History Videogame / Wizard101

The game was originally released in 2008. Updates for the game, such as new worlds, quests and items, are constantly released. The most recent story update, Novus, was released in November 2022 while summer and fall updates in 2019 completely revamped the beginning of the main questline to better appeal to new players.

* BaitAndSwitch: Some spells in the game take the appearance of other spells but then another creature introduces itself and interrupts the original creature summoned.[[note]]Catch of the Day, Angry Snowpig, Burning Rampage, and Monster Mash subvert Kraken, Evil Snowman, Firezilla, and Vampire respectively[[/note]]

* BonusBoss: They pop up occasionally; some of them are just standing around, while others require effort on the player's part to reach them before they can be engaged in battle:
** For example Firevein in Dragonspyre's Plaza of Conquests. While it is required that he be faced for the quest Stop the Advance for Dragonspyre, he does just wander around the street; thus, he can just be fought to gain loot.
** One of the worst of these is Gladiator Dimachaerus. This boss is located in a dungeon designed for level 30 wizards but is designed to be a tough fight for even a team of four level 90 wizards.

* LargeHam: A few of the voice actors ([[EvilIsHammy especially villain voice actors]]) go a bit over the top. But the winner has [[BonusBoss Grubb]], who sounds like [[WesternAnimation/InvaderZim Zim]] after going through puberty.

** In the summer of 2023, the ability to change the player's name was added, alongside new names being added. It didn't take very long for players to discover inappropriate name combinations. A lot of the new names ended up being removed or changed in the test server to prevent exactly this, while the game developers opened a Discord channel dedicated to posting inappropriate name combinations for them to remove from the game. Some examples were Ebony (a common remark is that outside of [[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim], the only time they have heard that word was in porn, resulting in NSFW references) to be replaced with Ekani, Nia being replaced with Navi (likely because they would have a hard time preventing certain slurs in the chat), Rei being changed to Reiden [[spoiler:Because people made the name Rei TeaYard, which if sounded out slowly sounds like a certain slur]], shatter being changed to splinter (likely because of the combination shatterpants [[spoiler:which sounds like shat her pants]]), Gate being changed to Bridge (probably due to the Ocean Gate submarine event), as well as Disaster being changed to Venom (probably the same reason), among others.

''[[https://www.wizard101.com/ Wizard101]]'' is a MassivelyMultiplayerOnlineRolePlayingGame developed and published by Kings Isle Entertainment that is targeted towards children and preteens. The player is a student [[spoiler:and later graduate]] of the [[WizardingSchool Ravenwood School of Magical Arts]] in the world of Wizard City, where they enlist as a student of one of the seven PersonalityPowers-based schools of magic, then set off to complete quests and learn new spells. The combat system has very simple roots, similar to action-based RPG games, and relies on cards that correlate to spells and magic points that you collect each turn to use the cards with. The cards work in a TacticalRockPaperScissors power arrangement based on the game's primary magic schools: [[PlayingWithFire Fire]], [[AnIcePerson Ice]], [[ShockAndAwe Storm]], [[GreenThumb Life]], [[LifeDrain Death]], [[TheBeastmaster Myth]], and [[JackOfAllStats Balance]].

* TeensAreShort: [[ExaggeratedTrope Exaggerated]] due to VagueAge. Most of the adults in the game are ''twice as high'' as your avatar.

* ChallengeRun: In a recent update, the developers have allowed people to lock the level of their wizard, as long as they have at least 1 wizard on their account at level 50 or above. Some creative players have created level 1 characters that lock their level that way and try to get as far as I can. Saint2th is the first person known to get through the first 6 worlds using a level 1 character. Unfortunately, you cannot get past Celestia as the developers require you to be at least level 55 in order to unlock Zafaria, making that the end of the line for those trying out this challenge. However, players do not stop there. Some also try to get as many badges as they can while under these restrictions or fight bosses that are way beyond the level that they are supposed to be fought at. Fellspawn (a secret boss in the Catacombs) is intended to be fought as a challenge with a group of level 130s for a chance of getting gear. However, it has been proven to be possible to solo his fight as a level 1. This challenge severely limits your options that you can use. Without leveling up, you cannot learn spells from any teacher that are gated by a level requirement, you can only learn ones that are given through the main quest line which are very limited. Most schools will be unable to get their blades or traps, and they usually will not have many attack options either without item cards or treasure cards.

