The Test Realm is Up and Running and Upcoming Posts

It's time for our first major update of the year, and that means new things and changes to a variety of other things. Ever wanted to play tag in your home? Two different versions of tag? All that is now possible, plus you'll have power-ups throughout the house. Power-ups include Speed-up, Freeze, Teleport, Disguise, Invisibly, Immunity, and Break Immunity. Although this update won't be available in the Live Game until later this year, there are spell updates, creature updates, and more! No more Insane Bolt in PvP!

It's been awhile, but I'm still here, and I've got some posts for you over the next couple of days that I thought I'd give you a little sneak peek of. Here's what I know for sure that you'll be seeing:

This Week:

Win a Blood Raven Mount and Feature Post Announcement! With this post, I'll offer you the opportunity to win a Blood Raven Mount! You'll also see if you won the Kirin's Hoard/Animated Avatar contest! The discussion thread for the next Feature Post topic will be opened.

Feature Post: Turn by Turn PvP Mechanics. This will definitely be an interesting post, and I'm sure we'll have lots of opinions here. The featured post will be Diana Wildheart's.

High Flying Photo Album. More details later on in the post.

Undecided Time:

Top Five/Ten Mounts! The best of the best - most popular, most easy to navigate, and most beneficial mounts!

Top Ten Badges! The hardest to get, the most clever, and just the best badges in general.

Top Five Houses! Space, size, design, and other factors will show five houses to be better than any others.

The Life of a Gardener. Major post on gardening, links to guides, pictures, and what the best and most rewarding plants are.

Minigames and More. The best minigames and more about other interactive housing items.

In other news, the Test Realm is up an running, and there are several of changes to check out.

Later this year, KingsIsle will be releasing their latest interactive housing feature: the Tag Game! For 2000 Crowns, you can purchase a relatively small tag game from the Crown Shop for your house. If you've got an interactive room with statues, gongs, violins, frying pans, games, tapestries, and who know what else, you've got something new to add. This Tag Game will allow any player in the house to begin the game of tag. To prevent any unfair advantages, everyone will be forced to go "mount-less" through the house, so theoretically, it could be used as a device to do that.

When beginning a game of tag, you'll have two options - Regular Tag or Wildfire Tag. Lets start with regular. Everyone is going to get a message at the top of the screen that says something like "Housing Game: Tag" which first indicates that we'll potentially see more of these games in the future, and multiple games could make up a major update. Under that it will say "Beware: [Name Here]." Whoever happens to be it will be shown on the screen. The "it" person will turn into a Gobbler, so he'll be easily identifiable. When he comes in contact with another player, that player will be it, and the previous tagger will have 15 seconds of immunity to run away. You only have to have one person to start this type of tag.

In Wildfire Tag, one person starts out as "it" and tags as many people as possible. Every person that's tagged also becomes it. The players who are it become Fire Elves in the situation. You need at least three people to start this kind of tag.

There's another twist, though - Power-ups!

Speed up – Allows a player to go 50% faster for 9 seconds
Freeze – Encase all nearby players in a block of ice for 4 seconds
Teleport – Teleports the player to a random location in the current zone
Disguise – If they're not "it", this gives the player the "it" effect without them actually being "it" for 30 seconds. If they're "it", the "it" effect is removed for 30 seconds
Invisibility – Makes the player invisible for 30 seconds
Immunity/Break Immunity – If they're not "it", this makes player immune from being tagged for 15 seconds. If they're "it", this allows them to tag immune players for 15 seconds

Each time you collect a power-ups, a new one shortly respawns elsewhere. The same is true inside the house. The game is only active in the current interior and exterior of the house, so teleporters won't create a multi-house tag game. Here are some other important tag notes from Wizard101 -

All types of Tag games will un-mount you for the duration of the game.
All types of purchased and quest transformations will not appear during a Tag game, but the transformation and mount rental timers will continue to countdown for the duration of the game.
You cannot equip a mount or transformation while you are participating in a Tag game.
You cannot teleport to friends who are playing the same Tag game.
Players who are participating in housing PvP are exempt from the Tag game until they leave the duel.
This feature will not be available on the Live Game until later this year.

The following updates are being made to combat:

Underwater Casting Animation has been repaired and should correctly reflect the type of casting implement you are using.
Rank X spells now use the correct amount of mana for spells outside your school of focus
Area of Effect spells no longer play through if all targets are eliminated before the spell is cast
Pips and spells are no longer being lost if the creature or player they were about to cast a spell on was defeated in combat.
Players can no longer use the mark and recall exploit to escape combat.Resurrected players should no longer display the stars and moons dizzy animation.
Casting a spell that targets no one and that doesn't create a global/minion/etc will no longer take away cards/pips/mana.
Players in combat should no longer appear to have maximum power pips when you approach, or log in to a duel.
Enchanting a card during your turn of a duel will now hold its position in your hand and not re-sort.
Many more music scrolls have been added to duel rewards.

The following updates are being made to spells:

Insane Bolt Treasure Cards now restricted from use in PvP
Mend now has the correct description of outgoing instead of incoming
Icebird & Icezilla Treasure cards can now be bought and sold in the Bazaar
Myth Banshee now does myth damage, as she should!

The following updates are being made to creatures:

Mr Incinerator is now using a storm deck instead of a death deck
Clinker was labelled storm, but used a myth deck. Clinker is now labelled as Myth

The following updates are being made to items:

Snow on the Small Snowy Maple Tree and other snow covered items in the Raven's Hoard pack should once again be white!
Savanna Dream Headwrap's Spell "Spirit Blade" will no longer appear to be cast by your pet
Level 65 and 70 equipment now have the Crowns icon

The following update is being made to shopping:

To help organize and make shopping faster, there are two new tabs in the Crown Shop: Accessories will show you athames, rings and amulets. Housing Items will show you decorations for your home. Teleporters are the exception, and will be sold in the Houses tab.

Items previously sold for Crowns in vendors throughout the Spiral have been removed from those shops. We will soon be placing those items in the Crown shop, so there's no longer a need to find a friend to take you to Dragonspyre to purchase the Storm Hound, you'll be able to purchase those items in the Crown Shop for the same currencies for which they are available on the Live Game. (Crowns only or Crowns and Gold depending on the item)

The following updates are being made to various aspects of the game:

Recent changes that required players to complete Triton Avenue, Firecat Alley and Cyclops lane in a specific order have been reverted. You can now receive quests to enter all three streets at the same time.
The "Go to Commons" button now displays "Go to PvP Lobby" when you're in a PvP arena
Everyone will be able to see KingsIsle Support badges even if they have their "Display Names" setting to none
The Yellow Elf pet will be removed from the Kirin Hoard pack rewards. It was intended as an exclusive first generation pet for those who voted for us in the Online Choice Awards. We're human and mistakes happen - the yellow elf pet was erroneously added to the Kirin Hoard pack rewards, and will be removed as a chance reward from that pack.
New accounts can no longer skip the tutorial on their first Wizard
Limit 1 restrictions have been removed from most items (but not all!)
Advanced computer users are now allowed to change installation directory on Vista or Windows 7
Zamunda Barracks is now a gauntlet which means you cannot teleport into this area
Players can now properly switch from high res textures to low res textures
Clicking on the Quest arrow will now bring up your Quest Journal
Two handed swords will now be held properly in the character selection screen
Some issues with oversized ice blocks in the pet minigames have been resolved

One more thing - a recent glitch in the Tag Game allows players to have an incredibly high view... I took advantage of the opportunity, and took some interesting pictures... they'll soon be released in the background section as part of the...