Design Notes

February 21, 2014

A Fractured Alliance

Chaos is On the Rise!

After King Alteon's death, the kingdom of Swordhaven is in upheaval. Alteons daughters Victoria and Tara, along with his son in law Brentan, all lay claim to the throne. As the alliance between good and evil lays shattered, the forces of chaos close in and prepare to attack. It's up to you to battle the coming onslaught and help the people of Lore prepare for war!

Even Time Dragons can help.

As chaorruption spreads over Lore, many of the towns you helped in the past will need your aid again. Tonight, you'll be revisiting Mobius, Arcangrove and Dwarfhold. All have become ruined by chaos, but with you on their side, it may not be too late!

Good & Evil Alliance Shops!

Whether you fight for good or for evil, there's plenty of awesome new gear to collect from he new Good and Evil Alliance rep shops!

Gutter chaos.

• Alliance Exponent set
• Chaos Punk mythsong set
• Chaooze axe & cape
• Chaotic Forge hammer
• Epiphaneia sword

Time Dragon Warrior Set Now Available

Unlock all 10 items in the TimeDragon Warrior set with the 12 month upgrade package, or choose from the 6 month upgrade, 3 month upgrade, 5000 AdventureCoin, or 12000 AdventureCoin packages for selected items from the set!

Dragon + Chrono? Yes Please.

Awesome Updates!

New Player Suggestion Items:

• Dragonfire Of Vengeance sword by TheAvenger07
• Bright Rypt Sword by Vultex023
• DarkLuster sword by Reki
• Twilly & Obake Battlepuppets by El_Rue

Treasure Map Shop Update:

• Champion Snowboarder armor
• Champion Snowboarder Goggles
• Champion Snowboard weapon

November 04, 2010

Chaos Lord coming!

Battle MAGIC ITSELF* this Friday

Minimal created a new combat feature for the upcoming Chaos Lord Battle in Arcangrove. It is really fun experimenting with ways to make the battles more interesting. In this fight... were you stand will be critical to victory. The release will happen tomorrow around 6pm EST.  Beleen will be running the show from the lab while Cysero, Zazul, Faith and I attempt to secure an internet connection and join you from our booth at the ShadoCon convention.

* Pretend we used a cool super deep voice with an echo when you read that.

Forum Question: How good are your marketing skills? We have not updated our AQWorlds ads in ages... I think the last one was the one of me wearing my Pally undershorts... do you have any ideas for funny and creative AQworld's ads? Use your character! Come up with a funny slogan or situation and let us know. Who knows... maybe your character will end up plastered all over the internet O_O (Of course do not click on aq ads when you see them, those things are crazy expensive! Always type in www.AQ.com to visit the site and play the game.)

November 02, 2010

The Last Day!

You Only Have A Few Hours Left!

Today is the very last day you will EVER be able to become a 2nd Upholder by supporting the game buy upgrading to a member!

You have heard us going on and on about this for weeks now but maybe you were in outter mongolia and didn't have any internet until today or maybe you just found out about AQ Worlds so here it is one more time!

If you are a member by tonight at 11:59 PM EST (server time) you earn the right to call yourself a 2nd Upholder which grants you a special 2nd Upholder Achievement Badge on your Character Page so the whole world knows that you decided to help keep AQW going strong by supporting it with your membership, AND you get the very awesome rare item.. the Onyx Star Sword.

This will be the ONLY time that the Onyx Star Sword is given out and it ONLY goes to 2nd Upholders.

For those of you who have chosen to support AQW with your memberships, we really hope you find that being a member is worth a lot more than you paid. Thank you for supporting us, thanks for playing and thanks for sharing the game's 2nd birthday with us!

Birthday Event Closes Today!

Today is also the last day to take part in the AQW 2nd Birthday Event hosted by Paul and Storm, featuring Jonathan Coulton! That means today is the last day to play through the Mirror Realm adventure and grab all of the super-swoop rare items from the event!

The AQW Founders will also recieve their free non-member Onyx Platinum Dragon pets will be delivered with the 2nd Upholder full color badges and Onyx Star Swords tomorrow.

Once again, we want to say thanks to the Founders for having faith in us and faith that AQW would become a great game way back in the day. We hope that we have lived up to your expectations when you decided to get into AQW on the ground floor before anyone else.

If you happened to discover AQW after the ball was already rolling then don't miss your chance to become a Founder in the NEW web MMORPG that we are developing: SuperheroQuest! Coming SOON!

