Wizard 101 Review

Commons: Walk through the commons and pause for about thirty minutes. It is almost guaranteed you will see someone swindling someone else for a crowns item. Luckily, many people are also aware of the problem that the commons swindlers rarely find a mark… but it does happen.

Pvp: Ah the pvp system of Wizard101… so many flaws! I will not begin to list all of the problems of the pvp system, but one problem does involve the crowns/gifting issue. The pvp matching system is greatly flawed because it allows one person to team up with someone who has a much lower or higher level than themselves (Note: level refers to questing rank, not pvp rank. As a wizard progresses in the game, he or she gains levels and subsequently new spells). Therefore, what happens is a phenomenon now being called “puppet teaming”. Go to any fan site and you will find thousands of posts that mention this problem! Since I did mention that I am speaking of a crowns issue, let’s get to the point. Here is a scenario:

A young low-level wizard wants to rank up in pvp. He or she is having trouble in 1v1 but given his or her age, he or she is not willing to progress naturally.

A high level wizard drops his or her pvp rank down below 0 and offers to team up with the young low level wizard… meaning they will face opponents who are closer to the low level wizard. In case you cannot see the obvious problem here, the high-level wizard has powerful spells that can defeat the low-level opponents quickly. This means a free win for our low-level wizard.

So, where is the problem? You are thinking this game is for KIDS, and kids do the darnedest things, right? Wrong. The high-level wizard sets a price for those easy wins, and that low-level wizard is paying that price. The price… usually a crowns-bought item. Oh, and also the opponents lose out on rank because of an unfair match-up, but that’s a pvp problem.

How these problems are fixable, I surely do not know, but I do know that I have taken away my own daughter’s subscription because of these things. Do I dislike the game? Absolutely not, as I still play it every day for a few hours and thoroughly enjoy many aspects of the game. Will I allow my daughter to play again? Maybe… if they start fixing some very real problems.

Note: My number review is a result of my enjoyment of the game, but I do feel parents need to be made aware of the above issues.

Cons:

* The game is VERY childish to the point of being downright embarrassing! You play as a wizard and if you’re new, you have to go through this awful tutorial where this ‘headmaster’ who looks and acts (Or tries to act) like Professor Dumbledore ‘recruits’ you to become a wizard and join a wizarding school. Oh, how typical! Yeah, you get to choose what type of Element you want to train with, but this does nothing to help make the game better. Why? Well, let’s just say when you get into your first battle, you’re using certain ‘cards’ which summon monsters or minions or whatever they are and they attack the monsters or minions of the enemy. And some of these cards are so embarrassing, I actually had to turn the sound and monitor off until the card was done being played! Then, towards the end of the tutorial, the ‘good Dumbledore-like’ wizard challenges the evil ‘Voldemort-like’ wizard, but of course, the evil wizard declines and says ‘Another time, old man…’. I cannot even begin to tell you how cliche and predictable the whole tutorial was. Lame!

* The graphics/characters are stupid-looking. And again, some of them are obviously cliche and knock-offs of certain characters who are much cooler than these cheap knock-offs created by whoever makes Wizard 101.

* Battling against monsters/NPC’s is practically forced upon you as every time you wander a little to close to a monster, some sort of ‘battle-triangle’ appears and you’re forced to do battle with whatever monster you were trying to get past. And what happens if your health drops to zero? I did not play long enough to find out, nor did I have any intention of doing so.

* Leveling up is very hard to do and it’s not very likely it was intended to be easy. And making money? Forget it! Just stop playing this game before it reverts your brain into the state of an infant or at least a VERY young and probably VERY immature kid.

* Quests are quite hard to do, so if you’re the type of person who likes to play through the storyline of a game, forget about this game. It’s not even worth downloading and installing. Oh! And speaking of which…

* Downloading and installing this game was a piece of cake. But now, I cannot get rid of it to save my life! And I’ve looked around online several times for a solution and came up with nothing at all.

* Lost your password? To bad, cause I cannot log in to my account, therefore, I cannot scream at the community of this game for help on how to get it unstuck from my computer!

* Sound effects and music? Not even gonna go here, but I bet they have every single type of childish and embarrassing sound effect anyone’s ever heard of on here!

* Battle system is not really based upon magic itself. More like based on using cards and taking turns using those cards and hoping you can defeat whatever tough monster or NPC you’re up against and pray to God you don’t get killed.

* The community was not helpful to me at all! I doubt anyone who could stand to waste their time with this piece of trash even knew I was playing it amongst them!

Okay, so there you have the pros and cons. The summary…This game is not worth paying any money to play the full ‘unlimited’ version of it. In fact, I don’t even think the full version is unlimited. I still think you’d have to pay real money for virtual currency or items or something in-game not worth paying for. Yeah, this game is lame and I think even some kids around ages 5 to 10 would have to agree with me on this. So, unless you love wasting your time with a lame and highly cliche and embarrassing game like Wizard 101, then either find a much cooler game to play or don’t play any game at all! Worst…Game…Ever!!

