More school shopping..
I’m still in Dragonspyre, battling these awful Terrorwing Warlocks to get my school books. This is a good duel, shows what a Pyromancer can really do…
And can I just say, battling anything called a ‘Terrorwing’ to get your school books is certainly not the way to encourage the best and the brightest to attend your school. I wonder if Dragonspyre Academy is anything like Durmstrang?
And I thought buying textbooks in college was bad!
So I have a new task to get into Dragonspyre academy, in order to make my way to Malistaire. Well, one of things I need to do to become a student of Dragonspyre is to get my textbooks, and since the academy bookstore seems to have been blown up like the library at Sunnydale High (probably under similar circumstances), I need to collect my textbooks from Terrorwing Warlocks! And not all of them HAVE textbooks, so I’ve got a lot of dueling to do before I can begin my studies!
To be honest, even though it’s a pain I think I prefer this method of getting textbooks to actually paying for them at the college bookstore! $125 for an English textbook? But I already SPEAK English!!
Ditto’s weekly video bloggy thingy 3/22
So here it is, a little late – my video bloggy thingy for this week. OK, I’m not late for ‘technical’ reasons, it has more to do with a furry gray kitten, but that is fine, it’s done and ready to go, so I hope you enjoy 🙂
Also, Ravenwood Radio Episode 36, guest-starring ME, is now available for download! It was SUCH a fun and wonderful time, I hope everyone liked it and that I get to do again soon!
Ditto Interviews Brad Borne of ‘The Fancypants Adventures’
Getting interviews at PAX East is a very tricky thing, because there are LOTS of reporters trying to get interviews all day, every day. Fortunately I had arranged for my interview with KingsIsle a few months in advance, but I hadn’t made any other arrangements. While we were there at PAX East Miss Narrator and I did try to get on a few interview schedules, but most places were either booked solid or, for reasons I can only guess at, didn’t seem to take my request for an interview seriously. Once again Wizard 101 proves they are an industry leader, being the fist major game company to do an interview with a Fabricated American! Now I can also add Brad Borne to that very exclusive list!
I was able to get another short interview at the show, this one with Brad Borne, the creator of the great, family-friendly flash game ‘The Fancypants Adventures‘. His game is being released on xBox Live and PSN with new levels and a multiplayer mode, and I can tell you from experience that it’s a LOT of fun! It’s a platform game with stick figure characters and some really fun physics – we had a blast playing it and Brad was kind enough to sit and talk with me for a few minutes. Here’s that interview.
New Post – Ditto at PAX East – The Videos!!
So far I’ve shown you a bit about what PAX East was like, through words and pictures. Miss Narrator and I also took a number of videos for you as well, to try an convey the scale and energy on the show floor. Here are the ones that I think came out the best…
For my ‘Posted from Pax’ videos with the remote camera, the awesome Friendly Necromancer actually compiled them all on a page on his website, which was awesome, so go ahead and check them out on Friendly’s site if you haven’t yet.
This video was shot just after we got to PAX and had stopped in at the KingsIsle booth. You can see the Magic the Gathering booth behind me.
(more…)
Ditto has KingsIsle’s Big Announcement – WINTERTUSK!!
That’s right, the excitement from PAX East wasn’t just my initial interview with Fred Howard! After that interview was over, Fred said that the next part of the filming could not be shown until the official press announcement on March 15th – it was TOP SECRET! He was telling ME secrets about Wizard 101!! Talk about PRESSURE! And what was the top secret thing he had to reveal?
Wintertusk!!
The next world coming to Wizard 101 is called Wintertusk, and it will complete the epic storyline that began with Grizzleheim. Yes, Fred does call it Jotungaard a few times in the interview – I guess he was more nervous than he seemed – but I did confirm that the world is called Wintertusk and that Jotungaard is an important area in the Wintertusk mountains! That’s right, mountains!! How cool is that?
The Wintertusk update will offer new things to do, and areas to explore, for powerful high-level Wizards as well as lower-level students just beginning their adventures, which is always a nice thing!
According to Fred, some of the things that wizards will have to look forward to with the Wintertusk update include:
- Brand new areas for high-level Wizards to discover and explore.
- New spells! I’ll say that again – New Spells!!! Woohoo!!
