Idea for "new game+" to keep old experienced players interested
Hi! I was working my way through the world Khrysalis and had just gotten to the area "The Hive" after completing the quest "Sun's Shadow" and by the way, for anyone who hasn't been to Khrysalis before or doesn't want the main story spoiled, it may be best if you get up to Khrysalis and complete the quest "Sun's Shadow" to avoid such spoilers that you may be subject to in this post!
You still here? Good
So anyway, there I was, super hyped because I had just gotten access to my second set of Shadow Spells, and for those who don't know, I love the living lights out of Shadow Spells, I believe they are the most fascinating, most cool-looking and most well-designed spells I've ever had the pleasure of casting! So that lets you know where I'm kinda going with this but, the main idea came from the fact that I looked at the spells in my spell deck and remembered that, as we go through each school in the Sun Arc, we enter rooms which could be/may have been used for teaching that relevant school of magic in. But then we came to the final school after completing the alignment in the Solar Arc: The Shadow School, this school looks like any other, has its own teachers, and even has its own banner to boot! It looks like any other normal school!
Now, with all of this flowing through my wild mind, I had a crazy idea forming in my head: "What if we could have chosen Shadow as our starting School of magic?", and this is where I tell you how I would plan to implement such an idea into the game as the game is so far.
Now, from what I learned on my travels throughout Khrysalis, Shadow magic is a powerful and dangerous magic that is used to "rebuild reality", and as such "it is easy to lose yourself in the process" of casting it. And because of this, Bartelby and Grandmother Raven forbid the use of it. That is why we were not allowed to start learning Shadow Magic as our first school of magic. And because of this limitation, I had the idea to introduce a mechanic similar to one that exists in the game "World of Warcraft" (abbreviated as WoW).
In WoW, you have a character that specifies within one "Class" (just like our wizards specify in one school of magic) and you can make new characters with different classes, and experience each class and the powers they have to offer to the gameplay experience. Now, in WoW there are powers, like Shadow Magic, that are so powerful, you cannot acquire them without a lot of experience, and this power is the power of a "Death Knight". Death Knights are so powerful that they start at higher levels compared to all other classes, they start at level 50 and to make sure you don't just get a level 50 character for nothing, you have to own at least one level 50 character, then, the power becomes available to you to try on a fresh character.
And so I thought we could introduce something similar to Wizard101. We know that Shadow Magic is a powerful magic and that it's so dangerous that only high-level wizards can use it. So I propose the concept that we players can make a new wizard but, now that we have completed a specific shadow related quest or heck, even defeated Morganthe, we have the option to enroll in Shadow Magic for our "first school of magic".
Now I know this sounds crazy and far fetched, and it may bring such an imbalance to starting a character at a higher level and not have one of the classic schools in your spellbook, but I really love Shadow Magic and wish I could've chosen something like it to start my journey with. I also know that to make this happen would require an overhaul to include the current story or even lead off from it and maybe even require a new world for us to start in, but the idea was so strong in my mind that I had to write it down and see what other people think.
(Of course, I haven't forgotten the fact that, if you create a new wizard, you can be boosted to level 50 for 30,000 crowns and that implementing this would negate the need for the 30,000 crown potion, so there would obviously have to be some new limitation there, or even start us at just plain old level 1 but start in a new setting. somewhere other than Wizard City. I just think that this idea should be explored and that is why I want to hear your thoughts).
So this is me thanking you for reading up to this point and also asking you for your input. Could this style of play where you choose a brand new never-seen-before School to start with, or even starting at a higher level because of such, be a valid addition to the game that you would love to see? Please let me know and again, thanks for reading!
Re: Idea for "new game+" to keep old experienced players interested
I actually really like this idea. It would be really cool to start the game in the school of shadow. Obviously, I don't know how realistic this idea is though. It would be really fun and exciting, but I don't know how difficult it would be to implement something like this in terms of development and balancing. It doesn't seem too difficult to add in a basic starting world resembling Khrysalis or something but balancing might pose some troubles:
What is the school going to look like in terms of shadow magic? How do their pips work? How do their spells work? Would they get shadow pips faster than the typical schools? Are they a mostly offensive or defensive school? What is their utility like? Would they be a mix of all the other schools or have their own unique niche that they bring to the table? Would they be able to learn spells like Shadow Shield, Shadow Blade, Shadow Auras(?), Shadow Dispels, etc.? Would these spells be able to be learned by other schools who didn't start as a shadow wizard? How would this impact the spells that already exist? How would this impact fights that already exist?
The Trident fight could be significantly less challenging with the use of trainable shadow shields and shadow dispels.
You can also imagine a shadow dispel could ruin someone in PvP if they didn't have shadow wand hits. A shadow blade able to be stacked with sharpens could cause shadow school wizards to be exceptionally powerful when using things like Dark Nova.
This looks like an incredibly fun and cool idea that could be brought to the spiral, but if it does come to fruition it will be far, far into the future.
