Wyvern Codes a Palooza!

That's right, it's Mount-a-Palooza in Wizard101 right now and yours truly has the opportunity to throw down some codes for 20 lucky fans! I'm so happy to give these awesome Wyverns to you guys! That's right, WYVERNS! If you're one of the lucky winners you will get one random permanent version of the following options:

- Cloud Wyvern
- Fire Wyvern
- Jade Wyvern
- Night Wyvern
- Skyvern
- Gold Wyvern

All you gotta do is enter the raffle below and leave a comment in this blog post about what type of mount you'd like to see from Wizard101 in Pirate101 and why.

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Best of luck everyone! The Raffle ends Sunday (04/21/2013) and winners will be emailed during the week.

Happy Dueling

New House, New Card Pack, New Halloween Craziness!!

News broke today that there was a new card pack in the crowns shop after the longish patch and maintenance this morning. You can read all about the new Nightmare card pack and Halloween goodies from KingsIsle over on the main page.

I was lamenting earlier in the month about how bland the Hallowe'en celebration had become from when we first saw it three years ago. (Also, did you peeps notice that KI is now calling this "Halloweenfest" instead of "Hallowe'en" like they used to? Kind of weird, wish they would have called it something other than "fest," you know? Doesn't seem very creative. Then again, I guess it's better than Halloween-a-palooza, right?) With the new card pack and this new jungle-themed house, we totally got a one-two KO punch today; Halloweenfest is looking more awesome now! Although, I'd love to duel that Spooky Bob for cool Halloween prizes. BRING IT SPOOKY BOB!

First up, let's talk about this new mega giftcard house. Lionrider King is already taking credit for the Zebrifica idea. Hey! I don't blame him! If I had come up with a Zebrifica world and saw this house, I'd do the same thing. ;) I'm just hoping there's a Bullrilla pet for me somewhere in all this excitement. :) Of course, Elie Akilian has been talking about going on Safari over on his Twitter since 8 Jan 2011. Nice, three tweets! LOL.

Bailey was invited to view Jack Skullsmith's house, giraffe pet, and mount by her friend Jason Thundershield this afternoon. Yeah, Uber Wife has connections like that. ;) She had a great time running around and taking pictures of all the amazing things about his jungle paradise.

Here's a picture of Jack on his two-seater mount.


Bailey had some troubles riding on this with Jack, even after adding him as a friend and in a group. Other people seemed to be able to jump on Jack's mount with him and ride around just fine, but it was buggy for Bailey. Hopefully that gets cleared up soon.

Here's another picture of Jack with his awesome Giraffe pet . . . 57 pedigree, hmm. Not too bad! Wonder what awesome talents that thing gets (also wonder what it looks like dancing!)


Apparently if you click on this Bazaar Tapestry, you're magically transported there! That's awesome! Ever since seeing the teleporters, something inside me has been saying, wish I could mark places around the spiral with those instead of just inside my house. Nice implementation there, KI!


The house also features a friendly gorilla who much like the genie in the Sultan's Palace will gift you with treasures once a day. He should be a bullrilla, but gorillas are ok. ;)


Check out the amazing attention to detail in this main room of the house and the awesome carved-looking Lion, Zebra, and Elephant heads adorning the upper tier of this room. Awesome. There's ample room in these houses for all your expert decorating needs.


Just amazing stuff there. The house has other tricks and surprises, and I'm sure I'll be finding more out about it here soon.

Next up is the Nightmare pack.

WOW! Look at this Nightmare mount you can get as a rare find!


That's Conner Mistblade who was dressed as the headless horseman today in his Sleepy Hallow themed house. :)

The Nightmare pack is coming in at 299 crowns, which is 100 crowns cheaper than the regular packs. It's mostly full of treasure cards, pet snacks, specter themed robes, spooky bob themed costumes, pets, broom mounts, and a few housing items. The nightmare mount is definitely the thing you want from those. :)


There I am! Surrounded by my housing items from the few nightmare packs I purchased today. Love that you can get the Halloween decorations now. :) Good news on those pet snacks (don't know if this is going to be changed in the near future or not), you can actually sell and buy some of those new high rank snacks at the bazaar. Be on the lookout for those!

Have fun with all your new surprises! I can't wait to see what KingsIsle has next for us.

Happy dueling!

Fairy wings! You're a butterfly in the sky!