- Level 58 class pets for each primary school – Yay pets!!
- A revamped underwater introduction zone for lower level characters that’s going to continue the story of the Crab King from the Selena Gomez/Crab Alley quest line. That’s great because that was a fun quest line!! I love the underwater areas!
- Lots of additional surprises – Fred said they were saving some of the best details to reveal later, but the info we have now is a GREAT teaser – I’m already really excited!!
In addition to the video interview, KingsIsle gave me a great picture of one of the lead characters in the Wintertusk storyline, Grandmother Raven. She looks so nice – I’ll bet she loves to bake cookies, what do you think??
Grandmother Raven, a lead character in the Wintertusk story!
That’s all the information I have right now, and it was made very clear to me that there is no release date or tentative release date or anything even resembling a date related to this. They keep the developers locked in a room with no access to calendars, and even the fruity dates that grow on trees are off limits to them, so please don’t ask! KingsIsle will let us all know as soon as they’re ready to, and I for one cannot WAIT!!!
I do want to say another deep thank you to Fred Howard and everyone at KingsIsle who made this furry orange monster’s PAX East experience one he will NEVER forget!
Ditto’s Interview with Fred Howard of KingsIsle at Pax East
Once in a while in a monsters life, really really awesome things happen. For me, that was getting the opportunity to go to Pax East, an amazing gaming convention in Boston that was huge and really mind-blowing in so many ways!
Just going to Pax East would have certainly been enough for me, sure, but the thing that pushed my weekend completely over the top was an opportunity to sit down with none other than Fred Howard, the Vice President of Marketing from KingsIsle. And not just shaking hands for a quick photo op in the KI booth, either – no way! Fred actually took the time to sit down with Miss Narrator and myself and answer a number of questions, including some questions posted by you, my readers, about the game!
I was so nervous! I’m just a simple Fabricated American, it was a lot for me to take in, but Fred was great, and he even said he was nervous about meeting ME – can you believe it? I really appreciate him taking the time to sit with us!
Without further ado, here’s the interview!!
Ditto Meets Fred Howard from KingsIsle
Headed to PAX East!!
Hello Everybody! Ditto and Miss Narrator are on our way to PAX East in Boston right now!! (Well, as you’re reading this, not as I’m writing it, obviously…)
I just wanted to say hello to anyone who is coming here for the first time after meeting us at PAX – hi there!! I am Ditto Monster, I am a proud Fabricated American of the furry orange monster variety, and this is my bloggy thingy!
I love playing family-friendly online games, especially Wizard 101, and I like to talk a lot about staying safe online, because that’s really important, and that’s one of the things I will be doing at PAX East is asking other gaming companies and players more ways to stay safe and have fun online!!
I will be trying to update my YouTube channel and twitter with videos and pictures from PAX all day, so stay tuned, it’s going to be a lot of fun!!
Ditto’s Weekly Video Bloggy Thingy 3/7/2011
Yay, I’m actually posting on a Monday like I wanted to! So this is my new weekly video bloggy thingy – Apologies for Carl, he’s the new camera guy, he’s still learning. Anyway, this week I’m very excited for PAX East, I can’t believe it’s only days away! Also, I discuss the terrifying DragonSpyre , the AMAZING Celestian Observatory, and of course gardening. And a reminder, I’m taking questions for Kingsisle until the end of the week and I’ll choose the five I’ll try to ask them on Friday. Just email me at dittowizard at gmail dot com and make sure the subject says ‘Question for Kingsisle’ – thanks!!
Ditto enters DragonSpyre!!
So after more than a year of adventure and epic battles, including defeating the dreaded Jade Oni, Ditto and Madame Jasmine finally reach the dark halls of DragonSpyre. What dangers and treasures await them in the lava-filled streets and toppled buildings?
No, seriously, what dangers are there? This place is really scary!!
Ditto’s Video Bloggy thingy and CONTEST!
