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 ... ;(
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
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.
@@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...
@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 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.
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.
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.
@@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"
@@AkamoriArt 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.
You hit the nail on the head. W101 advertises itself as a free mmo, but it's really not. It's a paid mmo with a free trial. Essentially if you want to play the game for more than, like, a couple days, you have to start paying. And that's fine, but misleading. The game itself is actually a load of fun, with a surprisingly excellent story, especially in arc one.
Not forgetting to mention the unavailability of being able to play in regions away from north america. I remember being a 12 year old, really wanting to play more of this game, and not being able to play because I couldn't pay in dollars. I love the game to this day, but I could never experience it fully. Really wish I'd never played it
@@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
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.
@@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 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.
The difference in quality between voice lines is due to the fact that the voice lines were all added in different eras of the game. Originally very few characters were voice acted. Mostly ambrose and gamma for the tutorial and a few more main story characters. Most other voice lines including malastaire in the tutorial were added fairly recently in the timescale of updates. Hence them having nearly 10 year newer audio quality.
I’m really not sure what you’re talking about, I played all the way back in 2009 and I remember all characters in quests being voiced, something that I was fond of as an impatient kid that didn’t want to read.
yes the VA's got a huge overhaul. thats why merel ambrose has a really crusty voice that sounds different, they got a bigger budget and so they updated their voice actors
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.
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
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,🙏
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.
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.
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
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.
@@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.....
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.
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.
does it count if you started at 24 and are now in your thirties? once stats got complicated in celestia a ton of older players started. this is also when pet breeding started (prolly not a coincidence)
I remember playing this game, and actually figuring a way behind the paywall. Basically you make friends with someone who is a premium member, they travel behind the paywall, and you teleport to them. Anyway that’s how I managed to beat the game without paying any money.
@@Dudebox64 I did this when I was a kid and it worked for me... But getting back into the game recently, I haven't been able to do it. Maybe a patch or only sometimes you can get away with it?
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.
Honestly with how many people downloaded Wizard101 and bought cosmetics, if the game just costed 10 dollars to play or just 5 dollars, they would've made so much money they would never need to crown lock locations. It honestly would've saved the game
there is an aspect you missed >_< you have to use premium currency to transmogrify your gear to look like another piece of gear as well. so about the crowns locking area. the game started out with the ability to buy areas or sub. when you buy an area it is open forever to you even when you are not subbed. the alternate way of the subscription is why this model can work. granted up until they released card packs it was a pretty fair system cost per world (i mean you expect the next world to cost more to support development anyways). however when card packs became overwhelmingly produced THAT is when the system became a bit toxic. as the cost per world went waaaaaaaay up on new produced worlds. they ruined a healthy system with greed really. then they got even greedier. they punished crowns players who buy areas and dont sub. subscription players received an increase of about 33% to their bag space and basic attic/housing space. then they monetized bag upgrade to make your backpack bigger. then they also increased the amount of junk that drops per fight to make you need to empty your bag more often. yes you heard me right JUNK items increased making good items decrease. now i understand making house space a purchase since about 70% of the houses had lower furniture and storage space and you would only do this to your favorite 2ish houses. but purposefully creating a need for player bag issues was a stupid and unforgivable issue i will forever hold against them. when wizard101 had to join up to a different company to stay sailing i felt really sad. the previous team cared about the player. now it's cash shop is a way to rob impulsive people. still an amazing game but put a chain and lock on your wallet when it comes to large spending in the cash shop please.
@@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.
