Design Notes during Oct 2008 Top secret behind the scenes information about AdventureQuest Worlds and our other web based games.
Pumpkin-adin
October 31th, 2008 Happy Mogloween! DOOOOOM... The Great Pumpkin King has risen. As the sun sets a the ground beneath the Myscroft pumpkin patch begins to shake! Kaaaaapow.... a huge monster bursts through the soil. It's body is the shape of a giant pumpkin with a huge vines that grab nearby candy and tosses it into its giant fang filled mouth. The Great Pumpkin King is here... and TRICK -- he is here for YOUR candy!
Rumor: If you and your friends can defeat the Pumpkin King, there is a chance he will drop one of THREE rares including the "Great Pumpkin Seed". Hold on to this seed and it is rumored to grow into a loyal mini-pumpkin pet! There is also the Strange Pumpkin Seed, the Great Pumpkin King Vines and the Great Pumpkin Sword!
October 30th, 2008 The Night before the.... Rise of the great Pumpkin King!
Safiria:Artix, why are you sitting all alone in this pumpkin patch? Artix: I am waiting for the Great Pumpkin King. He will rise here tomorrow night!
Safiria: Seriously... everyone knows that's just a myth that was made up to scare little children. Artix: No way, he is real... and when the Great Pumpkin King rises out of the Pumpkin Patch I will be here to see him!
Safiria:Like last year when you sat in that Pumpkin patch with Twilly and Zorbak for hours and didn't see a thing. Artix: He will be here this year, I am SURE OF IT!
Safiria:... and what exactly will you do when this "GREAT PUMPKIN KING" shows up? Artix: Chop him to little itsy bits with my new chainsaw (Rare drop from the Chainsaw guy -- alternate color version available for AdventureCoins) and protect all of the trick or treaters from his sugary candy coated wrath of doom!!!
Mogloween Finale... bring your chainsaws!
Safiria:You are such a blockhead. Next you're going to tell me that the part about his Pumpkin Seed is real. Artix: It is! Legend says if you capture one of his Pumpkin seeds it will grow into a loyal pet after a few days!
Safiria: Artix: The Great Pumpkin King will not let me down this year! Safiria:Wait... what's that on your back? Artix: Oh J6 made this for me. This... this is my BOOM STICK!
Coming next: November is officially DRAGON month! RAWWWWWWR!
Rumor: If you and your friends can defeat the Pumpkin King, there is a small chance he will drop a "Great Pumpkin Seed". Hold on to this seed and it is rumored to grow into a loyal mini-pumpkin pet!
Last chance
October 29th, 2008 Become a Founder Time is almost up! If you have not become a member already, this is your last chance to upgrade and obtain the once in a lifetime title of "Founder of AQWorlds" along with your Platinum Baby Dragon and all of the exclusive AQWorlds features.
The founder cut-off date is November 10th
Pal-AD-adin
October 28th, 2008 Shonen Jump - Take 2! "WOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAH!" My new copy of Shonen jump just arrived... and if you check out page 359 there is a full page AdventureQuest ad! I know it is just an ad, but it is soooo cool that we are actually in my favorite magazine.
This is the only magazine I read* so I really like seeing our characters in there**. I am really proud of our team -- we started out with literally nothing but a passion for games and our "never give up" motto. To this very day we continue to get better and better each day. If there is one three things I have learned from reading Manga it is 1.) Believe in yourself and in your friends 2.) No matter what happens, do the right thing and never quit... ever.... 3.) Give your super special move a cool name and shout at the top of your lungs when using it***!
* Read!? It is 99% pictures.... **Artix's ex-girlfriend was in Cosmopolitan when they were together. So, does that mean he gets to say he is in Shonen Jump since his NPC is in there? *** Battle on!
Bug Fixed! Now it is time to make some more... <Applause> Congratulations to Minimal for fixing the monster respawn bug. Also Zhoom fixed the quest chain issue. This has been rolled out onto all of the servers -- let us know on the forums if you see anything strange.... er... than normal.
