Worst MMO Ever? - Wizard 101
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- Опубліковано 27 вер 2024
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Swamp, Gravecrawler, yours.
Wizard 101 is a card game, but its actually quite a good card game. Shame about the extreme amount of monetization and premium content it tricks you into trying to access.
Thanks to my Patreon and Twitch subs who make these videos possible.
Do you have a suggestion for a 'Worst MMO ever?', let me know in the comments below!
The only memory I have of this game is from a few years ago when I was homeless, I'd walk to McDonald's every day to use the wifi. There was a group of 3 elderly ladies who would come in, plug in their laptops and play Wizard 101 together for hours on end.
It was wholesome. I hope they're doing well.
hey i hope YOU'RE doing well. homelessness is no joke
@@m1rac1e I am doing well, yeah. Got a job and a place. 's all good! Thanks for your concern!
@Jem The Good Ending
What an uplifting thread. Hope you and your older ladies are doing well
Holy fuck that’s adorable. I hope you’re doing better now!
You’d think these “pick from a pre-made list” name systems in children’s games prevents rude names, but I saw a person in Toontown once named Big Buster Nutterface, and that will live in my memory forever.
Big. Buster. Nutter. Face.
I got a giggle out of "Jack Ash" featured near the end, though I wasn't sure if that was a person or NPC.
Club Penguin swastikas and rude names in childrens games...humanity is dope
Saw somebody named Hugh G. Rection once
Or an army of Nick Crompton pigs named Big Nutty
My lv142 Wizard’s last name is TitanShard.
Read that name slowly. Titan… *shart*
I remember playing, hit the pay wall, and then was able to break through the barrier by teleporting to a freind who had the membership
yoooooooooooo
That worked very sparingly many many years ago I remember it working around when Aztecha was the latest world out.
Can you still do that? lol
@@benwildheart no and it was a rather rare bug trigger since they have always tried hard to keep the pay for sub/area popup in good health
That was still possible when I played it in 2010-2012
A comment on the fizzle mechanic. While annoying, it's actually not the worst thing in the world. Each card tells you to odds of how likely it will cast and if you fail a spell, you keep the pips, meaning you have more pips on the next turn to cast a potentially stronger spell instead. It introduces a bit of random chance into the game and helps balance the fire and storm schools high damage for the early game, making their playstyles more risky while being stronger/faster at fights.
Thing is, I'm pretty sure you still lose the mana at the beginning of the turn. So, if you're low and you fizzle, you're kinda screwed, especially at higher levels.
@@Zeroshiki yes, but by then being mana screwed is kind of on you. You have a bunch of mana and multiple mana pots to refill your pools.
@@corbinogden1338 Exactly, you will have tons of mana and pots to refill your mana, the only times I struggled with mana, were times when I was like, uhh only have 20 mana, no pots, don´t really wanna go refill it, it should be fine right? Only to then lose the fight because I did not refill it. Really I struggled with mana more in the early game, mostly because I played when the game was more active and people kept stealing my precious mana orbs...
this, plus you can use other spells and treasure cards to keep from fizzling. it's just another allowance for strategy.
@Zeroshiki mana in the game is mostly pointless. You basically never notice it’s there since you have so much, and you get wisps to refill it after most battles.
the fact that this game is fully voice acted and still receives updates still astounds me.
2008 still swinging strong my guy. Was also surprised to find it running a month ago when I started to play again
i think 2020 was its most profitable year yet, all the 12 year olds grew up and got jobs and started spending on the game lol
@@Benjyman31 liturally me
@@Benjyman31 I made so many accounts as a kid and could never get far because of paywalls now i’m almost 19 with money to spend on dumb shit so I’m redownloading the game as i’m typing this
@@Benjyman31 pretty much lol. I recently got a job so i started playing pirate101 again and having a blast going through all the new areas I couldn't when I was a kid
The fizzle isn’t random. Each card has a success rate shown as a percentage. The higher damage output, the lower success rate and vice versa.
Thats a much nicer system. Shame this wasnt explained better.
I do think this is a good game, badly explained.
@@JoshStrifeHayes A lot of things aren't explained well, they should revamp the tutorial again. Some things to note are, the windows on buildings are blue when it's to do with quests, you can name your pets, change gear color for free, change your own appearance for free, feed your pet for free and increase happiness for free, most things don't cost crowns, treasure cards (can be bought from the bazaar, traded or dropped), spells from other schools (takes training points which you get from leveling and certain quests).
Of course there's packs and pay-to-win gear (mostly only slightly better than dropped gear),
you have to earn energy for pets, fishing, and gardening, or wait/level-up,
mounts which are better usually cost crowns, but you can get some of the high speed mounts by paying gold or fishing/from drops,
stitching gear (swap appearance and stats between gear) costs crowns, jewel socketing costs crowns, some of the better houses (You can visit people owning the houses for free and make the same use of them) or house items cost crowns,
2nd roll chests cost money except on free chest events
expanding backpacks, character slots, and banks costs crowns,
and lastly bundles (ignoring crowns pets because almost no-one uses them); also, you could earn all of these with the trivias, and they have double pet xp, no energy fishing, double reagents events, KI gives out codes that anyone can use especially around Christmas, one for crowns and the rest mostly for items. and so-on too so it's not so bad. That's pretty much all there is when it comes to micro-transactions, it's a fair amount, but most of it is not needed at all.
The game has some pay to win elements, and a lot of them can be gotten easier by paying crowns, but I really would appreciate some corrections in the video when it comes to wrong information. If Kingsisle got a change in leads and the lead game designer, the game would be much better off, along with if they provided some more ways of earning stuff in game with an exorbitant time investment, they're really trying to please their investors and it's whales who continue this and actually keep Kingsisle afloat (they've already filed for bankruptcy before). The good thing is, they did a free membership for 12 days event during Christmas season, alongside the crowns code and everything, many people in Kingsisle are still trying to reach out to players and do something good.
@@Souls_p_ as someone who is almost level 120 life, I can say that grind isn't really that bad, you can progress through the game mostly on bazaar gear, or if you want better gear, mount olympus gear at level 30 will carry you to level 60 where you can grind waterworks for the level 60 gear that will carry you to level 100 gear at darkmoor, don't really know any grind spots past that but since its been a while since I played last there is probably new gear for max level. Crafted spells for the most part are unnecessary, only spell i'd say is pretty good to head is the knight for death schools, but most of those special crafted spells are useful for pvp, and if you're like me and not interested in pvp then you don't have to worry about it, like you said mounts can be gotten with gold, generic mount speed is 40% there is crown ones that are 50% or have a stat bonus but the bonus is minor not really big impact. The crowns gear again not even needed or even that good unless you plan on playing pvp. One thing I think kingsisle should make clear is that this game is not free, the free parts is closer to a demo of the game to get you to buy a membership or crowns to continue with the story.
Oh and btw i don't think the UA-camr realizes this but this game is quite old, 13 years old, so while certain models may be stolen, idk, you have to keep in mind that those models were almost the same 13 years ago.
My memory of wizard 101 was making an account, enjoying the tutorial, then hitting a paywall and dropping it forever
Imagine IT was free to Play i played IT Back then and then suddenly there comes the paywall and THE FKIN GAME DOESENT LET YOU PLAY ANYMORE WHILE YOU PLAYED SO MUCH UNTIL LVL 3O
Yeah this hitted me hard Back then ... ;(
That was me. I was enjoying it so much. Then it said I needed crowns to progress to the next part of the nation quest line. I gave up after that.
i had the exact same experience
I played it as a kid, now that I have adult money I picked it up again and got a bunch of my friends to play with me for questing and it is actually fun when you get older too surprisingly. Lots of screaming too
SAME THOO
Wizard 101 is without a doubt one of my favorite MMO's. Even as a 30+ year old, every time I played, I felt like I was doing something with my deck and character that no one else was doing, even when compared to someone operating within the same school as me. Not to mention they are one of the few MMO's that got player housing, and useful pets right.
I just started playing as a now at 19 since I can actually get past the pay wall and ugh I’m so happy!
@@tommysafford2425 I think Thats around the time I started playing 19-22 somewhere around there. It's a great game, especially if you're willing to drop cash for a bunch of crowns and pimp yourself out. I've never played an MMO that made me feel more "customized"
@@forrestredd2706 Exactly! Just because a game makes you pay money, doesn't mean it's automatically bad. By that logic, WOW is bad because it does the same thing...
The issue with this is what you were doing was most likely subpar. The quickest way to kill things in this game is just to use your best aoe spell, this is true for all battles, except bosses.
@@LaprasTrainerLiam Freaking exactly!
WoW Players will make fun of every other MMORPG and mock it for being behind a paywall, when WoW itself is literally behind a paywall.
A subscription to play a game is still a paywall folks. At least you can actually login to Wizard101 without having to pay so you can actually get a feel for the game.