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
18:40 So the deal with the house lights being on is referring to the window on the door. The quest door lights are blue, enterable is yellow, not enterable is black (aka lights off). Also, if you look at the left hand side of the screen you'll see that the game is still installing while you're playing. A lot of your graphical bugs are just because it's not finished yet
As a person who played the game for many years, I wouldn't say this is a pay to win, but rather a pay to play. Most of the stuff in the crown's shop is unecessary and doesn't really impact gameplay much (plus you can get some items like certain mounts (not too flashy ones though) and houses with in-game money). Most of the good sets can be achieved by farming certain dungeons or through crafting. However, I may add that the shop contains "packs" that kind of work like loot-boxes, which can be pretty dangerous (specially in a game aimed for kids). It's probably the sketchiest system to get money implemented in the game. Apart from that, it's absolutely true that the pay-walls are a pain in the ass and things can get REALLY expensive if you want to reach endgame content. It's also true that soloing bosses gets extremely complicated as the game progresses, specially for certain classes. As a storm wizard (who are pretty much glass-cannons) I would get destroyed really easily, and my success in battle fully depended on an rng based healing spell that could either save you or be absolute trash, which was frustrating lol. Overall, I think it's a game I would still enjoy as an adult despite its flaws. The card system is really good, and bosses later into the game use different "tricks" that force you to change the way you play to spice things up. The game makes you seek new stratergies just to beat them specifically, which keeps the battle system from becoming too stagnant and predictable. Apart from that, you can indeed customize your deck quite a lot with cards from other classes using points you get throughout the game, which is pretty nice. In addition, PVPing is really enjoyable and challenging, and every class plays a unique and important role in battle (I didn't think it was too unbalanced when I used to play), house decoration is nice and pet leveling/breeding (despite being time consuming and pretty repetitive) is kinda fun as well (imo) Fun fact: There was a time where the spanish server had no pay-walls until Celestia (lvl 50 or so), and I haven't experienced a more lively community since then. Nevertheless, pay-walls from the beginnig of the game were introduced in like 2013 or so, and most of the players completely vanished. Glad to see the english server is doing so well, though :).
As someone who played from 2009 on american server, ever since lvl 50 when dragon spyre officially released its been easy to clear and solo the entire games pve content as long as u used training points for satyr heal and ice tower shield even if you were storm. U dont need to pay to win for anything in wiz until may cast wands and op crown gear came out in later years. All you needed was a good pvp pet and a decent wand for whatever was good at the time which was extremely easy to obtain (and still is) and you were set. Any purchases past that point are just for convenience. Even leveling a pet and hatching is extremely easy. Gold has always been easy to farm since The membership has been required on NA server since lvl 11-12 from the very beginning since I played in 2009. Aside from the cost of membership you really dont need to spend anything unless you care about try harding in pvp and even then it’s extremely easy to be a warlord through various means / strats / puppet abusing back in the day. Wiz was a very fun game with a fun community from 50-70 level cap. After that it changed in pretty drastic ways from time to time.
If you are paying to save time or getting an early/overall advantage than it is P2W. If the stuff was pure cosmetic then it wouldn't be P2W. It may come in degrees of much the advantage is, but if you pay a cent for an advantage then it will always be P2W.
@@blakecampbell6549 The only aspect of wiz thats p2w is pvp and thats at all levels. Crown gear and may cast wands before you get any form of actual pvp gear was always op since the beginning. People also dump tons on pet energy/snacks if they don't know how to farm. The degree of p2w definitely matters in the context of other full scale mmo's, but for Wiz sake its def just p2w in pvp 100%
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!!
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
@@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
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
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
Having played the game from the beginning one major thing that I would point out is that YOU DONT NEED TO BUY CARD PACKS TO GET CARDS. Cards are earned as you lvl up through the game. You can also get cards through crafting as well or by farming a particualr boss but thats it.
@@jorlynemil8723 Yes i know it can be difficult to craft the cards and how hard it is to farm them; however, imo its better to just grind than spend money on packs that are basically loot boxes. I also think that grinding to get materials or farming a boss is part of being an mmo
@@ahappybadger302 i respect your answer but the people who own the game don't even care about the players, they care about their money. and i am pretty sure that's the reason why things are so hard to get in this game, and why this game is so play to win.
@@jorlynemil8723 I totally agree with your point about kingsisle doesnt really care about their players and just want their money; however, i have to disagree with the pay to win since I only see p2w in pvp while in pve you can just get gear from bosses or crafting. The game could be pay to play since you need membership or crowns to access areas
@@jorlynemil8723 the hardest reagent to get when it comes to crafting the spells is amber... make a few gardens, one for each character to take care of, and you can get amber from gardening. Problem solved. It may take a little longer but if you prepare it early, you’ll have plenty of amber.
@@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).
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.
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.
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
@@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
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.
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.
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".
@@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
How i'd fix Wiz101: make the entire first world accessible by everyone for free, only have the extra worlds be paid. And it's not like there's just 2 other worlds, there's like, a dozen of them
Yea the way my sister and I did it when we were younger was buy one and I’m not sure if you can still do it but you at least used to be Abel to tp to the person that was in the pay walled areas and do the quests and stuff for free.