So here is my weekly video bloggy thingy – can you believe it’s already March? And with March, aside from hopefully the end of cold weather and snow in my fur, we also get PAX EAST!! That is right – PAX East is less than two weeks away, kicking off next Friday, and Ditto and Miss Narrator will be there! And I decided, since I will hopefully be talking to the folks at Kings Isle for a few minutes, it would be cool to find out what YOU want to know from them. So if you have questions for KingsIsle about Wizard 101 (or whatever) send them to me at dittowizard at gmail.com and use the subject ‘Question for KingsIsle’ so I can sort through them easily. I’ll choose five questions and I will do my best to ask the wonderful KingsIsle people at PAX East and get answers to them. My plan is to get it all on video too – we’ll see how that goes, right?
I’m getting so excited!!!! Woohoo!
Ditto versus…. Professor Drake?!?
So after my stunning defeat of the Jade Oni, I returned to Headmaster Ambrose to report back and hopefully get a report card or something. He sent me to see my least-favorite teacher, Professor Snape Drake, who decided that to help me face Malistaire, I would have to fight HIM! I know Malistaire is his brother and everything but I sure did not see this coming! The cool part – I had to face down a professor in a duel, and I beat him! I have a feeling he might have taken it easy on me though…
Facing the Jade Oni – Part 2
Here it is, the end of the battle against the Jade Oni! I hit him with two massive Helephants and got him down to just over two hundred health before he was taken out by Tanner Rubycatcher’s Ice Wyvern! We healed the emperor and saved Mooshu and I was granted the spiral key to get to Dragonspyre! Woohoo! so DragonSpyre here I come!
Facing the Jade Oni – part 1!
So this is the first part of my Jade Oni battle. I will say right up front that it was a tremendous fight against an impressive opponent! It was a LONG fight, too – almost twenty minutes total.
Because it was around twenty minutes and I did have a few technical glitches, I’m only going to post two clips – this clip is the first five minutes of the duel and shows my setup, as well as me deciding that the Jade Oni was way too scary to fight solo – I hired a life henchman to help out.
About mid fight – shortly after this clip ends – I’m joined by a fan who ports into the fight. Now while porting into a fight without asking is considered a breach of etiquette in Wizard 101, he did help me out and ended up getting the final blow in against Jade Oni, so it all worked out OK in the end…
My strategy for the fight was different from other boss fights for a couple reasons – first, Jade Oni fights solo, so I didn’t have to worry about a henchman, that meant Meteor Strike was a waste of pips. Second, he’s HUGE, starting with 7,500 health AND the ability to heal himself repeatedly, so I had to be able to do as much damage as I could as fast as I could – that meant extremely well buffed Helephants. My Life henchman proved to add a challenge since she did break my feint a few times, but overall it was her that kept me healed and fighting strong – I was at full health for most of the fight, I think. The fight would have been over more quickly if she hadn’t broken my first two feints with wand hits, true, but it would have been over MUCH more quickly if she hadn’t been healing me!
Again, this was an intense and awesome fight, I had a great time!
Video Bloggy Thingy 2/21/2011
Here is my video bloggy thingy for the week. This week I talk about lots of things, like PAX East, my 250th Twitter Follower, plus I have a great idea for KingsIsle related to gardening, and I take a twitter question. Yes, only one, because it’s early and I only got one – I’ll try to do better next time…
It’s Ditto’s Anniversary!!
So one year ago today, a furry orange monster started playing an online game called Wizard 101, and decided it would be fun to blog about it, because he really couldn’t find any other Fabricated American bloggers out there. He started playing around with his roommates’ video camera and writing and talking about the game, and something cool happened – people started reading his blog, and watching his videos, and they liked him! That is to say they liked me, because him is me. And them is you, too, right? I think I confused myself again…
In any case, in the last year my blog has grown a lot, I have branched out from Wizard 101 – still my favorite game – to discussing a bunch of other games and topics, I’ve done interviews with people, and I’ve started writing for another site as well, MMOCrunch. It’s been an amazing year with a lot more great stuff to come, and I thank each and every person out there who reads my posts or follows me on Twitter or enjoys my videos, your feedback and support are what keep me going, that’s the part I love the most about all of this! I couldn’t do it without all of you!
What’s in a year??
-
3 MMOCrunch Articles
20 episodes of ‘The Daring Adventures of Ditto’
43 Levels for my pyromancer, Digby Hexcrafter
142 videos posted
205 Facebook friends
217 Blog posts
241 Twitter Followers
1,160 Tweets
30,000+ Unique pageviews
New friends – priceless…
The longest fight ever….
