Worst MMO Ever? - Wizard 101

i summon dark magician in attack position dark magician attack his life points directly ladies and gentlemen welcome i'm josh strauthays i've spent years playing the best mmo games available now it's time to do the opposite and find the worst of the worst i'm going gonna play them all so you don't have to join me on a journey through the most awful mmos i can find drop a like on the vid and sub the channel for more awful mmos and ring the bell so you don't miss a single video a huge thank you to all my supporters on patreon and twitch who make all my content possible links to both are below right let's begin today we are playing wizard 101. now i've never played this before even as a kid and i've had lots of people recommending it to me so i actually went into this one with pretty high expectations first thing you notice is the main website is very very colorful this looks like something straight from the late 90s early 2000s educational era i'm getting very legend of the zoombinis vibes but it's free so let's make an account wizard101 is all about magic and spells so we have to choose whether we are a boy wizard or a girl wizard this is a somewhat limited choice guys plus boy wizards wear blue and girl wizards wear pink not really pushing the boat out too much on this one are we now for a name ah right this is one of those games kind of like horse riding tales where you can't actually choose your own name you've got to create a name from a pre-selected bank of names you've got your first name and then two surnames this is a system used by companies to make sure no one ever makes anything rude and no one corrupts the virtue of its mostly child players so i spend some time trying to make something rude but i don't get too far eventually i just settle with richard because it shortens to dick and that makes me chuckle next up we have to choose a wizard type which major element we are going to follow you've got your standard magical schools like fire or ice or nature but you've also got myth or death oh yes let's do death necromancy all the way so the username josh striphaze is taken because i honestly downloaded this before christmas and signed up using a burner email then i never got around to playing it and forgot the burn email so i'm forced to go with josh streifhay's 2. the game begins we are thrown into the character creation system and a booming discount dumbledore talks us through it i find this really odd because all the choices we just made like gender name and wizard school we have to make again so there was no reason to choose anything earlier at all this overlay is a mix of charming and nursery school levels of design these overlay icons do look like they were drawn by a child but they are super simple to understand for any language so i've got to give the game props for being accessible it's very easy to see what does what and i mean the customization isn't awful you can change your hair robes eyes hat all the standard stuff you'd expect i've played worse character creators now we meet hedwig i mean gamma the owl she shouts some stuff at us and then not dumbledore says some more things and it becomes incredibly obvious that gamma and dumbledore are both very good voice actors using very different microphones the audio quality between the voices in this game vary wildly the actual quality of the voice acting is very very good as we'll hear but the quality of the equipment used is just all over the shop character made and we begin third person action adventure was movement but a and d are not strafe they are turn which is a control scheme i hate so i press escape to open the menu and remap the keys and nope pressing escape does not bring up any kind of menu at least not at the start of the game so there is no changing the keybinds chat to gamer the owl you run up to npcs and press x to interact which is an odd choice of key but okay she explains the basic plot and again voice acting is pretty damn good also it started raining and there's a storm happening and the ambient sounds and general weather effects are fine so we head over and inside this big magical tower inside we meet the evilest man who has ever eviled look at this dude this is the power of art direction he doesn't need to say anything and you know this guy is evil his name is also malastare because subtlety is not this game's strong point this is also the moment you really realize they definitely hired professional voice actors because almost every voiced character in this game is brilliant i mean listen to how evil malastar sounds you are no longer welcome here why have you returned i'm here to resolve our unfinished business is this your latest student my henchman will see to your little friend hurry along young wizard take this deck of spill cards and deal with those creatures while i tend to malice dare himself don't be so sure of yourself old man run up and confront them be brave i will guide you this is something we'll come back to often voice acting in wizard101 is top notch and now the game really begins and we discover what wizard101 really is because while it might look like an mmorpg it's not it's actually a card game i was not expecting this at all i came into this completely blind and i was just expecting a run-of-the-mill copy-paste mmo with small overworld sections and collect x or kill x quests like tale of toast or horse riding tails but what i got was actually a really really well designed card game so my geeky background