Mordiceius' Gaming Blog Flying Away on a Wing and a Prayer

Grizzleheim Gallantry

Grizzleheim is another world in Wizard101 that Rynala and I recently finished. It is also a zone in contention for my favorite in game (an honor currently held by Krokotopia). The world is split up into four main zones as well as a multitude of dungeons. The zones are gated by level. The first two can be done at level 20, the third at 30, and the final at level 40.

Grizzleheim is the Norse world of bears, wolves, and ravens. KingsIsle does a great job taking Norse lore and weaving it into a simpler story perfect for a younger audience and yet still refreshing for an older crowd.

The world is not connected to the main Malistaire story of Wizard101 but has an equally compelling story arc to it. You are initially sent to the world to hopefully open up trade relations with the land. In order to have council with the king, you must first prove yourself as a warrior and a hero. After accomplishing some basic tasks and proving yourself, you are sent to investigate the why one of the local Thanes has become increasingly war like and allied themselves with some evil bears. In the end, it turns out that the original Thane was kidnapped and replaced by a raven in disguise and that the ravens are trying to start a war between the bears of the land and the warrior wolves. In the final zone, the main goal of the ravens is revealed and leads to an exciting conclusion and the most difficult boss battle in the game.

One of the first things I noticed is that the later areas of Grizzleheim are not easy. Rynala and I to this day have had no problem two-manning everything in the main storyline. At level 22 we were easily able to two-man the Sunken City in Wizard City and nothing in any of the other worlds has provided much difficulty (except Kensington Park which we still have not touched yet). When you can first go to Grizzleheim at 20, the two zones you can go to provide some challenge, but nothing unbeatable. At level 30 and 40, the zones and dungeons they send you to are brutal.

At level 30, you are sent to Nidavellir, a three-winged dungeon filled with Grendals. Your goal is to defeat the head grendal in the center dungeon. The two flanking dungeons are optional, but if you do not defeat the bosses in the side dungeons they will join the final boss of the central dungeon. Each one of these final bosses has 8000 health with which is an incredible amount after being used to facing bosses with 3000-4000 health. In the left most dungeon, you are forced to face a boss of each element before fighting the final boss and in the right most dungeon, you are forced to navigate a labyrinth to get to the final boss. When tackling these dungeons, make sure to set aside a nice big block of time because they will take awhile if you go in with a few people. I expect that these dungeons would be fairly easy with 3-4 people, but with just the two of us it turned out to be very stressful.

Nothing could prepare me for what we would face at the end of Ravenscar, the final zone. Your final boss is in fact four bosses in one encounter. Each boss has about 4500 health. With two people, this was nearly impossible at level 40. I am assuming KingsIsle expects you to be around level 45 or go in with a full group of four because all of the loot these bosses drop is level 45 loot.

The encounter consists of four ravens: one life, one death, one fire and one storm. 4500 health is not an extreme amount of health. It is the fact that these bosses all pump out high damage is what makes this encounter so challenging. The fire, the storm, and the death bosses all do AOE attacks frequently and even just only healing and letting Rynala do all the damage, we kept dying in this fight. Eventually we figured out a strategy of focus firing the fire boss down first, then the storm boss, then the death boss and ending with the life boss. With the two of us, it took a great deal of luck but after about eight times dying on the encounter we were able to beat it. It was hands down the most satisfying experience in the game for me so far. At a later time, we went in with two others to try the encounter with a full party and did not have any difficulty. A warning: with just two people in the fight when we did beat them, the fight still took over 45 minutes to finish. Take that World of Warcraft! And you thought some of your boss fights were long! Even at the max level of 50, I do not think the final Ravenscar battle will ever be soloable. The four bosses together can easily put out over 3000-4000 damage in one turn and that will kill anyone.

Grizzleheim overall was a refreshing experience. The lore was interesting, the world was beautiful, and the fights were difficult. If you do not want to bang your head against the wall, either go there greatly over the level or go with a full party of four.

