I recently heard disturbing news that KingsIsle is going to stop updating content on Pirate101. For those who play Wizard101, you may not know about Pirate101. This game was created two years after Wizard101 got Dragonspyre to draw in more MMO players.
Pirate101 may be set in the same Spiral and have similar quest lines, but it's a completely different experience. Instead of being a young student in a magic academy being the Chosen One, you are a poor kid who was kidnapped by a robotic army called the Armada and rescued by a pirate who takes you to the home base of young pirates-to-be, Skull Island. There you begin your life as one of five types of Pirate: The gun-toting Musketeer, the blade-wielding Swashbuckler, the commanding Privateer, the magic-using Witch Doctor, or the beefy axe-maniac known as the Buccaneer. You then end up on a treasure hunt of the ages, finding El Doraro, the legendary City of Gold, while trying to stop the Armada from finding it.
This is a wonderful story that eases you into its narrative and takes you to worlds in a different way. Since you are a pirate, you get a ship, mainly a raft, that you replace with better and better ships along the way. You use your ship to sail down dangerous skystreams that lead to vortices that are gates to the Dark Aether, the skystream that connects the worlds of the Spiral, and visit new worlds.
While some worlds, like Mooshu and Marleybone, are familiar to Wizard101, you don't visit those until you are high level. Your early life is visiting brand new worlds like Monquista(which is basically ancient Hispania with monkey men), Valencia(home to the dread Armada) and Cool Ranch(a world based on the stories and legends of the United States Wild West era).
The most recent story update was a revisit to Valencia to storm the base of the Armada and defeat the leader of that army, the general Kane, the very first Armada soldier crafted long ago. But...
Now rumors are circulating that the supposed story update to Pirate101 that will let us visit Polaris(which is a world in Wizard101) is being cancelled. The devs have one reason, and sadly, it's the reason that Pirate101 was created in the first place so it can't be removed...
WIZARD101.
This game came first and had two years to grow, and now that Karmelle(its 14th world) has released and the player characters don't look like potatoes anymore, those who are introduced to KI will be introduced by THIS MMO, the more popular one.
There is Pirate101 support, or Pirate101 would have been shut down years ago. But Pirate101 is a zombie cursed by the Lord of the Whorl to be undead instead of a thriving game. People are worried about it being shut down for good.
MapleStory had a similar tale: After the huge popularity of MapleStory, they tried to go 3D with a sequel, MapleStory 2. It looked beautiful and had many good ideas...
GUESS WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT GAME
The original side-scrolling MMO was just TOO POPULAR to accept moving to a new game, especially one with a radically different graphics system and battle system. It tried, but failed due to moving out of the 2D side-scrolling that made the original popular.
Pirate101 isn't as bad off, in fact it was graphically better than Wizard101 and only the combat and companion system were different. Well, the pet training too, pet training is much easier in Pirate101. But even that cannot save Pirate101 from being shut down like MapleStory 2 was.
The devs clearly stated that as long as Wizard101 is played, Pirate101 will be ignored, and Karamelle is not helping Pirate101's cause by being so popular. With a level cap of 140, Wizard101 has a lot of content. So the community is trying to throw a revival event to drum up interest. I will be participating, but sadly, KingIsle might have a hard time getting me back...
As I said, my love and body now go to FFXIV. I'll put up a new blog later.
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