is very card game heavy i've played pokemon and yu-gi-oh and i used to play match at the gathering at tournament level so the moment i saw this i was like yes tactical deck building and card games let's do this then i remembered how much money i've spent on card games over the years and realized ah right i can see where this is going to go to anyway let's look at the card game itself the arena is divided into eight positioning circles split into four versus four in a one-on-one fight you just face a single enemy each turn you draw a card and cast spells some spells hurt the enemy some spells heal your own health some will power up your next attack casting spells requires pips and you gain a pip every turn so not casting a spell on a turn lets you save your pips up for better spells it's like magic's land system casting a spell makes the animation of the spell play through and you get to watch the damage being done and these animations are good seriously they're not too long they're just detailed enough they're chunky and stylized they are a pleasure to watch they don't slow the game down too much while adding real character and depth to each spell i like this a lot actually in the bottom left you can see your hp in red and mana which is your spellcasting power in blue because diablo mastered this system many years ago and no one has ever seen any reason to differ from it there's even a freaking unicorn spell that gives me health back yes unicorns stab me with your magical health giving horn some spells apply buffs to your next attack of a certain element or debuffs to an enemy's next attack against you meaning stacking spells upon spells is a legitimate tactic and good lord look at this slo-mo centaur arrow animation that's cool and then there's these three little pigs but they're ninjas three ninja pigs that is the sign of a good game look honestly within five minutes of actually playing this card game i was enjoying it there's a balanced resource system that slowly gets more complex over time damage healing and effect cards and slick animations to go with each one so far this plays better than pokemon come at me fanboys i meant what i said one of the best parts of this card game is it embraces an aspect that you can't do with paper card games it allows some variation within damage on the cards so a specific attack might do between 40 to 50 damage this isn't possible in paper as it would involve too many dice but in a pc game the calculations are all done for you so wizard101 is actually allowing very slight element of tactical randomness within a defined range this change means it stands out from other card games it's still tactical but you need to choose between an attack that might kill the enemy or one that definitely will kill the enemy and balance that choice with what card you'd rather have later i win the first fight because i mean it's scripted and you can't lose and now i try to chat but ah it's mostly canned chat for the young kids that's understandable not dumbledore now tells us we did so well defeating malestar this must mean we have a special destiny ahead of us my god i hope it involves casting exodia now we begin the game proper and the first surprising thing is how many other players there are around even in the starting zone this is more populated than most games i've played on this series as standard a yellow exclamation mark above a character means there's a quest because unique design is hard and this quest sends us to stop the undead incursion in unicorn way i mean at least it's not killing rats i'm still impressed by how every character even seemingly minor side characters are fully voiced oh and picking up this piece of wood unlocks the crafting tutorial i will try and look into this later if i have more time but a quick glance around the menu shows me crafting probably involves combining stuff you pick up with other stuff to make things probably potions or more cards for your deck pretty standard stuff the spellbook is now also unlocked which is how we navigate through every menu and it's both surprisingly easy to navigate using the tabs on the side and remarkably detailed everything is chunky and easy to read laid out nicely and i imagine all the info you need about your cards and decks is in here there's nothing wrong with this i mean it might be quite garish at first glance but it's not technically bad oh one aspect i do love is how if you open your question and you can see all the quests you own choose which one to track and that affects the floating arrow at the bottom of the screen and you can go back and re-read all of the dialogue that's been in the quest so far this is a super simple system that more games should have and now i get to marvel at the combat or more specifically how they've managed to integrate a turn-based battle system into a real-time world you see the maps in wizard101 aren't huge there's no expansive overworld the game is divided into smaller sections which are all essentially linear paths from a to b with battle circles placed along them and when you bump into an enemy you and the enemy will run to the nearest battle circle and begin a duel but you can still see all the other players and enemies walking around in real time but remember how there's four circles for players and four for enemies if another player sees you involved in a duel they can run into your battle circle and just join in and if another enemy walks over they'll be added to the opponents then each turn is chosen