After a cold winter, daydreams of warmer weather and no school seem to be on every kid’s mind, especially yours. The thoughts of no homework, staying up late, and sleeping in during spring break are just enough to pull any kid out of that cold-weather rut. For most, this break is an opportunity to spend extra time with friends, go on a family vacation, or sit back and do absolutely nothing for seven days.
But for us gamers, the time away from school is especially awesome. You get to spend all of those extra hours getting lost in the world of your favorite video or computer game. Here is a typical day in life of a gamer during spring break:
After a long night of gaming, you get to sleep in way past your alarm. That is… until your mom bursts into your room and turns on the light.
You hop in the shower, but instead of singing your favorite shower tunes, all you can think about is what you need to get to the next level in Wizard101.
After your shower, you run downstairs for a quick breakfast. The faster you (or your parent!) can cook, the faster you can log in to your game and get your day started.
When your brother comes into your room asking if he can borrow the computer to Google something, this is how you feel. Yeah right, bro!
At 1 p.m., you realize you’re still in your PJs. You don’t care.
For lunch, you master the art of multitasking by holding a sandwich in one hand and your computer mouse in the other.
After lunch, your best friend calls and asks if you want to come over and quest some in Pirate101. Your response:
When said friend claims he’s better at the game than you, you’re just kind of like:
After 30 minutes of game time, you finallllllly defeat him, and this is your face:
By now, it’s 6 p.m. and your mom is forcing you to come home for dinner. How unfair! You guys were so close to beating the highest level!
After dinner, your mom and dad tell you it’s time to take a break from the games and encourage you to read a book for a little while. How dare they?!
After proving to your mom that you can survive a few hours without your game, she allows 30 minutes of play before bed. Yes! She’s the best!
But before you know it, those 30 minutes are over. You try to sneak some more game time in, but you can hear your mom coming up the stairs… Guess it’s time for bed before you get in trouble!
Until tomorrow!
On March 13, 2015 KingsIsle’s Community and Social Media team went downtown for the afternoon to check out the scene at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Gaming Expo in Austin, Texas.
The weather outside was perfect, but the real action was inside the Palmer Events Center in Downtown Austin where a ton of booths and “geek” entertainment could be found!
By the north entrance was a competitive gaming stage where players from around the world were competing for $20,000. By the south entrance there was a “Geek Stage” where there was always some kind of panel of guests talking about comic books, video games, cosplay, and gaming technology. In the middle was a huge area for playing board games, surrounded by vendors selling snacks and fun T-shirts. Upstairs were rows and rows of computers and gaming systems (both old and new) to keep expo goers playing games and having fun.
Here’s what Tom, Leala, and Julia all had to say about their favorite parts of the afternoon:
Tom
I loved attending the Expo this year. For me my favorite parts would, first, be all the people I met (or saw) at the event and, second, the Competitive Gaming stage. It was my pleasure to meet Justin Burnham, the organizer for the event, and hear from him exactly how big the expo had grown over the past few years. Even more surreal was seeing Markiplier (of YouTube fame and the gaming emcee for the event) wander past us with lunch in his hands and asking Justin to help him find a quiet place to eat! Beyond that, it was just awesome to feed off the energy of the up and coming developers who were in attendance showing off their games in person. There was a lot of innovation being showed off that I was truly impressed with.
Before we headed down to the Expo, I spent a few minutes watching the live Twitch Stream of the Tournament Stage at the SXSW Gaming Expo. Then when I arrived and watched it in person, I just sat back in amazement at the skill these players were demonstrating. It made me think how awesome it would be to someday see our Wizard101 PvP players in some kind of competitive gaming match where all could watch.
Leala
This was my first time to attend the SXSW Gaming Expo and overall I was very impressed. The fact that the event is free and for all ages makes it very accessible to lots of gamers, which I think is great. I enjoyed the variety of the indie game section of the show floor, but my favorite part of the expo was the gaming history museum and free-play area. It was like an interactive history lesson, and a bit of a nostalgia trip too!
