KingsIsle Entertainment has announced that more than one million players have registered to play Wizard101, and they've rewarded the one millionth player with a year of free game time, and everyone else with 101 Crowns.

Plano, Texas -- February 13, 2009 -- Online entertainment company KingsIsle Entertainment, Inc. today announced that over one million unique users have registered to play the highly immersive 3D virtual world Wizard101 (www.wizard101.com), just five months after its launch in September 2008. "The response has been absolutely overwhelming," says Elie Akilian, founder and CEO of KingsIsle. "We knew the game would appeal to families but we were surprised to see how well the game resonates with the hardcore set. The mechanics are a cross between a traditional Collectible Card Game and an old-school turn based Role Playing Game, and that makes us incredibly unique."

The company is marking this milestone by rewarding the millionth registered player with a free one year subscription to the game, and a statue with an interactive commemorative plaque featuring the Wizard's name has been placed in the Wizard City Commons.

As a special "thank you" all current and future players will receive 101 free Crowns automatically in their account. Crowns are used to purchase game areas and unique items. Several new items that cost less than 101 Crowns have been added to Wizard101 including a limited time commemorative Storm Beetle pet.

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The game really is a refreshing change in today's MMO market. They definitely deserve at least 1 million players!

Awesome! This is a fun game :)

more then darkfall will ever have lol

Originally posted by Raizeen

more then darkfall will ever have lol

Not quite sure what spurred this comment on but what can you do.

I am actually disgusted that MMORPG would even post this.

Anyone who has one iota of brain matter knows that the registered users number means absolutely zip when it comes to free to play games.  They count people who just registered and have never downloaded the game or played it.

I am not dissing the game btw, it is quite a cute game, just that I am very disappointed in the MMORPG staff for posting the number as if it meant something.

Just like someone posting that Dofus has 10 million users, when it is a well known fact that only about 600k actively play.  Just nonsense numbers with little meaning.

Just for the fun of i m trying this game out.

lol get through the tutorial and bamm server comeing down for patch.

oh well waiting for servers to come back up.

How many of those accounts have ever paid anything for the game?  It's presumably a small fraction, but that would be a much better gauge of how the game is doing.

It wouldn't necessarily compare properly to games with other payment models, though.  For example, how many players does Guild Wars have?  And should ArenaNet care how many have paid and quit if there's no monthly fee?  Wizard101 takes a hybrid model of either subscription to get everything until you cancel (as is typical) or micropayments for permanent access to individual zones, making meaningful comparisons harder yet to come by.

Originally posted by Quizzical

How many of those accounts have ever paid anything for the game?  It's presumably a small fraction, but that would be a much better gauge of how the game is doing.

It wouldn't necessarily compare properly to games with other payment models, though.  For example, how many players does Guild Wars have?  And should ArenaNet care how many have paid and quit if there's no monthly fee?  Wizard101 takes a hybrid model of either subscription to get everything until you cancel (as is typical) or micropayments for permanent access to individual zones, making meaningful comparisons harder yet to come by.

I would say it is a VERY small amount.I am not sure but i believe you can use others to warp into zones you did not pay to get into.

I will say something in hopes of helping them improve their game.The concept and game is great for kids and families,but once you get further into the game it is apparent that many players have dropped out.It is the noob/beginners zones that are usually full and usually on the weekends.

The reason is that even for kids the game play gets old and NEVER changes.The game needs more ideas and more content,playing level 20/30/40 or whatever and feeling like you are still playing level 1 gets real boring .Although the quests are simplistic in nature ,perhaps geared towards little kids,they are mislead into thinking young kids are not too intelligent.Well when comes to gaming they are VERY smart,sometimes smarter than us adults,so Wizard 101 misses out here,they need to make their game MORE challenging and more ingenuity in quests and game play,basically there needs to be some change as yo uadvance,so the game play does not get boring.

I can tell you that 99% of the ones that stick around,spend most of their time grinding for that pet drop,because the game gets that boring.

The game is a great initial effort,but needs to advance/improve,in MANY areas.It is too simplistic even for kids.

Originally posted by Wizardry

Originally posted by Quizzical

How many of those accounts have ever paid anything for the game?  It's presumably a small fraction, but that would be a much better gauge of how the game is doing.

It wouldn't necessarily compare properly to games with other payment models, though.  For example, how many players does Guild Wars have?  And should ArenaNet care how many have paid and quit if there's no monthly fee?  Wizard101 takes a hybrid model of either subscription to get everything until you cancel (as is typical) or micropayments for permanent access to individual zones, making meaningful comparisons harder yet to come by.

I would say it is a VERY small amount.I am not sure but i believe you can use others to warp into zones you did not pay to get into.

I will say something in hopes of helping them improve their game.The concept and game is great for kids and families,but once you get further into the game it is apparent that many players have dropped out.It is the noob/beginners zones that are usually full and usually on the weekends.

