Six Pirate101 Wishes for 2022

The new year is here and there's good news for Pirate101 players. Beginning with a hiring process, Pirate101 will slowly start to resume updates, and while new books are a long ways away, smaller updates could be coming sooner. Here's what I'm hoping to see in Pirate101 this year! In no particular order...

#1 A New World, Obviously

Let's get the obvious out of the way. There's not a chance it's coming this year, but it's at the top of everyone's list. Even just a peek at what's next or a promise of a new world would excite the fanbase. Pirate101 is a beautiful game, but the last time it got a world with environments we hadn't seen before was Aquila and Marleybone (Valencia reused a lot of assets), and that was nine years ago. We're hungry, KingsIsle. Take my money!

#2 Scalable UI and Wiz Tech

One of the biggest components of bringing Pirate101 into the world of 2022 is simply updating some of its base features. For example, computers beyond the standard 1920x1080 will have cropped loading screens and tiny, unreadable UI. Wizard101 solved this problem with its scaling UI and UI size options. 

On top of that, there are a lot of features in Wizard101 which would work nicely in Pirate101. The team up feature in Pirate101 with the kiosk seems to be fairly popular. Some of the other wizard activities and systems could come into play also. Obviously KingsIsle can't just copy and paste these from one game to another, but there are a lot of updated systems in Wizard101 that could quickly improve the playability of Pirate101. 

#3 Large World PvP Arenas

PvP is a side activity that remained pretty popular for a long time after the game stopped getting new worlds. I'm not sure how busy the PvP scene is these days, but the only battle option for ranked PvP is essentially a big shack with a few columns. Wizard101 has these custom zones with arenas for every world, and their battle circle is the same in all of them. Pirate101 has an opportunity to create these custom zones and worlds and also customize the battle map on each one. This would add another layer of complexity and excitement to the PvP world. Plus, as a Musketeer, I've always wanted more dynamic battlefields with better opportunities to set traps!

#4 Pet Tome

Here's a specific example of something from Wizard101 that I'd like to see! The hatching system (called morphing in Pirate101) is a lot more fun than Wizard. It costs quite a bit less to morph and you need only wait ten minutes before you can morph again. In Wizard101, it's a lot tougher to collect all of the pets. In Pirate101, it's a more doable task and there are some super cool hybrids which everybody used to have a lot of fun with. There'd even be new hybrid hints on KI Live. A pet tome would help keep track of all of the pets in the game and the progress we'd made toward getting them!

#5 Expanded Badge Info

Like in Wizard101, Pirate101 badges don't provide a ton of description as to how to obtain them. While they're more detailed than Wizard101's badges, some give descriptions like "round up the worst criminals in Cool Ranch" or "contemplate the mysterious spirituality of MooShu" or "verse yourself in the religions of the skyways." Uh... what? These could use some additional clarification. And we could always use more badges, including some of the pet collecting badges that Wizard101 has!

#6 Ship-to-Ship Combat Rework

One thing that stands out in Pirate101 as not being quite up to par with the rest of the game is skyway combat. It's still pretty epic, don't get me wrong, but it's a lot of button-mashing for a game which is otherwise extraordinarily strategy-based and has more potential combinations and possibilities given the varying sizes and starting points of different battles than any wizard battle. And it doesn't need a complete overhaul, maybe just a few tweaks so we're doing more than just pressing our powers as soon as they're ready!

What do you want to see in Pirate101 in 2022?

Thanks for reading and see you in the Spiral!