Just found out on Twitter (and the Wizard101 Patcher) that you can now buy Fairy wings in the crowns shop! This item was requested as a mount a long time ago by fans, and it's finally here! I imagine a few of the "gals" out there are flippin' out! If I could wear my fairy wings while riding on my unicorn and go twice as fast, THEN I might be more excited. ;-) But that's just me.

Myrna has been riding on a cheap old broom for a long time, so . . . I decided what the hey! It's time for an upgrade for Myrna! Amber hasn't really had anything new on her character for a while either, so we sprung to give the "girls" a make over with new butterfly wings! Check 'em out!


WOOT! That there deserves a random butterfly-in-the-sky Youtube for awesomeness sake.


HAHA! That guy is freaking AWESOME! He would wear butterfly wings in Wizard101 for sure!

Anyway, I love the little side-to-side air dance/resting animation your character does while wearing fairy wings. Heck, in general I'd love new dances options for our characters. I like the fairy wings, don't get me wrong, but I'd even be happier to pay crowns for a new dance move. Know what I'm sayin? Maybe not 15,000 crowns for new dances moves, but still . . .

Happy dueling!

Awesome Mount Contests

I've been having fun seeing all the mount contests popping up! It also makes me wonder why they are emphasizing mounts on all the fansites, there has to be some kind of improvement or something coming down the pipe about mounts, right? Maybe? Or maybe a ton of new mounts? I mean, remember the gobbler giveaway that accompanied Advanced Pets? What if this was advanced mounts! WOOT! :-)

If they do something cool with mounts, then I need like an additional 20 slots on my backpack . . . wait a second, didn't they just add 20 slots on backpacks? Hmmmm, something's fishy here. ;) Maybe they'll let your mount roam around your house like your pets? That would be awesome!

Anyway, I have no idea--it's probably nothing--but let's see who has what mount giveaway (that I know about . . .)

Central is sporting three giveaways.

Starshine Pony
Royal Lioness (courtesy of Paige's Page)
Batwings (courtesy of the central wiki)

Ravenwood Radio apparently is doing a Sunshine Pony giveaway.

Petnome is giving away Proud Lions.

Awesome Pyromancer is giving away Dark Redwing Dragon Mounts.

West Karana is giving away Manta Rays.

Homework in a Graveyard is giving away Swiftshadow Wings.

Valerian is giving away Chestnut Ponies.

That Pyromancer is giving away Bengel Tigers.

Kestrel is giving away Dream Fillies.

Diary of a Wizard is giving away Sea Turtle mounts.

And I totally expect more to be showing up soon too! YAY!

**UPDATE** Ditto has the Lobster mount! **UPDATE**

Where's your contest, Friendly?!

I don't knowwwwwwwwwww . . . . :) I'm still deciding what to do, actually. Stay tuned . . . April 1-7 is the magic set of dates for most of the giveaways and it's going to be huge (and awesome).

Happy Dueling!

Mount Collection?

I got a question from Mike:

Hey friendly! :D

I was just wondering, in your screen-shots I have seen you on a bunch of different mounts. You have shown us your LARGE collection of pets, but out of curiosity how many mounts do you have?

hmm. Good question.

*logs in all characters*

*unsuccessfully farms for Thomas's hat*

Account 1 mounts—
Thomas has 3 currently: Proud Lion, Swift Gryphon, and Dream Filly (check my unicorn ride)
Myrna: Enchanted Broom (hand me down)
Isaiah: Bat Wings (hand me down)
Molly: Chestnut Pony
Deirdre: Seraph Wings

Account 2 mounts—
Kyle: Starlight Pony
Rowan: Bat Wings
Sean: Enchanted Broom

Account 3 mounts—
Bailey: Seraph Wings, Black Stallion, and Swift Shark (Gift from the Mistshards)
Amber: Swift Gryphon, White Mare
Alexandria: Faithful Dragoness
Moira: Seraph Wings
Neela: Enchanted Broom

Account 4 mounts—
Iridian: Charity Meowmadon and Dream Filly

We've also had a few rentals in our day. I needed to blow some gold once so I bought a temporary stingray mount (which I may go back and purchase at some time in the future). Bailey had the temporary Black Panther mount. etc. etc. etc.

