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OK, not a real brush with death, but with The Friendly Necromancer, a death wizard. I was curious to see how far my partner and I could expect to get as a duo in Wizard 101. One of the things that annoys me about WoW is the fact that you can handle the entire game as a duo, except the end game. So can two wizards defeat Malistaire?
My parter and I just started playing Wizard 101 and we love it. We're both around level 20. She is a storm/death wizard, and I am life. I haven't picked a second school yet, but I will probably go balance.
So far we have beaten every boss and sunken city, just us two. Will we be able to do the whole game like this? Can two wizards alone defeat the hardest boss (Malistaire?)
I was pleasantly surprised to read his answer only an hour or so later, and even more pleased to find out the consensus from him and his commenters is that yes, we should be able to beat Malistaire, and the whole game, by ourselves! Excellent. It really does seem like Wizard 101 is an MMO pitched perfectly at us.
@diaryofawizard suggested I use XFire for recording video, and it works great. So without further ado, here's a quick video of us fighting Soul Scavenger, a rank 3 undead boss:
Two issues: the video is a bit choppy, which is odd, because it's not choppy when I'm playing, even during recording; and there doesn't seem to be any sound. This is probably because I play with the sound turned right down (but not off). I might have to increase the framerate I'm recording at, lower my game resolution, and crank up the volume when I'm recording. To be honest, I'm a complete beginner when it comes to recording game video, so any tips would be greatly appreciated.
UPDATE: here's another attempt with Soul Scavenger, this time Boris solo, and with some super lame post-processing, courtesy of Windows Movie Maker:
We had a great weekend playing Wizard 101. We finished up Wizard City, including the Sunken City instance and all the side-quests we could find, then moved onto Krokotopia. It's great discovering a new game together -- typically in the past I play a game for a while before @yetigirl joins in, but we're playing Wizard 101 entirely together.
We're using Wizard 101's Crowns cash shop system to buy new zones, rather than subscribing. The advantage of using Crowns is that once you purchase a zone, it's unlocked forever, for all the characters on your account, regardless of whether you have an active subscription. This is great for us. We tend to jump from one MMO to the next every couple of months, and often can't afford to subscribe to more than one at a time, so having an MMO that's always there is a nice change.
Paying by the zone also encourages us to get the most out of it. Wizard 101 has a series of badges, which reward grinding monsters with titles, and there's plenty of vanity housing items and pets to collect by farming bosses. As we've spent up our monthly Crown allowance by unlocking all of Wizard City and the opening few areas of Krokotopia, we're going to spend some time farming items bosses, completing badges and honing decks.
MyLife wizard, Boris Wildblossom, and @yetigirl's Storm/Life wizard, Devin Stormrider, just tackled Sunken City for the first time. I wasn't feeling too confident, as the Wizard 101 Wiki page says:
"Sunken City is considered the most difficult instance in Wizard City... Four people can be in this instance and that number is highly recommended to avoid frustration... Do not be surprised if you cannot beat Sunken City because it is harder then most of areas of Krokotopia. It is recommended that ... everyone be over level 25."
Instead of four wizards over level 25, we were two wizards, level 15 and level 14, so I was pleasantly surprised when we defeated the last boss (Grubb) on our first attempt. We did have take turns to teleport to the commons to restock potions once or twice, but we were never simultaneously defeated, so no "wipes". I love the way Wizard 101's casual design extends into it's dungeons -- party members are free to teleport back to the Commons to restock on health, mana and potions, then can use the friends list to jump right back into the action. As long as everyone doesn't leave at once, the instance remains open.
No, what we're playing at the moment is Wizard 101, which seems to me to be an under-appreciated gem. Perhaps it's family-friendly image and Harry Potter-esque theme has been putting people off, but then that's their loss. Beneath the simple, childish art style is a very good CCG/RPG hybrid, with all the deck-building and min-maxing potential that entails.
It's also perfect for the way we like to play MMOs -- just the two of us, playing MMOs as basically single-player games with very good multiplayer. You can instantly teleport yourself to any of your friends. Grouping is available, but you can join other people for battles or boss fights seamlessly without grouping. There are no looting options, so there's no drama. Chat is heavily filtered, and can be turned off entirely, so you don't have to endure endless waves of moronic chatter. So far we've been able to duo or solo every boss encounter. Excellent.
Offline, we've also played a bit of Microlite20, which is a cut-down version of the traditional pen-and-paper D20 rules system. With a few house rules and a bunch of index cards, we've been playing without a DM, in a roguelike style with lots of combat and emphasis on dungeon crawling. We're rollplaying, rather than roleplaying.
We're going camping in a week's time, so I'm going to be creating a short campaign for us to battle through while we're sat in a tent in the dark and poring rain.