The "Fizzle" isn't at random, there are percentage chances for something to fall. Life spells have a high amount of chance to succeed but Lightning spells have a medium amount, usually 70+ whereas life is 85+ sometimes
Oh wait you used logic? I just paid attention to the spell sounds being different and lighting of the spell trying to be casted.
@@qwertysub2038 well that's a valid way too lol
@@qwertysub2038 I mean he’s not wrong.
Also, players can reduce that chance of fizzling by improving their accuracy using dropped gears or jewels
@@qwertysub2038 brooo i did too XD
"Spells arent that long" Ra would like to speak with you
Forest Lord would also like a word
@@AluraAlua Scarecrow entered the chat
Test Realm Call of Khrulu wants to converse
Old lulu
Humongofrog would like to parley
I remember seeing the ad as a commercial while watching cartoons with my older brother while we were going to get snacks and we both looked at each other and just ran to the computer because we were so exited to play this. This game will always have a special place in my heart forever
I remember how long I would wait for loading screens, just because I was enjoying the game, my computer was a mere shadow of a blighted potato, and the internet was not much better, but I was still able to enjoy my trial run in grizzleheim.
my 10 year mute ends in just over a year boys. My sins of telling someone my minecraft username will finally be forgiven.
underrated comment!
Then banned again because you're that person 😍
underrated comment!
lmao, what a legend.
what was the name
Saw a guy named "Jack Ash" on Wizard 101. I miss him every day.
and dont forget the 3rd name can be pants as well...... lets say most 2nd words just explained the kink your had in your pants. LOL! the most common one i saw was firepants >_< but there were a few other inappropriate ones. i wanna know also why pants was a boy locked name as well because it doesnt exist in the girl names from when i tried a girl character.
@@Everlucky_Clover lmao that's odd.
Also @Jebediah Honker-Tonker I'm sorry you didn't see him again, that sucks
Funny how MMO's do that sometimes lol.
I named my second character 'Sierra Mist'.
wait, like the guy at 40:30?
My little brother played this and when he'd hit a paywall area, he'd complain to our Dad about it and, since he wouldn't shut up about it, our Dad paid for it. I complained and said "He can get that stuff for FREE if he could do those Tests and score well. He just has to be smarter."
Well, when it came time for College, I complained to my Dad that I needed tuition for Med School.
He told me I could get in for FREE if I had scored well on more tests and were smarter.
I somehow got horribly Dad-burned by Wizards 101.
DAYUM
well we know who the favorite kid was
Grade A comment man lmao
ohh noooo 😭🤣
I bet your dad played too. I'm 42 and started with my kids but I still play all the time. 7 max wizards
Just wanted to point out that the chance of your spell working is shown on each card. If it says 70%, then there’s a 30% of a fizzle. Which if anything actually makes it more tactical than not.
I also wanted to discuss that. He doesn't like the fizzle chance but considering the target audience is children it's a system designed for kids to weigh the pros and cons of their abilities. It's a math game made fun which is why I used to help my step-brother in it; it was fun.
Storm ahs highest dmg but worst accuraccy for example yes. There are also spells that have accuraccy bonuses etc
Yeah it is entirely made to show off the strengths of each different school (at least early-mid game). Storm is inaccurate but the most powerful, fire slightly more accuracy less damage, life low power high accuracy, rest all middling. Late game it gets power crept out because you can get 100% accuracy in all schools, but originally the game went to level 50, over 100 levels above that :P
@@zalvian22originally it was 40 not 50.
Yes RNG mechanics, so tactical! So much skill expression when you miss just cause the game decides "fuck you specifically". This is very healthy and skillful gameplay that should be taken vEEry seriously!
Diego the duel master gives a quest almost immediately that explains the card and duel mechanics. I think you skipped it. He teaches accuracy, pips, strategy, traps, blades, etc.
Yes, I was about to say at 16:30 that the accuracy is based on spell and then gear determining extra accuracy. It’s not “random” per say, rather based on chance by percent.
It's almost like he doesn't care.
@@BannedAide don't chock it all up to him not caring because he missed a tiny detail
@@poppachoppa8956 nah he missed a LOT of stuff. He clearly just fast forwards through text and blames the game when he doesn't understand how it works.
@@poppachoppa8956 yeh no sorry if you skip the tutorial u have no right reviewing the game when it holds complaints solved by playing the tutorials.....
btw the timer thing is intentionally designed that way because players can strategically stall out the turn timer to let friends join the battle at certain points, so it always needs to have a timer even when its just you so that players can't just stall forever and wait for their allies to flee and return to boss fights indefinitely.
me reply
@@king_bob7959 me reply
@@mr.voidroy6869me reply and someone else will in 7 days!
@@Ooffoop6 days
@@voidoceanskye26620 hours.
I played when I was 8 years old. I was playing for the better part of 5 years with my grandmother. She got cancer and it was how we spent a good portion of that time together. I have nothing but fond memories of this game. I have no idea how this popped into my feed, now as a 21 year old. But I’m kinda glad it did. RIP memere,🙏
Bless her good soul !
you played with your grandmother, as in she had a character or she watched/played alongside you? Thats so cute! Wishing you the best
My memere and I play it too ❤️
My condolences to you and the loss of your grandmother, but I'm glad that you were able to have fond moments with her. I wish you all the best in every aspect of your life going forward.
I remember playing the game as a kid and hitting the paywall, not paying, and just playing the free to play areas for soooo long, reaching level 26 before convincing my mom to get me the membership and allow me to work off the payment as an allowance with chores and such.
That cyclops lane quest broke my heart when I was a kid
Same.
THIS IS THE MOST RELATABLE SHIT I'VE EVER FUCKIN HEARDDD
Same I got stuck there like 5 times and then I think I quit
Whys that
@@AxisChurchDevotee because I knew my mom wouldn’t buy any in-game currency
I'm really glad Josh seemed to like the game, because if he didn't I would have had to muzzle my childhood.
Same here haha
I almost cried watching this, I had completely forgotten about this game, and seeing the cartoons on all of the menus brought back so many memories.
@@loganpatriquin9443 well come back, we still have full realms
Hivemind
its been over a decade since ive played wizard 101
8:40: *surprised by how populated it is*
I miss the early 2010s when there were around 20 people talking to Ambrose at a time
;(
i forgot about that lmao
it's important to note that most of the MMOs this guy looks at are basically empty, so more than two players on screen is probably a surprise to him
@@uglybad4 I mean Wiz still has a healthy 10-20k players so it's probably the biggest mmo he has visited on this series, and the only one he liked I think along with Defiance 2050.
20 only, I remember more
I'm actually surprised it takes so long to get to the premium zone fees now. I remember when I played it as a kid I got a quest going into a premium zone pretty quick and couldn't do anything (since I did everything that was free already). So I basically just replayed it a couple times as different schools until I just stopped since my family couldn't pay for it.
The percentage of people making accounts, playing a little and reaching the premium zones, seeing they are paid, and quitting probably increased, so they added more to the beginning to make people more invested
That’s how I imagine it went anyway. When I played it had way less at the start as well
Yeah, i mean i was at that stage in life when rent was barely being met so once i did sub to something it was back to WoW or LotRO, or you know? Anything that wasn't a F2P MMO with gated content. But i do fondly remember this game, too bad they marketed it the way they did though because it seems like A LOT of us hit the paywall and said NOPE, and just left for greener pastures.
If only he read a single card to find out that the reason fizzles exist is due to cards having an accuracy percentage, not a mechanic that's just meant to make the game unfun.
I really like the fizzle (unless it happens 10 times in a row) bc even if it's super low like the ice and storm schools you can always get accuracy from gear/pets
@Nicholas Conundrum yeah frickin sucks but hey there's always next time 😁
@Nicholas Conundrum I get what you mean, but as someone who's played the Pokemon game for years I was just like "This is normal"
Yes because a card game is better when your card doesn't work. Cause in yugioh I love when my card just fails randomly for no specific reason, but just because RNG. That makes things fair and fun and skill based.
@@august6029 Or just find a better card game. Magic and yugioh are solid choices. And cards work as intended 100% of the time, a card will never fail randomly, and only fail when countered by another card. Let how card games are supposed to function.
hey!! i know this video is a year old but this is a game i grew up with and it’s JUST NOW taking steps to possibly eliminate the immediate paywall 😭 until january they’re making arc 1 (5 worlds) free which is something they’ve never done before!! so it’s a small step but it might become permanent :D very proud of them for this
was excited until i found out it was just for a limited time T_T
they should do something like ffxiv and SWTOR... make old 'expansions' free eventually
They extended the free arc 1 for an extra month and then made another promo after making just Wizard City free. Pretty sure they're testing out how that effects playerbase to determine whether it's worth making it free or not. I really hope so.
