Wizard 101 Part 2: The Tutorial. 'Welcome to the Spiral'
Pretty, huh? yeah. That's the loading screen for your journey into Hogwarts... Er Ravenwood Wizard School of Magical Arts!
When first you enter the game, you're given the options to choose your gender right off, and a little quiz to pick your school. Your typical internet meme "Which element are you?" sort of fun and fluff. This you can skip, though, if you just want to pick a school of choice that you've got your heart on. Once that's chosen, you go to the creator for your appearance. You can change your faces and hair styles. Sadly, no eye color option changes. So if you had your heart set on an intense gazed, green eyed lass, well... You may not get it. That intense gaze might wind up paired up with grey eyes. Lucky me, Thomas has grey eyes AND an intense gaze. So I lucked out.
They've added more hair styles since I first created Taliesen and Thomas, damnit, and there's no way to change these outside of rerolling. And yeah, no. After you have your face chosen, you're given the option to change the colors of your hat, your robe and your shoes. Then sent to choose your name.
Naming is pretty much standard kid's game, fare. They want to make sure you don't name your kid "Screaming Dildo d00d!' or something further horrendous like that. So you have three wheels of choices.
A First name, and two words for your surname. So you can have "Becky ThunderDragon" or something like this.
Taliesen is of course way too obscure, so I wound up going with Finnigan Willowleaf. (He's a life mage, after all) Thomas is Thomas Dreamcatcher. (He's a Storm/Mythic mage.)
And for kicks, for tutorial/post purposes, I made a version of Justin because I wanted to play with fire. Justin likes dragons so I made him Justin Dragonfriend.
Any ways, into the tutorial!
Pretty basic. Your first day of school seems harmless and non-descript!
And you're introduced to Albus Dumbledore... er Headmaster Ambrose. He greets you and prepares to show you the ropes, however, doom is afoot!
The clouds get spooky, an ominous shadow appears in the tower window and OOOOOOOH! Dun duhhh duhn! An evil wizard appears!
Dumbl... er Ambrose takes no time in hurrying a brand new student fresh off the streets into the thick of things. Trial by fire, huh? Sure, right! Great way to see if you really belong in the shcool, right? Right!
You're herded into battle after a brief explanation of how to move around with the WASD standard movements and into another explanation of how the card selection battle works.
And you're greeted by... this guy... OMG! Snape and Voldemort's love child..
This is your enemy! Make note. He's bad. Can't you tell?
Thankfully Albu.. Ambrose isn't going to throw you to the veritable wolves all alone. Thanks, old wizard trope! He's basically there to inspire you and guide you like Gandalf.... but sits back and lets you get the tar beaten out of you by evil-wizard Vol... Yeah, that guy across from you.
Combat isn't twitch based or even on a cooldown method. Nope. It's nifty cards that you pick and choose to place in your deck and customize for how you want your wizard's abilities to work. I like this, personally. It's slow and easy going and turn-based. You select your card and click 'done' and that's when the magic happens. A bit like Battle Chess. You get spectacular spell effects when you cast them.
While Justin casts fire elements, the tutorial for some reason gave me a Troll.... so I trolled the villain's mobs. "TROLLOLOLOLOL!"
Gandal... er Ambrose in true 'old wizard tropey' style stands back while I get my butt kicked so he can graciously explain to me "Hey! You're hurt! Check this out! If you have no HP or mana, you're screwed!" (This might explain why he gave me the Troll.....)
Justin did have a fire cat in his pocket to cast... So commence, fire awesome!
About this point, Ambrose woke up and noticed I was keeling over here and offered *GASP* Help!
He threw me a unicorn healing card at the last minute to save my newblet bacon! Nice to know the trope isn't TOTALLY heartlessly, impassively standing on the sidelines watching like a mastermind of fantasy .. whatever.
He goes on to explain that powers have 'pips' that are used in casting. As you go through combat, you gain pips to power you up and give you more access to higher cards. Think of the buildups in Secret World or City of Heroes' Street Justice (build, build, build powers. By using zero casting cards or passing.) then spend it on bigger powers.
Justin wants this power when he grows up!
With Ambrose's help after the Phoenix attack beat me to a pulp again, Justin is handed a raging comet of awesome power and proceeds to kick .. .er, well, not kick Malistare's ass.... just make a show of 'yeah, I have badass old guy wizard on my side. Run away!" Which he does in true villainous fashion!
And from here, you're patted on the shoulder, told what a good boy/girl you are and given your wand, your spell book and told how you can chat since you're standing there mutely in response to his praise.
Chat involves the pull down tabs or severely filtered chat engine for free-folks. If you're a subscriber, you actually get to say a lot more. You STILL can't swear! Geez... talk about oppression! You'd think it was protecting the children or something! ;)
And from here, you're herded out into the world to start your first day.... hopefully with less.. .eventfulness.
