Friendly Surrenders to the Super Hero Squad Online Paywall

I couldn't help myself. I had 10 bucks of Christmas money burning a hole in my pocket, and I wanted to speed things up . . . and that I have!


Since I had about 300 gold and 14000 silver banked, the extra 500 gold from a subscription plus the fact that gold populates the prize wheel everyday now PLUS the fact that you get 20 gold for logging in everyday instead of just 5 meant that I was able to buy an army of Super Heroes. Mostly Agent Only heroes mind you, but heroes none the less. That jumped my Squad level up, and all of a sudden I had an extra hero thanks to Colossus being the reward for getting your Squad level past 200.

It's like I'm drowning in heroes now! 21 heroes in fact and 11 of those are brand new. In essence, I doubled my squad size last night. LOL. (I highly recommend building up a lot of silver before you become a member, so you can buy all those Agent only heroes out of the gate.)


Forget paywalls, now I'm fighting herowalls. Leveling all these Agent Only heroes will be a high priority when I'm in game for now . . . that, earning tickets to spin the prize wheel, and finding all the hulks to play missions with:


Hmmmm, I imagine just spending some time chatting during busy times will help me find people to play missions with, or yes, I may have to buy those heroes myself (might take me a good portion of the month I think).

I'm only subscribing for a month at this point. I'm hoping that will be enough to get me through a few more challenges. As to be expected, my kids interests skyrocketed last night when they saw me purchasing hero after hero thanks to the subscription account. It wasn't enough to pull Kyle off of Roblox last night, but we'll see.

Until next time, this is the Iridescent Time Hound saying, hero up and . . .

Happy Dueling!

Spell of the Week -- Hydra

The spell of the week today is one that I remember fondly from an old school video from Quantize, an old school player who used to comment on this blog quite often back in the day; he's long gone now, but you still get to see the hydra cast in the first 45 seconds of his video.



HYDRA

As he states in the video, the hydra spell (from the balance family) does three types of damage--fire, ice, storm. It's a 6-pip cost balance spell with an 85% accuracy rate that's up there pretty high on the Balance School tree at level 42.



You can also find this card on items (woot old school crowns gear) and as a treasure card that you can craft, find as a drop, or garden up.

Since the spell separates its damage into three distinct types, sometimes people will use it as a shield breaker spell more than a damage spell. Any way you use it, it's just simply cool looking, and the readers of the Friendly Necromancer have shown their support and sent in a number of these for us to look at.

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Jason Thudershield:


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John Legendmancer:


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Teri Spell:


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Alex Mythblood:


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Cori Rosepetal:


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Chris:


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Elijah Stormheart:


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Gorman:


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Nathan Goldenshield:


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Ebony Titanfist:


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Rogan Johnson:


"Burn the MANDER"

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Ronan Shadowhammer:


"Ready, Aim, Fire"

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David Spiritblossom:


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Jason:


"Shocking!"

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Richard Spiritbright:


"Hot enough for ya?"

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Jordan Golden:


"A lion still roars while facing bigger enemy!"

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Chris Mythbringer:


"Trying to dodge it eh?"

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John Mistthorn:



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Travis Darksong:


"I'll turn you into ashes!"

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Destiny Soultamer:



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Michael Spiritblossom:


**burn the troll!**

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Joe Thunderhammer:


"Your fate is sealed!"
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Alric Blood:


"Intimidating!"

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Steven Dragonspear:


"^Bloodymary, Bloodymary, Bloodymary!^"

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Savannah Blueriver:



Savannah adds, "Well, I figured that you were going to get a lot of pictures of the spell, so I sent a picture of my old hydra pet casting it instead :) Hope you like it. (And I sent a pic of the actual spell in case you didn't!)"

Thanks, Savannah! Cute Hydra you have there. :)

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Bryce:

Bryce adds, "I would also like to add that this spell took forever to find. It just didnt want to show up into the bazaar so i finally got onto my sister's balance wizard to cast the spell."

:) Glad you found one regardless. Thanks for the picture!

