It followed me home, can I keep it?

As promised, I'm keeping you updated the ever growing and always changing MMO, Wizard101.

Exciting news! The new pet system went live yesterday! Kings Isle had opened the test realm a little over a month ago for subscribers to check out and test out the new pet system they've been working so hard on. Here is a little background history: Like most MMORPG's out there your character can attain pets, little guys to follow you around and benefit you in some manner. For Wizard101, standard pets could boost your power pip chance, give you an extra card for your deck to use in battles, or just look plain awesome standing by your side. That was pretty much all pets did, but it was cool, the most rare pets were feverishly farmed for even though the new pet didn't help your stats at all. Now, with the new and improved pet system, all that has changed.

For starters, pets can now do more than just stand by you, you can let them loose in your dorm room and not just keep them stuffed in your backpack. But aside from aesthetics, they have their own little arena called the Pet Pavilion. There you can do so many things with all your pets. First you can buy snacks for them which increase their stats: intellect, strength, agility, power, and will. Same with little mini games, the games take energy to play, but you gain experience, which ages your pet, and depending on which game you play and how well you do, the pet's stats go up. Another fun little bit you can engage your pets in is the Wizzy 500 (aka the Pet Derby), a cute little racing game where your pet races three other pets. The derby takes no energy so you can play as much as you want while you wait for your energy to build back up. The better you do, the better rank your pet gets. Doesn't do anything for your pet's abilities, but it's fun bragging rights.

Another great thing about the advanced pet system are the new talents the pets can have. Now, this part of the pet system promises to be one of the most rewarding, yet at the moment, is the most unknown. All pets start out as babies or teens with little experience. You have to train and grow them to get them to adulthood and from there they can move up to me ancient then epic. With pets, older is better. With the talent system, your pet can give you help in battle by casting their own spells, buffing spells, increasing damage, giving cards, increasing mana, increased resistance, dealing damage, de-buff and disarm opponents, increase accuracy, increase health, increased power pip chance, increasing pet stats, and so much more that hasn't even been unlocked yet. As you age your pet, he unlocks more of the talents to either use in battles with you or in the pet derby.


After the pet gets to be an adult it can participate in the coolest feature, in my opinion, the hatchery. If you have two adult pets or if a friend has an adult and so do you, you can both hatch a new pet with combined powers. That's right, forget farming for pets, you can make custom pets with literally MILLIONS of out comes. It's completely random chance as to what talents, powers, and abilities your new hatchling will get from it's two donor parent pets, but if you hatch with a friend, you both get the same new baby pet. I, for one, am totally stoked about this feature and can't wait to see what kinds of new powers these custom pets can give me in battles.

Kings Isle has been busy with all this pet release but they are still hard at work on the new world, Celestia, new schools, spells, and raising the level cap. You have to give it to them, they are doing awesome for a two year old MMORPG. More updates to come soon, and you know I can't resist posting about them. I'm off to hatch some new pets and save the spiral again.