It's getting hot outside, and getting closer to summer, my FAVORITE season. While the other Professors are complaining about our 90 degree weather, I'm lovin' it. Before I go play outside in the sun this evening, it's time for Feedback Friday!
Standard disclaimer applies: We do not guarantee to use each and every idea submitted, and questions we pose may or may not be pertaining to things we are currently working on, or will ever undertake. Sometimes, there are just technical limitations that make changing things difficult to impossible, and though we possess all manner of magic wands here, there are technological beasts out there that are beyond our grasp. Sometimes, we may not feel it is within the spirit and vision of the spiral to add or change something. Also, we realize that some of these topics may have been addressed before in other threads - sometimes it's good to pick up a discussion again. Chances are I have read your threads and would like to hear more!
Avalon and Marleybone are some of the worlds that are strongly influenced by stories and tales from the real world outside of the Spiral, but all of our worlds take reference in a small way at least from both history and fiction. That is, we gain inspiration from our favorite stories, true or not.
My question this week is this - What is your favorite story from outside of the Spiral, fictional or non-fictional?
“If the Mind is like a candle, the Heart is like the sun.”
Professor Falmea
(For those that dont know, lonesome george is a pinta island tortoise, and he is currently the only one left on the entire planet, and you gotta admit, thats pretty baws, to be the last one of your kind to survive through all the stuff and junk.)
This list could be quite long, but I'll try to narrow it down to my top 5 stories that I can recall this instant:
1. Lord of the Rings/Hobbit- J.R.R. Tolkien 2. Dune- Frank Herbert 3. Hyperion- Dan Simmons 4. The Uplift Series- David Brin 5. Ender's Game/Speaker for the Dead Series- Orson Scott Card
My favorite stories would probably be all of Rick Riordan's series' like the Percy Jackson series, the heroes of Olympus series, and the Kane chronicles series.
Percy Jackson, Heroes of Olympus, and Kane Chronicles. Percy Jackson is the series that got me into reading. Now I have two (going on three) full bookshelves filled with stories that I love. :)
Would it be too far off topic to suggest you be inspired by your own story?
I wish Kings Isle/Wizard101 would create some way back in time to before Malistaire and his hoards destroyed Dragonspyre. It wouldn't require rewriting anything at all.
After Avalon sometime the call comes from some world where magic exists that can send a wizard back in time to a time and place of his choosing. This time it's to save Dragonspyre. Dragonspyre of Old, would function exactly as any other world. Malistaire and all his minions would function just as any other foe. But the players could actually play in the old Dragonspyre which is beautiful.
To make it more interesting once we save Dragonspyre we can play within mythological situations drawn from what we already know about Dragonspyre and fleshed out with Russian & Baltic mythology. So its really very economical for the creators, they must create the Dragonspyre of Old world, and we run a Celestia sized questline with all the areas and stuff - but after that instead of farming or hoping for a new world, there is a whole new Celestia sized quest line, based on what would have happened in Dragonspyre if Mal hadn't gotten there or had been stopped before the destruction. So in a way it's like Winter Tusk and Grizzleheim - but you reuse the whole environment and figures, not add a small area. Just adding new story, new tasks, and maybe a handful of new npc - or not.
Oh - and new housing that looks like the Dragonspyre of Old area you get to visit in game now. Not like the current Dragonspyre style housing.
So Kings Isle and the players could really be getting a two for one. First leg is saving Dragonspyre which would be a world sized quest unto itself. Along the way the side quests could be totally un-related to saving Dragonspyre from the total destruction we know it's headed for. The side quests could be actual stories unto themselves - not the standard message or item delivery or policing the streets from hoodlums because the populace is so harried, sick (or in the case of Marley Bone - lazy.)
Please think it over. I have wanted to play in Dragonspyre of Old since the first time I saw it like 2 years ago.
oh ... but there's the minimized cost to players of reusing an existing world... New Crown Housing, Crown Housing Items, New Crown Gear....could help but that's all optional.... meh I really want the second quest-line.
There's nothing stopping Kings Isle from expressing that it's a new deal for this one world. For Dragonspyre of Old one buys the areas once for Saving Dragonspyre and once for Playing in Dragonspyre of Old - or - maybe the second quest-line is a membership exclusive.
Something along the lines of the Hunger Games would be interesting. I mean it could be cool. Also about when North America was just being explored people were trying to find the fountain of youth. Sorry for being late with this reply.
Oh man, I can't believe I forgot Firefly and Serenity. Firefly is probably all time favorite for me.
I second that!
There'd be a good bit of editing to do regarding the rating level of that material - but wow what a rich place to draw from.