@@arazec1014 I made new acc on Europe server made 6 wiz made them level 12 now I just take free crowns from daily mission
Did they make it permanent
@MrOgst I heard that the European server is always like 2 years behind in terms of updates…..
as someone whos been playing for 11 years ambrozes voice in the tutorial hasnt been updated and was probably recorded in like 2007 but i think malistaire and gamma (?) were updated in 2018 with the wizard city overhaul
i think this is a case of dont mess with perfect ^_^ they even got the same guy to voice for the few times you visit Ambrose after the Malistair arc.
Oh yeah, I remember some specific voices for people on like unicorn way, and I played it after a few years and they had changed some of them… I never knew why
I thought Malistaire’s voice sounded different
You must have done a LOT of tutorials
Fizzling is part of the strategy. The higher damage spells have less accuracy, meaning they fizzle more, so you have to decide between a riskier attack that would kill, or a less risky attack that wouldn't kill but still take the damage lower. You can improve your accuracy by going to the Bazaar in Olde Town and buying the gear with your desired stats, you don't need to pay real money for it.
So, kinda similar to pokemon's blizzard, thunder, fire blast etc
@@ejokurirulezz yes exactly that
@@ejokurirulezz just need gold
@@ejokurirulezz it's on the card as well the game though doesn't tell you that there is accuracy IF I remember correctly also theirs field cards as well that powers that school there's a player market system as well life schools is the only school that can heal others without treasure cards Myth you can summon companions that will also have a deck they themselves play out of the bad thing about this game as well is that A LOT of it is just the same like in this video the firecat alley is literally just the same as that tempest street except different enemies. Mini games you can play and the better you are at them the more rewards you get even to the point of gear as well you get resistances and more damage out of your spells through gear... also he didn't get to the point of power pip % which is 2 pips in 1 swords can make it so your own character is the card... there's quite a bit more further you again but it is very samey in terms of areas
@@randallsheriff3529 life isnt the only school that can heal, lmao.
23:13 ”just how many players there are!”
F for those who thought wiz is dead 5 years ago 🤣🤣
By your definition that means my dad, mom, and grandparents are dead just cause they don't have 8 pack abs and are successful millionaire. What is your definition of dead? Lmao.
@@tristanthealien3249 nani
That is so true once when I went on around 5 years ago there was like no players on at all then when I went on nearly 1 year ago now it was like when I first started playing again
So happy its booming now
Its rising actually
Fizzle actually makes it more tactical because some cards are more and less likely to do it so creating a well balanced deck becomes important
Ok, but the ultimate experience of wizard101 is making a girl character and getting guys to gift you p2w items.
selling dorm hex for packs
Exploiting the simps.
Does this actually work 😂
@@shrimpjesus4561 It worked in Runecape once upon a time. Buying and selling GF was the most profitable business for primary schoolers
Right next to offering to trim peoples armour.
someone gave me a permanent mount after we fought 1 random battle together, I didn't have the heart to tell them I'm actually a guy so I just followed him around for a bit and did some quests with him so it didn't feel like I took advantage of him (I didn't ask him for a mount he just bought me one).
I stopped playing wizard 101 years ago as a kid because of the sudden premium pay wall that i couldnt pay for. They advertise it as a free mmo even tho its a free trial game, but it still holds a special place in my heart and is the only turn based card game i ever enjoyed
Girl it was 9 dollars
@@queerlibtardhippie9357 and? Im confused with what you want me to say, i was literally just an 8-9 year old kid with no money?
@@queerlibtardhippie9357 girl you missed the whole point
@@Johnny-nt2ng They advertised it as free to play. That literally never means free. You were a kid, but NOW you should know that
queer libtard hippie yeah exactly and 5-10 dollars monthly member is the absolute minimum for mmos or the base standard at least
"most of the game takes place in wizard city" heh... About that
Ooh boy.
R/whoosh
@@tylerredforge5563 that isn’t wooosh bro
@@tylerredforge5563 You need to learn what r/whooosh means.
I don't play wizards 101, what does it mean?
I know I’m late but for anyone new coming and watching this video, 12:38 is not actually a glitch. You can not join a battle that is about to finish. Even though you can’t really see it, the wizard that was in battle had already selected a hit on the ghost and it would be defeated before the next round would come around, therefore you could not join it. So when you ran into that ghost it dragged you to the closest available battle location, which happened to be across the universe.
Every child’s favorite.
Saving Private O’Ryan
I remember back in the day I had a friend that paid for access to all the areas. We found out that I could still teleport to him in places I hadn't bought, so whenever I got to a new area that I couldn't go to, he would just walk through the pay wall and then I'd join him on the other side without paying a cent. I got through a good chunk of the game that way, all the way up to the Asia inspired area with the ninja pigs. There was no restrictions on level or anything either. I remember I was just in the desert area, and I could join him in the end game areas. He powerleveled me like crazy.
They nerfed everything is this comment sadly 😭
@@tristantanner2870 times you aint have your parents debit card and you had glitch your way through
@@tristantanner2870 I remember doing this too! Holy crap the memories
Too bad they patched all this now :(
@@trottinettesauvage tho now for i beleve limited time all begening arias are unlocked
The pay wall is for sure annoying and disappointing as you try to find quests that AREN’T in a blocked area within the first few hours of playing. But I think the membership is worth it.
Playing when I was a kid, it was less accessible, but I still saved money and don’t regret the money I spent on it.
Now I’m an adult with a job, and the $10/month fee is a great deal to me. Streaming services have monthly fees, too, and it all boils down to the price you’re willing to pay for your entertainment.
However, I do agree with another comment I read about them needing to re-advertise this as not free-to-play, but being free trial. Unless they do completely unlock the first story arc (not a bad idea; at least they need to unlock all of Wizard City).
Agreed, It should just be listed as a free-trial game at this point since you can't go far without a membership. In general, not everyone can afford a monthly game subscription or have the time for doing so. That's why I prefer to buy membership cards, once it runs out, I don't have to worry about paying additional charges.
I think one of my core memories was finally unlocking all the spells for this game and being so happy that I just decided to kill everything in sight for like 4 weeks straight
Bruh I never even got close to that 😭 my parents were NOT trying to put their card on the internet back then…. And that’s all they do now
@@Momosrevenge I hear that! I would have to do extra chores near the end of the month so they’d buy me a gift card for the game lol. Good times
@@alixvaughan6856 same bro 😭 Imy dad would buy me $25 gift cards (RARELY, even with this they didn’t trust it) and I’d use it to buy builder’s club on Roblox haha
how much debt are you in
Fizzling isn’t entirely random, it’s based on a percentage and that percentage is tied to spell level and school (ex. Storm spells deal the most damage but fizzle the most). It can also be affected by various spells
Or you're a storm without equippment [*]
Wait he thinks it's random?
I don't blame him for thinking it's random at first but I don't like that he's describing it as such on here.
@@EmmaSpiritcaller it’s honestly one of the more obscure mechanics so it’s not his fault for being confused, but it’s still vexing that he didn’t look at what all of his stats meant in the menu or with deigo before saying that it’s random
@@sicthemutt yeah, he said that he thinks it’s based on random change
One thing I like about wizard101 is the spells. Most of them are just so well animated especially the high level ones
100% agree, ill be honest though I haven't been a fan of Karamelles much, and the Scions could be cooler with some work. But man many are awesome
most attack all spells got a rework to where they hit all instead of going one by one
well if your gonna stare at the same 4 spells for a while i sure hope they did a good job at them >_< i didnt get past azteca but the spells i did use always felt exactly like the damage number said......... weeeeellll unless you over buffed a low level spell ^_^
this is an old video but
16:14 Fizzling isn't random, it based on the percentages listed on your card. Its on the middle left. Certain elements tend to have higher percentages than others, and stronger attacks tend to mean higher chance of fizzling. Of course, there are also cards with high damage and high cast percents, but they're super rare (read: cost money / level locked)
Do you know what random means?
@@jonastho19do you? This comment is right lol
@@Brilliantick99 So when casting a spell with 20% chance of fizzling it's predetermined which cast will fizzle? The 4th? 5th? maybe the 2nd? No it's random. I get that spells have accuracy percentages but it's ultimately still random if a spell fizzles or not.
@jonastho19 Thats not what random means lol. That just means the player doesn't know when it'll fizzle LOL. The original comment is correct
@@justtim6887 Oh, so when you flip a coin its not random, because there is a 50% chance of heads and tails. gotcha
The dialogue of this game is mixed from 2008-2021 that's why there's such a difference in quality and at other random points questing soe characters sound different mid dialogue. But originally there was no voice acting I think. The beginning of the game was updated a few times over recent years
I know that the teachers had voice acting in the beginning (or by 2009, at least), same with the school trees. I distantly remember that a lot of others had simple vocals to hint at how they sounded. When I revisted the game I was surprised about some of the side characters in the beginning having voice actors because I don't remember them having voices.
