June marks the start of Pride Month, a time that highlights the LGBTIQ+ community, diversity and inclusion, and celebrates people for being themselves.
While we’ve made a lot of progress towards acceptance in the past few years, we still have a long way to go. The LGBTIQ+ community continues to face discrimination on a daily basis worldwide. It’s tough knowing that many of our employees and players experience these hardships just because of who they are and how they identify themselves. Since we are a gaming company responsible for creating immersive experiences that bring people from all walks of life together, we can and want to help forge safe spaces not only in our game and community, but outside of those places too.
To do that, we’ve teamed up with Outright International this year for Pride Month as part of their Outright Proud initiative!
The Pride Piggle and Pride Hoggle are Here!
Make way for two adorable new pets! Wizard101’s piggle and Pirate101’s hoggle have been given a colorful new makeover to celebrate Pride Month. They’re the perfect match if you want to represent your pride in-game while also receiving some combat assistance at the same time. The Wizard101 Pride Piggle Pet and the Pirate101 Pride Hoggle Pet can be purchased together in the Wizard101 and Pirate101 online carts here until the end of June. All proceeds from the sale of this Pride Pets Bundle will go to Outright International.
New Rainbow Piggle Plushie is Ready for a Home!
We’ve plushie-fied the in-game Wizard101 Pride Piggle Pet to make an irresistible couch companion! The Rainbow Piggle Plushie is now available in partnership with Makeship and will be purchasable until the end of June. Every Rainbow Piggle Plushie comes with an in-game Rainbow Piggle Plushie Housing Item to match and 50% of sale proceeds will go to Outright International.
The Rainbow Roller Mount Returns!
Courageously colorful and full of life, the Rainbow Roller Mount is back for a second run! All proceeds from the sales of this mount will be donated to Outright International. You can find the Rainbow Roller Mount in the online cart. Purchasing it will give you the mount in both Wizard101 and Pirate101! It will only be available to purchase during Pride Month, so don’t miss out on supporting this amazing cause!
Streaming for Charity
Join Kyle IceWielder and Hawkules for a very special charity livestream on June 16th at 4 PM Central Time! Much like the in-game and physical merch sales, all money raised during the stream will be donated to Outright International. Stay tuned for a more detailed schedule soon!
We can’t wait to celebrate Pride Month with all of you. We love to hear your stories and are humbled to know how much of a positive impact Wizard101 and Pirate101 have made on some of your lives. We look forward to continuing that and making our games and community the most inclusive places they can be.
With Pride,
The KingsIsle Team
About Outright International
Outright International works together for better LGBTIQ lives. OUTRIGHT.
Outright is dedicated to working with partners around the globe to strengthen the capacity of the LGBTIQ human rights movement, document and amplify human rights violations against LGBTIQ people, and advocate for inclusion and equality.
Founded in 1990, with staff in over a dozen countries, Outright works with the United Nations, regional human rights monitoring bodies and civil society partners. Outright holds consultative status at the United Nations where it serves as the secretariat of the UN LGBTI Core Group.
Welcome to Extra Credits, Wizards and Pirates!
Extra Credits is all about bringing together dedicated content creators and providing them with fun initiatives for the community. For example, we may ask participants to create a guide in completing a world, teaching a friend a new game mechanic, or celebrating the game’s birthday. Accomplishing objectives will reward participants with cool prizes.
As a big thanks to participants for being part of the program, you will have access to the program’s Discord server, your content may be featured in newsletters and on KI Live, you will be able to suggest future objectives, and much more.
Fansite leaders and similar community contributors that are part of our other influencer programs are of course welcome and encouraged to sign up.
You can signup on either the Wizard101 or Pirate101 pages. They both refer to the same program.
If you have any questions, please reach out to us at extracredits@kingsisle.com.
We look forward to you joining Extra Credits!
Many Wizard101 fans probably remember the distinct and comforting voice that followed them as they first set foot in the Spiral. Whether you picked up an intriguing item or discovered an important clue during your travels, the voice of Wizard101’s narrator was there to guide you. That voice was Dell Aldrich.