Rep Quests & Class Storage Zhoom is making a new type of quest reward that will speed up leveling your classes. Also we are working on unlockable class specific rewards. Because we do not want to take up all of your precious inventory spaces with Classes, in Phase 2 we are going move all of your armors in a seperate tab freeing up some bag space for you. This also means you will be able to collect armors pretty easily -- "Gotta wear them all!". There is more good news, but lets do these first two things first then I will tell you how you will be able to further customize the look of your armor.
Forum Question: What future classes would you like to see in AQWorlds? (Feel free to make some wild stuff up)
Plethoradin
October 27th, 2008 The Holy Bug Squisher An epic saga of Good vs Bugs As you surely know, we have been working hard through the weekend on fixing a plethora* of issues. The most serious is the bug causing monsters not to respawn in select areas**. Also, some of the quest chains broke! We are throwing everything including the kitchen sink*** at solving these issues. Expect a patch today. Once this is fixed we are anxious to start working on the new stuff and then I will get to tell you about how you can choose between being good or evil in the plotline of this game!
Forum Question: Will your hero be good or evil?
* How many is in a plethora El Guapo? **Exactly how hard are you hitting them that they are to scared to come back? *** Ewwww, there was some of Cysero's yogurt from last week in it.
Story-adin
October 24th, 2008 The Lore Grimoire Coming Soon: The Bizzare Storyline of AQWorlds An ancient evil awakens and the world is soon to be engulfed by CHAOS. Our only hope lies within a rare* magical book.... this book is said to seek out the chosen one and grant this hero the knowledge and power to save** our world! This one of a kind book*** is known as the LORE GRIMOIRE.
* New Lore Times Best Seller - Over 1 Million Copies Sold! **Or destroy the world... it says so on the back! ***Only 199g - coming soon to an in-game magical book store near you!
Note: Be forewarned, the book is a little crazy, full of typos, plot holes, and it HATES reading -- although, oddly, it loves comics and manga.... and um.. milkshakes. However, it is lactose intolerant. There is a rumor floating around that the Lore Grimoire actually ate the Necronomicon and occasionally beltches up pages. The main storly line... begins soon!
See the Forums Thread
Video Update New Player Made AQWorlds Videos We would like to thank everyone posting video to the AQWorlds Forum Video Thread. The Forum team selected their favorites which were just placed on the Video Pages -- check it out!
This is Xyo's video feature the just released Bludrut Keep! Please note, the videos are from YouTube. While we are only posting the videos we found appropriate it is possible that they may link to other videos with questionable content. Please view at your discretion.
UPGRADE Two Thumbs up!
October 22nd, 2008 AQWorlds Release This awesome update just went live along side the highly anticipated Bludrut Keep. We are now on Progressive Release version .37 (soon to be .38) which includes everything below!
Here is everything:
Bludrut Keep Released!
New Monsters Added: Rattlebones, Rock Elemental, Shadow Creeper, Fire Elemental, Siren, Ice Elemental, Shadow Serpent, Wicked Witch, Evil Elemental and Groglurk
8 New Quests
OMG... so many weapon designs....
Levels 1 & 2 Are now available to all players
Levels 3 & 4 are Member-only
Server Lag should now be reduced
"Joining Lobby" bug fixed
Costumes are fixed Dracula, Undead curse, and Pumpkin lord armors have had their skills restored. Be sure to hang on to these until we have time to build the improved inventory which will give you room to store all those classes. The plan as of this moment is to let you equip any class you want.. then put a costume over top of it so you can use any skills you want.
Gold Cap set to 1 Million (For now)
Flash 10 Major Fixes
Flash Player 10 has been released -- AQWorlds is now fully compatible.
Graphics Bug Fixed (Screen redrawing)
Smoother gameplay & Sound
Monster respawn issues fixed
Monsters now have a small chance of dropping the weapon they are carrying -- including the BOSS!
Action Bars and Greyed icons do not dissapear when clicking a spell anymore.