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.
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
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. 😅
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
@@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
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 ^_^
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.
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
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
@@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
@@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
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)
@@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.
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.
@@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.
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
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
With respect, most of the complaints you have about the game come from an unfamiliarity with the game. The most striking of which is fizzling. It isn’t random, it’s based on the accuracy of the spell card you used.
@@burstvgc Except this game is a TCG with resources you expend. Yes pokemon has PP but outside of competitive play it doesn't come up unless you haven't gone into the center in a while, so if it misses you wasted a turn, but you lose nothing. In Wizard101 and any other card game, you expend a card. This isn't a feature in TCGs at all, not even in the pokemon trading card game.
@@MISTABUSTABASE At level 30 you can get the Zeus gear which for storm, the lowest accuracy in the game at a base accuracy of 70%, gives a 17% accuracy boost making your accuracy 87%. This can be further boosted by wand choice, pet talents, and jewel sockets. At level 30 my storm had 95% accuracy, and around 70% strength boost. At lower levels you have the spell Lightning Strike which gives you +25% accuracy boost, making your storm spells 95% accurate. You get this spell after completing the first area unicorn way, approximately around level 5. So levels 1-5 you’ll fizzle more often, but unicorn way is a very easy, low stakes area. If you really don’t want to fizzle as much for levels 1-5, you can rely on pet talents or jewel sockets. So again I say, the majority of the complaints he has, and that you have, come from an unfamiliarity with the game and it’s mechanics.
@@waterwitch456 nah, I think you are rather unfamiliar with other games actually. You just proved how much work you need to put into the game in order to get high accuracy. You would be sacrificing time to do mount several times to get that gear at level 30 which becomes essentially obsolete by level 45 at best (besides the wand of course) which gives you 10 damage that people really aren’t willing to trade out, and rightfully so. In a turn based game most usually have a fizzling mechanic and nobody cares for it or likes it, and in wizard101 you would like to have the most damaging gear, even on supports until a fairly high level. Everything you named as far as the storm card thst gives the acc blade is a waste of a turn, pets you definitely can get accuracy on but it takes luck, gold to hatch, snacks to feed, and energy to continue playing. And at first you start with what, 40 energy? Sockets could be true and could work but nope, even they don’t. You need to go far out of your way to farm for them and they aren’t good enough to make a difference until like lvl 100 where you get like 10%+ you’re making a really weird assumption for some reason that you would Have multiple characters in the game to boost your others in ways like having plenty of gold, snacks, or extra gear. And second, all of that work for a problem that is OBJECTIVELY bad and gear that becomes completely irrelevant by lvl 60 at best. You should try to play some other games next time tbh
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.
@@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.
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.
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
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.
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.
@@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.)
@@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.
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.
Been rewatching a lot of this series and this seems like one of the ones with the most errors unfortunately. I know this can often be ascribed to bad tutorial etc. but I think most of these things were skipped over/assumed here such as card accuracy, treasure cards, card acquisition, etc. The game shouldn't be marketed as free to play for sure tho, more like limited free trial.
"Limited free trial" is absolutely accurate, I played as a kid and when it threw that level 20 paywall at me, I decided I'd buy 1 month and never touch it again. I did have a good time with it while it lasted though.
100%. Saying it's "free to play" is just wrong. You only get part of Wizard City and that's it. Advertising it instead as a "limited free trial" would help people know what they're in for so they aren't suprised by the paywall.
@@JrKengu It was free once, they just never bothered to change their advertisement. But you really pay less in Wizard 101 than some mmos you need to buy, and then even buy expensions for and then even a subscription so eeh.
A lot wrong with this review, especially the monetization. Basically the only thing you need is the membership . -The best gear can only be farmed in-game -Treasure cards are bought with in-game gold. -A lot of the stuff you said you can buy you actually can't buy it and earn it in-game only. The game is also game up into different "worlds" as well, which is why it seems small if you just look at the first world (there's currently 21 worlds in the game.)
@@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!
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
@@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.
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.
Man I miss playing Wizard101 when I was a kid, me and my friends would stay up all night during summer vacation playing while laughing in a 4 way phone call.
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.
