As we roll into the official start of Spring, and hope for some test realm adventures here eventually, Wizard101 has run some sales and specials through the crown shop that have raised some eyebrows and caused some vocal frustrations. While some of them have been good, ones focused around the recent “Green and Gold” holiday have been less than stellar. Today, we’ll go into the good, and bad of these recent sales - and the overlapping problem with these “bundles’ in the crown shop.
Let us start with the good. Some of these bundles are actually straight-forward and are a sale. They have run some “Buy 12 Packs for the Price of 10” which, as it says, is two extra packs for free. Simply put, a good sale if you are wanting to buy that pack. They also have run some bundles for the rare pack mounts, usually paired with a mega-snack pack or some other minor item. These are good in my eyes as it provides a direct way for players to buy a rare mount that may be missing from their collection, or a holiday mount that isn’t currently in season. SImply put, they provide items that are useful at a discounted price to where you may be interested in purchasing these bundles.
Now, let’s get to the other side of the coin, the not-so stellar sales. For the start of March, Wizard101 had released the “Green and Gold” bundles into the crown shop a little while back. From a thematic standpoint, as we were rolling into the start of Spring and St. Patrick’s Day, this sale made sense. However, what they decided to include in these bundles was what sparked a major discussion. While they included some good items, such as the Celestial Wolf mount, they also included gold. Including a currency that you farm for quite easily in-game, while also slapping a hefty crown price on these bundles creates a big problem. It increases the amount of money and crowns you may need to spend to get these, while not providing a proper payoff for that higher price.
Another problem with the bundles is the items that are chosen to be included. Over the past few months, we had some bundles come out with pet-themed items bundled together. While this may look appealing to new players of the game, when you break the math down on these items, the pay point is never worth it. Some of these bundles were running upwards of 50k crowns - for pets you could just hatch with someone you know in-game or set a hatch up through an outside website or forum. Even though the prices of these pet-related bundles have gone down (the current one being run in the shop is 18,000 crowns), these bundles still are not worth the price point.
While some of these promotions have been a great deal and succeeded, some of the bundles that Wizard101 have put into the shop have been dead on arrival. Whether it was the price, the items included, or a mixture of both, these bundles feel really bad to play for players. Putting that much money into crowns, for bundles where over half of the items you can obtain through other methods feels bad. The idea of bundling items is a good idea, it just needs to be items that are more useful and at a price point that encourages people to buy it. Moving forward, hopefully we see a positive change toward more bundles that are actually a good deal.