Sooner than we would like. Eeep!

Incubus Is Nearly HERE!

You guys have ripped through the current war, and as I write this the war is hovering at around 93% complete. By this evening you will be able to face down Vampire Lord Incubus! Kimberly from One-Eyed Doll is waiting for you in the war camp urging you forward with One-Eyed Doll's newest Single "You're a Vampire"!

You can also catch One-Eyed Doll's spcial AQW version of their music video for "You're a Vampire" by clicking the One-Eyed Doll button in Battleon! If you haven't yet, you really need to check it out.

Your fellow AQW adventurer, Xyo did am amazing job editing AQW in-game art into the real video. We're really excited that One-Eyed Doll decided to let AQ Worlds be the stage for the world premiere of their video.

You might be saying "Cysero, it's so cool to see a real music video right in the game. HOW DID YOU DO IT?!"

The answer is an easy one: I didn't. Zhoom, llussion and our new coder Yorumi did all that. I'm just as impressed as you are.

Pumpkin Princesses and Princes!

The Pumpkin Carving contest is done and we are in the process of marrowing down the winner or winners from all of the great entries that we got! The Grand Prize winner or winners each get 5000 AdventureCoins! I have also made a special pumpkin themed sword for the winner or winners which I have named "For the Gourd". This will be one of the rarest items in the entire game!

I always love having contests like this. It's really great to see how creative you guys can be with something as simple as a veggie.

If you've ever had one of your suggestions make it into one of Artix Entertainment's games and watched it come to live right on the screen then you know how we feel when we see ideas from the games we make come to life in the real world through your creativity! You guys are really amazing!

The winner or winners will be announced, and the sword will be hand delivered this Friday! If you're in game when I'm delivering the swords I'll goto you and say gratz personally.

Chaos Lord Fight: MEMBERS ONLY

This Friday is also the Arcangrove Finale member only preview! It's been a long and fun zone and I'm pretty sorry to see it come to a close. This zone has become my favorite in the entire game with it's beautiful areas, fantastic original music, impressive magic-themed items, interesting NPCs, and extremely fun-to-write plotline. Minimal and I have cooked up a new boss mechanic for Chaos Lord Ledgermayne which will require you to pay attention during the fight. I'm not going to say anything else about it but you members get to figure it out before anyone else. Have fun!

Stratos, Beleen and I have been combing the suggestion threads and we will be updating the Player Suggestion shop in Yulgar's Inn this weeked as well!

Forum Question

A lot of you have already tied your AE game accounts to the Battleon Master Account System but even more of you haven't yet. What little bonus would it take to get you to start a Master Account and attach your accounts to it? A free inventory space? An achievement both in AQW and on your Master Account? A handful of free ACs?

September 14, 2010

Tuesday PINK Alert!

TLAPD, Arcangrove expanding, and Calendar Project Spoilers below!

Avast me hearties! The day be Tues, and tis be the hour to plunder AQW’s secrets makin’ landfall this Friday.

For starters (in case you haven’t already guessed): Talk Like a Pirate Day! YAAAAAAAR! I know you’re excited. TRUST ME —we are all excited! Last year, TLAPD was a huge hit both in game and here at the Lab. Arrrrrrrtix and I dressed up as pirates IRL as thousands of our friends equipped their costumes in game. I know I’m dressing up again. Maybe I’ll bring a pie with me. So I can be a pierate ^___^

Quibble Coinbiter will offer brand-new TLAPD swag for you and your hearties on Friday. All the original loot from last year, including the house, are not coming back this year. They are Quibble items so they might come back someday… but that day isn’t Friday.

You like our new booty?

Here is just a sneaky-peaky at a *few* new TLAPD items. A lot of female players complained that last year's female version of the Pirate Captain showed too much skin. Cysero took that very literally. This year's Cursed Pirate Captain has no skin whatsoever!

You’re ganna want to stock-up on some AdventureCoins if you wanna showoff the best TLAPD booty. Remember, you can store an unlimited amount of AC items in your bank for free and forever! It’s like the best way to build that rare item collection of yours =D

The Natatorium

Pirates are natural born swimmers. …I think? Well I hope. The newest zone of Arcangrove will send you underwater to the home of freshwater merpeople: The Natatorium! The Natatorium is an ancient meeting place for various forms of merpeople, which has recently come under attack by Ledgermayne's forces.