* SelfImposedChallenge: In a recent update, the developers have allowed people to lock the level of their wizard, as long as they have at least 1 wizard on their account at level 50 or above. Some creative players have created level 1 characters that lock their level that way and try to get as far as I can. Saint2th is the first person known to get through the first 6 worlds using a level 1 character. Unfortunately, you cannot get past Celestia as the developers require you to be at least level 55 in order to unlock Zafaria, making that the end of the line for those trying out this challenge. However, players do not stop there. Some also try to get as many badges as they can while under these restrictions or fight bosses that are way beyond the level that they are supposed to be fought at. Fellspawn (a secret boss in the Catacombs) is intended to be fought as a challenge with a group of level 130s for a chance of getting gear. However, it has been proven to be possible to solo his fight as a level 1. This challenge severely limits your options that you can use. Without leveling up, you cannot learn spells from any teacher that are gated by a level requirement, you can only learn ones that are given through the main quest line which are very limited. Most schools will be unable to get their blades or traps, and they usually will not have many attack options either without item cards or treasure cards.

* DummiedOut
** In early 2023, there was a bug where you could trigger an unused shop that allowed the player to type in RGB (red, green and blue between 0 and 255) values to get precise colors for their gear. Currently, you can only choose from some pre selected colors. This wasn't intended to be released by the developers as it could only be accessed be a glitch. Players told people to approach the area, switch to pet mode and interact with the vendor, they'd access a different menu. Unfortunately, it wasn't very functional and very unfinished (for example, you were able to type numbers well above 255, and they'd integer overflow, and the ability to actually change colors wasn't implemented yet). Since then, the glitch to do this was patched out, and it's unknown if it will be implemented back into the game officially.