Ever since i was a kid I've hoped that they'd actually make a new version of this that wasn't just aimed at kids. This was a legit stand out game in the genre when i was little.
To alot of peoples surpise as soon as u hit the 3rd world onwards, honestly took me like 8 hours focusing main quests the game instantly becomes a top end mmo gear sets comboing, significantly more party incentives almost always people grouping, bosses with unique mechanics so many spells, also the game isnt as pay to win as some people say it is, u can buy gear yes but is almost always out valued by raid gear, unless u buy gear 5 lvls up from raidgear honestly no need reagents imo yea pay to win no one can be bothered to gather that many things, and out of the like 40-50 or so spells each school gets there are like 5 craftable cards u can lootbox for kinda reliably but u can craft these (they are meant to be bought, free option is there for people who want to earn it) and they are only better than normal for like 2 schools
@@thegoldenbunny4020 question, how popular is it still? I was debating going back and trying it(I never did a monthy thing when I played it years and years ago but I remember I really liked the game)
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.
I’m well aware of this game’s flaws, but try as I might, I still have nothing but fond memories of this game. It was one of the pinnacles of my childhood, and arguably got me into gaming later on. Ahh 2010, how I miss thee…
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
I remember one of the MMOs tried making the question markers a turquoise color to match with their theming and they just could not get test players to find the quests on a consistent basis so they had to go back to yellow
You need quest markers to stand out. Solid red, yellow, and, green are going to benthe most visible to players. Gray bends into the backgroun so many mmo use them to show quests in progress but not complete so player wont focus on them.
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!
@@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.
@@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.
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.
Nah the fizzling system needs some work. I even put it down to remembering when spells fizzle but not when they work but even then its frustrating playing as ice and setting up a win just for it to constantly fall apart on the rounds i go to hit. There were even rounds where i would fizzle back to back to back battle after battle
@@FrostDzNz it does need work, for sure. Most spells should be more accurate than they are. But the accuracy listed on the cards are true, right? They're not misleading?
"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"
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.
I hate Wizard101, it's my favorite game.
lol fr
People play this? I seriously thought this was just a meme
@@jonathansoko1085 it isn't that bad, but i think only people who are nostalgic can really play this game
@@jonathansoko1085 I came back on because of this vid to see what's up
relatable statement
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
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 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 when you used to take a personality test to decide your magic type 🤣
It still does that I’m sure
@@CwGuitar01 yeah i just did it a week ago
BEEN THERE BEFORE TOO
Hmmm. I wonder if that's new or old, because when I played it just asked me what magic type I wanted.
@@Rainbowthewindsage it's old. However you always had the choice to skip the test and go straight to picking the class you want
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"
@@AkamoriArt 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.
You hit the nail on the head. W101 advertises itself as a free mmo, but it's really not. It's a paid mmo with a free trial. Essentially if you want to play the game for more than, like, a couple days, you have to start paying. And that's fine, but misleading. The game itself is actually a load of fun, with a surprisingly excellent story, especially in arc one.
I honestly prefer the arcs in reverse order. And if I’m being honest khrysalis probably has the best story
@@sadkinz880 I've done every world except caramelle or however you spell it and never paid attention to the story XD
Not forgetting to mention the unavailability of being able to play in regions away from north america.
I remember being a 12 year old, really wanting to play more of this game, and not being able to play because I couldn't pay in dollars.
I love the game to this day, but I could never experience it fully.
Really wish I'd never played it
First arc is alright story wise but if you have played for a while it’s the most boring part of the game unless you’re pvping
And then in arc 2, arc 1 goes out the window
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
only memory of W101 i have is seeing commercials on TV and being like "wow that looks fun but i have to be 10 or up to play, guess ill wait."
Well are you 10 or more yet? :v
@@Matt_the_pirate maybe soon
you sure your older than ten now
looool
Dont worry you'll get to play soon.
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.
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 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
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
The difference in quality between voice lines is due to the fact that the voice lines were all added in different eras of the game. Originally very few characters were voice acted. Mostly ambrose and gamma for the tutorial and a few more main story characters. Most other voice lines including malastaire in the tutorial were added fairly recently in the timescale of updates. Hence them having nearly 10 year newer audio quality.
I’m really not sure what you’re talking about, I played all the way back in 2009 and I remember all characters in quests being voiced, something that I was fond of as an impatient kid that didn’t want to read.
