Stylish Corpse

I didn’t mean to. Honest, WAR dear, it was unintentional. I sort of slipped and fell right onto Wizard101; one minute I’d only vaguely heard of it, and the next (blame Hudson, and from there blame Tipa) I was making a character. There are no screenshots to document my dalliance, but only because I have no idea how to take them yet.

It’s quite clearly a game aimed at kids, but it’s pretty enjoyable for a jaded adult too, even though the first person I allowed to friend me immediately sent me a tell (or text, as they call it) saying, rather creepily, “Hello pretty.” Immediate image of mustachio-twirling villain leering at heroine tied to train tracks; and other less savoury images. If I’d known what the hell I was doing, I’d have sent him some text back and it wouldn’t have involved anything as mild as “Hello.” Yech.

Fortunately for parents and kids, that kind of stuff can be (and automatically is, if you’re a certain age, I think) pretty stringently controlled.

I lost most of yesterday running around in the bright, cartoonish, only mildly (and deliciously) scary Wizard City. Once I’d decided to try it, the base download was done in a matter of minutes and the game kept downloading in the background while I played. I’m thinking my other MMOs could usefully learn from that, since everything else I might want to try almost always involves an hours-long (if lucky) download of patches and whatnot.

Better yet, it’s free, at least up to a point, which made it even easier to stray. I doubt it’ll hold me for very long but then what does these days, with our busy lives and our craving for change. The trading-card style combat game is rather well done though, and took me back to my MtG (and NWO, VtM, Netrunner, etc etc) days without the attendant expense of actually buying cards.

All in all, a fun bit of weekend game-dalliance. Oddly enough, it makes me look forward to WAR and its greater complexity and meaning. Change is as good as a rest, as they say.