and all the spells are cast and the battle just kind of goes from there this i have to be honest is a brilliant system you see each enemy position has a symbol on the battle circle so you can refer to the dagger enemy or the spiral enemy and some player spells hit all the enemies so you can always join in and help then after a fight is over you'll appear transparent for a bit and be safe from any enemy attacks plus in every single area you can only be attacked in the middle of the road and sticking to the paths around the side means you will avoid all fights once you're out of a fight you've also got these red and blue floating orbs around the place that refill your health and your manner so you can restock after a duel we'll look at this system a bit more later on for a first quest we're told to report to a guard again the voice acting is stellar and they send us to chat to seren then olivia joins in seriously they've got theater standard actors for this it is super good dialogue just listen oh hey there i'm sarah you're new here aren't you well i for one am very glad you're here now we're given a map and wow this is charming this map might show how small and linear the instances are but it also reminds me of those cartoonified theme park maps you'd get as a kid with all the little drawings and stylized forests and rides on this is very very clearly aimed at children because all the aesthetics are pushing it toward child friendly but it's got superb voice acting and a very well made card game in it so while it's aimed at kids in a very superficial aspect it's not childlike in its mechanics or its technical presentation the card game itself so far seems solid more tutorials explains main quests shown by a star and side quests now to mmo vets we know the difference but the game is taking steps to make sure anyone new to the genre understands exactly what's going on and as someone who makes tutorials i can appreciate the attention to detail they are doing here first glitch now and i get dragged halfway across the map and thrown into combat like i was summoned from streets away to get involved in this specific battle you know what oh well the actual group combat works fine so i don't really mind it as long as this glitch doesn't happen again follow the quest through which is done by just following the arrow at the bottom of the screen and fighting whatever i need to fight or picking up x amount of objects but unlike the how to train your dragon quest arrow this one actually updates often and is pretty accurate for now completing the first quest gets me my first item a ring items can have health or mana or damage bonuses to certain magical elements on them there is nothing too groundbreaking here but it's easy enough for kids to follow and varied enough that tactics might eventually matter head back to saren and let them know we've done a few quests and again i really enjoy the dry wit and the sarcasm in the voice acting oh wow you made it back the pirates warned about a rattle in the darkness see this is what i was talking about pirates are always creepy and frustratingly vague what is clear is that some evil magic has emerged here and we're going to need more than a handful of guards to stop it the plot now takes us to find lady oriole who is apparently the head of fairies and hiding in the hedge maze at the end of the map so i run to the end of the map very very linear and very very small but thankfully you can stick to the paths and avoid combat if you want to this however is the worst hedge maze i've ever seen this is crap it's not even a maze it's just an elaborate hedge cut into a pattern there's no entrances or exits i have a very high tolerance for children's games taking liberties with design but to call this a hedge maze is just wrong what you have here is some hedge the fairy queen lets us know that the good fairies have been corrupted and we need to save them by breaking the bone cages set up along the street then fighting some corrupted fairies and gathering fairy dust translation interact with some objects and win some card games they've not really gone too far from the established mmo quest convention here quests aren't really quests they're just repetitive tasks then i hear what sounds like a rubber duck and yep someone rides past me on a rubber duck mount oh good it's nice to know the game will sell out the wizardy aesthetic to push premium cash shop mounts and oh don't worry we'll be looking at the cash shop later i run back down the street opening the bone cages and collecting fairy dust a few times i run into and join fights that are halfway done but it seems if you don't contribute enough then you don't get any rewards for being there so if you're just trying to power through a quest it's kind of a waste of time by now i'm actually getting quite strong pokemon stadium vibes so far as each fight is announced we face each other we call for the monster and we get to watch a cool animation play the fights themselves are fun honestly the actual combat is more fun than the connecting travel and game more on this later do the quest head back and bump into the first major graphical glitch where this fairy model appears twice and overlaps itself resulting in this lovecraftian monstrosity of wings and limbs if this were an actual intentional enemy it would be quite creepy but it's not carry on with the quest and turns out the undead invasion is likely the doing of rattle bones the evil skeletons so we go back to saren again