* ItsEasySoItSucks: Quite a few examples of this. The game is made in mind to be easily playable for those who don't play games that much, have never touched an MMORPG, or even if it's their first time ever playing any video game. The developers even put out a guide that has some gameplay tips for those who have never played games.
** Very notably in the community, the developers did a "audit" of many spells, making some of them considerably weaker. People were concerned that it was just designed to make the game harder unnecessarily, so the developers responded by just cutting down the health of many bosses down by 20%.
** The game itself does have quite a few powerful options if people choose to take them. A well known one are the sun school damage enchants, which increase the base damage of a spell. For example, if you have an enchant that adds +250, and you apply that to a spell that only gives 100 damage, that's 350 base damage, and that comes first in the damage calculation, so weak hits get considerably stronger, allowing players to easily roll over bosses.
** The final boss of Khrysalis, Morganthe is considered to be this. The dungeon before her was a boss rush against stronger versions of bosses previously fought in this world, which is very difficult even for those who bring high levels to help out. Once you get to Morganthe though, it's considerably much easier, despite the fact that you fight 4 forms of her at once. Some teams are even capable of beating her in just 2 turns.
** The Medulla, Titan's Trident and Hall of Heroes fights were given a "challenge mode" in an update. Players were excited to try out the harder versions, as the game allowed people to try challenging versions of the fight, still allowing people to try out the original version. Unfortunately though, at least until the summer update of 2023, the "challenge mode" was nothing more than the way that the fight was released, and "normal mode" was just easier versions of those fights. Later on though, the challenge mode fights were changed to be actually genuinely harder, but players can no longer do the fights the way that they were when they came out, so you can only either do the considerably easier fights, or you can do the challenge mode fights (except you can't do this the first time you go through for your quest), which are excessively hard for players who don't understand the mechanics from the newer spells, and many spells that the players are used to using are banned. Additionally, the spells that you ARE allowed to use change around a lot, making it very difficult to build a strategy while the developers keep changing things around.
** Malistaire in Dragonspyre was originally a very difficult fight. At launch, he was known to have 100000 health, but that got scaled back to 10000, where it now sits at 8000 after nerfs. A lot of players laugh at him now as he uses weak attacks, despite being the "master of death".
* ItsHardSoItSucks: Of course, the game is prone to this too.
** Recently, the game introduced guilds for the more hardcore players to have a large group of people to do things. One of them is called raids, similar to other MMORPGs that have a similar concept. They are definitely a heavy step up in difficulty, but do have some great rewards. However, for most people, they are very inaccessible for more casual players, making them not be able to stand a chance. In fact, the newest raid they came out with, Crying Sky, has not has a single guild complete it ever since it came out. One guild got to the final boss, but got defeated quickly. The developers also have been making lots of changes to it, some to make it harder, some to make it easier. It's hard to even get practice for it because the game enforces a 1 week cooldown between raids and you have to gather a lot of materials to even be able to start one. Granted, this may not be hard if you have a full group of 50 pitching in to help out, but for smaller and more casual groups, this asks for a lot. Also you can't bypass the 1 week cooldown by joining a different guild, because once you leave a guild, a 2 week cooldown is placed on your wizard before you can join another one.
** As mentioned above, the challenge mode bosses have been excessively difficult for most players. It's not even easy finding a group looking to do them because the gear that they drop is no longer worth farming for when you can get better gear in later worlds.
** When the Titan's Trident was released, most people found the fight to be excessively difficult as it required a very specific strategy. If you didn't have a death wizard that could spam bad juju, don't even bother trying. The boss simply did far too much damage to the team, especially with a cheat where it could just randomly disappear and be impossible to target. If you don't weaken his attacks, he's happy to smack the team for over 5000 damage. The intimidating 1000000 health didn't help either. The intended way to beat the fight was to damage him 3 times for at least 30000 damage each (the game never tells you this though, but it was lowered to 20000 health, and now it's 7500 health). After doing this though, he'll summon 3 myth refractions, all of which have extremely annoying spells like virulent plague or legion shield. Again, this has been nerfed since, but it still was definitely excessive.
** The final boss of Novus changes the players to a different form with different cards. However, they used new symbols and terms that players didn't recognize as they weren't present in the game before and there's no tutorial or even a good explanation offered, so it wasn't obvious what they did. A lot of people asked around on platforms like Reddit what they did and what they meant, many calling them hieroglyphics.
** Even though a lot of spells were nerfed, a lot of bosses still carry pre nerfed versions of spells, allowing them to have devastating effects to players.

** Doctor Jackall believes you are like a him: someone who truly understands the the call of power.

*** An infamous example of this is in Karamelle. Near the middle of Gobblerton, you are tasked with defeating some elite minions literally called "Oogie Boogies". If you kill a single one, it will take 25% of everyone's health, ignoring resistances and shields. If you try to kill all 4 of them at the same time, then all party members will take damage 4 times, which will always kill the party, unless a spell like Guardian Spirit was used first to prevent everyone from dying.

* CallBack: In Wizard City, one of the sidequests is to retrieve a sword, the Spirit of the Samoorai, from one of the skeletons for a collector. In Mooshu, Rikugun tells the player about how he had lost his sword and that a collector from Wizard City returned it to him.

* CrazyCatLady: Qhatlady is a literal one, being an insane anthropomorphic cat.

* PremiumCurrency: Crowns, which are mostly obtained with real-life money and used to buy in-game items.

** The three Mystics of Azteca in the order of Tezcat Threestar, Zaylin Reedwalker and Pacal RedMask.

* AbsurdlyHighLevelCap: The initial release had the level cap at 50, averting this trope, but it was raised by 10 levels for every main story world addition. With the release of Novus, it now sits at a staggering 160. This is worth noting because Malistaire, Morganthe, The Coven Quartet, [[spoiler:The Sons of Ymir]], Randolf Spellshine, Zeus, Poseidon, the God Trio, and [[spoiler:Undead Malistaire]] are all bosses for their respective main/side story arcs. They're meant to be fought at levels 50, 100, 43, 27, 30, 70, 90, and 102, respectively.

** In the fight against Rasputin [[spoiler:a.k.a. The Rat]] in Polaris, if you spend too many turns [[spoiler:(30 rounds)]] trying to beat him, your entire party will be one-shotted by his [[spoiler:Borealis Titan]] with 1,000,000 damage.