Tranquil Cottage Contest is Closed and Winners to be Announced!

I've closed the House-a-Palooza contest and picked winners both from the pirate side of the contest and the last couple days on the house side.

So far we have the following awesome winners who will be getting emails momentarily:

Jasmine (Moonstone)
Liam (Blood)
Tessa (Farley)
Matt (amytaio)
Medeleine (Arvidsson)

and from the Pirate side of the House-a-Palooza giveaway we have

Nicholas Harms
Brandy Cook
Dusan SarafanPriest
Quinn Moondreamer
Zachary Jarfas

Congratulations to the winners and we look forward to our next contest.  Please do join and enter whenever you see one because your odds of winning are pretty good and you will loose 100% of the contests you don't enter.

Pirate Beta Winners

I sent out emails to the winners the other day but wanted to post the list of people who won so that you could see that there WERE winners and if you haven't been watching your email you could hopefully be surprised by your lucky awesomeness.

Congratulations to the winners of the pirate codes and I hope you will make a last ditch attempt at the House-a-Palooza contest.  Someone once told me you have a 100% chance of failing if you don't try.  Soooo.  Get in there and raise your chances!  Enter the House-a-Palooza contest in the post below before time runs out.

Vale

Pirate Contest Over - House-a-Palooza Still Going

House-a-palooza
The house-a-palooza contest will continue until the 21st.  I'm going to pick some winners from the current contest for houses and open a new house contest.  We want to maximize our house-a-palooza fun!

Pirate Beta Contest
The Pirate Beta contest is closed!  (Woot!!)  I would have done it today but we had a family reunion.  It was awesome.  A neighbor let us use their back yard which is kind of like a mini park with covered seating and a play area, a huge slide about 20 ft high and 50ft long and a zip line that runs about 200 yards over to the slide.  They also had a tramp, volleyball net (popular with me) and a BBQ pit and tons of other stuff.  It makes me think that houses are over-rated and fun use of property is the real key to enjoying your home.

It was fun seeing family again and playing a competitive game of volleyball.  Kids showed off their talents including gymnastics, hula hoop etc.  Cody showed off one of the forms for second degree black belt and Logan showed off his basketball dribbling skills which are considerable.

I feel a lot like captain Jack Sparrow when he was abandoned on the island.  I feel tired, sun-burnt, dusty and I think I have only 1 shot in my Nerf gun to end the suffering.  Let's hope I can find some great company to begin a new adventure...

WAIT!  I do...

I'm gonna work on the contest and try to get things out by tomorrow so I can get a lucky few people joining the ranks of the famous gang of testing pirates.

Please bear with me through all the contest closing work.  And enter below for house-a-palooza!!

Vale

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Pirate Beta and House a Palooza Giveaway!

Are you a decorating pro in the game or wanting to get your feet wet with your first Wizard101 house? If so, welcome to House-a-Palooza to save on all your housing needs!

Starting August 14th through August 21st,
save up to 50% OFF Houses and Housing Items in the Crown Shop!

• Houses and select Housing Items are up to 50% OFF! their Crowns prices!
• 12 New Avalon furniture items
• Additional Castle Space Elixir now available in the Crown Shop!
• 50% OFF Emperor's Attic Pack
• Fansite contests, code giveaways and more!

A Pirate's Life for Me!

There's nothing quite like a life on the open sea!  Just enter this contest:  a million or two times and win a beta key code for Pirate101 beta.

ENTER BOTH CONTEST USING THE LINK BELOW!!  (if the link doesn't render check the pirate contest post a couple posts ago)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Pirate and House-a-Palooza Giveaway

For those of you having trouble entering the contest you may want to try a different browser or enable javascript.  You should see something in the Pirate101/House a Palooza Giveaway post that looks like this:

With the help of your email or Facebook account or your very kind parent (who you'd owe a huge favor) to log in where it says "log in to enter the giveaway".
Log in 2 win or else there's no way for us to send the code back to you.
http://icewizardsrule.blogspot.com/2012/08/enter-pirate101-beta-giveaway.html
----

I wanted to answer a couple common questions from other comment lines...
1) The job ... I decided to not rock the boat and went to work versus to the Amazon interview which would have made me miss a full day of work.  I decided to dig into my new job and work toward a future interview that will be even more awesome.