There are SoundFX for non-damaging attacks (NICE!)
"Black Armor" bugs should be less frequent (Again)
Spell Effect animations have has their detail increased
Spell Projectile Animations are significantly smoother and more accurate now
Overall game stability "betterness".
If everything goes smoothly the team will return to focusing on the new features that we are all anxious for. This includes friends lists, parties, increased bag space, stats, importing data from AQ/DF/MQ, Guilds, Castles... etc. Go little game go!
Roll-adin
October 22nd, 2008 That is how we /ROLL Late last night Zhoom was trapped all alone at the secret underground lab without his keys. One of us had to go there and rescue him. We all happened to be in game at the time so we solved this the only way a true gamer knows how...
We /Roll'ed for it!
Feature note: If you type /roll in AQWorlds it randomly rolls a number between 1 and 100
The high roller won the grand prize of a moon lit drive to the lab to save Zhoom. Doh... I rolled a 97.
In AQWorlds news, a new patch is coming today (We hope -- it was supposed to go live yesterday which is why Zhoom and Minimal were working so late) that will fix a lot of the server lag and "joining lobby" issues. Once that issue it fixed a lot more people are going to be able to login... which is going to increase our players online significantly! 80,000 new players created accounts on Saturday alone. That is sort of an insane number. It is a really hard number to believe until you see that weekdays have been around 40,000 new players each... this is madness. It looks like you guys made the right choice -- this game is a hit and is only going to get better. That is why we have three new game servers coming next ASAP. (The others are getting converted into file servers so your items load faster) So we need your help. Those three new servers need names and EVERYONE on the team wants it named after them. This is too big of a decision for me, I thought maybe you could help me? The choices are Safiria, Reens, Warlic, Zhoom, Minimal, Nythera, Geo, Jemini, Fae, Miltonius, J6, and Robina. We put up a forum poll and the three who get tops votes will be chosen as winner! See you on the forums.
Vote on the Official Forum Poll
Finders Keep-adins!
October 21st, 2008 Bludrut Keep Playing for KEEPS! In our next exciting release you and your friends will enter the legendary Bludrut keep where you will become helplessly lost, fall into deadly traps, and then be eaten by terrifying monsters of unspeakable power have lots of fun!
A huge dungeon to explore with a map. Take on new quests and see if you can navigate our first ever multi-level dungeon!
Crazy all new monsters.... and one of them has a wicked looking weapon that may be yours if you are lucky! We are going into testing today which means we will be releasing either tomorrow or Thursday!
Spookadin
October 17th, 2008 Mystcroft - Just Released! Super spooky Mogloween Special Event A mysterious fog has rolled in... villagers are rumoring that those brave (or dumb) enough to walk into the fog found themselves in a small creepy town called Mystcroft... full of haunted houses. They told tales of Ghosts, giant monsters with pumpkins, and... *coughs* my apologies, it was hard to understand what they were saying as they were screaming at the top of their lungs running at top speed away from the fog.... but it sounded something like... trap doors... giant guy with chain saw. I am sure that I misheard them
Note: If your map is not showing the Mystcroft location, you can type /join Mogloween
Giant Man eating Pumpkin Monsters,
Chainsaws... and Chocolate!
This zone has gone bananas!
Letting the Black Cat out of the Bag: Safiria the Vampire Queen from AdventureQuest and the trio of Candy making witches (Bubbles, Toil, and Trouble) from DragonFable are making an appearance in AQWorlds for the first time ever in this caaandy filled, deliciously evil zone. Mogloween starts tonight!
This special server-wide event celebrates the 6th year birthday of the original AdventureQuest, the 1st birthday of MechQuest and the 0th* birthday of AQWorlds! As of the moment I am writing this... there are 3 costume armors and a lot of rares that will be available!
*Pronounced "Zero-th". This is... um... an extremely official math term!