Voice acting was always included for every character since release I believe. It wouldn't make sense for them to make a random decision to add voices to all characters after release, and I mean EVERY single character has voice acting (i.e. tens of thousands of voiced lines)
@@joakimawesome It wasn't since release, I remember I joined in 2008 after one of the first updates post-release, and there was no voice acting, even for the teachers. It wasn't until 2009 I think that there was voice acting.
@@Dudebox64 thats quite impressive then. While the voice acting isnt the best, its still incredible the amount of voice lines they have in this game. Not many mmorpgs that i can think of with this many voice acted lines.
i started playing wizard101 around the time it came out, and everybody had voice lines. they went all out
As a person who has played this game since 2012 and is currently level 105, it's honestly pay to play, not pay to win. After paying membership, you really don't need to crown shop to improve your gear. You can just grind for it in the actual game, like any good MMO. Even the membership card gear you can buy at a gamestop is still weaker compared to grindable boss gear. I will say, the game has it's flaws (especially how misleading the trailers are compared to the actual graphics of the game) but the game isn't bad. The story and writing are good, there is even some dialog that pokes fun of how ridiculous some of it's story is, which I personally enjoy. But for a game that works on a really old engine, it's still fun to watch the animation and walk through the environments. I only wish the paywalls weren't on Wizard City, it scares new players off when it gets to the good bits, especially in Cyclops Alley (hint hint). If they were to remove the locked area paywalls and leave Wizard City completely free to play, this game would have millions of more players instantly.
Any cons I have equate to what Josh already explained in the video.
Would I recommend this? Sure, if you're willing to spend membership (I suggest buy 1 month to see what it offers later on before paying more into it).
Edit: To add, ever since they were bought by MGI, the dev team have made necessary and positive changes to the game and are more beginner friendly to help engage new players. At this point, the crown shop is really for cosmetics and extra packs. Most good gear is grindable in the game.
Edit 2: EVERY QUEST UP TO LEVEL 50 IS COMPLETELY FREE!!
i used to play this shit everyday i already know this video cap😭😭
Man do I miss this game, I remember asking my grandma for some money to get past the pay wall but she said no ofc
100% I loved this game as a kid. I remember putting all my friends on with wizard101 and we’d stay up all night playing. This games for sure worth playing and I’m even considering buying a laptop just to get back into wizard101. The membership is worth it and will get you through the entire game without buying a thing.
Wiz isn’t bad just pay for membership and grind…you literally have everything…game is fun
Eh, I stopped playing after they added P2W mechanics. The armor sets they added (haven’t played in a long time) were really good
I use to play this game religiously. You could say i was raised playing it. Even after hitting the pay wall I just kept playing.
Then I dropped it, returned in 2016 because a friend gave me their account with membership and told me shed keep paying the membership till i stopped playing. I stopped playing after a long time on there and had garnered so much gear and cards and pets. Then I stopped playing.
Now im going to start playing again because of this video and nostalgia
Would you like to play together? I also just came back to it.
@@euphoria4502 Were you still looking to play with someone? I wanted to get into it too and now I work quite a bit so I’ve been looking for a game to put this new money into anyways and going back to my childhood game seems as good as any but I’ve heard you’ve gotta have friends to do the later content in the game
@@baquetteboi3084 yes I am still looking for someone. It’s hard to progress without someone to play with. Do you have discord?
@@euphoria4502 Yeah I’ll add you what’s yours *edit* That’s actually a waste of time mines BriskBruce#2029
@@baquetteboi3084 I added you. I’m lickuid
Some notes after playing for about 12 hours.
1. There is a percentage chance of failure listed on the card. Pokemon and other RPGs have accuracy stats.
2. There is free chat, just press enter. The game tells you unless you entered your age as a child.
3. You can endlessly get free reagents around the world. You can get free treasure cards by grinding the same mobs and feeding your pet gear you don't want.
4. There ia a very clear zoom-out button on the map that shows all area connections...
5. Pets do have unique mechanics, heck entire questlines center around them if you had finished the first world...
6. The undead everywhere are because of the main villain you met in the opening.
7. You can have multiple characters and you have a shared bank. Give the good rolls to your wizard of the correct school. 😅
18:22 before they revamped the game, the owl would explain that houses with blue lights are relevant to one of your quests
Oh so they did change that? I got confused because I remember one of the first things being drilled into my head being blue=quest lol I had a lot of characters played through to Krok-MB so I haven't played the beginning in a long time
Early in the video when the spellbook opens to show the tutorial tips, it does mention the "blue light equals quest" thing, but a player just trying to...play may speed through that without noticing and then have no idea that they can access those tips later. I get why they made the change because now you can read these tips later on, but I'm not necessarily a fan because it means these tips are easier to miss.
It's funny because when he was showcasing the book menu he was on a page that explained that
@@IceCreamWorks He does! Makes me wonder if he was paying attention during that segment ^^;
90% of players experience with this game was making a wizard, getting to level 5, then seeing payment options to continue to play.
You can get to 15 without even thinking about paying lmao and it’s $10 a month…you know how much people pay for dlc’s and skins? Lmao
@@trevorrichardson1977 sorry rich kid when most people played this they were younger and didnt have the option
@@heldzero117 Yet now kids on fortnite are paying gor battlepasses and currency in multiple games for 10 to 20 bucks a pop somehow...
@@levistinefeld1809 Times change bro...... when this was out an iphone wasnt a thing....... if i wanted emerch i would have 2 steal my parents credit and thats a no go kids today are super spoiled
vr at 9 and shit and vr tech costs a fortune like wow insane tbh
@@heldzero117
You deliberately misinterpret their point.
They aren't saying that everyone can afford it and should shell out the money. What they ACTUALLY said is that the same spoiled children who make in-game purchases for no reason in Fortnite CAN afford a Wizard101 membership.
Of course poor kids can't have either and it sucks. But for the kids who buy skins and cosmetics in other games, the membership fee here isn't even close to unreasonable.
16:15 I actually couldn't believe he complained about this being a bad mechanic just because he didn't understand it. You should complain about it not being explained to you, not the mechanic itself. Each card literally has the percentage chance it will hit written directly on it. This relates back to the point he made earlier about how it's a GOOD and interesting thing that this card game allows for damage to be randomized, such as a spell dealing between 40-50 damage, and how it can let you try a spell that MIGHT kill an enemy, or use one that definitely will but lose that card for later rounds. This is the exact same principle, but you complain about it? You can choose to play a card that can deal high damage but has a higher chance of fizzling, storm cards are a good example of this, or you could play a card that might not do as much but has a higher chance to hit. For an analysis this in-depth I'm pretty disappointed you chose to criticize the mechanic without fully understanding it instead of criticizing the fact that the game didn't give you the resources to understand it. Honestly, who's first thought when a spell fizzles is "this must be completely random and unexplainable so I'm going to complain about it".
its so simple minded that even 5 year old me understood it, he's just lowkey slow upstairs but its alright
@@Jared_VQZif it was outside the original tutorial I would believe Diego would teach you about fizzling
nah to me it's a shite mechanic. I literally restarted the game and nowhere in the tutorial did they explain that.
@@chilairearts4238just because it wasn't explained, doesn't make it a bad mechanic. Just means it was explained, the tutorial was shirty enough that it didn't cover all the information. This mechanic is no different from pokemon having moves with chances of hitting. The difference is you can visually see the spell being cast, and experience minor to major disappointment due to it, which likely influences the idea that the mechanic is shit, because you expected it to work, and it didn't.
You must also be forgetting about the part of the video where he complains about the pips not being easy to count because of the UI when they're legit on the menu at the bottom and visually by your feet and easy to count
6:20 "They don't slow the game down too much" *Ra, forest lord, and mystic colossus have entered the chat*
Dr von's monster*
Old cthulu watching this like 👁👄👁
After nerfs and introduction of new spells you're not using Ra anymore at all, and rat spin is an alternative to forest lord.
@@Sxtvara yeah i know, im talking about how much enemies use them and it takes up so much time
@@Sxtvara rat spin is too hard to get, but yes I agree, everyone is gonna use power nova or ortherus instead but I wish life got something else more available to everyone as an aoe
I was in the level 90 world krysalis and there was a boss that told me "despite all your rage you are still just a rat in a cage" then he died and said "smashing pumpkins". Best reference by far. Gave me a chuckle.
This game is filled with references
The guy in pvp offering to help you quest is wholesome af
These "wholesome" jokes aren't even that comedic.
Oooh! The joke is that it's not even though I said it is! Laugh!
@@thunderblood6603 wow your life must be so sad
@@thunderblood6603 This wasn't a joke. It was legitimately wholesome. Are you ok man? Do you need a hug?
I think it's gotten to the point where I have no idea what's ironic and what's not.
@@thunderblood6603 I totally get that. Especially with anti-vaxxers and flat earthers running around.