The change i noticed is animation when they talk. I think they replaced Ceren's VA. Not sure if wrong
@@georgelooney6826 It's true, they did. Many of the Wizard City NPCs got new VAs during the FTUE (First Time User Experience) update.
yes the VA's got a huge overhaul. thats why merel ambrose has a really crusty voice that sounds different, they got a bigger budget and so they updated their voice actors
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.
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
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.
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.....
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?
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
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.
"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
Most of the wiz player base joined as kids and still play now. They are mostly 18-24.
does it count if you started at 24 and are now in your thirties? once stats got complicated in celestia a ton of older players started. this is also when pet breeding started (prolly not a coincidence)
Yup
Yup. Was 7-9 when I started and now I'm 22
Let gooo 😂😂 started 12, now 22
bro literally just called me out
I remember playing this game, and actually figuring a way behind the paywall. Basically you make friends with someone who is a premium member, they travel behind the paywall, and you teleport to them. Anyway that’s how I managed to beat the game without paying any money.
I question this because I tried this exact tactic as a kid and it didn't work
@@Dudebox64 I did this when I was a kid and it worked for me... But getting back into the game recently, I haven't been able to do it. Maybe a patch or only sometimes you can get away with it?
Yeah they patched it about 2 -3 years after people started doing it
That's what I did. If you leave a mark you could return to those places too.
That’s exactly what I did
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…..
Honestly with how many people downloaded Wizard101 and bought cosmetics, if the game just costed 10 dollars to play or just 5 dollars, they would've made so much money they would never need to crown lock locations. It honestly would've saved the game
Monthly membership costs $10, and sometimes they have sales for first time members for $5
there is an aspect you missed >_< you have to use premium currency to transmogrify your gear to look like another piece of gear as well.
so about the crowns locking area. the game started out with the ability to buy areas or sub. when you buy an area it is open forever to you even when you are not subbed. the alternate way of the subscription is why this model can work.
granted up until they released card packs it was a pretty fair system cost per world (i mean you expect the next world to cost more to support development anyways). however when card packs became overwhelmingly produced THAT is when the system became a bit toxic. as the cost per world went waaaaaaaay up on new produced worlds.
they ruined a healthy system with greed really. then they got even greedier. they punished crowns players who buy areas and dont sub. subscription players received an increase of about 33% to their bag space and basic attic/housing space. then they monetized bag upgrade to make your backpack bigger. then they also increased the amount of junk that drops per fight to make you need to empty your bag more often. yes you heard me right JUNK items increased making good items decrease. now i understand making house space a purchase since about 70% of the houses had lower furniture and storage space and you would only do this to your favorite 2ish houses. but purposefully creating a need for player bag issues was a stupid and
unforgivable issue i will forever hold against them.
when wizard101 had to join up to a different company to stay sailing i felt really sad. the previous team cared about the player. now it's cash shop is a way to rob impulsive people. still an amazing game but put a chain and lock on your wallet when it comes to large spending in the cash shop please.
@@Everlucky_Clover
This.
downhill since Darkmoor (2014-15) at least
Saved the game? It’s still doing good
@@Everlucky_Clover purely cosmetic
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 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
18:40 So the deal with the house lights being on is referring to the window on the door. The quest door lights are blue, enterable is yellow, not enterable is black (aka lights off).
Also, if you look at the left hand side of the screen you'll see that the game is still installing while you're playing. A lot of your graphical bugs are just because it's not finished yet
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
As a person who played the game for many years, I wouldn't say this is a pay to win, but rather a pay to play. Most of the stuff in the crown's shop is unecessary and doesn't really impact gameplay much (plus you can get some items like certain mounts (not too flashy ones though) and houses with in-game money). Most of the good sets can be achieved by farming certain dungeons or through crafting. However, I may add that the shop contains "packs" that kind of work like loot-boxes, which can be pretty dangerous (specially in a game aimed for kids). It's probably the sketchiest system to get money implemented in the game.
Apart from that, it's absolutely true that the pay-walls are a pain in the ass and things can get REALLY expensive if you want to reach endgame content. It's also true that soloing bosses gets extremely complicated as the game progresses, specially for certain classes. As a storm wizard (who are pretty much glass-cannons) I would get destroyed really easily, and my success in battle fully depended on an rng based healing spell that could either save you or be absolute trash, which was frustrating lol.
