Amber is holding a contest today!

Well, my daughter wanted to make a comeback to blogging over on her blog: Boogie Woman's Babble.

1- She's awesome
2- She's giving away a few crown prizes of 2,500 crowns each
3- She's awesome

Make sure to head over to her world of pink, and give it a shot. :-)



Happy Dueling!

Interview with Jason Durall!

Heya peoples! I have a surprise for you all today. It's a Q&A interview with Jason Durall from Kingsisle! I think you Wizard101 fans and especially you Wizard101 fan fiction authors are really going to like this interview, so please, read on and enjoy!
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Friendly: Hi Jason, thanks for agreeing to be interviewed on The Friendly Necromancer! I really appreciate your time, and I hope the fans of Wizard101 are going to take away a lot from this interview. Why don't you start by introducing yourself and giving us a little background information on your job at KingsIsle?

Jason: My name is Jason Durall. I'm the Creative Design Lead on Wizard101, a position that covers creative oversight of all aspects of the game: devising the plots; planning quests; coming up with new characters; writing dialogue; naming everything; and describing environments, creatures, and equipment for the art team, etc. In my day-to-day task load, I deal with every group: programmers, art, design, and even marketing. I do some of that work alone, though much of it is in collaboration with the rest of our awesome team.

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Friendly: I understand that writing the storyline to Wizard101 has been a collaborative effort by many people but have you ever had to sacrifice a part of the storyline that you really wish could have stayed in, or was there a part of the storyline that you can't believe made it to the final game? Feel free to talk about the process of storytelling in Wizard101 since I don't believe many really have an insight into how that happens.

Jason: That's a loaded question! I started at KingsIsle a few months before launch, and one of my first tasks was to punch up dialogue, clean up the storyline as best as I could, and to add some bridging content that helped explain things better during the more complex sequences. For scheduling reasons, art sometimes has to be started before story is locked down, so it can occasionally create situations when it made sense to change an idea, but we had to proceed with our past decision.

As far as sacrifices, Grizzleheim ended with some unresolved plot threads, but I suspect that the door hasn't closed on that world yet. Usually though, it's the smaller stuff that gets cut in favor of the core story. There are a few quest lines that we haven't revisited, such as Penny Dreadful's whole story. We have a whole quest line with Sir Reginald Baxby that's always simmering on a back-burner. For various reasons, those stories just haven't made it into the game as of yet.

On the other hand, there's almost no sense of surprise about what's in the game. It takes so much effort to get content created and implemented, nothing sneaks up on you. The only time I've been simply amazed at what went into the game was the Hallowe'en content, where they actually let me do an entire quest chain in rhyming verse!

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Friendly: Can you talk a bit about NPC development in Wizard101? How was it crafting dialog for characters such as the school trees and for the professors with strong personalities like Cyrus Drake? I imagine it was a lot of fun!

Jason: I came in after the first four worlds (Wizard City, Krokotopia, Marleybone, and MooShu) were developed, so much of the hard work had been done for me when it came up with developing core personalities of faculty and monsters. However, I've been directly responsible for the characters in Dragonspyre, Grizzleheim, and Celestia, as well as any who have come after release, such as new vendors and trainers or seasonal content. Regardless, the process is the same: figure out what role they will play in the quests and the story, and develop a voice for them that helps convey the spirit of what we're trying to do. In some cases, the concept for the character helps suggest the voice and personality, and at other times the character idea (personality and voice) comes before any artwork is done.

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Friendly: A year after the launch of Wizard101, I discovered a particular quest that really filled out all the questions I had about the lore of the Kroknomicon and tied together all the questions I had surrounding the Golden Fang. Unfortunately I had somehow missed the importance of this quest text TWICE Before when playing through the game. When I finally slowed down, I managed to read the text instead of skipping it with the mentality of "What do they want me to do next." How hard is it for you as a writer in this game environment to craft text that people want to read and need to read to understand the story better?