I remember playing this as a kid. I loved it so much, when I hit the paywall, my soul literally left my body :(
him:"I feel like you will eventually outgrow it" Me: *Laughs in max level ice wizard after playing this game for almost half my life*
whats that like? ive never really looked at what a high level player looks like, ever
@@hampsterdance1226 i mean it's cool. some of the high level spells are cool. it's also nice to have access to worlds as they come out :p
@@mermaid0tails are they still updating the game???!?!?
@@brov3313 yep, they started a fourth arch a few months ago by adding a new world called Karamelle which means they are planning at least three more worlds if their usual four world archs keep up.
@@mermaid0tails sheeeshhh
"It gets more furry as you play"
Me playing Pirate101: 😳
weeeeeeelll
Me, a Max Level Swashbuckler: "No, no. He's got a point."
Marleybone: 🐶
wait till he finds out the world of only bugs
@@wild5851 Khrysalis?
I remember as a kid, I was so amazed at the Leprechaun card because the Pot of Gold had so many indivisual pieces of moving gold. It make look pretty bad nowadays, but as a kid it looked really neat
omg same! when i first started playing, players that used that card looked like pros to me :))
The fizzle thing is accuracy, each spell has a percentage chance to hit and you can improve this stat with gear
Thank you for pointing this out, i wish this was explained better in game
Explained better? There’s a percentage on the card itself on the top left, how could you miss it?
@@GhostlyFyre im sorry i clearly played the game wrong.
@@JoshStrifeHayes they should definitely add something to explain fizzling and accuracy in the tutorial. I never really understood it until half way into the game when I played
@@JoshStrifeHayes As a quick note should you want to play the game again, you can usually guess accuracy before even looking at the card, as the school the spell is from influences it.
Storm hits the hardest but has the lowest accuracy, it's definitely the school of luck or, well, diviners seeing the future.
If you want greater consistency, balance is the school you want. Just don't be expecting to hit very hard early on. It also gets a TON of support spells, you are a force multiplier. If you have friends :,(
Necromancy has average damage and accuracy, not something you want, but have tons of spells that do multiple things at once, making your pips much more efficient. Also makes you really good at drawing agro, making you a half decent tank.
Ice is your generalist Tank school, having the best shields and the only card that draws agro, while also commonly having more health due to their school restricted gear.
Fire is really good at dealing damage, but most of your better damage spells are DoT spells. There are ways around that, it's a really solid.
Life is your healer, obviously. They have the lowest damage in the game if I remember right, but they get a really nice shield spell and have a monopoly on Every healing spell worth anything. That's why I kept the starter wand with the 1 pip any target heal spell.
Myth is the minion School, they can summon things that take up a player slot and start casting spells. This causes problems if there are 3 other players with you, but they also get strong hitting spells and later on they get ways to deal with other schools.
And yeah, the monetization is pretty nasty, though you can skip it outside of the Giant Paywall that is membership, that is actually rather cheap tbh. And Wizard city is about 10% of the game, good luck!
To be honest, this video made me have a better view on Wizard 101 and show me it was better than I had expected, instead of making it worse.
i absolutely love this game. ive been playing since 2010 and I've loved every moment of it. it can get a little grindy near the end game, but it all pays off in the end. there's so much to do and it brings me a lot of nostalgic feelings :) i would most definitely recommend this game.
I wasn’t able to pay past the pay wall as a kid but as an adult I can afford the yearly membership and you should easily be able to beat it within that time. Past the paywall is so much more fun qualities and you also get free pets. A lot of the content in the video isn’t accurate like fizzing. This guy didn’t do a lot of quests that explain the mechanics.
truee it made me appreciate the card game part of it more. i enjoy that he always looks for the positive side of things
Since this review was done from a new players perspective (and side note you sound similar to the late TotalBiscuit) I'd say it was done well and did its best to be both fair and informative, which I appreciate. That said as a veteran of the game myself I'd like to take a moment & clear some things up.
First to obtain new spells, aside from a select few optional spells you gradually gain access to more from your own school by leveling up, with training points (gained every few levels) being used to learn off-school spells. The select few that aren't obtained like that can be gotten by farming certain bosses (some can drop spells) and/or by crafting them in addition to packs, but again these are optional. The Second Chance Chests (like the one for The Harvest Lord) are also optional & in fact the price to use it increases after each use to discourage overuse of it.
Second, when it comes to gear you can get by on gear purchased from the bazaar, ones dropped by bosses or crafted gear. While some items found in packs are better than non-pack (usually just the wands) it's not a deal-breaker if you don't have one, and in fact most pack gear is often inferior to non-pack gear in terms of general stats. Also when it comes to pets while their names are random when hatched you can always rename them at the dye shop for gold.
Third, while the Crowns Shop pop-up every time you log into a character is annoying (a thought many in the community share, and a feature that didn't always happen) there are actually a good amount of mounts and houses in it available for both gold & crowns, with almost none of the latter being crowns only. Houses can also be purchased for gold from the housing shops in many of the games worlds, with 2 even being craftable. This also goes for reagents (crafting materials) as all but a few can be gotten by hunting in the worlds or bazaar, with the few that can't being boss drops or rewards from side activities like gardening or PvP.
Fourth, the tutorial tips (the notices that appear on the right) can be dismissed by right clicking on them. Alternatively you can have it set to only the most critical ones appearing or even turn them off in the options menu.
Fifth while the amount of side content available can be overwhelming for new players (understandably so) many of them are actually locked until you reach certain levels, which does help against that some. Not only that but the community as a whole is pretty welcoming to newcomers, with many happy to share tips and tricks for said side content.
Finally while it's true that the first paywall appears early (many in the community have suggested making all of Wizard City free with the worlds after that being premium areas), something you might not have noticed is that buying an area in the game with crowns unlocks it permanently on your account, a feature I've only seen its sister game Pirate101 have. There are also some ways to gain free crowns, mainly trivia (10 per successful quiz, 100 per day), daily assignments and contests.
Let me know if you have any questions & I would be glad to answer them for you.
P.S. Gamma is male not female and is referred to as such frequently throughout the game.
P.S.S. Speaking of Pirate101 your Wizard101 account works for that game too and vice versa, with your Crowns amount being account wide rather than just game wide.
Totally agree as a veteran myself......who needs to get more money to finish where I left off,
And yea I agree that gamma is male XD
Great review and a great reply as well.
This annoys me so much. Like people are saying it will cost you some $400 to play. Sure, if you unlock everything, but if you are any normal person you will not finish an MMO. Without all the extra ways it costs about $25 to unlock all of the first two worlds (up to level 30~) for all your characters btw. I've been that weird guy who like the pay to unlock idea, cause then I can bugger off and play anything else. I really dislike how many game rope you into playing only their game through subscriptions and I wish more game would have an unlock feature instead of subscribing or worse yet paying for the game and subscribing. I'm looking at you Microsoft Word!
thought i was the only person who was fussy gamma got called a female, but as a veteran player myself i love that you educated instead of being angry and hating on josh!
@@gardealle8761 While I can certainly understand being annoyed at some of his misassumptions I see no reason to get angry at or hate on him because of it. Better to try to clear up misunderstandings instead if possible. We were all new once after all.
This game was great - I used to play it as a child and I'm so grateful that somebody actually bothered to make a good, easy-to-understand yet deep and complex game for children. There is an idea that things for kids don't need to be high quality because they're "easy to please", so a lot of new entertainment for children is garbage (mobile games, reaction videos), just things made by people looking to make a profit rather than a good product, whereas Wizard 101 was good, obviously it wasn't without faults and the heavy monetization was a bit predatory, but I still think it's much better than a lot of new things. I'm glad I played it - it was one of the first games I tried and it really made me want to play other games.
I’m not sure how far into the game you got but I should mentioned Malistaire has quite the character story, SPOILERS AHEAD.
His life went into a downward spiral the day his wife died, he tried everything he could do save her but in the end she died to an unknown and incurable illness. He blamed himself and the spiral for taking the love of his life away and vowed to bring her back, to resurrect the dead no matter the cost. He grew more and more opposed and eventually turning cruel. By the end of the vanilla games story we stop him before he unleashes devastation and that was that for a time, later we are introduced to Morgan, a ex star pupil of Ambros that started to experiment with shadow magic, eventually being consumed by it. Along this very long campaign spanning almost a decade in expansions we are faced once again againts Malistaire, this time as a literal animated corpse brought back by the powers of Morgan. We failed to stop the destruction of a world and Mailistaire retreated to his estate in wizard city, this is where we face him one last time. The battle is a clash between two old adversaries that have both sacrificed alot to get to where they are in that point of the story, the player character is no longer the child who entolled to Ravenwood all those years ago, but instead a battle hardened warrior that has defeated thousands of enemies, against one of the spirals most dangerous death wizards it’s ever known, two legends, two adversaries, one old wound that needed to be mended. The battle isn’t complicated, I think that was intentional, it showed the growth of the player against the once mighty Malistaire. When we first faced against him we where but the learners now we became the masters, the power disparity is shown in the final cutscene after we defeat him, and as we did we liberated his soul from Morganas spell, and as if it was to close a chapter, the ghost of Malistaire’s wife, the same one he tired to revive all those years ago, approached him, he realized the mistakes he made and seeks forgiveness from his wife and us. Before he fades into nothing with his wife he tells us that the fate of the spiral lies in our hands, to stop Morgan and to free the spiral of her evil, it was a nod of respect and acceptance that the past is now the past and we the players are the future to make all of this suffering and death mean something. The story is way deeper than it appears and the narrative though cliche is still compelling.
