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
For the very first time in the company’s history, KingsIsle went to Gamescom in Cologne, Germany to talk about all things Wizard101! We had a cozy booth in the business area where we had the opportunity to meet up with our amazing partners, look for exciting potential new partners, and speak with the press about the wonderful wizardry we have cooking up in the next few months. What we spoke about was exclusive to the press for a certain period, but now we’re ready to spill the beans on exactly what we announced!
From left to right: Sam Johnson (Narrative Lead), Kayly Ginsberg (Marketing Manager), Leah Ruben (Senior Studio Director), Joel White (Product Manager)
Wizard101 Europe
One of the reasons we decided to attend a convention in Europe was to make a bigger splash there. While Wizard101 has been available in Europe for quite some time now, self-publishing the game since May means that we have more opportunities than ever before. We viewed this as a chance to share our excitement about the game with the European audience and affirm our dedication to maintaining and catching the servers up to their North American counterparts. Our first press exclusive relating to this was the reveal of the exact launch date of Karamelle for the European servers, August 31st, which has since been released! We also shared our intention to try and have the European servers caught up to the North American ones by late next year. We really care about our European players and are very excited about increasing the amount of content updates as time goes by.
Sam Johnson presenting passionately about Wizard101!
Wizard101 North America – Novus
Just because we were in Germany doesn’t mean that Wizard101 Europe was the only one to have all the fun. Gamescom is a big stage and we didn’t want to waste it! So, as our second Gamescom exclusive, we decided to announce the name of our brand-new world coming later this year to North American servers – Novus!
We can’t talk a lot about it just yet (need to leave some surprises of course!), but just know that we’re looking forward to Novus for a lot of reasons. As you can see, it has a branded logo – something we’ve never done for a world release before. In general, we’re taking a different approach with Novus than we have with all previous world releases and we can’t wait to unveil everything that we have planned for the launch.
Until then, we do have some teasers we showed off at Gamescom to help tide you over …
Unlike other worlds of the Spiral which are based on certain regions or cultures, Novus is inspired by surrealist art. Beware: things might get a little … bizarre. Be sure to keep watch on our website and social media channels to keep up to date on future announcements and Novus teasers!
We are excited to announce that later this summer Guilds will be introduced to Wizard101!
Guilds have been a requested feature for some time now and we’re finally making it happen. The idea is often implemented a little bit differently depending on the game. In Wizard101, Guilds will be large persistent groups where you and your friends can share stories of Spiral adventures in your very own private Guild House. There are many other perks as well that will be announced later!
We wanted to make sure Guilds were done in a way that makes sense for our unique player community. This new addition to the game will give players even more fun things to do in a group setting, and a variety of new challenges (with sweet rewards!) that can be overcome only with the help of one’s guildmates. Want to still quest and adventure with other friends from outside the guild? You will of course be able to continue to do that too!
Guilds is such a big idea for us; we’ll be adding much more to it over time. When the initial release comes to Test Realm during the Summer Update, we want the community to explore the new feature and give us as much feedback as possible so we can make it the best it can be. We’ll have more details in the coming weeks on what you can look forward to with Guilds, so stay tuned!
For now, gather your initial questions and join us in an upcoming Guilds Roundtable with WhiteTiger93, and at the next KI Live on June 30. Gather your friends and get ready for Guilds!
KingsIsle Blog 