And give in an in-depth look I have! I've struggled with how to start this section of the Atlas entry for a while, probably because I've found it so easy to keep dipping back into Wizard101 to explore it some more -- for a variety of reasons, but as is the format I'm not going to discuss the game's positives and negatives until we get to the conclusion.

However, I will make a fairly strong statement to start this off with. Wizard101 is very much an "MMORPG" rather than a virtual world. The distinction is loose -- we have a lot of trouble with that on Worlds in Motion! -- but sometimes it makes sense to separate them out. With Wizard101 the reason I want to make the distinction is that the game is very much based around playing a character who fights enemies and goes on quests to level up (and vice versa), rather than any concept of creating a community.

In fact, sometimes when I think about it (personally) I consider the distinction to be that in MMORPGs you can often spend most of your time playing alone in the world, where virtual worlds tend to "force" some socialization upon you (usually because they're so boring without doing so). Wizard101 offers instantly such a list of things to do it makes me think of World of Warcraft before I think of anything else.

Ahem! But moving on. Wizard101 isn't especially clear on its website, but to play you have to download a client, from which you play the game. The download is quick, but if you're used to playing MMORPGs the experience of starting the game up each time is familiar -- you usually have to spend a while downloading the latest patch before you can finally run it -- but once you're in everything is pretty streamlined.

After creating my character using the game's very cute Q&A style character creator (it made me think of playing Ultima games "back in the day", which may or may not resonate with you) I ended up with an ice mage called "Scot Frostglen" (you can't create your own name, instead selecting from a small amount of possible names, which can be mixed and matched.)

Scot headed off on his adventure -- which borrows heavily from the Harry Potter mythos, lets not beat around the bush, here -- and quickly learned how to fight with enemies, which involves a turn-based sort-of "card-battle" system.

I don’t consider this an especially important quibble, so I'll place it here rather than in the conclusion, but I was disappointed with the card-battle system. Perhaps incorrectly when I saw it -- you use a series of cards to cast spells, summon monsters, etc. -- that it would be a rather deep system, if not Magic: The Gathering then at least the Pokemon CCG.

Alas, it was not to be. Turn-based battles pan out like they do in nearly any RPG (especially those of the Japanese persuasion, though Wizard101 couldn't be further from a Japanese game in aesthetic) with cards really only limiting your choice of what you can do each turn. Summoned monsters last a turn and everything you do costs mana (which we'll discuss in a minute).

One interesting thing is that as you run around the world you can see everyone who is involved in a turn-based battle (there aren't instanced) so can join in at any point -- notably, whether you'd like to or not (it doesn't make sense to run through the middle of someone else's battle, though, so that's my bad, really).

As a result, the game has a strange sort of dynamic. Characters are split up into classes that roughly mimic the usual MMORPG archetypes -- ice wizards are (supposedly) tanks, fire wizards damage dealers, etc. In the turn based format (and, admittedly, in the still early stages of the game that I am playing) it doesn't seem to entirely make sense, nor do the other players seem to be making much of it (ice wizards should, I guess, be spending most of their turns "aggro"-ing enemies, but that's kind of boring).

As everything you do costs mana, you have to replenish it regularly, something which is, unusually, done by taking part in minigames. These games are largely fun and well put together, but in the context just seem like a timesink. You can replenish you mana by running around and collecting glowing orbs in the world's safe zones, but that's more tedious (unless you manage to pick up a lot while running errands anyway.)

In my time playing Wizard101 I've explored a few zones, fought a lot of battles, collected a lot of loot and beat several quests, but what's interesting is that as a result I didn't do a lot of interaction with other players, bar some occasional battles together. There are a lot of players in the world -- it's obviously popular -- but everyone seems to be doing their own thing.

So what does that mean? I'll draw my conclusions next time!