and they send us to a tower at the end of the path and we have to fight the first boss now every map plays out like this complete a load of smaller fetch quests within a given area then fight the boss at the end lather rinse repeat oh and the boss seems to allow four players to enter at once but i decide to go ahead and try and solo this the fight itself is fine occasionally you however or the enemy will fail a spell and it will just say fizzle this seems to be at random and it's very very annoying in a game based around tactics i can't think of a single card game or tactical game that has a chance of something just failing at random and anyone going yes this is a good enjoyable fun mechanic beat rattle bones and pick up some evil book and when we go back outside the scenery has changed because the evil influence is gone i like this visual storytelling environmental changes based on narrative events good one designers saren now tells us to go to the commons which is the central hub players can all meet at there is a quick teleport button to the bottom right or we can just manually run there but first pressing q opens the quest finder and not only shows us the quest we're currently on it also lets us locate any nearby quests so wherever you are in the world you'll always be able to find something to do i want to finish a few more things while i'm here so i set off to find orion a guard friend of connolly who needs to be rescued orion is hiding in a house and wants us to go and kill lady black hope apparently a powerful and scary lich and can we just take a second to admire this painting of a dog dressed as a naval admiral that is fantastic if i could furnish every house in every mmo i play with that picture i would do back on the quest the lady black hope tracker sends us to another tower because designing environments takes time so once you've got one good tower you may as well use it many many times and i'm getting very strong tim burton vibes from the character design here very corpse bride beat her pretty easy and head back to ryan he's thrilled to know she's dead let god connolly know and he sends us off to another sidequest to rescue somebody else look when your gameplay mainly consists of turn-based card games you don't really have that much scope for questing shenanigans every quest is defeat x amount of enemies or save someone by defeating a specific enemy but anyway off we go the quest says i need to save dorothy and she'll be easy to find because she's in the house with the lights on but clearly the designers didn't read the quest text because all the houses have lights on they are the same house model i only know where to go because i can follow the quest arrow inside dorothy is surrounded by a tin man and a giant humanoid dog called toto who also happens to be dressed like an absolute gent oh no i have a horrible feeling i don't know why but i just think it's only going to get more furry as we play look these early quests are just busy work back and forth from place to place there's nothing of note here so once they're all handed in we go off toward the commons on my way i spot this badger called brandon mistborn this is the most obvious homage to a fantasy author i've so far seen for anyone unsure brandon sanderson writes the mistborn fantasy series now i didn't realize it at the time but this game is actually packed with npc references to other famous fantasy things see how many you can spot if you play here's the first mechanical problem opening a shop with an npc brings up the shop window but pressing escape on my keyboard doesn't close the shop window it only opens the game menu which we now have access to and pressing escape again closes the game menu but leaves the shop interface up quick design note pressing escape should exit any in-game overlay the player has open now the commons is packed with players and i can't help but feel the fantasy wizard aesthetic is dulled somewhat by this giant mech suit this seems overpowered anyway i'm off to meet someone called harold and it seems harold is a dog and the furry domination continues harold tells me to take the book i found to the headmaster but then he introduces me to treasure cards which are super powerful one-time use cards that can help me in battle which i need to either buy from the premium store or get through crafting using reagents that i buy from the premium store and i can see how this is going to go head over to the headmaster and let him know i've dealt with the incursion on unicorn way and i found this cool book he thanks me and sends me to study some more you think a young wizard would finish their training before taking on hordes of the undead but not here maybe this is more on the job training we now learn about potions which can be used to refill our health or manner in battle and they refill themselves by playing mini games or distractions at the fun fair might do that later might not don't know so this is the main city and it's really busy it's so busy in fact that sometimes bodies just don't load and players are disembodied floating eyes and eyebrows drifting around just flat faces moving through a city i'm sent to meet some more npcs and this guy lincoln looks suspiciously like the stalk from the old disney robin hood cartoon then we go along and meet all the teachers from all the specific schools and everyone looks like they've been ripped off from somewhere also the dog is the same model as toto earlier in a nice storytelling touch however the death