NON-STORY: Brief Test Realm online!

Whenever KingsIsle has major updates ready for their game, they create an alternate reality called Test Realm where they have players beta their new additions and debug it before they update the game with the new stuff. This is how each new world was brought into the game.

Just recently, they brought up Test Realm again, but there aren't any major updates. Most of the update was basically on their new event challenge, the PvP challenge called The Beastmmon Hunt, and just adds two new forms. However, they also updated one of their useful options, Team Up.

Each dungeon and boss battle after Unicorn Way(save solo battles for spell quests and rare story encounters) has a sigil of four marks where up to four players can stand on. When you step on the sigil, a timer counts down and when it expires, those standing on the sigil are whisked away to the dungeon or encounter. Recently, Wizard101 added Team Up, which allows you to enter a lobby where you can wait (you don't have to stick around and can do other things) while waiting for others to use Team Up on that same sigil. It is not perfect - sometimes your lobby will be empty for a long time and nobody will join you.

But recent Test Realm updates have improved the Team Up feature:

1. When you use Team  Up, you'll be asked for a minimum party size first. If you want to Team Up for a three or four person team, the icon will be displayed on your UI.
2. You will also be asked if you are questing or farming and the lobby will only allow people who are also doing the same thing you are. This is really a god send! I can't tell how many times one of my Promethean Wizards tried to Team Up to complete Tartarus for their quest and instead got a lot of people who just wanted to farm Cronus, the secret boss, and leave. The inverse happened, I wanted my Promethean to farm for the Blade of the Felled Titan, which is only dropped by Gladiator Dimach-- er, the big secret boss in the Pit of Noxii, and when I got a Team Up, it was with a bunch of Journeymen who needed to beat Zeus for their quest and I'd either have to solo Glad or just help the team out and end the dungeon and try again! Now I can farm Mt. Olympus with a proper high-level team!
3. Now a progress bar will fill up showing how long a team up has been waiting. I assume that once the bar fills, the lobby is shut down and you're given an error message with "Sorry, no one is available at this time." So that way people don't get stuck waiting and are just disappointed. I'd rather be kicked and said I'm gonna have to solo rather than hope a few good people my level or overpowered come along and give mercy on me, forcing me to cancel the team-up.
4. Long dungeons will now have a special icon in the Join a Team Kiosk. While us WizVets know how long The Great Spyre is, some people only play sporadically and probably don't look up guides so they don't know what they are in for when they click a dungeon like that. Now they are warned that the area they want to join is questing in a dungeon. ;)
5. A very grateful addition: Now the Team Up Kiosk has a category for Skeleton Key fights! The Kiosk will check the team lobby and if nobody has the proper key, it'll kick you and give an error saying "Sorry, you need a XXXX Skeleton Key to access this content." This will save a lot of player headaches when a full team enters the Yuletide Feasting Hall and finds that nobody has a key to fight any of the Krampus fights. :p 

I think these improvements will make Team Up so much more reliable and help wizards who do not have boosting partners or friends to help them through the dungeons which are brutal to solo. ^_^