This game has an extremely strict policy of filtering almost everything in chat. So Strict players have a list of set names to choose from in the character creation menu they can mix up, no custom naming on pets or characters, even typeing numbers is bad. There is adult chat that allows the typing of numbers, but you still have to use the list of names giving when naming your Wizard upon creation.

The game is rated “E” and it has all kinds of policies to protect children that play this game(I think the yougest I seen was 8, my neice was 11 at the time) so it is a great family game.

Basicly the game is turned base, and you are handed a deck of cards with skills and creatures in the deck. You can build all decks the way you want, from heavy hitting, to heavy healing, or mix ‘um up a bit, also some cards have Buffs.

Buffs are spells that last on your character or characters, that give all kinds of bonuses depending on what buff(skill) you use at a set time, that needs to get recasted when the time of the skill runs out. That you can use for yourself or in a group.

Level caps is(was) 50 which gives you the Grandmaster tittle that everybody in game can see. Wizard 101 also has some mini games built in that you can play anytime, and win prizes. This game also has one of the most unique pet systems then any other Pet system I ever came across in any game so far.

The pets can be bought, with crowns, or dropped by boss mobs in game, or some quest chains reward pet cards. Here is where the pet system gets interesting, not only do the pets have attack/spell, Heals, or buffs cards that you can use in your custom built deck. But there is a place called a hatchery, and you can breed two totaly different pets, into one, and MAYBE come up with a very unique pet by incubating the two togeather, by help of a friend in game. You can not incubate two of your pets togeather, it has to be with another players pet. Sometimes you will get a one of a kind pet, and other times you may get a clone of a pet you used. you never know.

The graphics are very toony, leveling is easy peasy. You can get max level in a matter of days. When you start you can focus on one skill type, like Storm(Diviner) or you can learn another skill type like Pyromencer, and your wizard can be a Pyrodiviner. Wizard 101 classes are Life, Death, Fire, Ice, Storm, and Myth.

Myth is one of them skills that you mostly never see in other MMO’s. Myth is basicly a summoner, that summons Mythilogical beings, Like Trolls, and Cyclopses, that act as your henchmen, you cast your spells through these creatures, and the creatures do most of the work for you. Myth is a great solo class.

Wizard 101 is just an awesome family friendly game.

The PvP system is broken big time. In the rated games (the ones that matter), you have no control at all as to whom you are up against. Imagine my surprise to pay real money for in-game currency (which I used to play around with PvP a bit) only to discover that I was automatically paired up against someone with several more levels than myself and double my health. Actually, this was not a fight at all. It was a murder. A murder that I paid real money to experience. I could actually go on for quite some time picking out the serious problems with the pvp system, but I don”t really think it so much a pvp system a “test out your spells until your opponent has enough pips to one shot you” system.

Support is a bit slow on the draw and is relentless when it comes to parting with a dime. After several communications with them they quite literally informed me that the design of their account processing system made it impossible to manually add credits to an account. I found this frightening since every system is capable of errors. After some back and forth banter with their support staff I am somewhat scared that they are currently in possession of my credit card info especially since they apparently can NOT fix an error should it occure. I challenge them to say this is slander….I still have the emails.

Oh and free to play covers less than half of the starting world. Furthermore, you will not even be able to complete every quest given to you in the free areas as several of them send you into paid zones. One in particular sends you into nearly every paid zone and early in the game at that. Quite the gimmick to get your payment info.

If you enjoy an exceptionally simple game with a ton of repetition and you trust payment systems that can”t be corrected then go for it. Its childlike atmosphere might provide you and your kids a great time. For me however I simply wish I could get my money back for unused credits.

With the influx of new online gaming options I can only imagine that this one will fizzle away unremembered as its initial fan base grows up and moves to bigger and better things.

Oh, you might also find it interesting that their first major “upgrade” was the addition of low quality voice overs to all of the starting world characters. As if this was needed with the three simple, largely recycled quest requests that they asked you to read in the first place. I am almost convinced that they grabbed a few of the office staff to record these voices and it shows. A better option for their resources would have been to improve broken game mechanics…and oh, I don”t know…maybe to enable staff to make manual modifications to player accounts? You know. Stuff that improves the game.

Well at least you can entertain yourself with minigames while you regenerate your mana and health (and a necessity for filling your potion bottles unless you wish to spend hard earned gold.) You”ll remain rivited for hours playing recycled versions of games like Dig Dug (you remember this exciting 8-bit game right?) Truely original content that will keep you engaged for days just looking for an excuse to refill your potion bottles. Yea…that was sarcasm.