school is led by a young student because the previous professor blew himself and the school up i'd go to the death school or in a nice design touch as the game says the crater where the death school until recently used to be and learn some more spells basically you can learn spells from your own school for free to add to your deck but you have to pay to learn spells from other schools so you can build a deck of any cards you like you're just limited to what you can afford in the early game oh we also have a dorm room now which is just player housing i imagine you can kick this out quite nicely there's also a bank chest in here too nothing wrong with this mechanically the overlay graphics especially the hand-drawn characters on the map or the menu screens are really starting to remind me of the old vimto style tv adverts or don hertzfeldt's animation style the creepy artist who made the my spoon is too big video so these are adorable but also rather unsettling back to the headmaster after all of this he sends me off to old town then we get some icons appear on the right npcs that want us to find and talk to them one of them is a super suave italian stallion this is diego the pvp master and he is so smooth i am absolutely trying some pvp before this video finishes there's also this npc a way too excited preteen girl who offers to show me around town and wanting to avoid appearing on any police watch lists i decline and explore by myself instead so the main city is big it's also not all loaded onto one map and you have to travel between the various city sections now a seasoned player will know which part of the city contains what but as a new player i can see the icons for the map i'm on but have no way of knowing what's in any other part of the city you have to actually go there for your map to update one small technical issue while traveling around it again becomes super obvious just how many players this game still has these zones while shared are as busy as they've ever been there are people round every corner my next few quests send me to talk to this guard who explains about pets animal companions that will fight alongside you but also get tired and need feeding oh good another system i need to keep track of and will no doubt be able to pay real money to improve then we go into this tower and battle old judd the most voodoo punk looking baron sammedy rip-off ever while the character design in the game may be nice it feels very derivative of characters that already exist one great thing about fantasy is you can create your own stuff game you don't need to copy everything another issue with combat is if i'm the only person involved in the fight you don't need the 30 second timer on my turn i understand that in a public shared map you need turn timers for matches to not drag but when it's just me soloing a boss let me take my time card games always have multiple lines of play and tactics matter so let me make tactical choices also let me read the damn cards 30 seconds is not enough time for this i know i can win these early fights by just clicking basically any spell but you should start how you intend to go on and you should teach your players the value of time tactical choices oh also we now have a pet which cannot be manually named either and is given a randomly assigned name mine got shaggy beatrix which is better than anything i could have come up with myself oh and now you actually get to play as your pet because you need to sneak through the bars on a gate and find a key to unlock a door which only the pet can fit through this honestly doesn't add anything of value to the game there is no unique gameplay element when you are the pet it's just a small section of walk over here now walk back over there nothing optimal opens up playing as an animal has a world of possibility and you've used absolutely none of it now a bit of humor here and i love this i have to admit the game's humor so far is absolutely my sense of humor this bit actually made me laugh out loud you need to crack a combination lock so the wizard you're with tries zero zero zero zero zero one which doesn't work so they try zero zero zero zero two which doesn't work and then they get annoyed and give up so you as the pet go and talk to the animals in the tower to get the code turns out the code is zero zero zero zero zero three that actually made me laugh the pet now has talents which are unique pet attacks that can help you in combat however using the pet's talents reduces the pet's happiness and you can refill the happiness by have a guess did you say paying real money because you're right another graphical overlay glitch now i leveled up the moment this dialog box opened and the close the level up x is covered by the dialog box which traps me in a conversation loop maybe you need to revisit how these uis interact with each other game okay by now i'm still having fun but i'm beginning to see the flaws this game is going to have there are so so many systems now it's getting a bit overwhelming remember when i reviewed league of angels and it just throws everything at you at once well wizard101 doesn't go as far as that but it definitely has the same design principle you have health and mana and cards and a second deck and one-time treasure cards and pips and pets and pet energy and food and resources and mounts and player housing there's a lot of systems within systems here and i just know it's going to get to a point where they all hit a paywall i am making this