An Army of Russian Wizards

Mord and I played Wizard 101 a lot last weekend and finally reached the last world, the Dragonspyre. It looks awesomely dark compared to the other worlds. The tallest of the towers in the city has a gigantic dragon sitting at the top, menacing down at you. Running around doing quests reminds me a bit of running around Icecrown Citadel in that you're running along very high walls between towers instead of the ground for half the time. So far from our quests, it seems like Dragonspyre, which is now in ruins, used to be a very militant city. It's also funny because the characters' voices all sound Russian.

If I had to rank the worlds before Dragonspyre from most enjoyable to least, I'd rank them as follows:
Krokotopia
Grizzleheim
Mooshu
Wizard City
Marleybone--had some terrible quest chains

The only thing I didn't like about Grizzleheim was that it seemed to give little experience. We had to leave for extended periods of time to quest elsewhere because we hadn't reached the level requirement to unlock certain areas. Then again, I don't know if that is because we played the worlds in a different order than the designers had intended.

I also want to mention another small thing that Mord and I both really like about the game. For every new explorable area, there is a different map, and on every map are different drawings containing the same male and female wizard plus some characters you can expect to meet in that area. For instance, Marleybone had us fight literal cat burglars; thus, we would see cat burglars on most of the maps for Marleybone, but notice the expressions on the characters at the bottom right of this map:

Drawings on the maps and even the character, backpack, and spell deck menus make the game even more enjoyable. Here's another one:

MooShu Meditations

I have actually been fairly busy in gaming lately. Rynala and I both had a long weekend and we spent majority of it Wizard101. We have really spent a ludicrous amount of time in that game and I am still greatly enjoying it. Someday in the future when I have very young kids, I hope there is an MMO as great as Wizard101 for me to play with them.

We finished up MooShu, Grizzleheim and are now two areas deep in Dragonspire. Mooshu was a nice change from Marleybone. While there may be some fans of Marleybone (*coughTipacough*), I am not one of them and MooShu was refreshing enough to make me forget about my pain and suffering in Marleybone.

MooShu is the land of barnyard animals. Led by the Emperor, the denizens of MooShu worship the great Moodah. The theme is a mixture of Asian cultures with Japanese Samurai, or MooShu Samoorai, and Japanese Oni demons taking the forefront. After stealing the Krokonomicon from the Marleybone museum, the Death Professor Malistaire came to claim the key to the Dragonspire Academy from the Emperor of MooShu. When the Emperor declined, Malistaire wounded him and stole the key. Wounded, the Emperor slipped into a coma and was weakened in mind, body and spirit. Without the Emperor to lead the lands, radical sects rebelled and demons started sewing seeds of destruction in the land.

I have always been a big fan of Asian history as well as lore so MooShu was quite the treat. The enemies you face are mainly ninja pigs, Samoorai cows and horse bandits. Eventually you face the Onis which are giant demons in the form of elephants. Some of my favorite parts of MooShu were reading the lorebooks and the different boss fights. Kingsisle did a great job taking true Japanese history and rewriting it to this fictional world. People who know a lot of history will notices immediately when they face enemies named Kagemoosha and Katsumori.

A lot of the questlines are quite exciting too. One questline has you traveling through a burial site and catacombs to open a door to the spirit world so you can face an evil spirit on the other side. It is exciting experiences like this that keep me coming back for more with Wizard101. Rynala and have been playing pretty consistently for the last month and a half now and we will probably finish up Dragonspire right in time for Aion. While I probably will not replay through the game right away, I can see myself coming back in six months or so for another play through.

Right now, however, I just wish I had a young cousin or someone who I could take through the worlds and open up to MMOs.

Marleybone: The Land of Endless Errands

This past weekend, Rynala and I finished the Marleybone world in Wizard 101. We are really going through this game a fast, but still enjoyable, pace. Marleybone is based of England in the late 1800s. It is the land of dogs, cats, rats, top hats, canes, gentlemen, gangs, and Sherlock Bones.