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Seth:




Seth adds, "Here's my photos for this weeks spell. Note that I used the hawkrider gear for hydra since the lv.50 tier robe gives a hydra item card."

Awesome that you found the spell on some gear!

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Whew! That was a lot of spells, and I'm out of time! Although I've never promised crown codes for participation, I've been surprising those who do with a little code in their email the past few weeks. Thanks everyone for your participation, and I'm sorry that I'm not able to reward you all with crowns codes this week or address all of your e-mails. I'm simply out of time today (late for work even), and I've just received far too many entries this week. I think in the future I may start to run this as more of a contest to see who can provide me with the best picture and only post maybe 5 instead of 27 pictures (and award crowns this way as well). The amount of pictures is becoming unwieldy and has caused delays in my page loading times that are unacceptable (even causing crashes for a few readers). More information will be forthcoming.

Thanks again everyone! Great work!

Happy dueling

Call for Spell of the Week

Hello all,

This week let's take a look at the Balance school of magic, shall we? It's an oldie but a goodie: Hydra!


Send a screenshot of you casting Hydra to thefriendlynecromancer@gmail.com by tomorrow night (3 January 2012), and I'll post your picture on my blog on the morning of 4 January.

Here's a mailto address link to get you started: Click Here.

Can't wait to see what you come up with.

Happy Dueling!

Metoo and Brittany? Definitely Ditto Fans.

So, I got an e-mail from a couple of Fabricated Americans the other day,

"Hi Frizendly!!! How's you? I'm Metoo, and I'm kind of shy, but my friend Brittany isn't! Anyway we're fans of Ditto Wizard and we know you know him from Ravenwood Radio and stuff. So do you think you could post this on your blog or something so he will see it? You could just forward it to him to if you don't want to but it would be cool if you would. PLEAZZEE! WE LOVE DITTO AND MS. NARRATOR!

-Metoo and Brittany Bell"

Hey! I think Ditto is pretty awesome too, so what the heck! This one's for you Ditto!



Happy Dueling!

The End of an Era: Final Issue of Beckett's Massive Online Gamer

A couple of weeks ago I got the notice from Jason Winter, head editor of Beckett's Massive Online Gamer (MOG) that this next issue would be the last issue. MOG, to me, was not only a great news source for MMOs, but also a staple food in the Wizard101 Marketing diet. It wasn't unusual for W101 to take out large advertising spreads in MOG. In fact, Doug Kale (a past editor of MOG) had even done a voice in Wizard101. MOG and Wizard101 shared a booth at PAX East. MOG and Wizard101 were buddies! At least it felt that way to me.


So for me, it's with great pride that I hold this last issue of Beckett's MOG in my hands. It was a great run, and I will always have my freelancing days writing for this magazine notched in my resume. It's been a huge learning experience and led to a great many things for me, including a trip down to Austin where I was able to interview the fine people of KingsIsle for an article and to tour the place.

Sadly, with the passing of MOG, it really feels like print media for this niche gaming market is on its last legs. Magazines can't keep up with the speed of instant news that sites like IGN, Kotaku, 1up, MMORPG, Massively, etc. (But nothing is cooler than a print mag in your hands that you can "feel" or shadowbox and put on your wall, you know?)

This is a great issue regardless. On the cover is a great picture featuring Star Wars The Old Republic, and inside is a huge spread on this new MMO that's making all the gamers fire up their lightsabers and rattle off a few rounds of their bounty hunter's favorite weapon. (Even Stephen Spiritcaller is doing it.)

Of note to Wizard101 players, on page 6 there's the 2011 Readers' Choice Awards. Wizard101 again took the Best Kid-Friendly/Family MMO of the year.

To be expected with MOG there's a good amount of pages devoted to WoW. (You know, because, well, it's WoW . . . you can't have a magazine about MMOs without mentioning the MMO some see as THEE ONLY MMO EVA . . .)