Jason: It's always a challenge writing dialogue and story when there's the very real chance your audience is pressing fast-forward. The most you can do is make your dialogue fun enough to read, keep it direct enough that it's easy to understand, allow for some redundancy in describing what's going on, and present clear and regular goals for the players.

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Friendly: I asked Professor Greyrose (Kiersten Samwell) at one time if she could supply me with whatever lore bible you guys had, and the response was that it all mainly just exists in the heads of the writers. How do you keep track of all the lore bouncing around behind the NPCs and areas of the spiral?

Jason: It's easy because I've spent the last couple of years with all of the lore of Wizard101 in my head, but I use a lot of notes, and frequently find myself searching through old quest dialogue documents, or replaying quests I've completed just to remember bits of setting information. Sometimes I have to ask Kiersten to help me remember things.

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Friendly: One of KingsIsle's most recent successes is the release of Celestia.
Was there a particular NPC in Celestia that you could comment on as being fun to write quest text for?

Jason: I absolutely loved writing dialogue for the crabs. We had done their look long before any development on their personalities and voices, and I tentatively suggested to our sound developers that I'd like to give them outrageous Italian accents. Once we worked out what they'd sound like, it became a joy to write them. Everything they say is larger-than-life and they are incredibly touchy about how terrible their culture is. The other thing I liked most about Celestia's character development were the three epic "school bosses," imagining how these ancient beings would sound and what they would have to say after centuries of exile.

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Friendly: Wizard101 seems to have a really big following with young writers creating fan fiction out of the characters in Wizard101. What kind of advice could you give to the budding writers that are cranking out fan fiction for Wizard101 and beyond?

Jason: Keep it up! Write, write, write! It's incredibly flattering to see that Wizard101 inspires creativity in the players, and there's no better way fuel your imagination than creating new stories and fiction for a setting as rich as the Spiral. Have fun filling your version of the Spiral with your own stories and characters, and feel free to share them with your friends and with KingsIsle. Walls here are covered with creativity from our dedicated fans. It's a wonderful compliment to know that what we do is so inspirational!

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Friendly: Thanks so much for your time, do you have any questions for The Friendly Necromancer?

Jason's Question to Friendly: Now that we're starting to move into a big new story arc with the mystery of Morganthe and her designs on the Spiral, where do you think it's going to go?

My Answer to Jason's Q: When I think of Morganthe, I think of her army of Shadow Weavers. For some reason I have the Shadow Weavers in my mind acting as a kind of Borg construct like from the Star Trek Next Generation series: emotionless and calculating with a dangerous hive mentality, which is tragically being guided by Morganthe for her own evil purposes.

Morganthe definitely has her eyes on Merle Ambrose due to a past conflict that we are mostly unaware of. I’m predicting the truth about the conflict between Merle and Morganthe will surface over the next expansion.

I also think we’ll see new worlds opening up that have already been subdued by Morganthe’s Shadow Weaver Hive and, in Hero108 style, have to either undo the lies that Morganthe has told to the reaches of the spiral, converting them to the cause, or liberate them all from the oppression they face from Morganthe and her Shadow Weaver army.

In my mind the final blows will occur one world beyond a Shadow Weaver hive where we finally reveal Morganthe as the evil manipulator she is and FINALLY, the hive will turn on their queen.

How was that? ;p I’m probably not even close. XD

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Once again, thank you for doing your part to make Wizard101 a great game. From all the fans, thank you and keep up the good work!

Happy Dueling!

Answering a bunch of Wizard101 questions to try and catch up

This one comes from Toby:

"I have ben trying to make a blog on wiz101. but formatting i really dont understand. i noticed that your is well formatted. how do you do it?"

Magic. It all involves braving that Design tab and knowing a little HTML so you can modify the design of your blog. There are a number of blogs that talk about this kind of web designing stuffs. Here's one that's incredibly laden with laggy advertising: The Blog Doctor. If there's a way to modify your blog, this guy has a tip . . . just don't use them all or you'll end up laggy like his site.