This is definitely a gameplay vs the lore moment.
@@g.g.g4121 it is, the gameplay is a acquired taste but the lore is actually really detailed and good in my opinion. This is but one of many great stories in Wizard101.
@@Neromilius nice
@@kdfksfkldsklfkldsff thank you 😁
You didn't even get to Marleybone, where everyone is a dog person, and the quest line has you assist Sherlock Bones in defeating, his cat arch nemesis: Meowiarty
Or Krokotopia, where you meet Krokotehp, and Krokopatra, and go to the Krokosphinx, and please, Kroko-kill me now
Or mooshu where a japanese cows and goats and pigs task you with healing the land and their cow leader by killing elephant gods
Or dragonspyre where a dragon titan inside of a volcanic island academy fucking kills everyone and leaves the academy in absolute ruins turning every water source to lava and charring the sky a permanent red where you have to help the spirits living there give you an enrollment so you can kill mallistaire
Wait until he tries pirate101
@@azzzanadra I'm still hoping he covers it, because I do love the game but I wasn't as into it as Wizard101 and I'd love to hear his thoughts on it.
Or Grizzleheim, where you have to help a bunch of bears unite with a bunch of boars and a bunch of wolves to stop a bunch of ravens from plunging the universe into permanent winter. Also, Nick Jonas.
@@lordpenn see you in the game
The thing about w101 is, the f2p part is basically just an extensive tutorial. The membership is basically required to play the actual game, since the main quest line goes out of the starting area after like 5 quests. Ignoring that, the packs and everything else in the premium shop is decent and people definitely buy it, but it is by no means necessary. So I'd say the biggest flaw of the game is marketing itself as free, since it's basically a ten dollar subscription. On the flipside, I personally know how much fun I had as a kid just playing everything in the free zone, spending hours on the minigames and just running around the map looking for Easter eggs. And if anybody decides they want to play the game and see the whole story through, just go in expecting to get the membership. Plus, KingIsle is pretty smart in pricing the whole thing, they have a family option, so multiple accounts can get a discounted membership and they also do discounts pretty often, including making the whole first world free.
as someone who has played the game since 2008, the reason the voices are so different when it comes to quality is because the beginning got completely redone and they didnt really fully convert to the new system. with the character creation, in the beginning you created your character within the launcher not the website. they added the website creation later and it clashes with the launcher creator. you can skip the website creation and get the launcher directly. you also dont need to pay to feed your pet, you get pet snacks all the time form everything to feed them.
Cope cope cope
@@bldontmatter5319 lmao you're definitely high in copium
@@bldontmatter5319??
He's explaining why the quality of the voices are different.
@bldontmatter5319 wut? Are you coping?
@@bldontmatter5319
Considering this guy's name, I doubt there's more than 5 brain cells up in there.
when i was younger i always saw the ads for this game, and i always assumed it was pretty dead since those commercials just stopped suddenly coming up on any show i watched, but to my surprise the game is still kinda alive which is wacky for a late 2010s educational type mmo
its one of the few technically math games really. and i love that it forces you to used predicted math rather than doing perfectly same hits every time ^_^ this is prolly a huge reason the sub players enjoy the stat system.
Late 2010s? Isn't this game older than that, like late 2000s or something?
@@Josbird it came out in 2008 i think. but they didnt add end of malistair arc till almost 2010
16:14
... *All storm wizards EVER start sweating profusely*
Thanks for the flashback
LMAOOO FACTS
I played this game a lot. The thing I always hated most about it is that gear/card/pet drops are always random, and thus a large proportion of your time has to be taken up by grinding for all the good drops. Dungeons are actually fun, but they start to get old really quickly once you've done them 5-10 times. Don't even get me started on the loremaster.
I mean, that’s literally most mmo’s (you gotta farm for drops.)
@@senseiadam-brawlstars9465 Yeah, but I don't know about other MMOs, but with wiz it's practically mandatory to farm to progress unless you can get 3-4 people together to play it through. Also they've been doing some malicious actions lately (malicious in my opinion anyways) where to even get access to a boss you want to farm you have to go through a time/money paywall. It feels like it artificially inflates how long you're subscribed.
That and it's impossible to participate in pvp without spending extra money.
@@bunnyben5607 Yes, other MMO's have those same qualities as well (you gotta finish a whole dungeon to get the final boss that gives drops.)
And yes, you gotta pay to play in most MMP's too (you think they're just gonna offer their game for free? That model is only a recent thing, and Kingsisle has said that the crown shop only accounts for 30% of their revenue (would be very unsustainable to make the game free.)
@@senseiadam-brawlstars9465 Yeah, but I think it would increase subscription rates if they at least made the rest of wizard city + the pyramid free.
@@bunnyben5607 right now its free membership for like a week since its wizard101's birthday! :D
"spell animations are short and sweet" don't tell him about the first version of call of khrulu
Or Ra or Forest Lord
Omg or ra
@@redlacer1 ra still doing it’s round now and it’s been 5 year since l last been on it
i remember doing quests if i see a balance wizard i would switch realm so i would not have to deal with ra if they decided to join in my fight...
Forest lord lol
I really like this video but there are some inaccuracies, maybe just lost through lack of context.
1. Treasure cards can be purchased with real-world money, crafted with materials, OR found in the open world by defeating enemies and can be purchased at the bazaar which is the trade hub of the game.
2. Pets do not get tired and need feeding, they have energy bars that go down when playing pet mini-games.
3. Potions can be purchased for gold (non-real world currency) at the location of the carnival where you can alternatively play mini-games to fill them for free. Performance dictates how much is filled.
4. 25:53 Pets lose happiness when using abilities, happiness can be increased by feeding them. They can eat items you don't want, pet snacks, and not all pet snacks are from the crown shop.
5.~35:15 The most pay-to-win thing in wizard 101 is the ability to buy exceedingly powerful gear for crowns, if you know exactly what to buy then you can be more powerful than anyone else.
6. 35:33 you only spend mana when placing a beacon not traveling to it. Marks can also be overridden and it is implied that you cannot in the video.
7. 35:30 there are a lot of sudden spikes of difficulty. However, there are few spikes so great that you NEED a team unless you're talking about a dungeon or an activity that has cheating enemies.
8. 39:39 The game does not encourage you to buy card packs, the card packs do very little unless you're buying gold cards, and gold cards are only as valuable as how quickly you can gain pips. You're encouraged to level and optimize your deck depending on who you're fighting. The beginner wand is actually very detrimental unless you understand the deck building system since it dilutes your card pool with cards that may/may not help.
9. 41:13 I've enjoyed this video but it's almost egregious and slanderous how often it is stated that players will -- need to buy card packs to succeed. That's not how you progress in this game that's not how you get better cards and the biases that you have from previous card games are really leading you on. This game has so much wrong with it and this is not one of the issues.
"The most pay-to-win thing in wizard 101 is the ability to buy exceedingly powerful gear for crowns, if you know exactly what to buy then you can be more powerful than anyone else."
Even this is not entirely true. There is no need for this gear in the early game, and in the late game the best gear needs to be obtained through gameplay.
"I've enjoyed this video but it's almost egregious and slanderous how often it is stated that players will -- need to buy card packs to succeed. That's not how you progress in this game that's not how you get better cards and the biases that you have from previous card games are really leading you on. This game has so much wrong with it and this is not one of the issues."
This is what I was thinking. I've played the game for years and honestly can't even think about a way to buy normal cards. If there is it was so unimportant and unnecessary that it didn't matter. It bothered me a lot about his review that he was simply saying, "Oh this is a card game? That means you have to buy card packs." You don't, not at all lol.
my only problem with the game is the pay to go to new area's as a kid i spent 100's on this game and if i remember right im only in the area after the floating island with the rainbow bridge also i cant remember my account to login its over 10 years old rip
@@toha9460 Thats grizzleheim, and you get there relatively early. You should only have spent one months worth of a membership to get there. Because you don't pay to go to each new area, you unlock all of them as a member.
