December 12, 2013 / KingsIsle Entertainment

What Wizard101 and Pirate101 Mean to My Family

During the holidays, we’re running a contest through our “12 Days of the Spiral“. The question is – what has Wizard101 or Pirate101 meant to you and/or your family in the past year? Today we have our third winner! Read about what KingsIsle games have meant to their family.

I started playing Wizard101 nearly six years ago. After playing for about six months, my then six year old autistic son started taking an interest in it. At first I thought he may not be quite old enough for it as at that time he would get scared very easily. He began just watching me play and one day ask if he could make a character. His first character he named “Reid Boom- Wraith”
He chose the Balance School.

At first he needed help with the combat, and sometimes just operating the mouse and the direction keys. Although I most certainly don’t want him to have an over abundance of computer time, I saw that he was able to focus for longer periods of time and not just while playing Wizard101. I feel that just finding an interest for him was key in reaching him. He loves to talk about the game, and WOW – he can recall details like you would never imagine.

When we heard Pirate101 was coming out we were both extremely excited. We have both been playing Pirate101 since the test realm came out. We love the companions, the ships, and all the other little surprises Pirate has to offer.
I was impressed with the detail that my son could recall with Wizard 101 but with Pirate101… Holy Cow! He can act out each and every companion’s moves, dialect, grunts and equipment use to perfection. He loves to quiz me as he acts out their moves.
I have a difficult time keeping them all straight as he has characters belonging to every school. Yikes!

I am so grateful to KingsIsle for creating games that families can play together, but more so due to the tremendous amount of progress my now 9 1/2 year old son has had with his focus and social skills due in part to your wonderful and detailed games. We now can play on separate computers, so we can help each other. My son has made a game out of leveling up before I do.
See, I like to do the side quests to level up and gain more gold and loot… but not my son. He feels that if he just does the main story line quests, the companion training quests and the quests where he acquires further companions he will win the leveling up game. We also have a “Who can gain the most Companions” contest. My son can now play on his own and handle most combat on his own.

Thank you for making such an impact on our family and more importantly on a young autistic boy whom a few years ago, could not carry on a conversation about anything.

Ruthless Olivia Morgan and Fearless Finnigan Cog
Level 56 Swashbuckler and Level 65 Privateer