Dell’s unique voice brought incredible life into the game as both the Narrator and Grandmother Raven. She made so much of an impact that when people think of Wizard101, one of the first voices they think of is Dell’s. We knew how much Grandmother Raven meant to our community and sought to create a plushie of the iconic character early last year. It shocked us that during the production of the plushie, Dell would pass away later that year in October 2022.
While Dell is sadly no longer with us, her memory and legacy continues to live on …. and we want to continue that legacy too.
Dell had been in show business from a very young age and throughout her time in the industry, she always made it a goal to encourage and support young entertainers in Austin and around the nation, especially women. To honor her memory, we’ve teamed up with ZACH Theatre to give to a cause that was close to Dell’s heart.
ZACH Theatre is a local Austin non-profit organization that creates intimate theatre experiences which ignite the imagination, inspire the spirit, and engage the community. They focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as support enthusiastic young entertainers through camps and classes. Dell even has a personal connection with ZACH Theatre – having performed in their productions of Death of a Salesman and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf decades ago.
To continue Dell’s legacy and support local arts and entertainment, we will be donating 50% of the Grandmother Raven plushie profits to ZACH Theatre. The plushie will launch on Makeship’s website on February 24th.
Dell left a profound impact on the game, the community, and all the KingsIsle employees she worked with. The game truly wouldn’t be what it is today without her contributions. Thank you Dell, for everything.
To learn more about Dell and her career in show business, please check out her Dev Diary on our YouTube channel.
About ZACH Theatre
The mission of ZACH is to create exceptional theatre experiences that inspire and engage the Austin community. Founded in 1932 in Austin, ZACH is the longest continuously operating theatre in Texas, and one of 10 original resident theatre companies in the nation. ZACH offers a year-round season of 7-8 plays and musicals across our three stages as part of our Mainstage Production Series, which range from classical musicals to contemporary dramas written by the country’s leading playwrights. As Central Texas’s largest producing theatre, ZACH has earned a national reputation for creating bold, significant, and engaging theatrical productions that respond to our community conversations.
Our community means a lot to us and we want to show how much! Just like last year’s holiday post, please enjoy these special messages from various members of the KingsIsle team – all about how YOU have positively impacted us and our games. Thank you community!
“Happy holidays, Wizard and Pirate friends!
It’s been a busy and amazing year for us at KingsIsle! As our holiday celebrations are (gearing up/winding down – depending on timing), we are very excited about all that we have accomplished together this year. While we at KI are looking forward to some downtime (to catch up on questing Novus, run some raids with our guilds, and more!), we’re already hard at work on what’s next in 2023, and we think you’ll be as excited as we are about plans for all our games! We’re ever grateful to have the best community around, and we wish you and yours a safe, happy, and warm holiday season.” – Leah Ruben, Senior Game Studio Director
“Well well well, if it isn’t the most welcoming community a person could ask for. The most HEARTWARMING and inviting group of Pirates (yes, you too, Wizards) to ever walk this Earth.
I started work here in March, and not a day has gone by where the Spiral community has not made my day better with kind words. I hope you have the absolute happiest of holidays!!
From the SON OF ZEUS to you, thank you.” – Chris ‘Hawkules’ Willis, Pirate101 Community Manager
“Hey Wizards,
I hope everyone had a great thanksgiving with friends and family and is ready for the holiday season! I just wanted to take some time to say how thankful I am to not only be a part of the Wizard101 community but also to work so closely with YOU! It’s such an honor to interact and make plenty of memories with the community that I hold so close to my heart. Here’s to more memories and fun! Thank you!” – Kyle IceWielder
“The holidays and anticipation of another year of fun content with the community is my favorite time of year! My sister has a 2-year-old son and I will be showing him Wizard101 and Pirate101 for the first time. I’ll be sure to report back to you all his first impressions, a big smile probably 😊.
Each year when I head back home, someone in the family ends up asking me what I’ve been doing over the last year and how work is going. So many exciting things have happened this past year that I don’t know where to begin. I’ve met amazing new content creators, helped decorate guild houses in Wizard101, competed in intense battles in Pirate101, and brought onboard previous community members to the KingsIsle team (let’s be honest, once a community member, ALWAYS a community member!).