Surprise
Cake-adin
October 16th, 2008 Best Team Ever! "Oh how I love thee... let me count the ways. I will start at infinity and work my way backwards." We have been having non-stop technical crisises* here at the Secret Lab since the lauch of AQworlds So, when I was called to the game room** for an emergency you can imagine my shock to see a cake with my picture on it! They said it was national bosses day. The team even got me the "World's Best Boss" cup from my favorite TV Show The Office! I am so happy. But when I think of Boss -- I think of BOSS MONSTERS. Which brings me to the forum question of the day. Out of all of our games -- which Boss Monster should earn the title of best boss? (Drakonnan, Xan, Doom Kitten, Sepulchure, Carnax...) let us know on the forums!
*Toilet backing up, Flash lights running out of batteries, Primary Server Cluster Load Balancer Ruleset Mis-configuration... you know.. the usual. **Game Room - you know, it is funny. I most places the game room would be where you go to play games. Here it is where you go to do work!
Galanoth Server
The Galanoth server is now online. It is a free "normal" server accessable to all players. Our online count has been steadily climbing.... so *gulps* I placed an order for 5 MORE servers!
Friends, Parties & Quests and.... darts... and music? Minimal & Zhoom have been literally working around the clock on new bugs, lag and issues (Solving them, not adding them, lol!) Originally we expected to have friends and parties working this week, but the things that popped up this week had to be fixed as top priority. Friends lists will be easy and allow you to see what servers your friends are playing on. Parties will allow you to go as a group into private instances for a good dungeon crawl! Mogloween should be ready for tomorrow, but I will have to push Bludrut back to mid next week so it gets proper coding attention for the traps and features you were requesting on the forums. We do not have a fixed release day for AQWorlds... we are just going to release it as soon as it is done and tested! Finally... Warlic worked on a music project for AQworlds today. He made a Flash music synthesizer which... in short.. will let you play an instrument (like a guitar) in game. This happened because of the dart board I want to put in Yulgar's inn. I thought it would be fun to have a competitive game in the inn... then we thought... how about adding some music? Then... how about we let the players play as a band? Then... how about three players take control of the instruments on stage and then the others can optionally play a dancing game to their music? We all thought... AWESOME! Oh, did you know /roll works?
Paladin-adin... wait... what?
October 13/14th, 2008 Midnight Paladin Fix! This is now live, thank you. If there is one thing we here at AE are guilty of... it is listening to you guys! The Paladin armor is now equippable if you have it in your inventory. Your previous progress is still intact and you can level it up from where you left off.
Paladin is a second tier class which is available through the Artix NPC in Swordhaven. A Paladin has both the skills of a warrior and a healer. Therefore, to unlock the quests that will give you the class armor, you must be rank 10 as a Warrior (Or Warlord) AND rank 10 as a Healer (Or Acolyte).
Thank you for your feedback and input on the forums. I am glad that our community is awesome with a staff that listens and we are able to make changes like this pretty rapidly! (Compare that to a lot of larger games!) Now -- Reens, Zhoom, Minimal and I are putting our heads together on how to let you store more classes without taking up any inventory space. Meanwhile, read the next post to see how you can help with this weeks releases!
Progress-adin
October 13th, 2008 Great weekend! The game launch has just begun and we are off to a great start. As you could probably tell the team was working on bugs and fixing issues all weekend. Today, the Zorbak server is going to be replaced with the new Galanoth server! Meanwhile we are working on this weeks two exciting releases... want to help?
Mogloween Team up and quest for CAAAAANDY! Mogloween is the one time of the year that all of the cute little innocent Moglins turn into hideous creatures of untold destruction and mayhem! Normally we wear masks to hide from them... but we have NO IDEA how that functionality is going to work in game... yet. *gulps* J6 build a whole new Haunted House zone and Miltonius has several new creepy monsters and rare prizes ready. Do you have any ideas of neat things we could do in this zone to make it really special? We have the ability to have one player trigger something that ALL the other players then see. We need some good uses for this. Let us know on the forums and be a part of the creation of the AQWorlds FIRST mogloween!
