My sister is in labor with my new niece or nephew, and I don’t want to go to sleep until he or she is born! So exciting, since I think she (or he) will likely be the last baby born of their generation. Allyson, Shannon, Andrew, Jazzmin, Ilsa, Ellie — and now Fruity (temporary name). My cousin Adam still has time to get in the running here, but who knows…
I even watched “Blades of Glory”. Which made me want to wretch. What a terrible movie. On the other hand, I just finished watching the trailer for “Watchmen”. It looks — amazing. Just like the graphic novel. It’s been derided for not doing much more than filming the novel, but considering how people have a conviction that there are no worthwhile stories told in that medium, maybe seeing it in a movie will give them a taste of what they are missing. That said, I don’t read comics anymore, either. Print is too small, they cost too much for too few pages, and these days, all the main titles are in gigantic title-spanning story arcs that aim to try to lock you in to buying a bunch of expensive comic books really often in order to be told a full story.
That just seems like money grubbing to me.
Watchmen, you can buy in one collected book, the full story. There are so many stories told there.
Back in Wizard 101, I am happy to report that Tara Mythcrafter is now a level 21 Conjurer Adept, called by some Giant Hunter; by others, Krok Thrasher; and by the college of Ravenwood, the Protector of Wizard City. She has been working diligently to set things right in the Pyramid of the Sun, but there is too much wrong for one wizard to correct; even with all her friends standing at her side. The only ones who can free the hand-wringing Mungles is the Order of the Fang, an ancient order of Krokodilians, now far weaker than they were. I have been gathering together the relics of their power, which largely consists of fighting deadly creatures ad infinitum, same as every other MMO.
At these mid levels (the game seems to go to level 50), the deck building and card playing strategic combat has become even more involved. You have to think at least two moves ahead and frantically arrange your hand so the best cards rise to the top. Seed the deck with some strategic treasure cards when the only kind of luck you get in the draw is the bad kind.
Every card played has a pip cost associated with it, and you get one pip per round. Occasionally, you get a power pip which counts as two pips as long as you are playing a card from your school — Myth, in my case. This is KEY to getting high-rank (1 rank = 1 pip) cards out early enough to do some good. It’s almost impossible to bring out a rank 4 card not of my house — I nearly always need to play a healing card (costs two pips) before I get enough.
You can play cards from any house. Every few levels, you get a training point you can use to buy cards from another house. It’s best to focus on just one so you can get the higher rank cards, but that’s not mandatory. My secondary house is Fire; but I should probably have chosen Life. With a choice of Myth, Fire, or whatever the Myth Prism refocuses Myth magic to, I have a pretty good arsenal from which to draw. I can usually get a rank 3 fire or myth card out after the opening buff/debuff phase — buffs and debuffs cost no pips, and the debuffs the mobs cast on you give you a sense of the spells they’re about to slam you with.
Group play is made even more strategic because you are prevented from talking freely to people unless they are on your friends list and have “Secure Chat” enabled. You can turn on “2D view” which adds information to the UI about the hit points of the mob, the hit points and mana of your group, and the actions each group member is about to take. It’s not on by default, but without it, you waste a lot of magic.
Anyway, nearly through Krokosphinx Island. The next place in this world is the Temple of Storms, and then I’ll be off to the next world — a world of humanoid dogs that are stuck in England’s Victorian era. The clothing dropped there is delightfully retro, and I am looking forward to it. There is yet another world past that one, and I don’t know where the rabbit hole ends. But I think it is currently ended at that fourth world.
Top middle picture is my current gear. There’s some outfits that connect more with the Egyptian theme than the one I am wearing, but that’s okay. It’s just a placeholder for the next world’s robes. I’ve dyed all my gear blue-on-blue with yellow highlights. Nothing flashy, just a quick fix to keep looking good. ALL the hundreds of wizards I have seen in Wizard 101 pride themselves on their robes and usually have strikingly colored outfits– you really do come to recognize people by their colors and their staff.
How does W101 stack up against other MMOs? It has levels. Monster experience counts for less and less as you advance in levels, and almost all advancement is through quests. There are no real classes, and everyone can solo well and heal themselves fine. Plus, you can buy treasure cards to duplicate anyone else’s spells if there are some you really envy. Aside from larger card decks, there’s almost nothing to spend money on aside from treasure cards, pets and dying outfits (like most games, but especially so in W101, buying merchant gear is a really bad idea).
Combat in W101 is extremely slow. A battle against a boss and its henchman can easily take fifteen minutes; even simple figts against regular mobs can take five to ten. Each battle is, after all, a complete card game. So while you can repeat boss battles for loot, people just tend to keep moving forward.
Inexperienced players may feel lulled in by the simple, kid-friendly early levels. After a certain point, gear must be chosen for resists and for increasing the chance of a power pip. A badly constructed deck can leave you without any effective cards to play and no healing in easy reach; playing poorly can leave you with a healing card in your hand, and a desperate need to play it but without the pips to do so.
Four of us were fighting a 2000 hit point minotaur and his friends at the front of the Krokosphinx dungeon, and one of the people kept bashing fire spells at a monster protected against fire spells. All I could say was, he must have a really bad deck if he can’t change houses. Or perhaps he didn’t focus on a secondary house.
Although I understand its purpose, not being able to talk freely with the other players SUCKS. It’s the worst part of the game. Sometimes someone takes the trouble to figure out what they want to say, but usually there’s no time for that in battle, and people should be able to figure out what they need to do from the 2D display. The only real communication comes when you invite someone to be your friend, or you get invited. That’s a big step in W101, because these people are going to be porting on top of your head from then on, so you better get used to having them around.
You’re making W101 sound better and better, Tipa. Just what I need is yet another online game.
I’m really interested to see the consequences of such restrictive social interaction rules. Sometimes rules like that have unanticipated consequences. Do people end up friending a lot more because of the restriction? Is the threat to /ignore more meaningful? I find it hard to predict, though I can certainly appreciate the pain in the assness of it all.
I tend to accept friend requests whenever anyone sends me one. It’s allowed me to get glimpses of certain areas — and access to certain improved loot — before I could get there on my own. I send out friends requests of my own. If you just want to get into a quick battle, just go through your friends list, teleporting to people, until you find one doing something fun, then help. I’ve stumbled upon and helped lots of boss battles this way. They were soloing, struggling to take down two elite monsters at once while remaining alive, and then a friend zips in to help. It’s nice how that works.
Still, I’d like an adult server without chat restrictions, I think.
Sounds like a really great and innovative game. My only concern would be the similarities between it and the Harry Potter IP. W101 seems to be under the radar at the moment but I’d be concerned that the HP folks would sue it out of existence if they knew.
I’m not trying to be the voice of doom and gloom, but I wouldn’t want to see a lot of heartache from the mostly-kids audience for W101 should Rowling, et al put the legal hammer down.
Just for the record: I’m no legal authority so maybe there’s enough differences between W101 and HP to make W101 untouchable from a legal standpoint. Still a tad worrisome though.
Aside from dealing with teenage wizards, there is no similarity. In W101, there are no school classes, no Quidditch, no Muggles, no spell casting (everything is done with cards), no wizard festivals, no hidden houses in London, no Ministry of Magic, W101 has different worlds… Yeah, Harry Potter was my first thought when I heard about it, and I think it opened the door for this sort of MMO. But the IPs are entirely different.
They have nothing to worry about from Rowling, except that it will reduce the market for a Harry Potter-themed MMO. Their IPs are as similar as EQ’s and WoW’s, and they seem to get along 🙂