Undersea Under siege

You will meet Nisse, the Mermaid Sage, and help her take out vicious Angler Fish, Armored Merpeople, and a new wicked boss that everyone here at the Lab is dying to see! I don’t want to spoil that last part… not yet, at least… so you will just have to wait patiently like the rest of us! Until we see it for ourselves. And then maybe we’ll share =D

Calendar Announcement(s)!

 Have you heard anything about the Artix Entertainment 2011 Wall Calendar?! Um well now you have! We are actually making an actual calendar featuring the female NPCS from AE, beautifully set against backgrounds reflecting each month’s theme! Check it out.

Ai No Miko posing for March!

Mido, our newest graphic design artist, is hard at work on the calendar. He is EVEN designing a new rendition of Beleen… and I cannot WAIT to see myself in a whole new art style!

Significant dates (aka the most awesome ones) from AE's history and the games (big events, beta and alpha dates, AE holidays, etc) are marked on this calendar so that you'll know just when to make time to play the Mogloween event, or to check out Frostval or Hero's Heart Day! …or TLAPD!

You can get the calendar from HeroMart once Mido finishes it. And also when HeroMart is online... Heh… OH AND! And there will also be an in-game item that comes with the calendars, unlocking something not-yet-decided in every game! Any ideas?

So let’s make this DN post even longer by listing the following month/NPC pairs! YAY!

January:    Fae * 

February:    Beleen

March:        Ai No Miko

April:        Geopetal

May:        Jemini

June:        Faith

July:        Nythera

August:        Reens

September:    Alina

October:    Safiria

November:    Oishii

December:    Aisha

Your fellow player by the name of ChainSword is even making a fan-made calendar that will be included on the Portal site once it's done! ChainSword and his friends have already gathered all the information they need and have moved on to the art-gathering stage. 

They would really like to showcase fan-made art in the calendar, and for that they need YOUR help! They've got themes for each of the months, but would also like to see any free-themed AE-based art for possible inclusion in the calendar. If you'd like to submit your talented work (or to read the guidelines for submission) please give this underlined hyperlink a click!

We could never do ANYTHING like this without your time, effort, and support. New ideas like this are amazing, and for that we have you to thank! So head on over to the forums and see what masterpieces have been made and come up with some of your own!

If these design notes are any indication of the crazy week ahead…. we are going to need more coffee.  

* Wait… who is Fae? Am I missing something here?

August 21, 2010

Arcangrove Disconnect

The Fix Is In

When I woke up this morning I saw 2 pages of bug reports about the same bug. People were crashing in Arcangrove. It was really frustrating because nobody could complete Reens' Daily potion tasks, or pretty much anything else.

Zhoom and I got to work and now we are fairly certain we fixed the issue.

Sorry to everyone who got DC'd during their fight and lost their progress, and thanks to the brave room of adventurers who helped me test the fix. The entire room made it through all 3 dailies without anyone crashing once.

Thanks also to everyone who went to the Release Bug forum and reported the bug. Without your very helpful reports and eye for detail it would have taken MUCH longer to fix it.

Have fun in Arcangrove!

Pay special attention to the Cysero entry in the Encyclopedia Arcana. Beacuse it's about me. Cysero.

Remember, if you think you've found a bug, the best way to let us know is on the Release Bugs forum thread!

Update

There is another bug causing disconnections in other parts of the game. We're working to resolve this one now.

August 20, 2010

MAGI of Arcangrove

Arcangrove Tower  is OPEN!

Visit our lovely tower! Feast on one or more of Blakk's magical pets! Spend your hard earned gold on some of Master Druid Moonwrath's Arcangrove items! Spend quality time with your friends earning Arcangrove reputation to earn the right to weild or wear some of the awesome, uncommon reputation items! Read a raondom entry from the Encyclopedia Arcana! Play with our broken teleporter pad! Experiment with Reens' one-time-use potions and scrolls!

This is only the first portion of the town that will be expanding even further next week, as we begin exploring the magical and mysterous Arcangrove!

Player Suggestion Shop UPGRADE!

We are also adding a few more items to the ever expanding Player Suggestion shop in Yulgar's Inn. This shop is FILLED with amazing items pulled from our Player Suggestion Forums, designed by players just like you and brought to life bu our amazing artists!

This expansion brings you 2 brand new culor custom armors, one matching helm and a pair of REALLY HUGE daggers!