@@toha9460 if theyre is something to complain about with this game their customer support is awful. I deleted one of my older wizards to make a new one last year at somepoint and it had many valuable things on them at the time. This deletes all of the items (including the ones you buy with crowns...) and the only way to get this stuff back is to go to support with the name of the wizard or the time of deletion.
@@toha9460 I am going to try and sign into my account. I remember my email but nothing else. Last area I remember is the steampunk world, but I could have went well past that area.
My favorite part of wizard 101 is forced communication and socializing. It perhaps isnt so much like that anymore with the team kiosk, but it still is incredible. EVERY other mmo, like ESO and black desert for example, you team up with people, you dont talk, and thats the end. Or you solo everything. But in wizard 101, youre asking for help, youre communicating strategy, youre joking about how you fizzled for the 5th time, etc etc. Wizard 101 was great at forcing social situations whereas other mmos just feel so lonely now
During the pandemic I decided to revisit this game. Thinking "I'm adult now I have a job, I'll spend as little as possible" I actually completed the first arch all the way to level 50, via only spending one month of membership $10 and I bought a perm mount. The game really isn't all that expensive
Yeah, 95% of the crown shop options are cosmetic. Even the gear you get is pretty bad compared to the regular gear for that level.
It didn’t have membership when it first came out so you had to buy crowns if I remember correctly which is the paywall everyone is talking about
Lol, commented basically the same thing. Membership + mount, never looked at the crown shop again
@@benjaminwatson7868 I played the game a decade ago with membership
@@benjaminwatson7868 No, membership has been around since the start. I sort of wish they would remove the option to buy areas with crowns, I think it makes the game seem way more pay-wallish than it is. It's really just a 10 dollar a month game with like a 3 hour free trial. Trying to play without a membership makes it seem like they try to take more money from you every loading zone you hit.
"Its only gonna get more furry as we play"
Marleybone: You called?
(Its literally London but everyone is a dog person)
Everyone is a dog person? Smh you're ignoring the cat and frog people.
and the rats and robots
Avalon
I was devastated to see some of the voice actors and dialogue have been changed. The wound in my nostalgia...
Lady Blackhope not having a voice that makes your very soul reach absolute zero out of sheer terror for example.
When I played this years ago, I told my parents it was my favorite game ever, so they ended up paying for the membership and Christmas presents were the honestly kinda cool cards that stores like EBgames or GameStop use to have next to the steam cards, they each had different things on them like houses or mounts or pets and all of them had crowns. But even with a lot of the "premium" items, the cards are what really counted. your mount and house were just secondary if not tertiary. As a game though, I loved it, but I never forgot how much money was put into it.
But as you say, it's a card game first. and a card game will always require more money.
Regardless I still have a place in my heart for this game, and honestly, I always will.
I remember seeing these ads as a kid and being like “Damn, that looks so cool. Wish I could play” lmao
yea even had commercials luckly my fam had a pc
@@benthosundercover7916 I personally haven’t owned a working computer in my life until last year (I’m almost 17 now), so I never had the luxury of playing games on a computer unless it was on the school computers
Just to note the fairy graphical glitch is because you and another person were doing that dialogue scene at the same time
Why didn't they just code any of those properly?
@@TrianglePants youre talking about a game from like 18 years ago lmfao at least its better than most games now adays with really bad glitches plus they are trying to improve since they got bought by a bigger company
@@wild5851
eh hardly
it's mostly sales and broken updates
@@wild5851 Except w101 is screwed because gamigo is literally an mmo graveyard.
00000~3 feels like a reference to an old well known Starcraft 1 cd key back in the day that was commonly used on burned copies of the game. We would often forget what number was at the end so start at 1 and work our way up. I can't help but feel like that quest is a reference to this.
23:45 actually Old Judd is a reference to Pet Sematary and not a Baron Samedi rip off. He even says “sometimes undead in better” it’s one of my favorite references in the game.
I’m actually willing to buy him an entire years membership of the game and take him through many of the beginner things in the game just so he’ll give it a fair shake. I’ll even throw in a few thousand crowns for him. I just really enjoy this game and want more people to see past the paywall.
Try to get him to try Pirate101 as well. He might like that even more.
i play w101 and it’s actually fun. like the fact people don’t like the game cause of “paying” like are you that broke tf? membership isn’t expensive like bitch just pay and play like you won’t realize your membership up until you stop playing for maybe a month.
@@cooperfloyd2287 do you need help trying to understand a simple game?
@@lash1283 Relax. It's more of me not understanding all the little parts of the game, not so much the main idea of the game. I've played pirate and maxed out one of my characters. I just think it would help to have someone to help me understand all those little aspects of the game.
@@cooperfloyd2287 wym? it’s pretty simple. you train up and lvl up to get powerful and buy gear and defeat bosses. it’s the same as pirate literally so you should understand it. it’s not that difficult you know? you’re becoming a powerful wizard throughout the game. it’s fun and you don’t have to buy anything but membership to go through the worlds. you can craft better gear than what’s in the crown shop as well. it’s not hard and it’s a fun game.
I play this thing since 2011 and I was already in my early 20s .. My wife actually started playing it when she was ill at home in bed.. On a really Crapp old laptop... Nothing else would run... And it was her first step into mmo... So I wanted to encourage that and started to play it too... Now I play it since one year with my 5 year old son and he loves it... I have to admit I might have dumped more into this than wow or any other game in my life... But I recommend it for anyone who wants to do first steps into mmo and or has kids and is not hesitant to play mmo with them
gosh that was my sister and I. Sadly we don't play anymore, but I have thought about taking a look at it after nursing school. My sister and I shrieked in joy once we found out how to switch servers and play with each other. That was back in grizzleheim. We beat the base game (mals story line) together and did every single side quest except for the find the 6 or so things that didn't have a tracker. I have so many fond memories of Wizard 101.
Fun fact the wizard city quest lines are a little different to how they original are
Personally, I had a great experience with Wizard101 growing up. As a young kid, it presented learning about our own world to me in a unique way. It did so by implementing different cultural inspirations for each game's worlds. I will always be thankful for Wizard101, I even still occasionally pop in to check in on some gardening or pet training. If I had to change one thing it would definitely be the paywalls. Kingsisle could seriously reboot the project as a free to play and be surprised with their success if they manage to market the microtransactions well.
so back in 2020 me and my friend started a wiz account where we could play together and relive our childhood memories and to have some fun. And our set up was that I would pay for crowns in game and she would buy me dinner and it was a pretty solid system. I think maybe we spent around...hm, let's say 400$ from 2020-2021. We got a membership too. We beat the second world and are almost done with the 2nd.
I never realized how fucking insane the costs are to beat this game. Even if you just paid for a membership (70$ a year appx) it'll still take you a long time to beat. And paying with crowns? Forget it.
Honestly I hope kingsisle just makes the entire first world free in order to get people to come back and play. Because i guarantee people would spend more money on it if they felt like they could actually progress in story
This game always had a strong connection with Toon Town for me.
The whole formula of the games are basically the same.
4v4 player vs. Ai using turn based strategy to defeat your opponents.
Go around a similar town layout doing basic missions to progress.
Even the minigame system was more of less the same.
Would definitely recommend playing Toon Town Rewritten.
Made by fans of the original with all the monetization stuff removed.
Can go download it for free right now!
Does toon town rewritten have an active playerbase?
@@aelanarbrightfield6817 Pretty much yeah. They still make new additions to the game so it's not just playing the same old thing from all those years back. Definitely recommend checking it out since you can download it for free right now.
I forgot that game even existed even though I last played it like 2 years ago.
@@aelanarbrightfield6817 I'm a (somehwat) active TTR player, I've seen the lows at around 300 and highs above 2000. The district selection page in your shticker book shows the total player count at all times. I second OP's suggestion though, TTR is an amazing rendition of the game and is exactly what a private server should be like. They've also recently been making some very small QoL changes, mainly around the combat.
Recommend playing the new rendition Corporate Clash. rewritten has some dodgy organization.
The lore and story of the game is really good in my opinion and i always enjoyed the turn based combat, but the game's potential is wasted so much by the early as fuck paywall, and stupid devs making update harder for everyone to enjoy (just one example being the pet hatching update.)
To be honest a good chunk how the lore are ripped off stories that are slightly changed to match what the game is about, so I'm not to sure about praising that aspect of it.
i will say that thank god they added the pet hatching kiosk........ still a PITA to make a decent pet (going for perfect is extra pain) but now you can just breed down a pet from junk to great, instead of peck and pray like it used to be. slamming 2 pets together hoping to pass 1 skill and not pick up a junk skill was unbearable when they first introduced it.
@@Everlucky_Clover oh yea the kiosk was one of the best things they ever did, but it's more of what they did to the kiosk is what i hated. Making hatches almost 100k each egg and only searching 2 talents was such a stupid change in my opinion.
