Joel White, Head of Product & Leah Ruben, COO of KingsIsle / Wizard101 • Interview Series

Wizard101, the deck-building school-centric MMORPG that has been shuffling decks and casting spells since its 2008 debut on PC, has officially made its formal announcement to bring the magical world to consoles. And that’s not all: developer KingsIsle has also announced its plans to bring a full-fledged single-player game into the mix, too. Aptly titled Ravenwood Academy: A Wizard101 Story, the upcoming chapter in the series will reportedly return its fledgling students to the root of the beloved academy for a series of “trials and tribulations.”

To learn more about the console announcement and the future of Wizard101, I decided to reach out to two of the major players in the KingsIsle team: Joel White, Head of Product, and Leah Ruben, COO.

Firstly, it’s great to hear from you — and what a great time it is to have this conversation! With that said, before we slip into the classroom, please could you tell us a bit about yourself and your position at KingsIsle?

JW: I am Joel White, and also go by Decius on our Discord channel. I’m the Head of Product here at KingsIsle and what does that mean? Anything we put for sale or any game that we put for sale in a new place goes through my team to make sure it's all good to go. For the console version, I specifically worked to find a group to help us with the port and facilitate any communications between our internal groups and any external groups like Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo.  

LR: Hi, I’m Leah Ruben and the community knows me as Professor Falmea. I’m the Chief Operating Officer at KingsIsle, but in the seventeen years I’ve been here I’ve held titles in Production (Associate to Lead), Game Direction, Studio Direction, and I’ve dabbled in Sound, Design, Community, and Marketing. Basically, don’t ask me to do anything with code or art and we’re good! What I do these days is very broad – to work with all the teams at KingsIsle to make and support our awesome games in the best way possible. Some days that looks like a lot of spreadsheets, and some days it’s a lot of meetings to keep everyone coordinated, but it’s incredibly rewarding to work with such a great group of people. 

Well, it’s happening: Wizard101 is officially set to launch on Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch sixteen years after its 2008 debut. In your own words, how would you describe Wizard101?

JW: I have been playing Wizard101 now since it was in Beta and have been working at KingsIsle for over 14 years. The game is magical, and that might sound silly for a game about Wizards going to school, but it really is.

It has some of the best blend of casual to core gameplay in any MMO I have ever played or worked on, and I have been working on MMO games since 2001.  

We have the best community out there and they are always willing to help new people find their place in the game. 

LR: Wizard101 is a turn-based 3D CCG card combat MMO with a deep and cinematic storyline that’s easy to learn and difficult to master. It’s incredibly family-friendly and approachable because the combat isn’t twitch-based, and our hundreds of hours of fully voiced-over storyline is something that kids will enjoy, but our older Wizards may enjoy on a deeper level – like references to Monty Python, The Wizard of Oz, or other pop culture references spanning the ages. You can complete a lot of the content solo, but teaming up with friends is more fun and effective. 

There’s always something new to do, and there’s something for everyone. If you love socializing and decorating, we’ve got a robust housing system with parties and a party game system. You can garden and fish and train up your pets if you want a break from questing. If you are competitive, we have various solo and group competitive modes where you can climb the leaderboards. If you want to take on the toughest challenges, you can join a guild and complete our 12-person raids that challenge even the most veteran Wizards. 

In a nutshell, Wizard101 is the “kids game” that grew up with the awesome community that has supported us all these years.

Of course, Ravenwood School of Magical Arts has been teaching students for over a decade. But let’s talk about the newcomers—the students who have yet to enroll in the academic program. What advice would you be willing to give future wizards?

JW: Ask the people around you for help if you need it. People are always willing to lend a hand in-game. If you are fighting a tough boss, use the team up feature. Turn on your Friendly player flag letting people know it's ok for them to join you in what you are doing. Even though the game can be played solo, this is an MMO with a vibrant and wonderful community, once you become a part of that it becomes much more than a game. 

LR: Joel’s got it right – we have the best community out there and they’re always willing to help out a new Wizard. I’d also like to add that outside of the game, we have a very active Discord, including quite a few KingsIsle developers who also stream officially or on their own channels frequently. We also have a very robust group of content creators for the game – just searching, for example, “Wizard101 how to garden” will get you tons of information.

With the arrival of the console version finally on the horizon, it seems only right that we ask: what’s next for the MMO? Are we likely to see a few more updates over the coming months or years, perhaps?

