A few months ago Autumn & I announced a contest for a new Twitch name - which would be chosen by someone in the community. We had many great entries & we're thankful for all of the great names you sent in. We had to choose one & that one name was SpiralVision which was sent in by Esmee Stormweaver! We're excited to announce that we will use this new name & link for all future events, group questing streams, and more. We look forward to growing this channel in terms of community togetherness in 2019 and beyond. :) If you would like to access the new channel & our new Twitter, feel free to click on the links below:
I hope you're having a wonderful first week of 2019. I wanted to make a blog post today about the community. The community has grown through multiple social media platforms such as Amino, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, etc. The community is growing every day! Today, I'm going to talk about what made this awesome community grow to such large numbers across social media.
Let's start with what the community is like today before we talk about the past. The largest communities today are the Central & YouTube communities. They, along with many other communities, provide great information about the game and have helped those communities grow for years now. While you can link your other social media accounts from YouTube, that wasn't how communities outside of these two boomed. Let's travel back in time to see how the community really got started.
Nearly 10 years ago (it's unbelievable that it's nearly been that long - but it has), Wizard101 teamed up with Wizard101 Central to have a contest on Wizard101's Official Facebook Page. As you can see in the video above from Technodude67, a danger hound was given away to everyone who liked their official page & was a Central member. This contest was used to get the Wizard101 Facebook page to 100,000 likes. This was one of the sparks that got the community growing & was effective. I still have my danger hound from this contest on my ice wizard. This was an awesome contest & I hope Kingsisle considers having a contest like this again in the future. :) While this contest helped the Facebook community, what got the other communities to grow? Simple answer: Podcasts & Fansites!
The first podcast that I can think of is none other than Ravenwood Radio (currently Spiral Radio). The first episodes of Ravenwood Radio aired in October of 2009. This podcast was the very first podcast/stream to ever occur in the Wizard101 Community. Many people would tune in every Wednesday night to listen to this awesome podcast by Stephen Spiritcaller & Leesha Darkheart. This podcast, for me at least, was what introduced me to The Friendly Necromancer aka Tom, Diary of a Wizard, and all of the other fansites. I was first introduced to this podcast by Wizard101's promotion of Ravenwood Radio on their official launcher - this was nearly 10 years ago, so I could be wrong. But I am thankful that Kingsisle promoted them because I wouldn't be making this post right now if they didn't.
From there I'd listen to Ravenwood Radio every Wednesday night with the rest of the community. They would have special events such as the Mali-Fest of 2010. They made a lot of Wizard101 History because this was the first Malistaire-type Livestream with four well-known wizards (Leesha & Stephen of Ravenwood Radio, Thomas Lionblood of the Friendly Necromancer, and Fallon Shadowblade of Diary of a Wizard). It was awesome to see four great death wizards defeat Malistaire Live. Livestreams like these introduced me to the other fansites in the community. When people tuned into Ravenwood Radio, they would tell their friends about it. I remember inviting my friends to their podcasts & events. From there, the community grew even larger.
Diary of a Wizard teamed up with Ravenwood Radio and other great fansites in the community to have one large event in Ravenwood known as the Ravenwood Ball & Birthday Bash. This event brought so many people together that the event grew each year. These events were one of the largest (if not, the largest) events to ever occur in Wizard101. I was very shy when I first started attending these events but started talking a lot more. I was inspired by all of the people that promoted/threw these events that I created this website. There are many other fansites that were inspired by fansites like Ravenwood Radio, The Friendly Necromancer, Diary of a Wizard, Ditto Wizard, Paige Moonshade, and many other great sites that they created their own. They even started joining social media pages to follow them. From there, people would tell their friends about the community & it would continue to grow from a few hundred to thousands and today tens of thousands of active wizards across various social media platforms!
While I know not everyone will agree that this is how the community boomed - it really was. Through contests & most of all, podcasts & fansites, the community grew. A lot of people, including myself, were inspired by these amazing people to start having events, creating blogs, podcasts & more to pay it forward. A decade ago, I was going through such a tough time. I'll always remain thankful to those who inspired me & many others in this community to pay it forward just as they did. They did what they did for free & some still continue to do that - those are people to look up to. Thank you to everyone who helped this community grow to what it is today across all social media platforms. Without you, there's no way the community would be as amazing as it is today. Thank you all for reading this random Saturday morning blog post. Until next time, I'll see you around the spiral. :D
I hope you're having a wonderful year so far. Over the past few weeks, I've been getting back into game activities that I haven't really participated in for a while now. One of these game activities that I've started back up recently has been gardening. I think the last time I gardened was when it was first released to the game (I believe gardening was released in early 2011). Check out the old commercial below!
Can you believe this commercial is 8 years old? Time really is flying by and Kingsisle has done a great job by adding side activities, like gardening, to make the game even better! :) So as I've mentioned above, I really wanted to get back into gardening this year. Many of you already know that I created a new myth wizard, Edward Gem, in September of 2018 for group questing. I've recently used this wizard to start gardening again! The Aero Plains Bundle House was a perfect area to start this garden + I used a sparkle globe to make it magical. :D
Autumn Dreamwalker recently gifted me Key Limes on this wizard. I knew those seeds would be the first I'd plant if I ever did a garden again since they give a lot of gardening experience points. Just after Christmas I planted these seeds & checked on my garden day & night as they matured. Autumn told me that I only needed to check on them once a day - but I have to admit... in 2011, I let a large garden die out because I didn't check on it enough. That was when I stopped gardening. So, Y'all should know that I mean business this time around. :D I've already made it to Rank 9 in Gardening in a few weeks! How crazy is that?!
Shortly after raising my Key Limes & Harvesting them, I decided to buy even more seeds. I made the mistake of planting them far apart (I was trying to make somewhat of a design to make it look amazing). In recent days after I harvested a plant, I moved the pot closer to the other plants. This makes it easier to use a gardening spell on multiple plants - therefore saving energy for other needs. The pests have been super annoying since you have to use 15 energy to kill Rank 3 pests. I've been looking around on my wizards on my main account for one of the 48-hour pest-free spells to trade to Edward Gem. I know I have these spells because I found a few on my fire wizard - as you can see above (Dragonflies & Electricity Bolts - I think that's what they're called). Anyway, I look forward to gardening even more. I am thinking I'll make another post once I get seeds that give mega snacks. :D Wish me luck on my gardening adventures! Thank you all so much for reading. Until next time, I'll see you around the spiral.