Once you start Googling a few things, you'll start to find that there are a lot more awesome looking blogs out there than mine.

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Couple questions from Thomas Goldshade:

1. Do you have any hints on getting the gear that I want for my characters? Whether it's Bazaar sniping or farming.
2. There is a building(sorry, no pictures) in the Shopping District in Wizard City that has it's lights on but you can't enter it. It's right across from the deck shop and the castle shop and next to the ring shop. Any idea why it's there and inaccessible?
Thanks a lot for answering and even thanks having a blog!

1. I guess it all depends on what gear you want! Most of the level 58 gear can be purchased at the Bazaar, and when you hit that level, you most likely have plenty of money to buy it.

An old recommendation, but a good one (oldie but a goodie) is to check Ironhawk's guides as you progress through your levels:

Marleybone
Mooshu
Dragonspyre

Zachery Firedust also has a Celestia guide.

2. I would go look at this shop, but, you know, Wizard101 is down this morning, so . . . readers?! Any ideas?!

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Question from Lauren Frosttail:

Where is Angus now? I would like to know. I am sorry your busy :( busy isn't fun. Sit down and have yourself Ice Cream Brownies and Hot CHocolate! After all, why not? Good luck to you Angus!

Thank you for the brownies and hot chocolate, ma'am!

Angus is in that first area of Mooshu. Once I got past the mountain of Big Ben, I kind of needed a break from Angus. No worries. His adventures will resume soon.

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Question from Mac:

Hello friendly! This is Mackenzie Lifebreeze and I have a question about blogging. Blogging. I have been trying to blog but I always FAIL. My goal is to be some type of famous wizard of the spiral like you. So my question is how do I get started out with a good blog? I will look forward to your reply.

Ahhh, dangit. I'm sorry you're not feeling successful with blogging. I think it's a common feeling though. You'll get lots of support from all the Wizard101 bloggers because just like you, they want to do well. Make sure you visit their sites and comment back and forth with everybody, and I'm sure they'll reciprocate.

I have a hard time keeping up with everyone else!

Here's a suggestion that perhaps might help: Find a niche for yourself and see if you can build an audience based around that. I don't know if this is a good example or not, but what if you were the best map maker in the entire Wizard101 community? People would come to your site to see your maps! Stuff like that.

I'm not sure about Fame.

Best of luck!

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Brian Titansword from The Necromancer Story has a question:

What gear do Duncan GrimWater and Malorn AshThorn have?

Well, I don't know if you remember my post on if Student Teachers were Grandmasters? If you go to the bazaar, you can usually find the level 45 wands pretty easily. If not, you can always make a low character and push them through the Sunbrand quests in Dragonspyre early to get the class staff since you can do the Sunbrand quest in Dragonspyre at any time as long as you can get there.

The Bazaar is also rich with low level clothing, so you can usually find an outfit to match.

Again, Wizard101 is down this morning or I'd go snap a picture or two for you on the subject . . .

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Laruen from three questions ago is back! With another question:

Well I just noticed something- Angus is casting Storm SHarks and Krakens... is he WAYYY over level for where he is? I dont remember my side character storm getting kraken until MB, Centainly not KT. WHat level is Angus now? one more thing- I think MS DS because thats where you will start to take more and more pips to kill something. Goodluck with a low power pip chance!

No, no. He's right on target. Yes, he's been doing all his side quests, but there was no powerleveling or xp potions, or anything else like that going on.

You know, in comparison to some other classes, Storm really gets some powerful spells quite early! By level 22 you have the Kraken spell, which should happen sometime in Krokotopia or Early Marleybone. The only difference I can think of would be that Angus did most if not all of his side quests in Wizard City (including Collossus Boulevard) and Krokotopia. I slacked off in Marleybone because there were just too many side quests, and I got sick of them.

