlwind of changes happening throughout the Spiral and exciting new initiatives that we could not wait to share with you all this year. Oh yeah, and planning has only just begun for 2022!
A Heaping Helping of Lemuria
Many of our high-level Wizards have already experienced what the world of
Lemuria has to offer. Spoiler: there are lemurs! The buzzword internally, as well with many of you, is the Heap zone. I think it's safe to say that this is one of the most unique and talked about zones in Lemuria and possibly the entire Spiral! We are so excited to give you many great additions to our end of the year content release. Check out the details of the release
here.
Honestly, my favorite feature that arrived in our fall release is the Quest Journal update. We've received many requests over the years to be able to organize the quest logs, and I'm glad to say you can finally hide unwanted quests! They'll always be available but out of sight when you want. Your side quests are also more organized by category as well. This has been a long time coming, and I hope you all are enjoying this feature as much as we are, especially now that there are even more quests added in Lemuria!
And let’s not forget the awesome Ranked School Spells in this update!
To Adventure!
We've had a lot of exciting dev diaries in the past few months. Our Lead Designer, Artie Rogers, shared more details behind our mission to make it easier to adventure through the Spiral with your friends in the
PvE Adventure Systems Dev Diary. We also worked with some of our community members when they hosted a
PvE Roundtable to ask questions of our design team about how we plan to take our content forward and provide compelling experiences for our players.
On the flip-side we have our Design Lead, Ben "Ratbeard" Durbin, explaining the easy to learn, hard to master rules of the new
Rho-Sham-Bo in his PvP dev diary. It's definitely no secret that we've been working towards 5th Age PvP - hopefully we'll be able to reveal more details very soon! In the meantime, we're always excited to hear about your PvP experiences and what we can do to make them more enjoyable.
Speaking of the player experience, we certainly want to ensure the Spiral remains a safe place that anyone can enjoy! Please take a moment to review the notice Professor Falmea provided about using the in-game
Reporting System to see how you can help us improve community interactions.
A Venture into Reality
One of the most exciting initiatives we have brought to life this year is a limited-edition physical
Gamma plushie! We decided it was past time for us to explore what options we can provide for players to show their love for Wizard101, and what's better than a cuddly plushie of Gamma the Owl? It was a lot of fun partnering with
Makeship to bring such a recognizable character directly to our players. For those that may have missed out, although it was a limited run it's highly possible we will offer a variety of other iconic characters in the future.
Be sure to follow our social media channels (
@Wizard101) and to sign up to the game’s newsletter for future news!
The Giving Spirit
It's that time of year again where we offer a charity mount in-game to support two impactful charities that the team really believe in! This year we've got the holly-jolly
Charity Hippogriff that has arrived in the Spiral! All proceeds from the sale of this mount will go to benefit the
Ablegamers Charity and
Creative Action charities. You have until January 3rd, 2022 to get your cheery mount!
Along with our charity mount initiative, we did something a little bit different as well. On our
Twitch channel we hosted a Charity Livestream where we played the game, recreated in-game pet snacks in real life, and raised money for charity! Throughout the six and a half hours we managed to raise $3716.70! You can watch the segments that interest you
here.
There are definitely plans to do even more of these in the future, including of course continuing to participate in
Extra-Life. This year we almost doubled our goal and raised $17,770 for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals! Be sure to follow our Twitch and YouTube channels for the latest charity participation news!
This year was jam-packed with new landscapes, exciting challenges, and amazing opportunities for Wizard101 and KingsIsle. I mean, we even got a
trailer featured at RazerCon! We have many exciting plans for the new year and promise that there will be something for everyone. Until next time, happy holidays!
Renee "Renee Wooften" Wooten (He/They)
Producer