prediction right now before i finish this review i will without trying hit some kind of paywall let's see if i'm right i accept all the quests local to me and set off to complete as many as i can mainly just by following the arrow and powering through them storm street is in trouble for some reason so we are heading there you know for a city full of powerful wizards and professors and brimming with guards the undead sure have made a serious dent in city real estate what is the point of having guards and powerful wizards if they are not going to stop an invasion by now i'm beginning to understand the problems with this game the actual card game the core battling system is good it's not explained well enough to do justice to how good it is actually you never get shown what elements are on cards or how pips interact with each other or how to cue up spells the mechanics of the system are sound but the game just really doesn't show the strengths of it plus honestly the walking around bit the traveling from place to place that's the weakest bit of the game this is a card game it's a darn good card game the bits in between the card games they're quite boring now we meet duncan i like duncan he has a good sense of humor and the voice acting continues to be terrific i played for a bit more and now it's just become really obvious how many buy systems are in this game how many things you'll slowly run out of but be able to buy with real money want better equipment yeah you can just earn it or you can buy it with premium currency of crowns or you can buy better pets or cards or booster packs or reagents or mounts or more mana or more item storage there seems to be nothing in this game that isn't monetized and just like any actual card game more money means more victory but forget the pay to win aspect for a moment and just look at this purely as a casual player the best part without a doubt was joining the four player battles against multiple enemies healing your fellow players discussing tactics taking down groups of enemies it did make the drop in and play style extremely accessible and the mid-level fights were really challenging and fun the quests aren't anything to write home about travel along a linear path kill enemies in a card game find item find more items take them to people you basically get the gameplay by now and the pve is just a series of story beats to move you from card game to card game this is an on rails adventure it's just a decent card game on top of that if i stopped following the main storyline it's not like i could go and explore somewhere else or journey to another world it's not a freeform mmo it's a linear story with a card battling mechanic now the main city is large for a city but when you realize that's the main hub of the game it becomes apparent that it's actually quite limiting if this was a city and there was miles of wilderness around it to explore then great but that isn't the case here this is where most of the game seems to be contained oh and if you're in a fight and you want to flee whether you're solo or in a group you need to wait until it's your turn and choosing flea drains you of all your manner meaning you can't get involved in any other fights until you refill and find the blue orbs floating around the side so fleeing isn't a good idea and in later areas enemies seem to travel in larger groups so aggroing one starts a fight against two or three you have to hope someone decides to join in and help you so like wizard101 you need to like turn based card games because that's the core mechanic it just so happens that i do very much like turn based card games first bug with the direction arrow when the map you're on has two levels because it is never quite sure whether to point you toward the person or the teleporter that takes you close to the person and will switch between the two quite quickly i do love how when collecting items from the side of the road i can just watch the other fights play out in real time and i can still see their animations i feel if they were going to make a pokemon mmo this is absolutely the system they should build on another message from diego the jewel master pops up he really wants to see me so i will definitely go and find him as soon as i'm back in town i get involved in some more fights and i try and look for some more areas i could improve in the game the pips your player has are shown as orbs of light around your battle circle but they really need to be numbered somewhere obvious on the screen you see it's a beautiful ui but it's not always the most functional and when playing a card game function matters quite a lot kill the mobs get the items charge the magical mcguffin save storm street head back and talk to the npcs it's all kind of the same to be honest seems that young susie was attacked by the harvest lord in galvanost tower and because the game has worked out that the travel is boring and the fights are fun you can now just use a teleporter to go straight there it's another boss tower which again i'm gonna try and just solo the tactical part of this game is good i need to actually heal myself in this fight and power up some spells or save some pips this isn't just a mindless steamroll victory although i hate when i spell fizzles random 100 failure shouldn't happen in a tactical decision based game so i win and this time i get a loot chest which gives me some cool boots and then i'm asked if i want to spend 50 crowns to roll again and get even more loot or pay to win