So you start up this game your friend told you about, and you find yourself a student in a school for wizards run by a gray-haired, bearded old man. The school, and the world in general, is under attack by evil forces led by a wizard gone bad. As you get to know your professors, you discover that one of them seems to harbor a great dislike for you. No, you're not in Hogwarts, and the resemblance mostly ends there. You are actually in Ravenwood, the wizard school conjured up by the developers of the tweencentric massively multiplayer online game Wizard101. Okay so we totally made up that word, but it means that the game's target audience is the 9-to-14 age group, otherwise known as "tweens" because it's that stage between childhood innocence and teen rebelliousness.
Wizard101 debuted in September 2008 with relatively little fanfare. Unlike its competitors, it didn't have a known franchise, television station, or seasoned marketing machine behind it, but what it did have was a charm that captured many, young and old alike. The fact that it appealed to grownups as well was an unexpected but welcome surprise for its creators, a group of guys who had originally developed another MMO of a totally different genre, called Shadowbane.
In February, KingsIsle announced that Wizard101 had reached 1 million players, an event that's commemorated in the game with a plaque outside the headmaster's office congratulating Fiona Ashblood for being the one millionth enrollee. Last month, they rolled out a huge update which introduced housing, crafting, a bazaar which allows players to trade stuff indirectly, and various enhancements to the social features. While we have no way to tell how many active players there actually are, we do know that all 29 realms are bustling with wizards these days.
So what is it that people like about Wizard101?
Certainly not the combat? At its very core is a simple turn-based trading card game. No hacking, no slashing, no chopping, nor hurling of fireballs--at least not directly. When you enter combat with a monster (or with another player in arena PvP), you attack with monster cards from your deck. You watch some animation as your monster jumps at your opponent, dishes some damage, and then it's the other monster's turn. This goes on until one of you is dead. Those who like fast-paced, shoot-the-face-type action will probably die of boredom first, but as one reviewer put it, Wizard101's combat is a cross between Final Fantasy and Magic: The Gathering. Okay, so maybe people do like the slow pace of turn-based combat and the simple rules of Wizard101's trading card game, but I can see myself getting bored with it before I get to level 50.
And then there are the minigames. Although these are just optional features meant to help you recover health and mana more quickly, the scores on the minigame leaderboards indicate that people spend hours beyond what it takes to fully recover. Yours truly pleads guilty to an addiction to a game-within-the-game called Sorcery Stones.
The trading card combat system fuels a lot of the other features of the game. Players do quests so they can earn better monster cards. They buy booster packs or items that grant cards from the cash store. They search for ingredients so they can craft newer and better cards. And, of course, they trade them with one another.
As in most online games for the tween audience, Wizard101 has built-in features designed to protect children from the dangers of online social interaction. The default chat system uses a menu of pre-formed sentences that work amazingly well. I have actually carried a conversation with another player without knowing she was using menu-based chat until she said, "Sorry I don't have text chat." (Yes, that's on the menu!)
There is a second tier of filtered text chat available to those aged 13 and above, where players can type text into a chat box but the words are screened against a list of valid words. And finally, due to player requests, KingsIsle recently introduced a third tier of chat for adults that filters typed words against a list of invalid words (ie. cuss words) and which can only be activated by providing a valid credit card number. So, assuming that your child doesn't lie about his age and doesn't have access to your credit card number, he should be restricted to the chat type within his age group.
In short, Wizard101 is the type of game you wish your child would play, and maybe he would if he knew about it! On Friday we will talk about the game's business model (what's free and what's not), explore the new crafting and housing features, and hopefully we'll get to see the new area, Grizzleheim, as well.