The main plot of the zone is the recent surge in gang crimes as well as the famous thief Meowiarty's escape from prison. While the main storyline is fairly interesting, the side quests make the world a terrible experience. When creating the quests for Marleybone the quest designers clearly had a love for backtracking.

Marleybone's zones take place primarily on the roof tops of the city. Why only on the rooftops? I have no idea but it works for the most part. For the first three zones, you take an airship to the start of the zone. Hyde Park, Chelsea Court and the Ironworks are the first locations you go to. Sent to each of these locations by Sherlock Bones, you are attempting to find out why the gangs in the city are becoming more violent. The O'Leary Gang is made up of cats and rats that are burglars and charlatans. For the most part you spend the first half of Marleybone solving petty crimes.

In each of these first three zones are a few women quest givers spread out through the zones. When you initially go through these zones, you may do a quest here or there for them while working through the main story quests, but it is after you complete the main story quests for each zone that more side quests unlock. The problem with these side quests are they are backtracking intensive. Almost all of the women have quests for you to go talk to some of the other women in the other zones. It would not be so bad if the women were at the entrance of the zones but they are often very deep in or near the end. By the time you finish all the side quests, you will probably have gone to Hyde Park and Chelsea Court at least five times each.

Wizard City has a little bit of backtracking occasionally but it is nowhere near as extensive as it is in Marleybone. Krokotopia, MooShu and Grizzleheim have next to no backtracking at all. Marleybone definintely takes a different tone with this. In Krokotopia you are overthrowing an ancient evil that is stealing souls and then you go to Marleybone where you are trying to recover stolen purses. It just is not that exciting. In the end, I think Rynala and I sped through Marleybone at a breakneck pace just because we wanted to get through it so badly to move on. MooShu is proving to be a much more enjoyable experience.

While most of Marleybone tests my patience, I really did enjoy ascending the Big Ben clocktower for the climactic finale against the main villain of the world. It felt reminiscent of the Golem Tower in Wizard City. We were watching a stream of Blizzcon this past weekend and we were ascending the tower during Ozzy's concert at Blizzcon so it helped to raise the excitement factor a bit. The best part of the night was the timing on the final boss. It was a fun fight to some good music and the boss happened to fall over dead at the very second one of the songs finished. The timing could not have been more perfect.

All in all, Wizard 101 still proves to be a very enjoyable experience. I hate crafting but I plan on saving that for another time.

PS. It just so happens that this is my 150th post.

Going Back to School with Wizard 101

I never expected to go back to Wizard 101. I had played it earlier this year and got to level 7 which equals out to about four or so hours of play. The lack of communication tools made it hard for me to adapt to the game and I eventually gave up. No guilds or ways to organize made it difficult to play by myself.

At one point, I went and fought a boss along side a random person and during the fight we had a fantastic conversation. The problem was that you cannot add someone to your friends list while in combat because most of the standard UI is disabled while in combat. The boss struck me down and the other person could not heal me back to life but was able to kill the boss. When the battle was over, I was instantly teleported back to the commons area. Since names in Wizard 101 are not unique, I was never able to find or contact that person again to say that I enjoy the fight and the conversation or suggest that we should travel together. Furious with this, I uninstalled the game and figured I would never go back.

About three weeks ago, Rynala was off visiting her folks and I found myself looking for a game to play. We do a majority of our gaming together and so when I am solo gaming, I feel like I am missing out. I decided to go back and try Free Realms again since I was on a new computer and I hoped it would not have the weird issues I had before. The main reason I wanted to get back into it was that I had heard great things about the card game and felt like I needed a card game fix. I created my character with my standard custom name "Mordiceius Isagirl". The name was quickly approved but within minutes changed to "Mordiceius Isawirl". Furious once more, I uninstalled the game and promised I would never return. And unlike Wizard 101, I do not think I will have a hard time keeping this promise.