here we go well i've got some free crowns so i re-roll i get the same boots again so let's examine the crown store i click buy crowns and the game freezes wow this is the first time i've ever played a game where the in-game cash store wasn't the most optimized thing ever but while you're on the website check this out you can earn free crowns by taking trivia tests you see wizard101 is aimed at kids and it seems they do actually value education somewhat so instead of just buying currency you can instead choose to take multiple choice tests and earn some in-game crowns the available tests cover a range of topics from maths to literature history or geography and if you do well you get currency i can't fault this you're rewarding kids for learning stuff good on your wizard101 well i'm a grown adult i think i'm quite smart so i'll take the colors test because i'm pretty confident i know what colors are what i um i have never even heard half these words they're asking me the meaning of i mean i'm not even sure if half these words are real so needless to say i did not do very well on the colors test and i earned no crowns you know what doesn't matter because at least i've got those boots from the chest which i can't equip because they're for ice school wizards only fantastic not only did i pay for a loot reroll but both bits of loot i got are useless thank you wizard101 go back and talk to susie about the whole problem with storm street she says it's the tempest nexus well of course it is susie it's always the tempest nexus god come on get it together then christmas happened in real life so i get to log out enjoy a few days of not playing this and then log back in now the moment you log back in as with almost any free mmo you are shown an advert for the cash shop so let's give this a quick glance over the premium currency is crowns you can also see on the shop screen we have some recommended items for our levels i wonder how much they cost us this candied ram mount is seven thousand five hundred crowns the cheapest way to get that would be ten dollars and five dollars of crowns so a 15 amount that's standard for most bigger mmos to be fair but here's a feature i really respect they actually show you the conversion rate of money you are spending to crowns you are getting so as you buy more you know what kind of deal you're getting that's a classy move i like that now crowns can buy just about everything in the game cards card packs boosters mounts pets even just straight up gold elixirs or potion boosts cosmetic overrides just everything also this overlord costume looks exactly like m bison from the street fighter movie so it's the only thing i'd completely consider buying you can buy better houses or crafting reagents or recipes look this is the perfect example of pay to win there is nothing in this game you can't improve with money because the core game mechanic is card game i know from experience that spending more money on a deck means you win more i played junned in modern for god's sake anyway i go and find susie she explains the nexus is unstable and sends us to bail strum we now get shown the mark and return function which is an amazing system that should be in every game ever you are allowed to mark where you are then later you can spend a small amount of manner to return to wherever you marked this deletes the mark so you can now go mark somewhere else this saves so much time and because you can only set one mark it's also a strategic choice this is a good system use this more games back to the commons we go and we're off to the storm school because they know a thing or two about tempest nexuses to fix up the nexus rescue susie and save the street we need an item and all that happens in about five minutes just by clicking there is amazingly no card games needed starts raining in the game and the rain graphics aren't awful so we continue on with more linear quests talk to a person defeat enemies in a card game talk to another person repeat i want to find the pvp but as i don't know the map i ask around and to the community's credit they're actually pretty quick at replying i need to go to unicorn way i know i've said this twice but the amount of players in wizard101 is still impressive and will be even more impressive when we see the pvp room clearly the core mechanic of card game is decent enough to keep people around and the added extras of fishing crafting or mini-games are just the cherry on top finally find diego the italian stallion and he shows me the pvp arena and it is packed so pvp is basically 1v1 battles but there's ranked and practice mode pvp seasons are called ages and the winner of a certain age gets some cool stuff so i'd queue up for a one-on-one pvp practice battle and the game tells me it's searching for someone of my skill level so i'm expecting to fight another brand new player i've been in the game about seven hours so far and i haven't spent any money so clearly it knows i'm not that powerful it finds me a match we begin and right you see i have a few hundred hit points and this guy has five thousand my attacks are doing absolutely nothing to him but to his credit this guy does ask me if i need some help and offers to go questing with me to help get me some better equipment if you're watching this kevin dragon heart you are an absolute gent kevin and i chat for a bit trying our best to get around the incredibly restrictive chat filter you can type what you like but so so many words are filtered eventually he