I was fighting evil in the Village of Sorrow and was doing a pretty amazing job – I had retrieved this crazy mystical cage and forged my very own soul chain, I was a one monster army, taking no prisoners! Finally, I’m talking to the adorable little lamb ghost Ken Shui and he says ‘Ditto, you’ve done an amazing job, thank you so much. Now, please go talk to my master in the village Dojo to finish your task, as he is wise in the ways of spirits’ or something like that. OK, maybe I didn’t catch every single syllable, as I was eating crab rangoons at the time, but I got the general meaning, you know?
Well, I walk into the dojo and see the spooky ghostly master, but as I go talk to him he disappears and is replaced by this huge fire boss named Usunoki, and a massive fight begins! At this point I QUICKLY realize that my deck is stacked for taking on wandering street mobs from Death and Myth school, NOT fire bosses, and I run away and hide.
I returned shorty afterward, however, with my deck stacked for Fire Boss, and the battle began! This turned into one of the longest and most epic battles of my life, since Usunoki keeps tossing up ice shields before I got my fire prisms up. It was such a hard fight, and there was more than one time I thought I wasn’t going to win, believe me! I was, however, victorious! I’ve got the video here, but it’s the longest I’ve ever posted – I think it’s almost as long as a standard season of Dr. Who on the BBC… It’s a good battle though!
In the future, against a fire boss I’m going to switch to my ice staff – that would have let me break his ice shields easily without using up my precious prisms. Still would have popped the feint spells, but that’s not as bad as burning my whole stack of fire buffs only to be blocked by -80% ice damage sheild.
Dinner and a movie with Haru
After my initial defeat at the hands of Haru and his storm minion, Sparky McSharks-a-lot, I go back to his dojo and try to convince him to give me the key thingy I needed. Unfortunately he just wasn’t interested in chatting and had his minion toss yet another Storm Shark at me, so we had to once again battle. This time I was successful and bested Haru, the key falling from his hand as he fell before me.
Ditto’s Big News!!!
So I can finally reveal my big crazy exciting news! After much arranging and organizing, I, Ditto Monster, and my fearless assistant Miss Narrator, will be attending PAX East in Boston! We will be filming some video segments, rubbing elbows with gaming’s finest, and most importantly, we’ll be swinging by the KingsIsle booth to meet some of the wonderful people that make Wizard 101!! We’re really excited about all this and can’t wait for March!!!
How not to defeat Haru…
Questing through Mooshu, hot on the path of the Death Oni, I have to defeat a Myth boss named Haru and his annoying little storm minion. The fight was especially annoying in that it seems like they cast about a dozen storm sharks at me, and those really really hurt. I’m just glad they don’t have laser beams on their heads. That would truly be epic.
Gardening Part 2 – My first garden!
So I was in Golem Court talking to that cute little mole person Farley. I learned all about the different stages of a plant’s life, saw wilted and dead plants, learned about harvesting, and I tried to sing. I shouldn’t really try to sing…
Finally I plant my very first garden – well, if you consider three plants a garden anyway! I was able to plant a despairagus, a dandilion, and a boom shroom! Let’s see if I can get them to grow! After all, my green thumb is actually orange…
Video Bloggy Thingy time!
So I’m back with another video bloggy thingy – sadly not a ton going on lately, at least not that I can talk about yet. The biggest news I guess is the snow – boy do we have lot of snow! That seems to slow everything down, doesn’t it? And it’s so cold and yucky and gets all stuck in my fur. So, any Ditto fans out there in Hawaii or South Florida or Southern California feel like adopting a furry orange Fabricated American? Just kidding!
Din Ho really likes flowers
Well after I assembled all the pieces of the fabled Jade Scepter I figured I’d have another big fight on my hands, but
instead Din Ho sends me to pick flowers. Flowers are nice – better than a big fight, anyway 🙂
Ditto versus Kanaga – Take 2…
After my initial defeat at the hands of Kanaga, I regrouped
and tried again – and thankfully came out victorious! It was still
an intense fight, Kanaga is a formidable opponent – I might fight
him again just for practice!
Ditto Monster's Bloggy Thingy 