Welcome to the Wizard101 Message Boards


Player Guide
Fansites
News
Game Updates
Help

Follow important game updates on Twitter @Wizard101 and @KI_Alerts, and Facebook!

For all account questions and concerns, contact Customer Support.

By posting on the Wizard101 Message Boards you agree to the Code of Conduct.

How did Windows 7's closure affect Wizard101 and the development team?

AuthorMessage
Survivor
May 14, 2015
46
If you guys remember, back on January 14th of this year, Microsoft officially announced that Windows 7 support would be coming to a close. No doubt this news had a dramatic impact on the Wizard101 community. After all, Windows 7 had been around since 2009, literally 1 YEAR after Wizard101 officially launched. The OS (operating system) itself was almost as old as this game, and there is no doubt it was the definitive way to play Wizard101 from 2009 all the way to it's eventually shutdown in 2020. And I know that many others, like me, shed a tear when we learned that Windows 7 was coming to a close.

Recently I've been thinking a lot about something. I'm almost certain that a large chunk of Wizard101's content was developed on Windows 7. After all, the OS had virtually unlimited compatibility with every creation engine imaginable at the time, including stuff that came out in Toontown Online's days ( 2003 ) thanks to backwards compatibility with Windows XP programs ( something that Windows 10 seems to struggle a lot with for some reason ). So I'm almost certain that Windows 7's closure hit the games development team in some way, no doubt because they had to update their Windows 7 computers to Windows 10 so they could continue getting things such as security updates and software updates ( you wouldn't want the people behind the game to get their computers hacked because of outdated security, would you? That's the same reason a lot of us upgraded to Windows 10 ).

As far as I can tell, us players only suffered a minor inconvenience at worst because of it due to the fact our computers needed time to make the jump to Windows 10. But I know for fact that on the developers side of things, having to upgrade the OS to something that isn't outdated can cause a mountain of problems if it's not done correctly. There's the risk of lost server data, lost player data, lost progress on work for the next big update, among other issues that can crop up. But at the same time, not upgrading the OS at all is very dangerous, because those outdated Windows 7 computers run a much higher chance of being hacked and compromised because the security isn't being updated anymore. And mitigating that problem often has a pretty high price tag.

So now I have to ask: How badly did Windows 7's shutdown impact the team developing the game?

Administrator
Scot S on Oct 7, 2020 wrote:
If you guys remember, back on January 14th of this year, Microsoft officially announced that Windows 7 support would be coming to a close. No doubt this news had a dramatic impact on the Wizard101 community. After all, Windows 7 had been around since 2009, literally 1 YEAR after Wizard101 officially launched. The OS (operating system) itself was almost as old as this game, and there is no doubt it was the definitive way to play Wizard101 from 2009 all the way to it's eventually shutdown in 2020. And I know that many others, like me, shed a tear when we learned that Windows 7 was coming to a close.

Recently I've been thinking a lot about something. I'm almost certain that a large chunk of Wizard101's content was developed on Windows 7. After all, the OS had virtually unlimited compatibility with every creation engine imaginable at the time, including stuff that came out in Toontown Online's days ( 2003 ) thanks to backwards compatibility with Windows XP programs ( something that Windows 10 seems to struggle a lot with for some reason ). So I'm almost certain that Windows 7's closure hit the games development team in some way, no doubt because they had to update their Windows 7 computers to Windows 10 so they could continue getting things such as security updates and software updates ( you wouldn't want the people behind the game to get their computers hacked because of outdated security, would you? That's the same reason a lot of us upgraded to Windows 10 ).

As far as I can tell, us players only suffered a minor inconvenience at worst because of it due to the fact our computers needed time to make the jump to Windows 10. But I know for fact that on the developers side of things, having to upgrade the OS to something that isn't outdated can cause a mountain of problems if it's not done correctly. There's the risk of lost server data, lost player data, lost progress on work for the next big update, among other issues that can crop up. But at the same time, not upgrading the OS at all is very dangerous, because those outdated Windows 7 computers run a much higher chance of being hacked and compromised because the security isn't being updated anymore. And mitigating that problem often has a pretty high price tag.

So now I have to ask: How badly did Windows 7's shutdown impact the team developing the game?
We haven't had an effect here in continuing to develop the game, all engines forward!