ends the duel by just smacking me for 24 000 damage back to the main square and it's alive and well this game seems to have a solid community i spend some time chatting in the main plaza and people seem nice enough to reply you could pick a worse community to be honest and now it happens what i predicted earlier i accept a quest that needs me to go to cyclops alley so i follow the arrow and nope cyclops alley is a premium area i need to either buy the area or be a monthly member to go here here is the paywall i predicted we'd run into it's either going to cost me 750 crowns or to have a monthly membership to access here now i don't have any problem with games having paid for areas or monthly fees elder scrolls online does it and that's one of my favorite mmos my problem is with the fact the game still gave me the quest and still let me accept it there was nothing to tell me oh by the way this is a member's quest it lets you start the adventure and then blocks you instead of telling you at the start i decided to just return to doing what quests i can working my way through my quest logs switching quests to other quests focusing on those sometimes fleeing sometimes draining my mana collecting blue orbs i join a few more team battles but honestly they're a really enjoyable system they are like a break from the rest of the game i like getting involved i like helping i like knowing we're working as a team and i'm dead so when you die other team members can heal you or you can just sit there watching the fight taking up a space i know that i'm taking up a space another more alive player could have but there's no one else around so i just sit there and watch these guys take the enemies down now after about eight hours there is a major difficulty spike up until now i've been able to solo everything and one with some basic tactics but now on this street enemies are so much more powerful they are hitting harder and you basically need a team progress is suddenly a lot slower it's at this moment the game really encourages you to buy card packs there's also some random camera jerking which is quite jarring so i need to quest to get better so my next quest takes me to fire cat ally so i go there and nope another premium area that's two and that's annoyed me having premium areas is fine sneaking them in like this is not this is the same thing that how to train your dragon did you see when you accept a quest there's nothing to tell you it's a premium quest there's nothing in your quest journal that even suggests it might be premium every quest in the journal looks the same every map area link looks the same the only way you know part of the game is premium is when you actually try to go there and for most kids by then they'd have invested time and energy into the quest and want to carry on i find this practice of giving someone a quest they will eventually have to pay to finish quite predatory anyway i'm eight hours in by now and honestly i've not had the worst time wizard 101 is basically a card game yeah there are some mmo elements like quest and equipment and a very loose storyline and potions and leveling up and mini games but if you strip away the excess what you have is a four versus four turn based card game and as a card game it's honestly not bad the large selection of cards the various schools the range of potential damage on a certain card the teamwork element even the animations are really good playing the card game part is fun if you like card games but it is a card game which means it's going to become pay to win eventually and there's a lot of monetized systems here and while they aren't bad themselves like pets or mounts or housing or mana they can all be paid for the act of having premium stuff or membership just sneaks up on you it will get very expensive and it sucks so wizard101 wasn't awful as a game but does have some really questionable monetization tactics and clearly favors those willing to spend a lot of money it's a card game with a rather large community and is definitely friendly but i feel once you've played you'd eventually outgrow it and you'd progress to other more established and better games which is why the final rating for wizard 101 is yugioh out of 10. cheers for watching if you want more worst mmo ever videos then drop a like or sub the channel a massive thank you to all my supporters on patreon and twitch who make all my content possible if you're enjoying the series and would like more you can support the patreon from only one pound a month comment down below with any game you want me to play next then check the video description for links to the patreon twitch twitter and discord and as always have a great day you

Channel: Josh Strife Hayes

Views: 1,903,330

Keywords: worst game every, really bad games, awful video games, mmo game design, worst mmo games every made, best mmo 2020, worst mmo 2020, online gaming, what mmo to avoid, what mmo to play

Id: egetZA0wgIs

Length: 42min 45sec (2565 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 31 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/UndyingMarygold]

I watched this a while ago, the name of the series is called “finding the worst mmo ever” he says a lot of good things about the game and a lot of things about the crown shop

[u/mimi_buns]

Lol this was the video that got me back into W101 after not playing it for so long

[u/ZweiRoseBlu]

He has not seen Diablio Immortal.

[u/Olivermustbehigh]

*you need to buy treasure cards from the crown shop*