Overall, I think it's a game I would still enjoy as an adult despite its flaws. The card system is really good, and bosses later into the game use different "tricks" that force you to change the way you play to spice things up. The game makes you seek new stratergies just to beat them specifically, which keeps the battle system from becoming too stagnant and predictable. Apart from that, you can indeed customize your deck quite a lot with cards from other classes using points you get throughout the game, which is pretty nice. In addition, PVPing is really enjoyable and challenging, and every class plays a unique and important role in battle (I didn't think it was too unbalanced when I used to play), house decoration is nice and pet leveling/breeding (despite being time consuming and pretty repetitive) is kinda fun as well (imo)
Fun fact: There was a time where the spanish server had no pay-walls until Celestia (lvl 50 or so), and I haven't experienced a more lively community since then. Nevertheless, pay-walls from the beginnig of the game were introduced in like 2013 or so, and most of the players completely vanished. Glad to see the english server is doing so well, though :).
As someone who played from 2009 on american server, ever since lvl 50 when dragon spyre officially released its been easy to clear and solo the entire games pve content as long as u used training points for satyr heal and ice tower shield even if you were storm. U dont need to pay to win for anything in wiz until may cast wands and op crown gear came out in later years. All you needed was a good pvp pet and a decent wand for whatever was good at the time which was extremely easy to obtain (and still is) and you were set. Any purchases past that point are just for convenience. Even leveling a pet and hatching is extremely easy. Gold has always been easy to farm since
The membership has been required on NA server since lvl 11-12 from the very beginning since I played in 2009. Aside from the cost of membership you really dont need to spend anything unless you care about try harding in pvp and even then it’s extremely easy to be a warlord through various means / strats / puppet abusing back in the day. Wiz was a very fun game with a fun community from 50-70 level cap. After that it changed in pretty drastic ways from time to time.
If you are paying to save time or getting an early/overall advantage than it is P2W. If the stuff was pure cosmetic then it wouldn't be P2W. It may come in degrees of much the advantage is, but if you pay a cent for an advantage then it will always be P2W.
@@blakecampbell6549 it's not pay to win early on (but 100% is later on)
@@blakecampbell6549 The only aspect of wiz thats p2w is pvp and thats at all levels. Crown gear and may cast wands before you get any form of actual pvp gear was always op since the beginning. People also dump tons on pet energy/snacks if they don't know how to farm. The degree of p2w definitely matters in the context of other full scale mmo's, but for Wiz sake its def just p2w in pvp 100%
yep
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 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.
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.
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.
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
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
Having played the game from the beginning one major thing that I would point out is that YOU DONT NEED TO BUY CARD PACKS TO GET CARDS. Cards are earned as you lvl up through the game. You can also get cards through crafting as well or by farming a particualr boss but thats it.
you are making it sound as if it were easy, do you even know how hard it is to get some of the reagents to craft those cards?
@@jorlynemil8723 Yes i know it can be difficult to craft the cards and how hard it is to farm them; however, imo its better to just grind than spend money on packs that are basically loot boxes. I also think that grinding to get materials or farming a boss is part of being an mmo
@@ahappybadger302 i respect your answer but the people who own the game don't even care about the players, they care about their money. and i am pretty sure that's the reason why things are so hard to get in this game, and why this game is so play to win.
@@jorlynemil8723 I totally agree with your point about kingsisle doesnt really care about their players and just want their money; however, i have to disagree with the pay to win since I only see p2w in pvp while in pve you can just get gear from bosses or crafting. The game could be pay to play since you need membership or crowns to access areas
@@jorlynemil8723 the hardest reagent to get when it comes to crafting the spells is amber... make a few gardens, one for each character to take care of, and you can get amber from gardening. Problem solved. It may take a little longer but if you prepare it early, you’ll have plenty of amber.
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).
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
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.
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
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
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.
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
How i'd fix Wiz101: make the entire first world accessible by everyone for free, only have the extra worlds be paid.
And it's not like there's just 2 other worlds, there's like, a dozen of them
Exactly but if there’s already a premium system just add optional worlds for purchase(there’s still the cosmetic store) and everything else is free
Very true that would definitely help but how would you treat the catacombs or darkmoor.