My mount collection isn't nearly as impressive as my wand collection though. I still need to get all my level 55 wands for Thomas to really make it impressive. Here's what I got so far on Thomas:


(Much bigger than when I was around with my 14 wands collection) I really like Bailey's idea of wand racks . . . I'd love to clear up the bag space HAHAHA. Part of me fears really trying to grow my wand collection at this point because it just takes up too much bag space!

What kinds of collections do you guys have?

Happy Dueling!

FOG #8 Came in the Mail!

You know, it's not every day that Wizard101 gets a cool cover story like this, but a six-page spread with a foldout poster of the Celestia Wallpaper is definitely worthy of a cover. You know what I'm sayin'?



As always, I'm just happy to come along for the ride, add my byline, and do some well deserved nose pinching.



PINCH! You CRAZY SPIDER LADYZ! YOU NEED HUGZ FROM FRIENDLY!



If you're a hardcore fan of the game (like most readers of my blog), by this time you'll be well aware of most of the content in the article. I hope you all enjoy reading it. My best hope is that someone who used to play this game will now see Wizard101 has become just that much more awesome and will return to play with us all. :-)

A good sign that someone has read the FOG (that's Fun Online Games for those of you who are not acronym savvy) will be that they are riding on a cool 15-day rental for a black panther mount.

**NOTE: When you get your FOG, don't quickly throw away the packaging! No no no! There's a card within the packaging for your rental mount. Apparently there was a problem on most (if not all) of these magazines in the printing process, and the code for the Wizard101 rental mount didn't get printed in the right block with the article. Instead the code is included on a card insert inside the packaging. You need to use that code to get your mount. Just a heads up.**

Check out Bailey sporting her awesome new ride.



Oo! White and Black, nice spot to take a screenshot, uber wife!

It makes me wonder if they're going to come out with a permanent version of that. Hope so! A black cat would be awesome for a necromancer. :-)

Hope you all get your FOG soon if you haven't gotten it already. Check your local bookstore for a copy. Back issues of FOG can be ordered from the Beckett site as well.

me likey!



Happy Dueling!

*flap flap* *flap flap* *flap flap*

I'm going to be so tired by the end of today . . .

I woke up EXTRA early just to get a look at this stuff and buy my wings. HAHA! So much fun!

Here are the sale prices for today:



Yeah, you're going to want to buy this stuff when it's on sale. That probably means that the wings are going to be around 9,000 - 10,000 crowns when they aren't on sale. (They are +40% speed like the other mounts just fyi)

By the way, the new weapons are sick sick sick!


The wife is going to be so surprised when she logs in this morning and sees that I got her a little gift. :-) We'll call it a late Valentine's.

That hammer has a power pip on it and 5 cards . . . available to use at . . . wait for it . . . level 25!

But this weapon for us high level people here . . . the Cerulean Edge:



Yeah, that has a power pip and does 110 damage . . . making it the best sword in the game atm.



Interestingly enough, the weapon disappears when you talk. I'm not sure if I should call the glitch dog out on that or if it's working as intended . . . I'm temped to call out the glitch dog since your hand still looks like it's holding a weapon . . . and i just like the glitch dog so much . . . NAH, I'll cut 'em a break.

While I was running around this morning I ran into Edward Icespear and Cass . . . I let them know the true nature of how I got my newfound abilities:



Sadly, if you just want to try before you buy, the wings are not yet in zeke's shop . . . yet . . . I have a feeling they will be soon.



OH, and one more thing before I move on from this post . . .

That Ascendant Staff?



Yeah, that awesome looking thing there. (Alexandria looks so smarmy there, doesn't she? Holding this staff that she just looks like she has no business holding LOL.)

That thing there is a GAME CHANGER for level 1 - 25 characters (at which time they should switch to the hammer up there at the top of this post). It gives you a regular pip. I ain't kidding.



AMAZING! You use to not be able to get a pip boost like that until you were 30th level. THAT'S HUGE! HUGE! If you have this staff, the game just speeds up a little bit more for you. I'm just going to estimate here that that little pip right there is going to shave off about 45 seconds from each battle in krokotopia, digmoore station in Marleybone, and the post 5th level wizard city fights. Over time, that's going to save you a TON of time in the lower game. That staff should be the first piece of crown gear any new player gets HANDS DOWN! I'm actually kind of shocked about that staff. I kind of feel like passing out.