2) Yes!  Fan fiction please!  Rowan Watertamer's books weren't exactly fan fiction but she has really hit the writing scene big time since we joined Wizard101 with a Valkyrie-themed epic adventure. (see the add below on the right sidebar) I think everyone should try their hand at writing.  Everyone has a story in them.  So just start writing or go to a free writer's conference or a writing class. There's no "write" or wrong way to do it.

3) Codes... yes, codes are always temporary right?  I should probably go back and remove some of the original code posts.  I think Wizard developers have been so epically busy with upgrades and the new game that they haven't had time to put out mysterious codes.  If you stay sharp you might catch one or two before they expire but I don't know of any active ones besides the ones we're giving away in the contest!

Jump down to the pirate giveaway and enter the contest!

Vale

House-a-Palooza giveaway and Pirate Giveaway

Enter the pirate contest in the post below to be entered for our simultaneous house-a-palooza giveaway!

Lots of exciting changes are coming!  Stay tuned and check out the other housing contests around the spiral.

To be considered for a Tranquil Cottage just log into the widget and then post about a new feature or enhanced feature you'd like to see in housing. You could win one of these tranquil cottages which are old favorites of mine.

Enter the Pirate101 Beta Giveaway!

We were pleased to be picked to give away a bunch of Pirate 101 beta test codes.  If you love trying new things, eating strange food, riding lobsters or steering ships into trouble then you're the right person for the job!

Enter our contest and get a chance to win a Pirate 101 beta code that will let you enter the world of Pirate101 and test it out before the general public is allowed to see it.

Check below for the widget that holds the key to letting you enter one entry per day and increase your chances of Piratical Awesomeness.

We wish we had a zillion codes to give but 25 will have to do for now. 

Join now and get your parents help if you need to!  We need pirates of all ages to sail the 7 or is it 8 seas.
~ Vale
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Test Realm Tid Bits

Hey people! Long time no post! It's me, Cody SkyRider (Aka Cody scoop writer)

I'm here to bring you some info on the test realm! (And some sweet pics to!)

The first thing I'm gonna talk about is the two new mini games, Way of the Ninja Pig and Grumpy Gobblers (Angry birds anyone?)
These games are both Lot's fun but way of the ninja pig can be extremely hard.

Way Of The Ninja Pig
Way of the ninja pig is a fun obstacle course type game with varying obstacles and courses.
I really like this game but I would suggest it as more of a fun game, not a training your pet game as the higher levels are very hard and take a while to finish. (Unless you're a pro at it.)
Check out some pictures I took.

 

                                                         Grumpy Gobblers

Grumpy gobblers is a fun, simple, and easy game to play similar to the cannon game.
I really like grumpy gobblers. It's a fun and simple game that will let you level up your pets faster, what more could you want?
Here are some pictures:

                                                               PvP Updates

Wizard has updated their pvp matching system to help prevent puppet teaming. I haven't been able to test if it works but hopefully it does.
 They also added some new pvp gear that's okay, but probably not very helpful.

Wizard did add some epic things to pvp though, the addition of three new arenas!

Wizard has now added a Wysteria arena, Zafaria arena, Avalon arena, and a Celestia arena!

 Avalon arena.

 Wysteria arena.

 Zafaria arena.

 Celestia arena.

For some reason my second wysteria and avalon arena pictures aren't showing but all of the new arena's are really awesome and I would suggest you guys check them out!

                                              Other Pet Updates

There are a couple other pet updates that are pretty awesome.

