For the very first time in the company’s history, KingsIsle went to Gamescom in Cologne, Germany to talk about all things Wizard101! We had a cozy booth in the business area where we had the opportunity to meet up with our amazing partners, look for exciting potential new partners, and speak with the press about the wonderful wizardry we have cooking up in the next few months. What we spoke about was exclusive to the press for a certain period, but now we’re ready to spill the beans on exactly what we announced!
From left to right: Sam Johnson (Narrative Lead), Kayly Ginsberg (Marketing Manager), Leah Ruben (Senior Studio Director), Joel White (Product Manager)
Wizard101 Europe
One of the reasons we decided to attend a convention in Europe was to make a bigger splash there. While Wizard101 has been available in Europe for quite some time now, self-publishing the game since May means that we have more opportunities than ever before. We viewed this as a chance to share our excitement about the game with the European audience and affirm our dedication to maintaining and catching the servers up to their North American counterparts. Our first press exclusive relating to this was the reveal of the exact launch date of Karamelle for the European servers, August 31st, which has since been released! We also shared our intention to try and have the European servers caught up to the North American ones by late next year. We really care about our European players and are very excited about increasing the amount of content updates as time goes by.
Sam Johnson presenting passionately about Wizard101!
Wizard101 North America – Novus
Just because we were in Germany doesn’t mean that Wizard101 Europe was the only one to have all the fun. Gamescom is a big stage and we didn’t want to waste it! So, as our second Gamescom exclusive, we decided to announce the name of our brand-new world coming later this year to North American servers – Novus!
We can’t talk a lot about it just yet (need to leave some surprises of course!), but just know that we’re looking forward to Novus for a lot of reasons. As you can see, it has a branded logo – something we’ve never done for a world release before. In general, we’re taking a different approach with Novus than we have with all previous world releases and we can’t wait to unveil everything that we have planned for the launch.
Until then, we do have some teasers we showed off at Gamescom to help tide you over …
Unlike other worlds of the Spiral which are based on certain regions or cultures, Novus is inspired by surrealist art. Beware: things might get a little … bizarre. Be sure to keep watch on our website and social media channels to keep up to date on future announcements and Novus teasers!