What's happening with the Wheel of Wishes slot?

The Wheel of Wishes slot was fully released in early February to much fanfare and expectation. Microgaming's new progressive jackpot game, devised by Alchemy Gaming, was the first to offer a massive 2 million seeded progressive jackpot prize pool.

The game, which was devised from the remnants of the old Wowpot slot, took that small progressive prize and gave it a massive revamp, increasing its value significantly and putting it together with three other progressive prizes, Mini, Minor and Major, the latter of these prizes also seeded at an impressive 50,000 initially.

Originally given a limited release across selected casinos, the game proved to be a hit with the relatively small number of punters that played the game and it was expected that upon release, the game would explode into life and we would see the top progressive jackpot prizes increase markedly over the first few weeks of the game.

However, that hasn't quite happened, and it is not down to any lack of popularity for the game, not a lack of support from customers. This has led to us wondering if the new Wowpot top progressive prize on the Wheel of Wishes slot is going to be a "slow burner"?

Wheel of Wishes progressive comparison

What do we mean by a slow burner? Well, if we look at the Wheel of Wishes top progressive prize, the Wowpot jackpot, we can see that at the time of writing, this stands at around 2.18 million. Now it is important to note that this jackpot has not been triggered since the game was released.

That means that since the game was first released back in January, and then subsequently worldwide, the size of the top progressive jackpot has increased by around 185,000.

Now, if we compare that with what has happened with another big progressive jackpot prize on the Microgaming network, the Mega Moolah progressive jackpot slot, the figures could not be more stark. On the 1^st January 2020, not too long after a Mega Jackpot had been won on the Mega Moolah slot, the jackpot on the Mega Moolah slot stood at around 2.7 million.

However, by the time that the Wheel of Wishes slot was released globally on the 11^th February 2020, the Mega Moolah top progressive jackpot prize had climbed to around 7.4 million. An increase of 4.7 million in the space of just over a month. See the stats and graphs.

Indeed, since the 11^th February to the 19^th February, those eight days have seen a further increase in the jackpot prize of another million, with the current top jackpot prize on Mega Moolah sitting at over 8.5 million at the time of writing.

The statistics are even more revealing when you consider that when the Wheel of Wishes slot was released across the world on the 11^th February, it's progressive prize fund was already at the 2.15 million mark. This means that across the eight days since then, the jackpot has increased only by around 30,000.

When you consider that the top jackpot on Mega Moolah has increased by a million in the same period, it appears that the Mega Moolah top progressive jackpot prize is increasing gin size at over 30x the rate as the Wheel of Wishes top jackpot prize.

Major Millions jackpot adds to the evidence

However, it is worth noting that Mega Moolah is an incredible slot game that enjoys massive support and which, with the recent release of two new additions to the stable, Mega Vault Millionaire back in the autumn of 2019 and the recent release of the Atlantean Treasures: Mega Moolah slot this year, has seen the slot gain a resurgence of interest over the last few weeks.

However, evidence that the Wheel of Wishes slot could be a slow burner also comes from evidence provided by another popular Microgaming slot game, the venerable Major Millions slot.

It just so happened that when the Wheel of Wishes slot was given its general release in February, that the Major Millions jackpot had, for the second time that we can verify, also climbed to just above the 2 million mark. Indeed, at one point, the two progressive jackpots had an almost equitable amount in each prize fund.

However, despite Major Millions being a much older game and also being a lot more expensive to play (Wheel of Wishes can be played from 0.10 per spin, Major Millions, to play for the progressive jackpot prize, costs 3.00 per spin regardless f whether you pay the 3-reel or 5-reel version of the game) what we have seen over the last week or so is the prize on the Major Millions slot start to increase more rapidly than on the Wheel of Wishes slot.

At the moment, the Major Millions jackpot stands at over 2.33 million, while the Wheel of Wishes slot stands at 2.18 million. Many progressive slot fans, myself included, felt that it would be the Wheel of Wishes slot that started to edge away from its older cousin, but in actual fact, the opposite has occurred.

So, the important question is what does this mean for the Wheel of Wishes slot? Is the jackpot performing as Microgaming would have hoped?

What does this mean for the Wheel of Wishes progressive prize?

The first thing to note is that Microgaming and Alchemy Gaming will be well aware of how the progressive jackpot on the Wheel of Wishes slot should perform and if those companies are not pulling the game for any tweaks to be made, then the comforting news for players is that the game is going to be working precisely as it should be doing.

The other thing to note is that Wheel of Wishes was designed to be different to other progressive games available on the Microgaming progressive network. Many people assumed that different meant larger, faster growing progressive jackpots, but that may not be the case.

Instead, it could well be that the Wheel of Wishes slot may only pay out its top prize less frequently but that it may have more time to grow into a larger prize compared to other progressive games available.

We do know that last week one player landed a Major jackpot prize on Wheel of Wishes of over 300,000, which means that the slot has already paid out at least one big money prize that we know about.

It is also worth noting that any new game needs time to gain traction with slots supporters. In its first few years of operation, Mega Moolah saw its progressive prize fund increase far more slowly than it tends to do at present. It is only when a game has been in operation for a good while, and has paid out a number of top prizes, that it seems to capture the imagination of the public.

The changing jackpot sizes show a number of things, firstly, that the Mega Moolah slot still seems to be the go to progressive for a huge number of players, secondly, that the WheelOfWishes.net jackpot slot has been designed to offer something different to the Mega Moolah-style slot progressive and thirdly, I think once Wheel of Wishes has paid out a few jackpots and has gained traction with customers, we may well see its progressive prize start to increase a little more quickly.