It's worth noting for those that are new to the game that you can earn crowns by daily rewards once you have reached level 12, but I have been told that you barely earn any crowns anyways this way.
I would like to mention that while you can purchase the zones permanently with crowns, and that Wizard City is relatively affordable with it only taking 2250 Crowns to unlock ( which translates to 23 days of trivia) every single world after that is incredibly expensive, taking at least 3000 crowns and all the world's past Arc 2 require around 10000 Crowns.
It is still insane to this day that the worlds of the first story arc aren’t free to play. They’ve got so much content locked behind membership today, that at least for replayability’s sake let people have access to a few more worlds. I’m glad that other people see how unfair this is to the newcoming and pre-existing players and I would argue it impairs the game’s overall potential for player interaction.
i feel like if you're going to make it so that after the first like 15 minutes people have to pay a monthly membership just to play the game you should just make the game payed at that point
i've been playing this game on and off since i was a kid in 2009 and it's absolutely wild to me that the first 50 levels still aren't free for everyone with how much content there is after that (and out of the 130 levels worth of content i've played the first 60 are where the game peaks anyway). the amount of stuff they gave you for free even back in the day was super scarce, and there wasn't a way to earn crowns for free or buy the member potion. wizard city alone should have always been entirely free. monetization is definitely awful but the saving grace is that unless you are a minmaxing pvper you can do without paying for most premium items. a lot of them are farmable from bosses, not even worth buying, or in the case of pets, can be obtained via breeding your pet with someone who has the premium pet you want. pretty much all gear you would actually want to use for pve is obtainable from difficult dungeons or crafting, at least in my experience, but i haven't played in a few years and only recently got back into it. not sure how much damage that chinese company buying the game did.
Yeah, the community has been begging for the first arc being free for a while now, we will have to see what the devs will do going forward. I hope they will understand the community :) they could revive the game so easily! PS: you can also buy permanent mounts for a kinda small amount of gold (40k) + the membership goes 50% off about every 2 months so you can just wait for that and you can easily to almost max within that 1 month if you like the game for only 5 dollars. PSS: KingsIsle got bought from MGI for 126mil in 2020 or 2021 i dont remember, so they will have to keep going either way to earn back the money, they still kept most of the employees as I understood as well. So the 5 dollars is worth it if you like the game and you like the grind + a funny ass community. I've been here since 2010 and I can tell you that even if you take a long ass break, you will still eventually want to come back if they release good enough content or to meet your old friends that you haven't talked to for years, or for them to make money again. Hope I helped
I got my bf into the game and he came to similar conclusions. He got the membership because he is really enjoying the game but it does leave a bad taste in your mouth
Even worse, the game was recently acquired by Gamigo. If you don't know their history, would recommend Josh Strife's video on them. Gamigo has been known to be the "Graveyard" of mmo's cause once Gamigo acquires a game, they milk them dry and once they're no longer profitable, they leave them to die. Which is what happened to games like Twin Saga. They also own games like Rift.
Even WoW had a paywall but it was at lv 20. Assuming Microsoft has plans to put WoW on gamepass. Wizard101's paywall is around level 8 which is ridiculous. The game passed Dragonspyre fwels like DLC. It would make sense for all of arc one to be free. Seriously, it sucks being in places like Polaris or Khrysalis and see nothinf but emptiness.
It's worth noting for those that are new to the game that you can earn crowns by daily rewards once you have reached level 12, but I have been told that you barely earn any crowns anyways this way.
I would like to mention that while you can purchase the zones permanently with crowns, and that Wizard City is relatively affordable with it only taking 2250 Crowns to unlock ( which translates to 23 days of trivia) every single world after that is incredibly expensive, taking at least 3000 crowns and all the world's past Arc 2 require around 10000 Crowns.
It is still insane to this day that the worlds of the first story arc aren’t free to play. They’ve got so much content locked behind membership today, that at least for replayability’s sake let people have access to a few more worlds. I’m glad that other people see how unfair this is to the newcoming and pre-existing players and I would argue it impairs the game’s overall potential for player interaction.
i feel like if you're going to make it so that after the first like 15 minutes people have to pay a monthly membership just to play the game you should just make the game payed at that point
i've been playing this game on and off since i was a kid in 2009 and it's absolutely wild to me that the first 50 levels still aren't free for everyone with how much content there is after that (and out of the 130 levels worth of content i've played the first 60 are where the game peaks anyway). the amount of stuff they gave you for free even back in the day was super scarce, and there wasn't a way to earn crowns for free or buy the member potion. wizard city alone should have always been entirely free. monetization is definitely awful but the saving grace is that unless you are a minmaxing pvper you can do without paying for most premium items. a lot of them are farmable from bosses, not even worth buying, or in the case of pets, can be obtained via breeding your pet with someone who has the premium pet you want. pretty much all gear you would actually want to use for pve is obtainable from difficult dungeons or crafting, at least in my experience, but i haven't played in a few years and only recently got back into it. not sure how much damage that chinese company buying the game did.
Yeah, the community has been begging for the first arc being free for a while now, we will have to see what the devs will do going forward. I hope they will understand the community :) they could revive the game so easily! PS: you can also buy permanent mounts for a kinda small amount of gold (40k) + the membership goes 50% off about every 2 months so you can just wait for that and you can easily to almost max within that 1 month if you like the game for only 5 dollars. PSS: KingsIsle got bought from MGI for 126mil in 2020 or 2021 i dont remember, so they will have to keep going either way to earn back the money, they still kept most of the employees as I understood as well. So the 5 dollars is worth it if you like the game and you like the grind + a funny ass community. I've been here since 2010 and I can tell you that even if you take a long ass break, you will still eventually want to come back if they release good enough content or to meet your old friends that you haven't talked to for years, or for them to make money again. Hope I helped
Appreciate your insights, I agree hopefully they make the right decisions moving forward
I got my bf into the game and he came to similar conclusions. He got the membership because he is really enjoying the game but it does leave a bad taste in your mouth
Even worse, the game was recently acquired by Gamigo. If you don't know their history, would recommend Josh Strife's video on them. Gamigo has been known to be the "Graveyard" of mmo's cause once Gamigo acquires a game, they milk them dry and once they're no longer profitable, they leave them to die. Which is what happened to games like Twin Saga. They also own games like Rift.
Even WoW had a paywall but it was at lv 20. Assuming Microsoft has plans to put WoW on gamepass. Wizard101's paywall is around level 8 which is ridiculous. The game passed Dragonspyre fwels like DLC. It would make sense for all of arc one to be free. Seriously, it sucks being in places like Polaris or Khrysalis and see nothinf but emptiness.