Official Forum Post: Mogloween
Bludrut Keep The most famous dungeon in the original AdventureQuest is being turned multiplayer. We have art and monsters and thought you would like some cresative input on how this legendary dungeon should work! Replay the original dungeon and let us know what you would like to see on the forums.
Official Forum Post: Bludrut Keep
Live-adin
October 10th, 2008 We are live! "Now... the real work starts!" The new site is live and the games are online. Cross your fingers... more news coming as it happens.
Release-adin
October 10th, 2008 The ClubHouse The Member-Only Clubhouse was just released! You can access it via your map. It is a place for Members to gather, chat, dance is two music-filled rooms, and venture into the Portal of Mystery to face the most powerful monster currently in AQ Worlds: Abaddon! As you will notice the Club House is still buing constructed in game -- which is the best part! Because YOU get to help decide what we put in it forums! (The crazy Disco ball in the room to the right was Warlic's idea)
Defeat Abaddon and his minions to get large gold and XP rewards as well as a chance for ultra-rare drop items: Balor's Cruelty sword and the Abaddon's Curse helm!
Release-Day Wallpaper By special request of the forums and staff Featuring Miltonius' new character classes and put together by Randor the Red:800x600 | 1024x768 | 1280x1200 | 1600x1200 | 1680 x 1050
This was a triumph
I'm making a note here
Huge success
It's hard to overstate my satisfaction
Artix Entertainment
You do what you want because it's fun
For the joy of all of us
Except for all the undead
But there's no sense crying over every big bug
You just keep on trying and don't pull the plug
And the game gets done and you make some neat puns
For the people who love all your games
I'm just really happy
Cause all your games are really fun
I hope the server doesn't overload
And break into pieces
And blow up to cause a great big fire
As we play we should watch out
And try not to break anything
As we wait for noon we're gonna form a big line
And we're out of beta, but they're never on time
Once we're in the same room
And no one can make a move
Meet the players who love all your games
Come on and join me
I can not wait for our first war
Maybe you are scared that I can pwn you?
I'll beat Cysero
That was a joke
Ha Ha, fat chance
Any way this game is great
It's so exciting and cool
Look at me still posting cause there's nothing to do
When I first log in I hope I'll get to meet you
There's lots of undead to slay
Why don't you join in the fray?
For the people who love all your games
And believe me we all love your games
We're slaying undead 'cause we love your games
We fight some frogzards 'cause we love your games
We kill the sneevils 'cause we love your games
We shoot Shadowscythe 'cause we love your games
We love your games
Love your games
THE CAKE IS A.... TRUTH! Game Files and website are rolling out right now! ... and.... they ACTUALLY just walked in with an actual cake. We are singing Happy Birthday to Cysero and Rolith. Que'ing up the Portal Song...
Prepare yourselves friends -- AQWorlds is going live!
11:59 am OMG.....................
11:55 am 5 Minutes... hmmm.. there is a light coming from the other room. What is that?
11:50 am 10 minutes! Everyone at your battle stations! Shapen your swords, prepare your spells.... soon we are about to make history! (and a lot of servers crash)
11:45 am 15 Minutes until Showtime! (I always prefered HBO) Zhoom says he needs 15 minutes to roll out the servers. Minimal, Galanoth, Llussion, J6 and Reens are applying the final bug fixes. Miltonius just sent me a brand NEW boss monster.
11:40 am We are also celebrating Cysero and Rolith's birthdays today! Meanwhile.... in these last minutes trouble brews! The Zorbak Game Server broke. We should have known that hardware was not powerful enough to withstand moglin Necromancy! (Yup, all of the game servers are named after NPCs.)
11:30 am My Mother just made the first AdventureQuest Worlds upgrade! She got the special 1 year package and even added on the bonus. Remind me we need to do something HUGE for Mother's day this year. System A-OK!
11:20 am *sings* "This is the final countdown...." (DADragon on the forums is responsible for why everyone here in the lab singing and humming the song.)
11:10 am It is amazing watching everyone work this hard. We might just make this.... just maybe! Sir Ver, our beloved Alpa/Beta server has been updated with the new game engine and is promoted to being our very first Member-Only server. Congratulations little guy!