We always read that forum and look at the buckets if creativity pouring out of you guys. If you haven't checked out the thread, you really should. You can get lost in there just spending HOURS going over the pages and pages of fantastic creations. Maybe you'll want to add something? We're always expanding the shop so maybe next time it will be YOUR item that becomes a part of AQ Worlds!

Dage The Evil

One such player going by Dage The Evil is currently helping out the art team. His armor is still in the Player Suggestion shop but now we've hidden him somewhere in the game and added some of the most difficult quests in the game to him, but the rewards are worth the effort. If you can find him, you might be able to upgrade his original armor design to something far more sinister!

Happy hunting!

Friday the 13th George Lowe Event!

Due to the populatiry of this event we have extended the event rares shop and ability to get the Friday the 13th achievement badge for a few more days. They will be removed mid-week next week so if you haven't gotten the chance to check out the Event Rares or get your badge, now would be the ideal time.

The badge will come back Next Friday the 13th but the rares will be leaving forever. This is your ONLY chance to get them!

Dragoncon

One and a half weeks left until DRAGONCON 2010! As you are probably aware, every year the crew from AE's secret Underground Lab (us) pack up our things and head northwards, neither toward nor away from the setting sun, to the fabled Lost City of Atlanta. Georgia.

There we take part in the east coast's (maybe the world's) largest Sci-Fi/Fantasy convention. It's ALWAYS a fun time for geeking out, failing to sleep and meeting new friends (in fact, it's where we met Stratos, back when I was head of DragonFable). This year we've got a 3 hour panel in a much larger room than last year and we'd love to fill every seat with one or more humans. Our panels are filled with fun stuff, behind the scenes stuff, contests, free swag, moglin punting, a free rare non-member pet and we'll sign anything you put in front of us whether you want us to or not.

I signed a baby last year.

Voltaire, Kimberly and Geroge Lowe are all going to be at con and MIGHT show up for our little panel!

Satuday 1 PM
Sheraton Hotel, Savannah Room

We're also co-hosting a MMO party Saturday night!

I know that some of you are going but if you happen to live in the greater Atlanta area, happen to be going there around the beginnig of September, or have a little time off coming up and some extra money for the con ticket you should come out! We'd love to hang and you won't be disappointed.

To misquote Captain James Tiberius Kirk... "COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!"

August 19, 2010

The Mages of Arcangrove

Journey to the tower of magic this Friday 

The magical forest of Arcangrove is home to time-travel faeries, mystic creatures, and most notably... the legendary Tower of Magic. You would be challenged to find a famous mage who has not spent time researching their art in the Magic Tower's Library -- Warlic, Cysero, Xarymandias, Mercuria and even Xan to name a few. Now it is your turn to walk through the stone, bark and star halls of the tower towards your destiny. Do not miss an opportunity to read the many books and visit the many trainers and shops there. If you are a magic user, this will become a place to frequent often our world expands. A place where magic users shall learn, evolve and be tested. It has been a long time since Drakath and his Chaos Lords last threatened the world... the sages shudder to dream what wicked plot now unfolds. Join us in Friday's release as the pathway to Arcanegrove opens at long last!

Players of DragonFable and the original AdventureQuest will be surprised to discover many famliar sights including Reen's Potion shop and a recreation of the original AdventureQuest's Mana Scepter! Also for DragonFable fans... here is one of the secret projects that has been taking shape in my workshop --  Necronic Blade of Doom

Auto Account Bans for Hackers/Cheaters

This is an important notice. To create a fair and safe environment for all players, the game has started automatically perma-banning accounts of players who hack or cheat. Over 100 accounts have been banned in the last hour. Once an account is banned for cheating it will not be recoverable and all items will be lost. To all players who this is relavent to -- I beg you not to use any hacks or cheats... even ones that promise that your account will not be banned. The system will be continually adapting, unexpectantly banning accounts using new hacks as they are attempted. Also, as you may already know our lawyers have begun taking legal action against several hacking sites, their respective owners and the authors of hacks found there. My sincere plea to these individuals in the past has been either ignored or their promises to us had been broken. After the creation of several malicious tools to use against our game we were forced into taking this very serious course of action. Dispite being in foriegn countries, they were easily located and we are working with their local authorities. This story is still very much in progress -- but please know it is one that weighs very heavily on my heart. I love all of the players of our games and will continue to protect their accounts at any cost. With this post, and another extra backup of all accounts, I wish you fun and happiness in your in-game adventures... and a great time during the start of the Arcangrove Saga tomorrow. Battle on!