Xanadu is a greenish gray color
Falu is a red color commonly used on wooden cottages and barns in Sweden, Finland, and Norway
Smalt is a blue color
Very late but the reason for changes in voicelines is probably due to the teams revamps to the start area and may have recorded new voice lines
you don’t have to pay for everything, like pet snacks or reagents (unless you really want to) but the paywall is really unfortunate, cause i love this game so much
When I was a kid I looked at coding and broke their paywalls on my side and got bored of the game when I unlocked every area and beat
@@triggerhappy4199 lmao yoo how was u even able to do that
@@triggerhappy4199 bro wtf how 😂😂
I remember seeing ads for this and Pirate 101 on Cartoon Network as a kid
My experience was playing the game, hitting the paywall, making a new character and picking a diff school and repeat. To this day the quote "I'll take my leave of this wretched place" from the tutorial scene continues to live rent free in my brain.
"At some point I will hit a paywall"
I remember 2 things about this game:
It is an okay card game
The moment I quit
What was that moment? I hit a paywall in the form of "You can't go to that area unless you pay for it"
man used to play this at my late grandparents house almost every weekend good times i still remember my login
Yeah, I've played this game ten to fifteen years ago with my daughter. There are parental features you missed that are quite good. For instance, there are three levels to the chat system, with the most restrictive being menu chats only. You can set and restrict what your child can do online. It also allowed you to transfer crowns, limit pay options, and even share your membership with your children. (So none of that "kid using parent's credit card to buy soccer packs in FIFA" shit.)
When I played, the pet system was nowhere nearly as complex as you saw it. Pets were basically things that occupied the same circle and gave you cards, buffs, and debuffs. Mounts were a thing. And the crafting system let you make a decent amount of things (but not all). On a plus note, it lets you craft all of the one time use cards, but the good gear is only obtainable with crowns.
Also, there's a bit of confusion over the paywalled content. The initial content and one of the three streets (first one you enter, so it's not a specific street) are considered the free demo areas, and every zone after that requires payment. So it's not a case there's premium and free areas, additional content will cost you once your done with the starting area. I don't mind them breaking up the story into chapters and having each chapter requiring a fee, but they break the chapters (islands) into zones and each zone has a paywall. So, it can get pricey after a while. But the subscription model unlocks EVERY MAP ZONE, so if you have a lot of little ones or play this heavily, the membership is worth the coin.
Also, the class and level locking on items isn't as egregious as it could be. You're allowed to create up to 8 wizard characters, so you can create one of each school. Plus, the chest/stash in your dorm room (or house if you end up buying one later on) lets you store those items to get them out of your inventory. The storage has two modes: Character's and Players. The player stash is accessible by all characters you have, where the character stash is just the active character. And there are no restrictions moving items between stashes.
All in all, it's not a bad MMO if you have kids. It's a nice way to introduce them into the design language other MMOs use, and they'll have fun right up to the point they're old enough to play ROBLOX or Minecraft.
As an experienced player, first off, amazing review. Secondly, while I will admit the initial window into the game’s monetization is nothing short of predatory (especially for a game so heavily geared towards children), the actual amount of things you need to pay real money for is rather small. Many useful items, like mounts or houses, can be bought from the crown shop with gold. Many items you can buy with crowns are often on par with or worse than items you can obtain on a budget. The only things you really do need to spend money on is membership and some very specific high level gear items. On a mechanical basis as a player who pays pretty much only for membership, I have few issues with the game’s monetization. The presentation of its monetization is despicable. Buying gold for crowns is a scam. Buying pets or snacks for crowns is a scam. Buying most packs is a scam, doubly so if you are low level (
I think my favourite memory of this game was coming across Nick Jonas teaching sunflowers how to sing haha
My first nut was when my game froze on the loading screen that included the head mistress of Wysteria, anyone else?
And Selena Gomez getting kidnapped lmao
Oh yea Selena Gomez and nick jonas was in the game back in the day.
Btw pet play is utilized at higher levels in the game.. so learning it at your level (an introductory level) is important because then you’re not dealing with learning it later on when you need it. So there is a plan there also.
What i love about this game is different classes actually have different base stats. Like fire wizards having high damage but low health and whatnot. Makes dual/tri classing very interesting.
That's true.
Storm wizards are the "glass cannon"
Fire are your DOT (Damage over Time)
Ice are you Health Tank
Myth are your Minion specialist
Life and Balance are your Support
Death is the best "solo questing"
imagine playing wiz tactically when you can empower feint crow
lol so true
lmao
im a solo death wiz, i love loeading every enemy with all different death traps and feints, then drop a scarecrow one-shotting everyone and getting my health back xD
@@mrdandy9427 period
@@mrdandy9427 I build death to solo with lol. Plus life as my secondary just Incase I run into a death npc....
The storm mobs 395 hp that you mentioned were more tough, Thats the end game area of Wizard City, So you need to be roughly level 12-18 to fight them effectively.
Yea for suken city you need to be 12-18, it’s hard to even solo
@@picassojulien899 did they nerf sunken city? I feel like I remember it being way more difficult but I soloed it on my death at level 15 the other day
You can solo wizard with a death main. Nothing beats attack converted to health for you.
i remember being so upset as a kid because firecat alley is the required space for almost every early game fire school quest and i was a fire wizard. my account now has firecat alley purchased from when i was 10 and begged.
i played this a ton as a kid (and also revisited during quarantine lol) and my favorite part was the housing system? I never had the crowns to buy a house, but once I hit the quest area paywall, I just tested all the houses (nice that you can tour them with a real estate agent…who’s also a cat). They’re all honestly really cool and very different from one another. i would just try to make friends so I could see how people decorated them. anyway I’m an architecture major now
I would spend hours touring those houses, I was so happy when I got enough gold for the non-crown house lol
You can buy houses and mounts with gold
Thinking of the voice acting mic changes (quality wise) they have kept a lot of old original recordings, and have re voiced a few as the years have gone on. They’re celebrating their 15th year, there’s definitely going to be a huge audio quality different
I still pay wizard101 from time to time, and this is a good video with some good criticism, especially the free crowns quiz it's really stupid. I've beaten all of the main stories and have a maxed character I can elaborate on how some of the criticisms in this video effect the late game.
-if you are soloing some parts can very very hard and you need to use the team-up option will be a very close friend and some late-game dungeons cannot be done solo but can be fun if you get a good team. the timer for the solo duel is pointless.
-the community is really good and usually, some will help you if you use the team up or just ask in the commons
-they don't tell you but you can remove the chat filter except for sware words.
-the voice acting and writing is generally very good, I like the story
-the spells do get more dramatic as they get more powerful but they do keep them short and even updated old spells to make them shorter by removing repeating animations
-They get better at adding more systems gradually at the start of the second story they introduce enhancing spells to upgrade spells, extra attacks, better shields, and a higher percentage of defense. attack better and upgraded shields, blades, and traps and they introduce transformations spells which for PVE are useless specifically the moon school, (I think they have some use in PVP but I am not sure) and as you go through the game they progressively get better. then at the end of the second story arc, they introduce shadow spells and shadow pips.
-there are two types of shadows spells, one pips spell, and two pip spells. shadows spells have a backlash that is reduced depending on that you. the one pip spells are transformation spells but actually useful in a team, you have one for healing, one for attack and one for defense that redirects some damage to you and not your teammates its very useful
-DO not buy areas just get a membership, trust me it cheaper and better. also if you are free to play when you open the game it is always open the microtransaction store but if you have a membership then it won't open up, which I think is just bad practice.
-with a membership, your backpack is expanded to 150
they blocked some spells behind a paywall or a lot of grinding. for two classes life and death they don't get a four-pip hit all and they don't get and hit all attacks until level 48. but in some packs, you have a chance to get a permanent spell including hit all for life and death, and its not guaranteed that you will get a spell from your class.
-BUT you can get the spells without paying(except for a membership) either through crafting or a rare drop, either way, you need to fight the boss loremaster I spent four days straight grinding the loremaster before I got the two spells for my school. Note: the spells aren't ultra-powerful but some of them are useful
-the developers have been adding more spells for lower levels, for both PVE and PVP
-the best equipment in the game can only be gotten through grinding and crafting, it takes a lot of time and I only got two pieces of the gear
-story is really good and I enjoyed it
tips:
1)dont buy pets, after arc one you get a lot of coins from selling extra stuff you get, with about 100,000 gold you can go and breed with other people's pets at a little kiosk in the pet area. to get a powerful one for free. it does take some time
2)dont buy packs unless you want a mount and dont buy bundles unless you want a house
3)unless you are life or death dont buy packs for spells or grind the lore master unless you really want to
Edit:
I forgot to mention some things:
-the worlds are really cool and they do drastically change due to story events
-I also think it is really commendable that kings isle has been developing this game for over 10 years
thank you for joining my ted talk
Epic Ted talk
wish more people saw this, imo i dont think the game is p2w I think it's just p2p like most other mmos.