* Reavers and the Alliance Government are the scariest monsters ever created * River Tam is the most complex, dangerous, troubled, loveable amazing character created in a very long time, by anyone. * Captian Tight-pants Mal is ... well they are all nuanced and loveable * It would be much fun to see Kings Isle rendering of Jane * Mind control, human engineering gone wrong * Importance of the Web and free speech is a central idea in Serenity * Freedom and the right to choose the life one lives is the main theme of Firefly. * Cowboys in Space (?) sounds crazy but Joss Whedon's universe is made plausible and deep.
Lol did I leave anything out? I love Firefly, Serenity, Angel, Dollhouse, and Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog :D (all Joss Whedon)
Beauty and the Beast especially the Beastly version, idk the author. It would be great if Wizard101 could combine the old version's settings with the modern ideas in Beastly.
The Scarlet Pimpernel - - spys rescues romance, French Revolution (movie with Jane Seymour based on two books)
Lord of the Rings trilogy
Harry Potter all 7
The Mists of Avalon (A version of King Arthur with a lot of rich depth and detail and from a feminine perspective where the female characters are equally flawed with the male.)
I was thinking of a world (timed for a Halloween release) all about the dead that won't rest. It's an almost totally haunted world. Each area of play could be a different ghost story. The overall world quest is just to bring peace to the undead so they can move on to their next state or whatever.
*The Canterville Ghost (regret and sorrow) *The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (jealousy & revenge) *Dracula (bitterness and regret) *The Others (shame and fear) *Hamlet (grudge, revenge, regret at unspoken truth)
*Christmas Carol (regret of greed and wrong priorities - and redemption through revolution in thought, belief, and action)
--without the Christmas Spirit stuff translates into the ghosts could be Seraph Messengers attempting to teach and save a man about to fall to Marley's fate, and that of all the other un-resting dead of that world.
The seraphs, or other, could teach the lessons but not be relative to Christmas. They could be like The Ghost Whisperer from TV working with living and dead to heal the misunderstandings and bad habits that caused the undead problem. Or the player could be The Ghost Whisperer - just having guidance from the Teachers / Seraphs / or other. The general message is that this world has had a cultural habit of holding onto grief and grudge against self and other so long that the dead can't move on. They stay trapped in their misery and spread fear thru it. The Teachers could be trying to redeem that world from those mistakes by teaching a new way of thinking about loss, mistakes, wrong but decided choices etc.
> Brother's keeper > sometimes forgiveness is so hard that it has to be done for oneself - just to find peace - just to let go and choose not to be angry anymore. > sometimes the forgiveness needed is of oneself to oneself, just to move on with life choosing to do better in the future and just "pay it forward" > go about in the land and be involved > money isn't everything > ambition can be corrupted and consume a life instead of making it fulfilling and varied. > It's never too late to change or be forgiven for mistakes, as long as one is sincere. Etc.
Study of those stories and others like them, probably would yield more - that's just off the top of my head.
The Housing & other Items for the world
If you do this one please make the housing and other items and gear a variety between the obvious tattered mess and "redeemed" housing and gear. I love the Death School House in all it's layout and structure - but the lighting should be like the Storm House, and the facings wouldn't be all skulls and ugly, and the house and lawn and pond wouldn't be rank and falling apart. Maybe one generic "haunted house" even with a resident ghost or two (like in Harry Potter Hogwarts ) but the rest would just be in the style of the world and period a Gothic House, a Victorian House, an Age of Enlightenment Palace - a place a player would actually want to decorate, garden and go to look around. It would be fun to play the game in the falling apart haunted versions, but the character's personal houses and castles are virtual doll houses, and I think most of us want them to be pretty.
One of my all-time favorites is The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by w.y. Evans-wentz
This book is great because it's just data gathered by a scientist. It's an anthropological study, so it's non-fiction in that way, but the stories are all the fairy tales of the Celtic nations that he could get his hands on.
There is such a diversity in the type of story and characters it could provide the basis for several worlds in Wizard101 or the basis of the largest world yet, or a modular one like Grizzleheim & Wintertusk.
The most important thing about this book is that the people he interviewed were telling him stories they believed the same way we believe in other continents. They were absolutely true stories, even if they hadn't experienced the phenomena themselves. It's also an important book because it was a study undertaken with the last generation that really believed in the stories. Some of the young people still believed, but he got the parents and grandparents who really believed and still recalled the old versions of the stories. He also got to talk to a couple of Story Keepers that had a family tradition of memorizing the stories in their oldest version and passing them down orally.
Also the Fairies, Gnomes, Sprites, Trolls etc in these stories are not the sweet Disney-ified creatures we think of. There is a lot for Kings Isle to work with for good guys, bad guys, beings with simply a conflict of interests, neutrals, helpful and dangerous beings.
He also spends time with the environment surrounding the stories and the culture of the people telling them.
These are great! You are a bunch of well-read folks!
One of my favorites from the time when I was a young fire Wizard was "A Wrinkle In Time". I just reread it recently and it's still as great as I remember!
New early Feedback Friday coming up shortly...
“If the Mind is like a candle, the Heart is like the sun.”
Professor Falmea