One of my favorite articles (besides my Wizard101 article) is the huge spread on all things MMO news from 2011. It's a fun look back and definitely a good read for the New Year. As a compliment to this article, there's also some grand predictions for the MMOs of 2012. Man, I can't wait for Guild Wars 2. :)

There's a chance Wizard101 players will also really like the code from this magazine. This magazine's code will reveal one random dragon-related prize. It could be dragon wings, a dragon mount, a dragon hoard pack, a dragon pet, and who knows what else. I picked up a pretty awesome dragon pet myself with the code. Check him out!


Thanks to Beckett's Massive Online Gamer Magazine for bringing me on and letting me write about the game I love and collect a bit of money for it as well. It's been great working with KingsIsle's Marketing on these articles. Even though it could be draining (nothing quite like pressing deadlines around the Thanksgiving holiday season to make a dad of 3 sweat), I'll miss it.

Happy Dueling!

Answering Questions about Super Hero Squad Online

After my post yesterday I got a few questions about Super Hero Squad Online, so I thought I'd take a few minutes and answer those to the best I can.

First up from a long time reader, Digby Mythweaver:

Hey Friendly a couple Super Hero Squad questions for you.

1. I play occasionally and I am on the Challenge of adding a 6th squad Member. Whats the best way to raise Silver or Gold to be able to purchase another character for my squad.

2. I noticed on the Badges, their is an Badge for collecting all your characters Tokens, twice. How does that work?

Thanks, Digby!

1- The best way to raise silver and gold is to log in everyday. Eventually you'll get to the point where you'll get 5 gold per day for logging in. Also, everyday one spot of gold will repopulate on the gift wheel. Unfortunately, that's about as good as it gets for silver and gold, so you'll be spinning that wheel a lot . . . A LOT. I usually go windowed mode and watch YouTube or something while I click "spin." You'll have to earn tickets to spin the wheel, so destroying trouble bots is probably the easiest way to earn those tickets. Note that you don't have to pick them up and throw troublebots to kill them. You just have to get near them and activate your first power emote. Easy tickets.

2- Badges simply give you goals to work for. That's about all I can see for their purpose at this point. Who knows, perhaps Gazillion will make it so badges will mean something more in the future. I'm unsure. It'd be great if earning a badge would equal squadron levels!

Next, Strong Sorcerer asks this question:

"Hey friendly, I've always loved Marvel and have a subscription for a comic every month. I'm wondering if I should play Super Hero Squad Online. if it helps I have played Wizard101, World of Warcraft, Roblox, and a game called Fusion Fall."

Awesome! Which comic are you collecting?

You list quite a wide variety of games, so that's a good starting point for comparisons to these other games.

Wizard101, WoW, and Fusion Fall vs. SHSO: At this point in SHSO there are no quests and there is no storyline. W101, WoW, and FF all have stories and quests. SHSO is more open ended. Because of this a lot of people really see no point in SHSO. Some people feel online experiences like these are more of a virtual hang out and not a game. Fortunately, shortly before I started playing the game, SHSO introduced a challenge line of "quests" so to speak. The main purpose of this challenge line seems to be raising your squad level while experiencing all that SHSO has to offer, which is this:

- emotes (there's a challenge to perform rude emotes in a pond in three zones)
- Card Game (win 10 card games against other players)
- Arcade Games (score a certain amount of points in a certain mini-game)
- making friends (challenge to add 5 people to your friends list)
- Combat missions (participate in combat mission challenges)
- Collect Tokens
- Destroy troublebots
- visit your player housing
- etc.

SHSO is not a difficult game to play. It's easy and extremely casual. I'd put SHSO less in the ranks of W101, WoW, and FF and more in the ranks of Club Penguin or Moshi Monsters except in a 3D world (More like perhaps Big Little Bang) with all kinds of heroes from the Marvel universe.

If you watch the Super Hero Squad cartoon series, read the comic book, play the Wii game, or collect the toys . . . this is a great online experience for you.

At some point, the hope is that Marvel will release a game similar to DC Universe Online. DCUO would be more like W101, WoW, and FF, and if you like DC comic characters and want to create your own superhero with your own powers, this is the game for you.