*breathes*

What are you doing still reading this? GO LOG ON!

Happy Dueling!

Holy Angel Wings Batman, it's a ROCKING update!

This just came across the newswire . . . you best log in early tomorrow so you can be the first to flap around with some new wings! Look how awesome these things are!


Oh I have to get some of those for Thomas to flap around in his new death house.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

New! New! New!
Starting in the early hours of February 18th, the SHOP will carry some new items!

New Mounts!
One of the most requested Mount additions has been a pair of wings, and we've got TWO for you to choose from: Seraph Wings and Bat Wings. Both types of wings can be purchased for either gender! These Mounts are only available to purchase from the Crowns Shop for Crowns, but they can also be found on high level bosses of the Spiral!




New Weapons
Sometimes a wand just doesn't make quite the statement you were going for, so here are three Epic Weapons: The Ascendant Staff, the Phosphorescent Maul and the Cerulean Edge! Like the new Mounts, these weapons are only available to purchase from the Crowns Shop for Crowns, but they can also be found on high level bosses of the Spiral!





New Outfits
Those of you who remember the old retired Crowns gear will rejoice, these two new Epic outfits are made up from very powerful items with crazy powerful stats and cards! These items DO have a level restriction on them, but any level Wizard can buy them! If you see a small lock icon on these items in the SHOP that only indicates you cannot WEAR the item now, but you can purchase it, and store it for later. Again, these items are only available to purchase from the Crowns Shop for Crowns, but they can also be found on high level bosses of the Spiral (the bosses drop the individual items, not the entire sets).



These high level additions are just the beginning of new items that will be introduced to the Crowns Shop, because a young Wizard must be prepared for things to come....

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

SQUEE!

And I quote . . . "because a young Wizard must be prepared for things to come..."

Oh, my happy duelers . . . this is AWESOME NEWS!

HAPPY DUELING!

Bailey's screenshots from the Test Realm

Well as soon as I found out the test realm was up again, I called my dear wife who was extremely anxious to see what was what on the test realm. She logged in, and let me tell you, it was torture for me. She's giggling and laughing the whole time while I'm on the phone with her from work. "Look at that guy! He's flying! on a dragon!" UGG! I was so close to leaving work early just so I could see what all the fun was about.

She rented a dragon mount and kyle bought a permanent broom mount. btw, it's very cool that they give you some crowns to play around with on the test realm.

So, while she was online she snapped these photos for you all.






You should all know that the prices for mounts are much more reasonable than what I posted in that guesstimate thread, AND you can buy them for gold as well as crowns . . . it's 90,000 gold (or 15,000 crowns) for the best of the best permanent mounts at this point; however, you can get a more reasonably priced permanent mount for much less.

You have to see this new crown shop screen.



Very cartoonish! I like the bright colors on this.

Zeke really serves no purpose now other than to help with quests and to sell rental mounts. You can access that shop at anytime by clicking the crown button in the top left of the screen.

The illusion potions are fun as well. Check out Bailey disguised as a gobbler. Awesome to be a gobbler fighting other gobblers. ;-)



There was also a line of people standing outside the new tower instance in Colossus Boulevard. Most were just wondering how to get inside. hehe. (This is the instance that's supposed to be harder than hard for level 50 only.)



I have to say that this upgrade to the game feels like a gift to me personally. I've ranted before about where's the kid in being a kid at wizard school. Well, this is a giant leap in satisfying that wish for all Wizard101 fans.

I guess all I have to say is just . . . thanks KI! This is a great update to the game. I appreciate all you do!

Happy Dueling!

Will getting a mount be fun?

No one asked me this question, but I'm asking it of myself:

username=thefriendlynecromancer
question= Hey friendly! Will getting a mount in Wizard101 be fun? Can you totally go over some stuff about that? YAY and YAY AGAIN. BYEZZZ!

So I've played a lot of MMOs, and "the mount" in all these games have been a pretty big deal.

Let's take a look at how those break down.

1- Lord of the Rings Online

In Lord of the Rings Online, you have to wait until you're a certain level to own a horse, and then you have to spend a lot of in game money to buy it. It's enough that at the level you can buy a horse, it drains your pocketbook completely dry. Most have to end up borrowing the money from one of their rich higher level friends. Once you get the horse, you have to complete a "driving test" quest or two to make sure you can handle your horse ok.

