January 05, 2012

2011 - AQW Year In Review!

Thanks For Making It AQW's Best Year Yet!

They say that hind-sight is 20/20. Now that the new year has begun, I want to go back and look at everything that we've done together this last year but first I want to say a sincere Thanks to all of you, Members and Non-members alike. Without you guys joining in the adventure we'd just be making these games for ourselves and that's not very fun for either you or us.

Now, let us peer beneath the bedskirt of time at all the wonderfull dustbunnies of adventure that we swept under the bed of 2011!

That metaphor went in a weird direction, sorry.

• We began the Year of the Moglin with the introduction of the Sandsea!
• Finally got the Bupers Camel monster in-game!
• Thyton held his first Live Drawing event and produced the Panda Launcher!
• We got to Spend A Day With Artix!
• We celebrated Cheese Day!
• Expanded the Inventory and Bank and gave all players 10 Free Spaces!
• We celebrated Winter-een-mas with webcomic Ctrl + Alt + Del!

• Held Groundhorc Day, Chinese New Year (with non-member Year Of The Rabbit AC pet!) and Superbowl Half-Time releases all in the same week!
• Opened a Player Suggestion shop for Heroes Heart Day items (should we do that again?)!
• Held our first Game-Tastic Game Challenge
• Nursey and I had our second son, Jetson (love you guys!)!
• Samba came to work for AE as an animator for AQW!
• Added Facebook Share buttons to each badge in the Book of Lore!
• Introduced AQW's first Limited Quantity Shop!

• Held the world premiere of the HeroSmash Game Trailer in AQW!
• Nythera and Ryuuji got married!

• Added vast improvements to Chat Filter!
• Yulgar celebrated Pancake Day by stealing my clothes.

• We all celebrated Lucky Day by attending the Shamrock Fair!
• Ragnar, the Member item vendor, came to Battleon and doesn't seem to want to leave!
• With your help AE donated over $5,000 to help with the Japanese Earthquake Relief!
• Fat Panda became our first real mobile game on the iPhone and Android markets!
• That whole "Rebecca Black - Friday" thing happened (not in AQW, just sayin')...
• We held the musical Fear Chaser event!
• We release the AQW Anything Goes Battle On Battle Card Game with CardClahser Class!

• We also released DerpQuest Worlds for April Fools!

• Released the Ranger class in the Sandsea!
• Began the SkyGuard member only storyline!
• BattleOn Games (formerly Artix Entertainment) became Artix Entertainment again!
• AQW appeared in the TV show, Endgame (good episode too)!
• Celebrated the end of the world on April, 21st, 2011 when Sky-NET came online!
• Held Earth Day and Grenwog in the same weekend!
• Introduced VIP Membership Perk with the HEROSMASH release!

• Released, amongst other items, the Ultrahat in honor of the Royal Wedding!
• Re-opened the Cinco De mayo shop!
• Released the Alina Storyline and briefly saw Derplina in testing!

• Voltaire returned for Friday, May 13th and brought Deady along!
• Introduced 1v1 PvP matches!
• Nulgath errupted from his previous larval stage!
• Began DoomWood and introduced Vordred, the Paladin Slayer!

• AE attended Pariahcon 2011 (where we were met by only 1 fan but maybe our biggest fan)!
• AE attended Metrocon 2011 where we held a GREAT panel for future game developers!

• AE went to E3. I don't know what happened there But I'm sure it was fun!
• Solrac (Mennace at the time) began his work for AE!
• Released AQW's first PET class, Necromancer!
• Introduced the AC Shortcut to get classes for those who don't want to spent the time!
• Added the Espada server for our Brazillian players!
• Released the 2011 AE Surfboard collection for the start of summer!
• Death began showing commercials (which Members can skip)!

• Introduced the Free Color Picker allowing you to pick ANY color in the visible light spectrum.
• Introduced the Member 3 Month perk: Battletested AxeMaster Armor Set!
• Introduced the Member 15 Month perk: Chaos Shaper Class!
• Buffed DoomKnight and Paladin classes! Twice!
• Introduced the DragonHero armor set!
• ArcAttack came to the game for a special DoomWood Event!

• Celebrated Freedom Day in style with fireworks and new items!
• Aegis came to work for AQW as a part-time volunteer Assistant Art Dev!
• DF Artist Tomix came to AQW part-time and brought his considerable skills to bear!
• Released Evolved Shaman Class!
• Released UndeadSlayer Class!
• teamed up with George Lowe to release the George Lowe Bites soundboard App!
• Actually Finished the Vordred storyline of DoomWood. That's a huge accomplishment. nearly killed some of us!
• Added Character Page Backgrounds as a Member Perk!
• Added the ability to turn Duel Invites off! 
• Added Gender Change option in Yulgar's Inn!
• Expanded the J6 Storyline to insane proportions!
• Artix let visiting super-fan Winnie write a Design Notes post, which was nice!
• Added Member only emotes as a Member Perk!
• Added Class and Reputation Boosts to the game!
• Began the BloodTusk Ravine storyline!
• Added Treasure Chests as a random collectible drop to the game!
• Added 2 Free Treasure Chest Keys per month for Members as a Member Perk!
• XAN arrived in AQW... and will be back!
• As usual, we had a FANTASTIC time at DragonCon (can't wait to see you guys this year)!

• Released our biggest and most popular Talk Like A Pirate Day Shop ever! YAR!
• AQW Introduced it's 3rd Upholder deal!

• Alina thought it would be a good idea to keep working after having her wisdom teeth removed!
• We had our biggest and best AQW Birthday bash ever with special guests THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS!

• We held our traditional Pumpkin Carving Contest and had so many great entries!
• Expanded the Mogloween Storyline when I decided to bake a pie.
• Released the Vindicator Of They Class!
• Veneeria came to work for AQW as a part-time volunteer Assistant Art Dev!
• Released the Battle Card Mod packs!

• Released the Paladin Slayer Class which comes with both Mod Packs!
• The 11-11-11 Portal showed up in Battleon and lead us to the DragonRealm!
• We released the 2012 AE Calendar with ChronoCorruptor Class which is still on sale at HeroMart!
• Artix was the guinea pig for the first I CAN HAS MOD contest! Next one coming soon!
• Expanded Harvest Cornycopia event!
• Re-opened our Black Friday shop with bunch of new Black Themed items!
• Once again, thanks to you guys, The AE family became Platinum Sponsors of the charity Child's Play! Thanks again!
• Nythera and the Player Support team held the first "Save The Players Event"!
• Released Troll SpellSmith Class!
• Released Horc Evader Class!
• Kimberly from One-Eyed Doll came to visit and wore an Artix Entertainment Shirt on stage that night! How COOL!

• We held our ever popular Creative Cookie Contest with some truly amazing entries!
• Began Mid-Week releases as another Member Perk starting with Molgulp's Marsh2 expansion!
• Continued the Mid-Week release Member Perk with an expansion to the Lair map!
• The /Samba emote became an unlockable reward from Samba's dance mini-game for Members Only as another Member Perk. 
• Expanded Frostval with Song of the Frozen Heart parts 1 and 2!
• Gave EVERYONE 200 ACs for a Frostval gift!
• Introduced Bank Pets to AQW!
• Expanded the New Year's Release with all new content, rewards and villian!
• Then I wrote this.

WHEW! It was a big year and those are just the highlights. I didn't even get to mention EVERY shop, release, advancement, event, or project, but you were here for a lot of it so you get the idea.

It's been a hard but fun year here in the lab making AQW and the other AE games for you and I can't wait till you see what fun stuff we've got planned for 2012!

351 days until Just Another Day.