Sir Ver says, "01011001010000010101100100100001"
11:00 am ONE HOUR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Tick... tick... tick..... a few words come to mind. Chaos, Insantiy, Doom, Explody! BOOOM KAPOW GAH-DOOOOM! OMG I love release days so much.
10:50 am Zack Masters just wrote the best "Still Alive" (The themesong to Portal) parody EVER! (Forum link)
10:45 am In every other MMO they seem to have you killing rats at level one... it only makes sense that in ours, you will be defending them! We are releasing a number of new zones full of quests and adventure including Noobshire, Willow Creek, The Marsh, Guru Swamp and The River. New monsters and boss monsters with rare drops can be found in these zones as well! Next week we will be releasing Bludrut Keep and Mogloween!
10:30 am Today we will be releasing three new character classes: Assassin, Beast Warrior and Paladin! Also, there is an advanced version of each of the four base classes with all new art. The Berserker class is going to become a Member-only class. If you obtained it in Beta you will still be able to use it of course (we love you!) Ninja, Pirate and Barber will be available to everyone.
10:15 am Special Release day Wallpaper! By request of the forums and staff -- featuring Miltonius' new character classes and put together by Randor the Red:
10:00 am Only 2 hours left until release!? Do you think we are too late to post this job ad?
Wanted: Miracle Worker (aka MMO Developer / Designer / Programmer / Database-Engineer / Nework Analyst / Dog Walker) To completely rewrite entire game engine and be ready for our live release. Must be able to work under tight deadlines (you have two hours.) Also, my dog likes to battle the undead so you should be comfortable walking through spooky places and have a college degree in protecting the innocent from zombies, vampires, ghouls, undead abominations. Experience with Liches would be wonderful.
9:50 am Reens and the Moderators have been testing all night. Which means this list she just sent marks the official start of: Xtreme Bug Smashing!
9:45 am I AM SO EXCITED! I cannot believe we are really doing this. I mean... I really cannot believe we are doing this -- we are not ready... nothing works.... and I am pretty sure we will manage to break all of the things that are working just before we go live. But I have faith (mostly because Rolith brought in 6 pounds of candy for us to eat!)
9:30 am Autobots, transform and roll out... of bed!
Prepare-adin
October 8th, 2008 Friday is Release day! Miltonius put together this teaser image of trainers and classes that will be entering the game over the coming weeks. This is a good time to remind everyone, that while we have more content than we have everlaunched a game with before... this is still only the very beginning.
On Friday we will release several new zones, new quests, upgraded base class armors, a few exclusive classes (including Paladin if you have maxed out Warrior and Healer.) The game is getting one final rebalancing which will increase lower level player's hitpoints and smooth out the hitpoint curve onwards to level 20. Many monsters will be getting their damage nerfed. The world map will have every location in the game on it and the news will be full of info on new things to see and do -- and a few shops! Valencia will be making a special visit to the center of Battleon. We have a lot to do before the release on Friday... it is going to be close.... really close... scary... close....
Oh, I nearly forgot. It is official -- The exclusive "Founder's Pet" is going to be a Baby Platinum Dragon.
Then next week we are aiming for the release of Mogloween and Bludrut keep!
AQ-adin
October 7th, 2008 AQ.com Mega-announcement! WOW! You better sit down for this one.... Yes my friends, it is true. We have obtained a two letter domain name! The new official home of AdventureQuest Worlds will be AQ.com!!!
HOLY SMOKES! A two letter domain name!? In internet terms that is an uber rare*! The story behind how we pulled this off would melt monitors. So.... this Friday.... keep your fingers crossed for our first ever black color scheme game website to be released on one of the only two letter domains we have ever seen**..... AQ.com. Please update your bookmarks now and spread the word!
* Ultra Mega Super Uber Rare Epic Legendary Artifact
** Think about it... not even Yahoo, Google or... this is pretty crazy. Way to go team!
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