The quest fun rating= 8 out of 10 (although some really had a hard time with the driving test LOL).

The money grind rating = 3 out of 10

2- World of Warcraft

In the game that shall not be named, you also have to reach a certain level before you can purchase a horse, and it is at a hefty expense as well. At first there were two versions of mounts: epic and normal. Normal hurt the pocketbook, but Epic was insane to purchase. OR, if you're a paladin or warlock, you get a couple quests to unlock your holy or unholy mounts . . . both normal and epic. These quests used to be pretty difficult to do. Now I imagine your high level buddies just breeze you through them. Later on in the game you could buy flying mounts that raised you up high in the world . . . once again normal and epic flavors were available. Once again pocketbooks were affected.


(or you could get the incredibly rare raptor mount from the ZG raid. I was one number away on the random from winning this btw)

I don't think anyone had quests for flying mounts. But I know you could craft a helicopter type craft through the powers of engineering. meh, I never made it to that part of the game.

The grind for money to buy a horse (or begging your guild to donate money to the cause) = 3 of 10.

The horse itself = 10 of 10 (riding a horse in wow is fun!)

The quest for paladins and warlocks = 10 of 10 (it really was fun to do this quest and paladin and warlock epic mounts are AWESOME looking). I made a video when I earned my paladin mount I was so happy about it.

3- Everquest

You buy a bridle to summon your horse. That comes in 4 or 5 speeds. wow it's been a long time. I remember that at the time, buying even the lowest horse for my cleric was painful, but SO necessary. You could meditate from horse back to regain your mana. Horses were a game changer for casting classes. You would pretty much always seem them on horse back regaining their mana. wow it's been a long time. There was no quest involved to unlocking the mount and it just hurt the pocketbook a ton. The fastest horse though was very very nice. I had one. It cost a lot of money. It was worth it for saving time on travel.

fun factor = 3 out of 10 to earn and 10 out of 10 when you got it.

OH, and there was ONE quest for a mount in Everquest . . . I had totally forgot this until I remembered just now. You could enter a low level dungeon (Befallen) and complete a quest there until a bridle with 1 charge of summoning appeared. It was a fun quest to complete, but that 1 charge of bridle just left you wanting more.


(oh look, an old picture I dug up of me and my buddy with said 1 charge bridle)

4- Guild Wars

what? There's no mount in Guild Wars. Exactly. Actually, there are a few missions where you "become" a monster and travel at high speeds or have devastating attacks. It's not really a mount per se, but you do get to experience the game at a different pace. They also had a mini-game where you could turn into a fast rolling potato bug type of creature and race against a number of people to a finish line . . . i.e., a race.

fun factor = 0 out of 0 for not having mounts, but 10 out of 10 for when they let you experience the game at a different pace and competitively.


(Riding and guiding inside the belly of the worm spore)

5- Wizard101

I hope that they in corporate some kind of "driving test" quest into getting a mount. In all these games, mounts have really been painful to earn the money to get, but they've been so worth it once you got it. But as you can see, earning the money for a mount has been my least favorite part of the game. (Some people love that by the way . . . some people just love making in game money . . . it's crazy . . . I've never been one of those people. I'm horrible at playing the bazaar. I think I see a lot of Raven$ farming in my future.)

I also hope they have quests to get a 1 or 2 charge use broom or horse or whathave you.


(it's looking fun! But will it be fun?)

I'm excited for mounts, but I'm also excited just to see how they implement them . . . how they introduce us to mounts. You know? It really ups the fun factor for me to have a quest or two go along with a mount.

What would be even better would be a mini-game ala Mario Kart. If they don't integrate this feature into the game, it's one of the first things "our crowd" is going to ask for. I guarantee it. Who doesn't love a good round or two of Mario Kart? I'd love to participate in that with my new expensive mount. It would make the crown purchase worth it because it would be like buying a game within a game.

. . .

And that's how I see it at 6:11 am on 22 September 2009.

Happy Dueling!

(p.s. I'm out of time . . . I'll probably add a few pictures later in the day, but I wanted to get this out there for discussion)

Will the test realm open for testing mounts?

Got a question here from LegendCrafter on twitter:

LegendCrafter: Good morning, Friendly! Any idea if the test realm will open for mounts or whether they will go live directly?