The free-play room on the second floor of the expo had games lined all around the outer wall. Each one had a different game and console set-up so you could start with the Atari, then move to the Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis and so on, all the way to the current generation of games. I had fun playing a bit of Frogger on the Atari, even though my skills at road-crossing are super rusty! Julia and I also had a rousing tournament of the fighting game, Tekken, on the original PlayStation. I used to be pretty good at button-mashing, but I was no match for Julia’s skills. I’ve never had so much fun getting absolutely trounced at a game before!
Julia
Going into the SXSW Gaming Expo, I had no idea what to expect. It was the first time I’ve been to anything of the sort, and it was a cool experience just to see the event in action. I was impressed to hear that people had traveled from all over to be in attendance or to host a table. One of the games we saw had come from Toronto, Canada!
My favorite part of the event was upstairs. There was a “History of Gaming” room set up with consoles from throughout the years, starting with an Atari Gaming Console. Of course I have seen pictures and heard about the Atari system, but I’ve never had the chance to see one in person or to play on one. We sat down and each tried our luck at Frogger, which I can’t say I was great at. But then we made our way down to a more recent console where Leala and I went head-to-head in a PlayStation Tekken tournament. I really had no idea what I was doing, so my plan of action was to hit random buttons as fast as I could. I crushed Leala over and over and by the end of our couple of matches, I was in tears of laughter. It was a great way to spend the day and learn a little more about a part of the gaming industry that I had not yet had the chance to see.
We hope to see you at next year’s SXSW Gaming Expo! Who knows?! You may even see us manning our own booth next year where you could come by and say hello. Would you be interested in attending if you knew KingsIsle would have a presence there?
Ahoy! We have a ton of talented Pirates in the way of the arrrrts in the Spiral! Each month we like to feature Pirate101 fan art and fan photo submissions through or official social media like Facebook and Pinterest. There are so many great creative works from all the amazing Pirate players. This month, we picked some of our favorites to show on the blog as well.
Want to submit something creative of your very own? If you are under 13 years of age, ask your parent or guardian for permission to send us your screenshot. If you would like to submit something, send the picture and your character name in an email to community@pirate101.com! Please attach no more than three images per email, and please limit total submissions to no more than nine screenshots in a month. Try to only submit your very best images!
Today is the International Day of Awesomeness! When it comes to Wizard101 and Pirate101, I feel there are tons of awesome things to find. In general, I try to be a half-glass-full type of person and love looking on the awesome side of things.
Back in 2013 and 2014, I gave a shot at trying to list all the awesome things I liked about Wizard101 on my blog. I remember thinking that I wanted to see how long I could go before time got the best of me. I managed to list 46 awesome things before I moved on to other things! Check it out (in no particular order – just how they came to me):
• Awesome Thing #1 — Low-hitting Wildbolt Spells (against me)
• Awesome thing #2 — Health Drain Spells
• Awesome Thing #3 — Regenerate while in Treant Form
• Awesome Thing #4 — The Arcus Cloud Mount
• Awesome Thing #5 — A Pet with Spritely
• Awesome Thing #6 — King Artorius and his Spells
• Awesome Thing #7 — An Undead Stegosaurus
• Awesome Thing #8 — Sun Magic on Low Level Spells
• Awesome Thing #9 — Casting with Class Symbols
• Awesome Thing #10 — Housing Statues
• Awesome Thing #11 — Blade Stacking
• Awesome thing #12 — The Christmas Tree in the Commons
