W101 and EQ2 Birthday Bash
stargrace 
Continuing along the Wizard city quests yesterday, I was pretty amazed at how big the world feels. I’ve never been particularly good at remembering where areas are, and I found myself getting lost often, or getting sent to areas I’d never even heard of before. I have one quest that sends me out to located these little tiny men scattered all over Wizard City. I’m stuck on the one in the shopping district. Or maybe it’s Triton, I can’t remember right now. As my life / storm combination progresses, I’ve learned a few things. Number one, I really need to make a deck for playing with friends. I’m not sure if there’s any way to do that or if I should just switch out some cards. My typical deck is perfect when it’s just me. It includes only a few heals, and a lot of attacks. I haven’t had any issue with it now that I hit level 10, things have been going pretty well. Until I group up with a bunch of friends and I’m left searching my deck frantically for a heal to toss out on them.
Wizard 101 is so very different then every other game I’ve played (for a number of reasons that I’ve hid on here and there) that it’s actually made me change how I think about games in general. Their completely open grouping concept (which is not really grouping at all so much as jumping into battles with up to three other people) means that if you’re looking to get those harder encounters done you will either want to have friends online to play with, or be quite social. It’s very common for people to spam group invites, and for the most part I decline them. I accept of course if they are someone I already know – or if I happen to be doing a battle and they seem to know what they’re doing which was the case yesterday. After I cast a group heal on everyone (it was needed) one of the players expressed their thanks and we finished off the encounter fairly easily. I don’t enjoy being spammed with friend invites just like I don’t enjoy being spammed with group invites in any other game, but I’m more talkative in this game, and when I’m in the zones I know people have paid to gain access to, I’m a little less cautious about who I make my friend because I know they at least have enough of a grasp on the game (or their parents do, either way) to have invested some coin in it.
Aside from changing my tactics on interacting with other players, I love the way this game makes me think about my next move. When I’m not thinking about my next move I’m thinking about the moves after that. Can I survive a round or two of trying to gain pips so I can pull out some uber card next? Do I let the giant cyclops whump me because I neglected to fill up on health and mana ahead of time? Exactly how long can I play the mini games before I need to blink (there’s one I’m completely addicted to in particular).
Another amusing point to me is the fact that on more and more blogs these days I’m not reading about WAR, or EQ2 or any other popular mainstream MMO – I’m reading about Wizard 101. Now, that has a large amount to do with my choice in reading, I know. I subscribe to quite a few blogs via google reader and then tend to snoop the comments on the more popular blogs (you all know who you are) and read the blogs of those who have left comments.
On a completely unrelated note – TODAY is the EQ2 anniversary party on Najena at 8pm EST (That’s 5pm PST). Tipa, consider this your official reminder! I’d like to see as many Nostalgians show up as possible (yes, all five of us) though I completely understand if people have other things to do. I’ll be there as (of course) Stargrace, hopefully I can get a few good screen shots in to write about tomorrow.
No worries about me missing out on any ‘other’ game time. That’s what the laptop is for.