The reason is that even for kids the game play gets old and NEVER changes.The game needs more ideas and more content,playing level 20/30/40 or whatever and feeling like you are still playing level 1 gets real boring .Although the quests are simplistic in nature ,perhaps geared towards little kids,they are mislead into thinking young kids are not too intelligent.Well when comes to gaming they are VERY smart,sometimes smarter than us adults,so Wizard 101 misses out here,they need to make their game MORE challenging and more ingenuity in quests and game play,basically there needs to be some change as yo uadvance,so the game play does not get boring.

I can tell you that 99% of the ones that stick around,spend most of their time grinding for that pet drop,because the game gets that boring.

The game is a great initial effort,but needs to advance/improve,in MANY areas.It is too simplistic even for kids.

 

Considering that my 9 year old son has been addicted to it since it launched 5 months ago, I'd say your wrong. 

While I agree with the assertion that subscriber numbers <> players, I million accounts is still an impressive benchmark in terms of gauging overall player interest.  Keep in mind, too, that this is a game that doesn't have gold farmers and bots and for which there's really no reason to have multiple acccounts.  Those factors lend more credence to there being truly unique accounts as opposed to the numbers thrown around by some other games.  Keep in mind, too, that KingsIsle has actually added servers in Wizard101 within months of launch, not removed/consolidated servers like other recently launched games.

So, regardless of the players vs. accounts argument, which is probably valid, KingsIsle appears to have achieved successs for their game, overall, in a very short period fo time.  For that, they should be congratulated!

~Ripper

P.S. Since Kingsisle Entertainment is a corporation, I'm sure we'll see some actual player and profit numbers when they are made public during filings.

Wow...just wow...some of the trolling in this thread is not only funny but also sad.

So what if the game doesn't have 1 million active players? What relevance does that have? It's pure logic that in a game that isn't subscription-based the "registered players" figure isn't an indication as to the total number of active players. 

What is does mean, however, is that close to 1 million people have decided to try out the game. That is an achievement in itself.

Originally posted by Lydon

Wow...just wow...some of the trolling in this thread is not only funny but also sad.

So what if the game doesn't have 1 million active players? What relevance does that have? It's pure logic that in a game that isn't subscription-based the "registered players" figure isn't an indication as to the total number of active players. 

What is does mean, however, is that close to 1 million people have decided to try out the game. That is an achievement in itself.

Is wanting to know how many players the game actually has too much to ask, especially when the company releases numbers kind of vaguely along those lines?  If they have 200k active subscribers, the game is a smashing success.  If they've only gotten 10k to ever pay anything, that's not so successful.

-----

"I am not sure but i believe you can use others to warp into zones you did not pay to get into."

I'd be very surprised if that's true.  You can warp to friends to get to zones that you wouldn't normally have access to because you haven't completed the storyline up to that point, but I doubt that you can use that to evade paying for the game.

"The reason is that even for kids the game play gets old and NEVER changes."

If you believe that, you didn't get very far into the game.  Try to solo Tomb of the Beguiler or Counterweight West as soon as you get access, and then ask yourself what in the free area is remotely comparable to that challenge?  For that matter, there are AAA MMOs ostensibly for older players that don't have anything to match that challenge.  Unless, of course, you regard grinding as challenging, which is an awfully pathetic notion of "challenging".

"It is too simplistic even for kids."

The game's combat system is deeper than that of, say, WoW.  Granted, the game is built around combat and not much else.  But it's better to do one thing well than to do many things badly and nothing well.

Originally posted by Quizzical 

Is wanting to know how many players the game actually has too much to ask, especially when the company releases numbers kind of vaguely along those lines?  If they have 200k active subscribers, the game is a smashing success.  If they've only gotten 10k to ever pay anything, that's not so successful.

No, it is not too much to ask. However, asking is not what has occurred in this thread at all. People hopped onto the troll wagon and decided to attack KingsIsle for making a simple announcement. The headline clearly states "Wizard101: More Than One Million Registered Players." They are in no way lying or attempting to cover up the truth in the least. For goodness sake...they were kind enough to reward their players with free Crowns on top of it.

Also, considering they're adding servers to the game instead of removing them, and the fact that one need simply log into the game to see it teeming with players and there really shouldn't be an issue in the first place.

Originally posted by Lydon

Also, considering they're adding servers to the game instead of removing them, and the fact that one need simply log into the game to see it teeming with players and there really shouldn't be an issue in the first place.

They haven't added servers in quite a while, and adding more at this point would be kind of silly.  Out of 20 servers, at peak times (which really come only on weekends), about half of them will be listed as low ("perfect") population.  Often that really does mean low population, with perhaps 1 or 2 players to a zone, outside of the free areas, which are certainly very crowded.  At off-peak times, all or nearly all of the servers are listed as low population.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, though.  It means that, once beyond the free areas, players who want to play on a crowded server with a lot of other people can, and players who want to be left alone can pick a mostly empty server and do so.

Is the game a failure?  Of course not.  But I'm curious as to just how successful the game is, as player density issues are rather different from most other games I've played, making it hard to get a good gauge.

Originally posted by Raizeen

more then darkfall will ever have lol

Don't be so cinical lol but your probably right..