Hope that helps clear up some confusion.

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Questions from Alric Wintershield:

how can I get a sheep pet? I seen small little sheep everywhere on mooshu I did not know it was a pet. I seen the other day this girl with a sheep pet her name was olivia i did not take a snapshot of it. I never seen the pet before I look all over central too see it what boss drops it or if it was holiday pet or something. I even ask a question on central on the pet guide and someone responded by saying only VIP wizards can get the sheep pet. I am not sure if he was lying or not which is why I came to ask you directly How or when is it possible for me to get a sheep pet? Does a boss drop it? am I missing something? please answer

Oo! You saw Olivia? Olivia is awesome.

Sigh, yeah, you know, the sheep pet is one of those where the only way to get it is to have Kingsisle directly put it on your account. You can't get it anywhere. You can't even mix and get it.

If you ever see a fake Thomas Lionblood or Kyle Skystaff, ask them to show you the sheep pet to know if they're the real deal or not. They won't be able to do it. I will. That for me is the real benefit of the sheep pet. XD It's an easy way for me to deal with an impostor.

Here's an old post from when Olivia and I got our sheep together to try out some mixing. The result was . . . piggles! Although Professor Greyrose told me the mix should produce a Goat Monk, which isn't much better. ;p Then again, goat monks are pretty sage, yo.

Hope that helps.

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Question from Alexander Battleflame:

Thanks so much for adding me to your mmo blogger club!!! I owe you one!! I needed someone to finally get my blog out so I could be popular! Thanks friendly and one quick question in Celestia where do you get the water mole statue?

You're welcome!

I do believe that comes from Gahlwok in The Floating Land. :-)

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WHEW . . . Thanks to Wizard101 being down, I actually got through some of those questions. The next hurdle I need to face is this daunting "Check This Out" list in my inbox.

Happy Dueling!

Game Report: Rowan and Isaiah Level 48 spell quest and GM Artisan on Thomas!

Uber wife and I decided last night to *finally* finish that lingering spell quest for Isaiah and Rowan.


So? Do you know the answer to Cyrus's question? Hmmm?

You Myth wizards do, right?

It's something to lure the Orthrus out to say hello, and that something happens to be the bone of a two-headed cat. Unfortunately you never get to see the two-headed cat though as Dworgyn just hands it over to you. I kind of wanted to fight a two-headed cat for that bone! :-) Oh well, beggars can't be choosers, and I was begging to get that quest DONE.

Anyway, since Rowan and I were simultaneously completing this quest, we got to see something even more rare than an Orthrus visitation. Behold the four-headed dog of awesomeness!


That's a lot of teeth to brush and noses to blow right there.

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Earlier in the night, Thomas finally decided to clear out that lingering GM Artisan quest from his quest log and crafted the seal of the seven seas.


You get a lot of gold for finishing that quest, but, um, well it wasn't nearly enough to cover the costs of sniping golden pearls in the bazaar. :)

I had missed that you could buy the Treant Polymorph cards from the Archivist, so I gotta give it up to Cassandra Griffindreamer for letting me know that you can buy them there. That saved a lot of time! No need to craft or even snipe those at all, just buy them from the Archivist. Yup!


WOOT, sporting the new GM Artisan badge with Cass, who looks strangly like an eagle wearing half of a wizard cap in this picture I might add.

Happy Dueling!

Bamboo Well in Mooshu?

Question from Neela Dreamglen:

Hi, this is Neela Dreamglen!
Aaaand i've got a question regarding furniture. So, you know when you walk into the jade palace into MS and you turn to your left a little and there's this bamboo well with a bucket and a crank? Well, I bought the imperial palace and have been trying to find where I can either buy this well for my house, or craft it, or even if it drops from a boss! BTW, your blog is awesome and I read it a few times a week! Thanks friendly!

OH yeah, that's a cool one to be sure.