Also, if you're into superhero games, you might be interested in checking out either Champions Online or City of Heroes. I played City of Heroes many years ago when it first came out, and I have to say that the character creator in that game is fantastic and just a ton of fun.

Now . . . Roblox vs. SHSO: Roblox is all about creating your own content and visiting player created content while running around with these kind of lego style characters. It's a very different beast all together than SHSO or any of the aforementioned games. It's a builder game, similar to minecraft in a way but completely different.

I would also love to see SHSO delve into letting players construct their own superhero experiences. That would be amazing. In fact, I'd love to see ALL GAMES have a builder component. That's part of what makes a game like Little Big Planet (which on the surface appears to be nothing more than a 2D platformer with fun graphics) a STELLAR game instead of just a great game.

If W101 ever put a builder component into the game, I think it'd just push things over the top for me. If I could build my own street and populate it with my own monsters and bosses, I think I'd be totally lost to the world. LOL. It would be a ton of fun.

So, hopefully that helped clear up a few questions about SHSO. It's casual, it's free, and it's very open ended. SHSO is a game I can play for 20-30 minutes a day and log off OR I can spend a bunch of time playing through missions with my kids, having a great time.

I like playing a lot of different games because I feel it gives me a broader horizon with what I know about games . . . and especially online games. I love 'em.

If you have other questions about SHSO, ask away in the comments. If you play the game and I've misstated something, feel free to correct me. Thanks!

Happy Dueling!

Friendly vs. Super Hero Squad Online's Paywall III

Ohhhh, this is a steep wall right here that I’ve come up against. By my math, I’m going to need at least four heroes (above and beyond the 11 heroes I have now) to make it past the next paywall without paying. That’s just harsh! But it makes sense. I mean, this is a company we’re talking about here that needs to make some money. You can’t just go on and on playing this game for free can you? Well, essentially, yes. I think that’s part of what I like about it. You can definitely keep playing this game for free. It just takes time with a splash of determination—or stubbornness—take your pick.

By my calculations, if I just log in, level my heroes, destroy a few troublebots, and spin the pay wheel every day, I’ll soon have two more superheroes purchased with gold and silver by sometime next week. Specifically Bucky Cap and Mr. Fantastic.



Not the most exciting superheroes in the world to me, but definitely two relatively cheap superheroes. I like cheap!

Anyway, the stretch from Paywall II to Paywall III (or raising my hero squad level from 100 to 200) was pretty fun actually. From all appearances, the most awesome challenge of the bunch happens right here!


It’s win 10 card games against another player. OH YEAH, TIME FOR SOME HAPPY DUELING!


I did it! (But only after going through a number of decks until I found my awesome pinkish purple death deck.)


The PvP card duel in Super Hero Squad Online is an interesting one. The best way I found to win this challenge (without spending too much on booster packs) was to organize a deck that is evenly balanced with blocks and heavily geared toward one type of damage. (I might be a little light on yellow blocks)

That and a little patience with the cards were my recipe for success.

I'll be honest though . . . I'm about ready to surrender to the paywall and subscribe for a month. Unfortunately my kids have lost interest in the game. They do that though, and if they see me playing with a subscription account, they'll come running back. :)

I still like this game on a personal level because, well, there's a part of me that loves these characters and comics in general. See! I even have a few old Captain America comics in my collection.


I can't wait to play my Bucky Cap character for a taste of Captain America! After looking at my issue 305 of Captain America though, I want to play as Captain Britain now! (Dang comics were a lot cheaper back then: 65 cents, wow) Of course, Captain Britain is not to be confused with Lord British . . . I wouldn't mind playing as Lord British either. I'm ready for an Ultima/SHSO cross over game, but is the world? ;)

The next post about Super Hero Squad Online you see from me very well may be as follows: Friendly Surrenders to the Super Hero Squad Online Paywall.

Hard to tell. :) It all depends on how stubborn I'm feeling.

Happy dueling!