Our team pours its passion out to you all every day to try and make it as fun and exciting an adventure playing our games as possible, and that includes interacting with you all about the games. Answering your questions on KI Lives, being guests on roundtables, and chit-chatting in Discord are just some of the things that this year has made amazing. I love our community and I can’t wait to do more of all this in 2023!” – Senior Community Manager, Mathew “Sparck” Anderson
“Another year, another successful journey in the Spiral! It’s been a blast seeing all the amazing community reactions to Novus recently. We’re so glad you love it (the writers always do amazing work on the story)! I look forward to many more exciting things on the horizon in 2023. Are you ready?” – Kayly Ginsberg, Marketing Manager
Hello Community! Last year I said ‘2022 is about to get crazy,’ and I think it definitely got a little crazy (in the best of ways of course)! It’s been great seeing the new initiatives being tackled throughout the year (hooray for Pirate101 getting an event system woooo), and watching Novus come to life was phenomenal, the team did amazing work. As always, thank you so much for playing and I hope you have a wonderful rest of the year! – Mesa Brown, CRM Marketing Associate
“Season’s greetings friends! The Support Team would love to extend our appreciation and well wishes to our awesome player community and their families. We have truly enjoyed hearing from all of you this year! We continue to be inspired by your dedication, enthusiasm, and boundless creativity. As other KingsIsle teams wrap up their work on a new release, our team eagerly waits alongside you, excited to play, test and help you have the best time possible in the Spiral. Whether it’s in your next team up or in an email, we can’t wait to chat with you again soon!” – Customer Support Team
“Happy Holidays! I have been fortunate to work with some extremely talented individuals here at KingsIsle and appreciate all the opportunities for collaboration. I have enjoyed making things for you this year and getting a chance to grow in my role. We have wonderful new things in the works for 2023. But your feedback is the most important thing. I always find it helpful. We will be asking you more questions in 2023 so stay tuned! Thank you all for being part of this wonderful community of Wizard and Pirate. Please have a safe and Happy Holidays and keep your plushies nearby.” – Robin, Associate Product Designer
“We love to see players sharing their passion for Wizard101 and Pirate101 by creating guides and videos and fan art and engaging with others in the community. We’ve been working hard to support community connections within Wizard101 with guilds and adventure parties and making it more beneficial to quest with other people. We love creating more reasons for players to connect with one another and we thank you for your wonderful work on this worthy endeavor! See you in the game, probably in the Beastmoon Hunt or the Beastmoon Monster Mayhem for me!” – Game Programmer
Have something nice to say about your fellow community members? Share it with them! For social media postings, use hashtag #Wizard101 or #Pirate101 and we’ll see your posts. Every day we look them over and love seeing all of the supportive posts, often sharing them in a retweet or posting quotes in our monthly newsletters. Expect more of that in 2023!
See you next year somewhere in the Spiral!
Pirates,
Can you believe it’s been 10 years since Pirate101 launched?! That’s a decade of incredible adventures, everlasting memories, and more treasure than you could ever imagine. We want to thank everyone who’s been with us on this fantastic journey and for being loyal fans in the Pirate101 community through the years.
The Spiral’s skyways are so full of wonder, and we want even more people to experience them! As part of our 10th Anniversary Sail-ebration, we’re very happy to announce that Pirate101 will be launching on Steam in early 2023! The team is SUPER excited about this and extremely eager to bring the game to an entirely new audience.
For existing Pirates already in the game, please know that Steam accounts are distinct from your existing accounts. Your current account cannot be merged with your Steam account or transferred to Steam. If you wish to play through Steam, you will have to create a new Pirate101 account through Steam’s platform.
Regardless of where your account was created, everyone will end up playing on the same servers and be able to meet each other in-game. Gear up to show our newest pirate crews around the Spiral and prepare them for their new adventures!
Happy 10th Anniversary and we look forward to seeing many new Pirates joining the Spiral from the Steam community next year!
The KingsIsle Team
KingsIsle Blog 