My immediate answer to her was, "Well, historically they've taken two to three weeks to open the test realm from the time of announcement." Grizzleheim seemed to take a little bit longer to hit the test realm, but we aren't talking a new world here necessarily. We are talking new houses and a dozen mounts along with some new monster models and whatever other surprises they're going to hit us with. It's a little intense, but it's nothing that's going to require music to be scripted, you know?

So, I took it a step further and I asked Professor Greyrose, "People want a guesstimate on when the test realm for mounts will go live."

She said one word, "October."

So, the answer seems to be, yes, they will go to the test realm sometime in October.

Personally I don't expect this to stay too long on the Test Realm, but you never know. Right?

:-)

Happy Dueling!

New video tour from AbleGamers

First, thanks to Diary of a Wizard for linking this up.

Next, this is truly an amazing video to watch from AbleGamers.com (Disabled Gamers community). You're going to want to watch this because you'll get to see the amazing Tony the Tiger mount.



I want one of those.



GETTYUP TONY!

Anyway, this video is from AbleGamers's exclusive peek at Wizard101.

The interviewer is Beau from the Spouse Agro blog. Well done, Beau! Thanks so much for doing this!

This was such a cool look at everything the fans want to see.

Here's a quick walk through of the video in case you can't access it from work or school or something.

Besides a clip of the fire dragon spell killing a ninja pig, the video starts out with some pictures from the fan art wall. Brilliant. Then you have James Nance (developer) walking through the design pit with Beau and Fernando (PR) in tow. The next piece of information imparted here is that we will be getting some new monster models in the early part of the game for the sake of variation. Awesome.

James and Beau then begin discussing how the data integration works, and the Tony the Tiger mount is unveiled (I love how the rider of the tiger mount has a ninja pig outfit on as well). They talk about the challenges and successes of making Wizard101 able to play on something as basic as a netbook. Then they talk about how they have built about 30 mounts so far; however, there will only be a dozen or so initially launched. The rest are going to be saved for special promotions and as . . . dun dun dun . . . monster drops.

Then James and Beau move on over to the environment sector of the design pit and try to snag a bite of an artist's granola bar to no success. HOWEVER, we do get a nice detailed look at the new balance world house. That's right, every school of magic is going to get their own house model. Beau actually tries to get them to call up the Death housing and they distracted him away from that attempt and they get pulled over to the concept art for Grizzleheim, and they have a quick discussion of moving from concept to game integration. Then we see the sound office, make a quick spin past the programmers, and there we go.

All in all . . . A+ fantastic video. Five stars from friendly for sure! You're going to see this video popping up everywhere that wizard101 fans frequent. Excellent!

Happy Dueling!

How much will mounts cost?

Got a question from an anonymous poster on the mounts thread below that I thought might be good to pull out here and see if we can get some good guesses . . .

Any idea on the cost of [the mounts]? or the number of crowns?

It's a very good question; however, I don't think anyone is going to have a good answer at this time. It's too soon, and I know that things get changed around in the test realm a lot too based on user feedback and opinions.

BUT, what we can do is look at the cost of current speed boost items.


and

so right now you're looking at paying around $5 real money to buy an 8% speed boost. Horses, and the permanent kind, are going to be five times that. Simple math says 5x5 = $25 real money.

However these things are never simple math, right? I mean, when you go to the movie theaters, they usually jack up the price of the small drink and then make it 50 cents more for a medium drink and 75 cents more for a large drink. Then you think, oh yeah, well I might as well get a large drink since it's only 75 cents more than a small and only a quarter more than the medium drink, right?

So it's entirely possible that the "rule of theater drinks" may apply.

We have three choices we know of for a surety:

- 1 day trial mount 20% speed boost
- 7 day trial mount 40% speed boost
- permanent mount 40% speed boost

How much would you spend for a PERMANENT speed boost to your character that you don't have to switch in and out of your inventory like boots. AND . . . it's unsure at this time if there will be other options as well like ability to avoid combat while on a mount, which would be another plus.

How much would you spend in real money for that?

It's hard to say . . . here's what I would guess:

- For 1 day--25000 in game gold or 2000 crowns with the option to put that towards my purchase of a permanent mount
- For 7 day--50000 in game gold or 10000 crowns with the option to put that towards my purchase of a permanent mount
- For permanent--20000 crowns?

Opinions? Too high or too low of a guess?

