The Controversial Spring Update After A Month
The Spring update and its controversy
In April, Kingsisle surprised everyone with the spring 2022 update for Wizard101, making major changes to the PvP system, introducing Cantrips, new spellements, and more. The controversy around this update focuses around the new PvP system, and the grind to get enough spellements. Some in the community also mention they prematurely released the update. The good news is several patches answered a lot of players’ complaints about the update.
The New PVP System
Kingsisle mentioned in the past they were working on a new PvP system to fix many of the issues players complained about. This debuted as the “5th age” of PvP contained in the update. For years, people complained about issues such as balance, “boosting” players, and people ditching matches to name a few.
This new system is a major departure from the previous one, creating a lot of backlash, especially for low-level PVP players who feel left out. Instead of being able to match at any level, this new system introduces leagues. The minimum level range for this is 40-50. The current league level ranges according to Kingsisle are as follows:
- 40-50 – Master
- 60-69 – Legendary
- 100-109 – Exalted
- 140-150 – Premiere
The controversy around this is that there’s no way for low level players to play ranked matches anymore. This change is here to stay, and will likely not be changed in the near future.
Another major controversy with this update is the removal of rewards in tournaments, the main reason that people even participate in them, and the introduction of the new “blue” arena ticket currency. How many of you have bought a mount or something of value with the old arena tickets? I sure have! The 5th age of PvP brings a new currency called blue tickets, retiring the old “red tickets” that were in use before. The old mounts and such are no longer available for purchase with tickets, and the coming summer update will permanently remove old red arena tickets. There are new vendors for these blue tickets, with different items. This summer update, however, will return the rewards for tournaments, giving players an incentive to do them again.
Many players also raised concerns about PvP requiring a membership or a recent crowns purchase to be able to play. This is no longer the case as of the May 4th patch.
Cantrips
Cantrips is a new feature that enables players to cast different spells anywhere, such as teleportation, motion (such as levitation), or effects that can heal all players inside a circle. There aren’t as many controversies with this, but there are a few.
The first issue is that cantrips use the same energy that is used for pets and gardening. The May 4th update to the game did lower the energy requirements for some cantrips to accommodate players’ concerns. The second issue surrounding cantrips is some feel there’s not enough utility yet to them besides basic things such as teleporting. As this new system matures, we’ll most likely see more cantrips that will be useful around the spiral.
Spellements
The last major controversy of the update surrounds the Spellement system. In short, spellements let players upgrade spells in multiple ways to add utility or be more powerful. Generally, players receive spellements by questing, farming bosses, using cantrips, and using “pet adventure power.” For the newer spellements added in this update, they are obtained by defeating bosses in the first arc during questing.
There are a couple of issues surrounding spellements when they released the update. The first one is that it was impossible for current wizards past the first arc to obtain these spellements. However, the May 25th update introduced a new feature that lets players rematch bosses to obtain them. The second issue with this update was the spellement drop rate was extremely low, taking many hours just to farm enough to be able to upgrade the spell of choice. The May 4th and 25th updates greatly increased the drop rates.
Conclusion
To summarize this up, Kingsisle released the spring 2022 update with a few major controversies that I mentioned above. Many players believe they jumped the gun on releasing this update, as they expected the update to release later than the actual date. However, Kingsisle did listen to the community, and multiple patches fixed many of the problems surrounding the update. The upcoming summer 2022 update will likely come with more fixes to some of the controversial changes introduced.