The first one I'll talk about is a new rule that wizard set that was very smart which is that after a race in the
pet derby, you can feed your pet TWICE!

The second thing is a new pet snack vendor in the pet pavilion.

There are also some new elixirs to help you with your pet breeding and crafting.
The hatching elixir hatches all unhatched eggs in your back pack
Purreu's potion #9 resets you hatching time
And the Crafting Elixir resets all of your crafting timers.

The final thing I'm gonna talk about in this is something truly epic.
The new pet rank, mega!
Now you can train your pet up to mega for another talent!

Here's a picture of my epic pet and what he needs to get to mega.

So over all, I feel that wizard has done very well with these sets of updates. To see a full list of all the updates go here.

- Cody SkyRider

(P.S) Can't wait for pirate 101! It looks epic!

Test Realm Tid Bits

Hey people! Long time no post! It's me, Cody Skyrider (Aka cody scoop writer)

I'm here to bring you some info on the test realm! (And some sweet pics to!)

The first thing I'm gonna talk about is the two new mini games, Way of the Ninja Pig and Grumpy Gobblers (Angry birds anyone?)
These games are both lot's fun but way of the ninja pig can be extremely hard.

Way Of The Ninja Pig

Way of the ninja pig is a fun obstacle course type game with varying obstacles and courses.
I really like this game but I would suggest it as more of a fun game, not a training your pet game as the higher levels are very hard and take a while to finish. (Unless you're a pro at it.)
Check out some pictures I took.

Test Realm Open

Ahoy!  For those that aren't yet aware, the test realm is open with some of the changes mentioned in the post below!

You don't know how to get to test realm you say?  I can help! Go to www.wizard101.com log in using your game username and password.  Click on the red ribbon (see the picture), then read the instructions and click the checkbox, and then... click the download link.

Then when you install the test realm and you're like me where you have a C drive that's small.  Yep, I have one of those SSD drives (memory based disk) but I have a large standard disk based D drive... I need to install on my D drive.  In the following picture there's a super-subtle button in the progress bar area (see the picture below).  If you pick that text button you get a dialog that warns you and then you get to pick an install location.  Thanks for that feature KI.  That's a life-saver for me.

See you in test!
Vale

Wizard Fan Books and Novellas

Living with a writer, one comes to understand a little about the process of creating something from almost nothing.  We draw on different things for inspiration and sometimes from combined life experience, sometimes from things we've watched on TV or read.  In some cases we can find inspiration in games as well.  Like this friend who's made a Wizard101 fan fiction story based on a set of adventures...

http://www.scribd.com/doc/75828003/The-Power-Spiral-Book-1-Wizard-City-Roots-of-Hope

If you are a wizard101 fan and have written something by way of fan fiction please forward a link and I'll post about it.


Thanks,
Vale

Awesome new features coming

Arrrgh, there's so much to tell you there's no good place to start...
I hear pets will be able to level up to MEGA and may gain talents like piercing, heal boosting, stun resisting etc.  And the rewards for racing your pet will tempt you back into the derby!
New pet games are coming in.  Grumpy Gobbler and "Way of the Ninja Pig" game.  I'm thinking American Ninja Warrior and Mt Midoriama.(sp?)

New potions are out for helping you hatch pets quickly.  And I hear that super good pet snacks will now be for sale for derby tickets.

I hear that is also new arena gear.  I'm anxious to check that out and see how good it is.  We haven't seen rockin' gear available for arena tickets in a long time.  And new arenas are out for the new worlds so you'll get a little change of scenery!

PVP changes are coming which will match wizards more closely on level so you don't get a level 10 with a level 80 versing two level 45's.
I'll try to post some more info soon.

Vale

Go check out the novel Become by Ali Cross (our very own Rowan Watertamer)  It's a dark YA paranormal novel now FREE at Amazon and Smashwords and check out book 2 which is out now!!!!  (see the sidebar ad below)