May and now June are shaping up to be pretty exciting months! In May, we had the first ever Design-A-Spell Card Contest, the Five B.O.X.E.S. event made another appearance, and of course a big Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers out there. New packs, pets, mounts, and more were also released. Speaking of pets, the Pet Promenade event also returned for several days, quickly followed by the start of the summer season’s Scroll of Fortune.
What else can the community look forward to in the next few weeks? Stay tuned!
Before diving into the newsletter, a quick review of recent news activity:
MAY 7: Happy Mother’s Day!
MAY 10: Five B.O.X.E.S. event
MAY 11: New Beau Frog Pet
MAY 13: Community Livestream
MAY 24: New Marleybone Motorist Hoard Pack
MAY 25: Pet Promenade event
MAY 27: KI Live – More Pirate101 news
JUN 1: Summer Scroll of Fortune begins
JUN 1: Pride Month – Celebrating Diversity
Keep updated on the latest news for next month on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, including special announcements from community fansites! Read on for more fun happenings with the community and their Spiral activities.
CELEBRATING DIVERSITY
KingsIsle takes great pride in our community supporting each other and making sure that everyone feels accepted for who they are. June is Pride Month where we celebrate the diversity of both our players and the KingsIsle team as one community.
We reached out to several of our team members and community leaders to share their stories of diversity and support. Here is what they had to say!
I’m proud of our players for seeing our games as a safe place to simply be themselves, and in seeing the KingsIsle team as a beacon of support. We have an incredible community that I am excited to help develop and grow, and that includes bringing the team closer to the community in understanding.” - Bat Masterson (aka Sparck), Senior Community Manager
Here are several related community events kicking off this month!
We received so many amazing entries that showed the community's passion for the game’s spell system and their ideas on how to add a little more fun to it. With hundreds of entries received and only a fraction able to win in the contest, if yours did not make the list, you can still share your entry on social media for all community members to see!
In fact, there were so many entries we ended up adding an extra social media winner category to maximize as many entries being recognized as possible.
Winning Categories (one winner per main school per category)
7 Masters of Magic: 3 Celestian Spellemental Packs, 10,000 Crowns
If you didn’t win and get a chance to show your entry to the community, or you’d like to create something post-contest just for added fun, use #W101SpellCards on your favorite social media platform to show it off. We may see your post and like or even retweet it!
KI LIVE: SPELL CONTEST AND PIRATE101 NEWS
We chatted for over an hour about Wizard101's Spring Update from last month, showcased the winners of the game's spell card contest, and revealed more of our plans for Pirate101!
It's always a blast hanging out with the community, so let us know what you most like about KI Lives so we can continue to make them even more fun to watch.
Missed the show? Watch it now YouTube!
Secret Reader Bonus - As of this newsletter's announcement, for those who didn't get a chance to redeem the KI Live giveaway code yet, we opened it up again (MOTORTRAINPACKS) for another 500 redemptions!
A great gameplay tip submitted to KI Live comes from Angela ShadowGarden:
"Beastmoon tip. Spend your Lunari on a form's tier before the level. Then when you purchase the level you won't lose it when the event ends." - Angela ShadowGarden
COMMUNITY LIVESTREAM
Alongside our monthly KI Lives, our Community Livestreams are with Sparck (aka Bat Masterson), Senior Community Manager at KingsIsle. The theme of this show is to play more of our games with you in a more casual setting. Sparck loves hanging out with the community, so it's just you and him during the hour!
For this year’s first livestream, Sparck spent the time moving beyond MooShu (“Finally!” his words, not ours... he likes taking his time, as he is only questing on this one character with the community at the moment). He then made some great progress in DragonSpyre while he talked about the year's community related activities.
Prizes were indeed given away throughout the livestream, though they are handled differently than KI Lives. We only give away codes during the show in Twitch chat, not afterward. For a chance to get one you must be present.
Sparck would love to get any suggestions from you on what to explore next in either Wizard101 or Pirate101!
NEW CONCEPT ART FROM ADAM ROUSH
Adam has been busy creating more cool new art! In May we released several news packs and other items you can now get in the game. Check out a few of the concepts below!
“Here's the Blimp pet in the new pack. This was a challenge, went through several iterations to find the right level of cuteness. I think the in-game version is a bit cuter.” - Adam Roush
“Here's the Roadrunner pet concept. Had some trouble with getting the feather colors right, but it was a fun to work on overall!” - Adam Roush
“Here's the player gear in the new Marleybone Motorist Hoard Pack. I'm a car nerd, so it was a lot of fun to design a set based on 1930s racecar drivers.” - Adam Roush
NEW HOUSING & GARDENING FORUM
Players who love the housing system never had a place to chat about it in the forums... until now! We recently repurposed the existing Gardening Forum section to the new Housing & Gardening Forum.
If you have any questions about setting up shop in a new house or learning how to get started in gardening, this is the forum for you!
WIZARD101 MUSIC VIDEOS
By: @IAmTheChezz
Love music videos and wish there were some for Wizard101? Your wish is granted!
Community member, IAmTheChezz, created the following music video series that spins a fun and even punny tale of wizardly adventures across the Spiral. Have a listen!
COMMUNITY ART SPOTLIGHT
By: @MiaSmithArt
She fights fire with fire! For this month’s art spotlight, we are showcasing Mia’s Mavis character drawing:
"Painting of an old character Mavis! Testing out my new tablet and I'm having so much fun!" - @MiaSmithArt
COMMUNITY BULLETIN
Keep updated on what’s happening in the community right here in our Community News section! For every newsletter, we receive direct from the community links to new gameplay guides, exciting upcoming contests, and much more. Thanks to the following fansites and other community leaders for their contributions this month!
Marvelous Housting Festival
“Check out Marvelous Housing Festival - Saturday, June 12th @ 1:45PM EST in Helephant realm of Castle Tours. This will be following the Wizard City Pride Parade, which starts the same day @ 12PM CST in Unicorn realm.” - Bartleby’s Bizarre Bazaar
For more guides be sure to visit the official Community Guides page!
The unaffiliated-with-KingsIsle “Community Newsletter” had a great selection of Wizard101 links this month from around the web. NOTE: Follow their Twitter page for more information. To subscribe to their newsletter, send a DM to their Twitter asking to be added or email them at community.newsletter.101@gmail.com. You can unsubscribe at any time by sending them an email with the phrase “UNSUB”
FOLLOW WIZARD101
Question for our readers - is there a section we should add? Tweet your suggestion to @Wizard101 and we’ll select the top idea we can implement to win 5,000 Crowns!
Be sure to follow the game and its community on social media!
If you didn’t yet read our article on online safety, please take a moment to stop by our KingsIsle Blog and read the post titled Account Security Best Practices. There’s important information in the article to manage and protect your entire family’s accounts.