I'd say just let the base game be free then all the extra content is paid. like any other game
Yea the way my sister and I did it when we were younger was buy one and I’m not sure if you can still do it but you at least used to be Abel to tp to the person that was in the pay walled areas and do the quests and stuff for free.
a huge amount of people still playing agree with this. but company gotta toss money in the water early for them extra 5 bucks
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
"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?
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. 😅
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
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 ^_^
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 ^^;
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
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
"I just settled to Richard because is shortens to Dick and that makes me chuckle"
We are truly the most mature community on UA-cam.
god i cant believe he didnt see that the third name could be PANTS so so many rude combination for that
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
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
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
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.
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 :))
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 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.
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.
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.
I remember playing this as a kid. I loved it so much, when I hit the paywall, my soul literally left my body :(
With respect, most of the complaints you have about the game come from an unfamiliarity with the game. The most striking of which is fizzling. It isn’t random, it’s based on the accuracy of the spell card you used.
It’s definitely very random under like level 60. Pretty much anything lower than 80% is a coin flip. But fortunately it gets far better after that
@@MISTABUSTABASE it's pretty standard for turn based strategy games like pokemon's videogame
@@burstvgc Except this game is a TCG with resources you expend. Yes pokemon has PP but outside of competitive play it doesn't come up unless you haven't gone into the center in a while, so if it misses you wasted a turn, but you lose nothing. In Wizard101 and any other card game, you expend a card. This isn't a feature in TCGs at all, not even in the pokemon trading card game.
@@MISTABUSTABASE At level 30 you can get the Zeus gear which for storm, the lowest accuracy in the game at a base accuracy of 70%, gives a 17% accuracy boost making your accuracy 87%. This can be further boosted by wand choice, pet talents, and jewel sockets. At level 30 my storm had 95% accuracy, and around 70% strength boost.
At lower levels you have the spell Lightning Strike which gives you +25% accuracy boost, making your storm spells 95% accurate. You get this spell after completing the first area unicorn way, approximately around level 5. So levels 1-5 you’ll fizzle more often, but unicorn way is a very easy, low stakes area. If you really don’t want to fizzle as much for levels 1-5, you can rely on pet talents or jewel sockets.
So again I say, the majority of the complaints he has, and that you have, come from an unfamiliarity with the game and it’s mechanics.
@@waterwitch456 nah, I think you are rather unfamiliar with other games actually. You just proved how much work you need to put into the game in order to get high accuracy. You would be sacrificing time to do mount several times to get that gear at level 30 which becomes essentially obsolete by level 45 at best (besides the wand of course) which gives you 10 damage that people really aren’t willing to trade out, and rightfully so. In a turn based game most usually have a fizzling mechanic and nobody cares for it or likes it, and in wizard101 you would like to have the most damaging gear, even on supports until a fairly high level. Everything you named as far as the storm card thst gives the acc blade is a waste of a turn, pets you definitely can get accuracy on but it takes luck, gold to hatch, snacks to feed, and energy to continue playing. And at first you start with what, 40 energy? Sockets could be true and could work but nope, even they don’t. You need to go far out of your way to farm for them and they aren’t good enough to make a difference until like lvl 100 where you get like 10%+ you’re making a really weird assumption for some reason that you would Have multiple characters in the game to boost your others in ways like having plenty of gold, snacks, or extra gear. And second, all of that work for a problem that is OBJECTIVELY bad and gear that becomes completely irrelevant by lvl 60 at best. You should try to play some other games next time tbh
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.
Every child’s favorite.
Saving Private O’Ryan
Random failure? You mean the hit or miss system in virtually every turn based system?
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 😁
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
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
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
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
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
Been rewatching a lot of this series and this seems like one of the ones with the most errors unfortunately. I know this can often be ascribed to bad tutorial etc. but I think most of these things were skipped over/assumed here such as card accuracy, treasure cards, card acquisition, etc.
The game shouldn't be marketed as free to play for sure tho, more like limited free trial.
"Limited free trial" is absolutely accurate, I played as a kid and when it threw that level 20 paywall at me, I decided I'd buy 1 month and never touch it again. I did have a good time with it while it lasted though.
100%. Saying it's "free to play" is just wrong. You only get part of Wizard City and that's it. Advertising it instead as a "limited free trial" would help people know what they're in for so they aren't suprised by the paywall.
it's free to log in. thats it.