JW: On the PC side we will continue to do 3 major updates a year. For the console side we plan on bringing those same updates to the consoles, but normally a few months after the PC release to make sure all the kinks are ironed out. 

LR: To expand on what Joel’s said, we have done 3 major content updates per year for Wizard for the last decade or more. For example, our summer update this year added The Cabal’s Revenge (a new raid), updated PvP tournaments, new Lore Spells, seven more Boss Rematches, Guild Achievements, and quality of life updates like a new Emote Wheel, Recent Wizards buddy system, and other social improvements, as well as updates to our existing events and other game improvements. We do similar-sized updates in the Spring (and each Summer), and every Fall, we release a major piece of new content – most years, it’s a new world with a level cap increase, but this year we’ve got something slightly different but similarly big and cool planned that we haven’t announced yet.   

Suffice to say, we release more content yearly than most other games out there, and we have no plans to stop when we reach consoles. 

With Wizard101 due to arrive on consoles, could this also mean that we might be seeing Pirate101 reaching the same shoreline at some stage in the distant future, too?

JW: Pirate101 is a great game, but a whole other thing to tackle when it comes to consoles. If Wizard101 does amazing on console and we think that Pirate101 could do as well, I won’t write it off. But right now I am not willing to commit to Pirate101 being on the console. 

LR: To echo what Joel said, no current or solid plans, but we will absolutely keep an eye on the spyglass on how Wizard101 does on the platform to see if Pirate should chart that same course. 

Putting Wizard101 aside for a moment, could you please tell us more about your works outside of the MMO? Care to lift the veil on any other projects that you may or may not be working on?

JW: Ravenwood Academy is our first single player story-based game that we just announced earlier in 2024. We got to show off a demo of the game at PAX and, wow, people loved it. I am so proud of the team for branching out and trying a new way to tell stories from our spiral universe. 

LR: A little history on Ravenwood – there are a lot of us that love these types of games and we’ve had multiple entries in our yearly Game Jams, and of course Narrative is one of the pillars of KingsIsle games. When we started to think about what’s next, it just felt like it was the right direction and we’re super excited to talk about our first new game in the Spiral in over a decade. 

Ravenwood Academy: A Wizard101 Story is influenced by games like Persona 5, Ace Attorney, and, of course, Wizard101. We’re putting our own twist on a relationship sim/adventure/mystery game set, as you might guess, right in the Ravenwood Academy you visit in Wizard101, but set in the past. Instead of being whisked off to save the world – you get a chance to actually attend the Academy and experience all of the trials and tribulations of being a student. You’ll make friends (and maybe enemies), build relationships with an exciting cast of characters including some very near and dear to Wizard101 players, and solve mysteries along the way. 

We received amazing reception demoing the game at PAX to both long-time community members and also people new to the Spiral and press. We thought we were going in the right direction and that confirmed it in spades. The game is still in early development, but you can keep an eye on our progress here as we release more about it.

We’d love to stay up to date with Wizard101 and its latest magical happenings on consoles. Are we able to share any social channels, streams, or newsletters with our readers?

LR: Do we have some links for you! 😊  We’re incredibly active on Twitter (X), Discord, Tiktok, Facebook, Instagram, and have multiple official live streams per month via our Twitch Channel.

Would you like to add anything to the cauldron before we go ahead and produce the mixture? Do you have any closing words for our community?

JW: Thank you all for a wonder-filled and magical 16 years of Wizard101, and here is to another 16 years on Console and whatever else comes out in the future. 

LR: One thing I’d like to leave anyone reading this who isn’t currently playing but perhaps remembers the ever-present Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network commercials from their childhood – come back and give us a try, we’ve grown up with you. Wizard101 will, and always will be, family-friendly and have the same whimsical heart and soul and loveable characters you remember, but we’ve built around that to have so much optional depth, even the most veteran MMO players will find a good challenge. 

And, also, I would be remiss if I didn’t end on this – we are so incredibly fortunate to have a thriving and active game and community sixteen years after launch, which allows us to do amazing things like bring the game to console after all these years. We can’t thank them enough for supporting us throughout the years. 

Thanks for speaking with us, guys! We look forward to seeing more of Wizard101! 

For more information on KingsIsle Entertainment’s Wizard101, be sure to visit the team over on their official social channel here. Alternatively, you can check in with the Wizard101 community by following the website here.