As far as I can tell, that isn't available as a housing item. The closest we have to that well is the Celestian Wishing Well, which is a crafted item purchased from Gearwise in the Celestian Base Camp, AND yeah . . . that doesn't look ANYTHING like a well, does it?


Nope. This is not the well you're looking for.

Well, maybe someday that'll be a housing item, eh? That'd rock!

And if anyone knows any differently, please educate myself and Neela, would ya? Thanks!

Happy Dueling!

What happened to Dragonspyre's Life School and Class Trees?

Tanner Rubycatcher has a couple of questions about Dragonspyre:

Hey Friendly! First off, thanks for pointing me towards that Celestia quest guide! :)

Anyways, I was walking around Dragonspyre Acadamy and I noticed that there were different doors with each of the school symbols on them. I thought this was cool and I also figured out that Dragonspyre Academy also has its own School trees. The only trees surviving are the Fire Tree, and the Death Tree(Who isn't very chatty). I also saw that there is no Life school or Balance School(Which makes sense since Balance is a "New" type of magic) in Dragonspyre Academy. So, I kinda have 2 questions that you may not be able to answer:

1) How did Dragonspyre Academy get those trees?

2) What happened to the Life School there?

Ahh, the tragedy of Dragonspyre. Here's a picture I made of that courtyard (click to enlarge).


So, it certainly looks like there's room for two schools that were completely destroyed, and the three other trees as you noted have been chopped down.

Yeah, I'm not exactly sure how the relationship between school tree and school works, but it definitely seems like they go hand in hand. Perhaps when someone establishes a school of magic, they also plant a tree with it?

Sadly it appears that Celestian magic doesn't work this way, instead we have to learn spells from . . . uh . . . magical oil barrels.


Where's the cool trees? You know?

The Life school at Dragonspyre academy was definitely obliterated by the dragon titan and its army of fire wizards. In fact, they look completely melted over as if a lava flow collapsed over them and then cooled, kind of like how it looks over by the volcanoes in Hawaii.


I'm thinking that's some extreme fire magic at work there. So, for a lack of better explanation, "it got deaded by fire wizards."

. . . you'd think they'd want to melt the ice school down, wouldn't you? But, by taking out the life and balance school, I think it also serves as a metaphor that most everything in Dragonspyre is a ghost and in chaos.

What do you all think?

Happy Dueling!

Space Area? And what about Briskbreeze?

I got an e-mail from Seth Hunter, and he wants to say something and has a question:

i believe the next area will be SPACE
and
i got a question why havent they expanded the briskbreeze thing?

You didn't hear, Seth? They already did that, it's called Star Trek Online, the pre-quest was called Anarchy Online, and the pre-pre quest is called Eve Online. What really hurt was when they cancelled the Tabula Rasa expansion on us. GAH!

OK, none of that was Kingsisle.

In all seriousness though, Celestia seems to have some space elements in it already. District of the Stars looks very "space-ish." If they were to explore some kind of space expansion, then I would love it to have cool little planets like on Mario Galaxy that you can jump from planet to planet on.


picture comes from Super Mario Galaxy wiki.

Personally, I'm hoping for a hive world or at least a hive zone. We've been introduced to Morganthe's evil helpers the Shadow Weavers, right? I think we need to go bust up their hive!

As for Briskbreeze . . . I don't know?!?!? Something sinister was supposed to happen out of Krokotopia and it never happened? Has Kingsisle forgotten this while they were busy with Advanced Pets, Celestia, and Gardening?

(most likely, yes.)

It is really hard to have to hang on to a cliffhanger like that for a year and a half, right? How hard could it be to throw another tower in somewhere like Krokotopia anyway? ;-) I'm sure designing / programming / drawing / implementing / marketing / quality checking / whateverelse some of the cheating boss fights is much more difficult that it appears on the outside.

It'd be awesome to see the Briskbreeze story line resurface, and I hope it does.

Thanks, Seth!

Happy Dueling!