Like I need an excuse to show off my home :) And though I love my little Marleybone manor, it doesn’t even come close to comparing with the marvelous work others have done on their homes. Every time I visit one, I feel like spending hours just peeking in room after room.

Molly asked if I could list the prices on all the homes, and that was easy enough, so here they are:

The June issue of the Ravenwood Newsletter is out, talking again about Grizzleheim, and also introducing a limited-time offer — $60 for a whole year of complete access to everything in Wizard 101. That’s $5/month, and that’s a tremendous bargain for one of the most original MMOs to come around in years.

Grizzleheim should be on the Wizard 101 test server soon, and I’ll be writing lots about it as soon as I get in.

I scurried my way to visit a housing turtle as soon as I finished patching Wizard 101. I wanted to get started decorating my house as soon as I could, but which?

I’d been thinking about buying one of the Wizard City castles, but when I tried to decorate it one last time on the Test server, I found the outside difficult to work with. I talked it over with Kasul, and he convinced me to go with a Marleybone home.

He was right, of course. After all, the builder turtle for Marleybone was named by the people who read this blog! The very least I could do was give him my business!

Thomas came by to offer some decorating tips, and some friends of his popped in, and one of them had this fantastic idea to go do some 4v4 dueling. Off we went, and we were soon matched up against four identical wizards in Krokotopia garb. But though they were lower level, they were professional duelers and more than held their own in the battle, especially once Thomas’ friends took off leaving us, a Death and a Life wizard, hardly powerhouse damage casters by any means, holding the bag.

The other team had more than enough Rebirth treasure cards to slow the fight down, and of course I could match them Rebirth for Rebirth, so the fight couldn’t end until all of them ran out of mana eventually. After about half an hour of a pointless fight we never asked for, we excused ourselves and took off. Dueling? Nah, not any more. Rebirth has made 4v4 duels last forever.

There ARE some unique housing items available for duelists… so maybe someday.

I traveled the worlds of the Spiral looking for found or bought items. This is only the bare beginnings, I have a lot more stuff to find, but — here is my parlor. There’s a settee under the bay window that you can’t see, two overstuffed chairs in front of a roaring, candlelit fire, a piano and bench with the Life symbol above, and a bed upstairs.

This is my park. A maple tree dreams over a still pool, and a found jade column sits decoratively in the back.

My sorcery room. If I ever get the urge to return to Dragonspyre, I can sit and wait here until the feeling passes. I didn’t even know I HAD this little underground room until I found it, entirely by accident, while exploring. It’s my favorite room so far :)

Next time, I’ll be going from boss to boss seeing if they have anything for me, and I’ll probably bring Allison to double my chances.

I hope Kraysys drops something nice….

We’ve word from Ravenwood that the newly-named Builder Turtles are being dropped off at their new homes across the Spiral, and that tomorrow, we’ll be able to buy and furnish our own homes. Thomes the Friendly Necromancer has been finding lots of treasures everywhere, and I’ve gotten a good look at all ten of the currently available homes (and a closer look at a couple).

Check out the complete information on player housing in the May newsletter.

Wizard101 will be offline Wednesday May 06 2009 starting at 3:00am Central US time until approximately 8:00am Central US time.
Wizard101 will be offline for an extended period of time tonight so we can implement the much anticipated Castles & Lands housing feature, voiceovers for Marleybone, MooShu and Dragonspyre, and many other exciting updates.

I read on The Friendly Necromancer’s site that little leprechauns had appeared all over Wizard City, ready, willing and hoping to give everyone who talked to them 50,000 gold.

So, my excited overspending on the first night of housing on the Test realm, was erased! When I logged in, I found more than that had been erased — all the characters had been reset, and I had all my original money back but had to buy those islands again.

With the leprechaun’s help, I bought ALL TEN homes, just so I could bring them here as sort of a virtual real estate agent’s storefront window.

Wizard City small island

Wizard City large island (with theater!)

Krokotopia small island (surprisingly roomy tent)

Krokotopia large island

Marleybone small island

Marleybone large island

Moo Shu small island

Moo Shu large island

Dragonspyre small island

Dragonspyre large island. It’s a tower. You remember Dragonspyre towers, right?

I also noticed a section on the left side of the screen which showed icons of all the stuff you have recently won in battles — VERY handy if you miss the text after the battle, or can’t figure out what that item WAS.

Wizard 101 continues to add features that truly make this, in my opinion, the very best of the Family MMOs.