Since I could not get my card fix from Free Realms, I decided to return to Wizard 101 but I also decided to try to get Rynala to try to play it with me. I hate playing MMOs where I do not know anyone so I took my Guild Wars approach. She agreed to try it out and although she did not seem to be getting very into the game at first, it seems she is growing to love it now. I too am singing a different song about this game. There have been multiple surprises for both of us.

When I asked Rynala's first impression of the game at around level four or five, she said "The game is cute, but I do not know if it has any long term potential." I agreed with her at that point for the most part. I saw us playing it for maybe a week or two as a nice diversion and then giving it up. But the further we got, the more we enjoyed the game.

The biggest surprise for me was the story of the game. When you first start the game, you are introduced to the Professor of Death Magic, Malistaire. He apparently went crazy, is power hungry, and wants to destroy Wizard City. Simple enough, I thought. Eventually though, the world gets pretty fleshed out. There is a chain of quests in Wizard City that send you to the different schools of magic to learn their history and eventually you go and learn the origin of the world. I figured the story would be just simple story of going and defeating the death professor. I did not expect a fleshed out world and origin stories.

This game is marketed towards young kids, mainly preteens, so I figured the story would not get too deep. I expected something more like a bad Saturday morning cartoon rather than anything approaching Harry Potter. When defeating enemies, I assumed we were just knocking them unconscious, not killing them. This changed when I was in Krokotopia and had to defeat and evil Krok boss. After he was defeated, I was sent to a new area in the zone and the first quest giver was the ghost of that Krok boss trying to redeem for his sins. In the same location, I found the crypts of two warring families. Even in death they were still fighting and angry about the burial place of the queen that formerly united them. I have fought bosses that have been turning this peasant race into mindless slaves as well as bosses that are harvesting the souls of the dead. I never expected story like this in Wizard 101. It leaves me craving more every time I log off. A game with a good story can often make me forget any other flaws of the game.

One of the things that was added to the game recently that was not in when I previously played is player housing. You start out with a dorm room near the schools of magic and eventually can buy a house or even multiple houses. Furniture, trophies and other items for your house are rewards from quests, drops from bosses, can be crafted or bought off the auction house. I know that Rynala has loved spending time decorating her house she recently purchased. I have not yet purchased a house beyond my free dorm room, but I have a total of over 70 housing items that I have received just from quests and loot drops.

The pricing options have also been something I have taken advantage of. You can pay monthly for $10 a month or a reduced rate per person if under a "family plan" or you can purchase "crowns", the microtransaction currency, to permanently purchase zones. You can play the first ten or so zones for free but beyond that they cost crowns to unlock at about a couple dollars per zone. I believe that you can unlock majority of the game's zones by purchasing about $80 to $100 worth of crowns. This may seem like a lot initially, but really I think of it no differently than spending $50 on a new MMO and then paying for three or four months of service. The difference is, after I buy all the zones, I have them for good and never have to pay another cent.

Graphics and voice acting. Usually I do not expect games marketed towards pre-teens to have much bang in the graphic department. The worlds graphics in Wizard 101 are surprisingly good when you use the high quality textures. All the maps and menus have wizard and monster stick figures drawn on them which are often quite amusing as well. All dialog in the game has voice over which is majority of the time fantastic as well. It may seem like fluff but it definitely adds to the immersion.

Wizard 101 is not without its flaws. The language dictionary can sometimes be infuriating when not recognizing what I would consider to be common words and not allowing you to type or spell out numbers. Trading is limited with only allowing you to trade "treasure" (special loot drop) cards and nothing else. So you can only trade cards for cards. You cannot trade money or other loot between accounts. There is limited trading between characters on the same account via a bank box.

All in all, I am very excited to be playing this game and I fully expect it to be keeping me entertained all the way to Aion's launch. I love the pricing system so that I know months down the line I can return to the game and play through everything (if they have not released anything new) without paying a dime.