@@JrKengu It was free once, they just never bothered to change their advertisement. But you really pay less in Wizard 101 than some mmos you need to buy, and then even buy expensions for and then even a subscription so eeh.
A lot wrong with this review, especially the monetization.
Basically the only thing you need is the membership .
-The best gear can only be farmed in-game
-Treasure cards are bought with in-game gold.
-A lot of the stuff you said you can buy you actually can't buy it and earn it in-game only.
The game is also game up into different "worlds" as well, which is why it seems small if you just look at the first world (there's currently 21 worlds in the game.)
I was going to comment this. His assessment of the game is so ignorant it's laughable.
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!
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.
"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?
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.
Man I miss playing Wizard101 when I was a kid, me and my friends would stay up all night during summer vacation playing while laughing in a 4 way phone call.
I never had anything like that, sounds fun. I was that loser kid, so I played games by myself a lot
@@EE-us9we sounds like me
Any of you guys still play I kinda want to start playing it to experience those childhood memories I never had lmao
@@tempoted337 I still have an ongoing membership even tho I haven’t played in a long while. I don’t mind getting back on though if you wanted to play.
@@tempoted337 I would play it thoigh rn my PC is busted
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.
Ever since i was a kid I've hoped that they'd actually make a new version of this that wasn't just aimed at kids.
This was a legit stand out game in the genre when i was little.
There’s pirate101 that’s aimed more at teens. Slightly older jokes, entirely different fighting system
To alot of peoples surpise as soon as u hit the 3rd world onwards, honestly took me like 8 hours focusing main quests the game instantly becomes a top end mmo gear sets comboing, significantly more party incentives almost always people grouping, bosses with unique mechanics so many spells, also the game isnt as pay to win as some people say it is, u can buy gear yes but is almost always out valued by raid gear, unless u buy gear 5 lvls up from raidgear honestly no need reagents imo yea pay to win no one can be bothered to gather that many things, and out of the like 40-50 or so spells each school gets there are like 5 craftable cards u can lootbox for kinda reliably but u can craft these (they are meant to be bought, free option is there for people who want to earn it) and they are only better than normal for like 2 schools
pft im still hoping lol im in school learning how to code as we speak XDDD
@@thegoldenbunny4020 no it is, gamigo or some bs company bought the game and ruined it. it USED to be pretty great
@@thegoldenbunny4020 question, how popular is it still? I was debating going back and trying it(I never did a monthy thing when I played it years and years ago but I remember I really liked the game)
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.
I’m well aware of this game’s flaws, but try as I might, I still have nothing but fond memories of this game. It was one of the pinnacles of my childhood, and arguably got me into gaming later on.
Ahh 2010, how I miss thee…
"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
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
I remember one of the MMOs tried making the question markers a turquoise color to match with their theming and they just could not get test players to find the quests on a consistent basis so they had to go back to yellow
You need quest markers to stand out. Solid red, yellow, and, green are going to benthe most visible to players. Gray bends into the backgroun so many mmo use them to show quests in progress but not complete so player wont focus on them.
@@supernova743 There's a reason school busses are yellow after all
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.
Anyone else remember going to the gas station and seeing wizard101 cards everywhere lol
Lol yeah, and now they’re barely anywhere
At game where I live wizard 101 uk card still selling them
Walmart, target, Best Buy 😂😂
wtf, really? o.o that's really cool tho, I wish we had those here in Italy!
didn't even know that was a thing tbh :o
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 love that you take the naming system not as an insurance for appropriate names but as a challenge to make something rude 😄
Fizzling isn't totally random, every spell has a set accuracy written on the card that you're not paying attention to
Regardless the game still sucks ass
Why?
@@jonahabenhaim1223 Idk, Pokemon is the same way- every move has a defined accuracy and sometimes you can just miss
Nah the fizzling system needs some work. I even put it down to remembering when spells fizzle but not when they work but even then its frustrating playing as ice and setting up a win just for it to constantly fall apart on the rounds i go to hit.
There were even rounds where i would fizzle back to back to back battle after battle
@@FrostDzNz it does need work, for sure. Most spells should be more accurate than they are. But the accuracy listed on the cards are true, right? They're not misleading?
"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
"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"
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.