• Awesome Thing #13 — Potion Motion
• Awesome Thing #14 — Allan Ghostdust
• Awesome Thing #15 — Brand New Characters
• Awesome Thing #16 — Daily Presents
• Awesome Thing #17 — Finally Getting that Piece of Gear
• Awesome Thing #18 — Two-boxing
• Awesome Thing #19 — A Really Hard Challenge
• Awesome Thing #20 — Gamma’s Room
• Awesome Thing #21 — Harvesting a Full Elder Garden
• Awesome Thing #22 — Dancing with your Pets
• Awesome Thing #23 — The Loremaster
• Awesome Thing #24 — Krampus
• Awesome Thing #25 — Bartleby
• Awesome Thing #26 — Class Trees
• Awesome Thing #27 — Tempest
• Awesome Thing #28 — Pigswick Schools and Professors
• Awesome Thing #29 — Golem Minion
• Awesome Thing #30 — Mr. Personality (Balloon driver in Marleybone)
• Awesome Thing #31 — The Kraken Pad
• Awesome Thing #32 — Mooshu Spiral Chamber
• Awesome Thing #33 — Memories of Oyotomi Farming
• Awesome Thing #34 — Riding the Young Battledrake
• Awesome Thing #35 — Class Pets
• Awesome Thing #36 — Tower Shield
• Awesome Thing #37 — Feint
• Awesome Thing #38 — Memories of Farming the Ravens
• Awesome Thing #39 — The Lava Bridge in The Labyrinth
• Awesome Thing #40 — Katzenstein’s Dance Floor
• Awesome Thing #41 — Multistrike (AoE) Damage Spells
• Awesome Thing #42 — Teleport Stones
• Awesome Thing #43 — The Labyrinth Dungeon
• Awesome Thing #44 — Toy Trains
• Awesome Thing #45 — Glowy Eyes
• Awesome Thing #46 — Marleybone Cops
Whew . . . that’s my list, but I think you all can do better! Why not take this International Day of Awesomeness challenge and see how many awesome things you can list about Wizard101 and Pirate101! We’d love to see your lists in the comments below.
~ Dworgyn (aka the Friendly Necromancer)
Wow! Let us start by saying this contest was much harder than we anticipated, and we absolutely loved that you stepped up to the challenge. Everyone who participated is to be congratulated.
We had multiple winners by very narrow margins and some items had no clear winners at all. Let’s take a closer look at who our winners are.
Overall—Crazy Cassidy . . . Congratulations on winning 60,000 Crowns! Funny enough, although she only managed to get four Pilgrim’s Campfires the entire day during the allotted time, that was good enough to win the overall category.
Now for the individual categories, our five mystery items were as follows:
– Domed Pyre
– Lantern Post
– Solar Obelisk
– Eagle Head Brazier
– Pilgrim’s Campfire
Here are the results:
Domed Pyre – SNAKE EYES! No one got this item within its time slot (which was very early in the morning for most people). This item was so rare in fact, only four Domed Pyres were acquired all day long. As a result, we’re giving 5,000 Crowns to each of the following players who just found one during the day as a thank you:
– David Hawkins
– Golden Mycin Inglewood
– Bloody Patrick
– Silent Xavier Holystone
Lantern Post—Congratulations go to Bridget Brewster! Only two Lantern Posts were found all day long and she found hers two hours sooner than her competitor.
Solar Obelisk—This was a clear tie between two mega-fans of Pirate101. Two-Faced Anne and Perilous Page both received two solar obelisks at the same time. We’re giving them both 20,000 Crowns. Congratulations!
Eagle Head Brazier— SNAKE EYES! Another item with no clear winner . . . Only seven Pilgrim’s Campfire Housing Items were acquired all day long. As a result, we’re giving 5,000 Crowns to each of the following players as a thank you:
– Alex
– Evan Ironside
– Wolf Silver
– Diego
– Fearless Dino
– Virtuous Leo Silver
– Husky Samuel Mickleson
Pilgrim’s Campfire—Since Crazy Cassidy won the overall category, our next-in-line winner is Bold Belle Barclay, who pulled in a Pilgrim’s Campfire exactly one minute before her nearest competitor . . . and simultaneously at the same time as Bridget Brewster (who already won for being the first to acquire the Lantern Post.) What a close battle!
Thank you for your participation in this extreme house hunting challenge. We hope you had fun! (We learned a lot, and next time we’ll choose some easier targets to collect.)
KingsIsle Blog 