Of course at this time it's all conjecture . . . um . . . *opens can of worms*

Happy Dueling!

AGDC Wrapup Post

Check it out! It's a picture of J. Todd Coleman at AGDC!



Yup, he's all talkin' and stuff about Krokotopia and there's a couple guys who have kind of dark curly brown hair there. One is starting to lose hair on top . . . OH WAIT! Blizzard T-shirt! Wonder who that guy is? It's so Blizzard to try to sit front and center and stuff. Hmmm, what if that was Professor Greyrose with the ponytail? AND what's the deal with the empty seats? This is FREAKING Wizard101 we're talking about here. I dedicated the last year of my gaming life to this game, and you people at AGDC leave empty seats? Oh man, so wrong.

Ok . . . now that I got that out. Let me just complete the story here that I started a couple days ago with this post.

So Nelson Everhart didn't win the Ironman competition, but he said it was a lot of fun. From what he was telling me, there was kind of a miscommunication about composing a piece of music for the game (which was Raving Rabbids) and doing live sound effects for the game . . . so he kind of had to shuffle, but lucked out by already having the "secret ingredient" sound already loaded in his soundbank! If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you can get some background information by reading this. Who won? A guy named Justin Brown (looks to be the composer for all the sims games). The lucky thing for us is that Nelson plans on writing a blog post about his experience. When that's up, I will definitely forward the link.

Next . . . oh yeah . . . this picture again:



From what I've heard through the rumor mill, and from what I can piece together from a couple of tweets, this was more of a get-to-know-the-sleeper-game-of-2009 jam session given by our Mr. Coleman.

Here's a couple tweets from people that saw the lecture:

RT @twizznerd: #AGDC wizard 101 can be played on most netbooks!
RT @NicoleLazzaro: Wizard 101 showing public Google stats to compare the major MMOs. They have 5M players. #agdc #gdcaustin Awesome.

Once again, from what I understand, the Google analytics they looked at showed Wizard101 was a more searched term than ToonTown or FreeRealms. So, you know, nothing much new came out of that, but hey! Have you seen this cool picture I got of J Todd Coleman speaking at AGDC?



(Thanks Nelson for snapping a picture for me and for the info . . . You rock!)

The big thing for us (us being the common Wizard101 gamer) through this whole thing was that we found out about mounts during the whole process, and we will all probably start to see more news trickle in about mounts as they are written about by all the cool gaming news websites that Kingsisle's PR guru talked to while he was there. (/waves to Fernando) Now if I could only find out who they talked to while they were there so I don't have to take the shotgun approach to gathering information . . .

I digress.

OH! One more thing before I drop the topic of AGDC forever, if you're looking for some more pictures of the event, here's some pictures of the conference from GameDev.

Happy Dueling!

FW: Wizard101 News Announcement from AGDC

NICE!!!


This just came across the wire from AGDC!

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WIZARD101™ MOUNTS



The next major new content being developed by KingsIsle Entertainment for Wizard101 is a series of Wizard Mounts that provide a fun, fast, and stylish way of getting around. Many different types of Wizard Mounts will be available with more to come in the future. Initially, four will be introduced: Brooms, Horses, Cats, and Dragons!





Wizard Mounts may be rented for a day or a week. They may also be purchased permanently. The one and seven day rental gives Wizards a chance to try out the mount and decide which one they want to own permanently. One day rentals add a 20% movement speed increase. Seven day rentals and permanent purchases add a 40% movement speed increase.





One day rentals may be purchased with in-game gold. Seven day rentals and permanent Wizard Mounts may be purchased with in-game gold or Crowns. All mounts may be purchased at the Crown shop (player user interface that will be available in October) or Zeke.



Wizard Mounts are expected to launch in October 2009.



Wizard Mounts Fast Facts:
• Four types at release: Brooms, Horses, Cats, and Dragons!
• Available in a variety of appearances that favor male and female styles.
• May be rented for 1-day or 7-days, or purchased permanently.
• 1-day rentals give 20% movement speed increase; 7-day and permanent purchases give 40% movement speed increase.
• May be purchased for in-game gold and Crowns from the new, upcoming Crown shop or Zeke.
• Available in October.



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I just knew something good would be coming out of the AGDC! I'm so excited for these speed boosts! AWESOME!

Happy Dueling!