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!