Release-adin

March 27th, 2009
Just Released!
Smooth roll for a complicated release
The 1st Lord of Chaos is preparing to strike... in the calm before the storm the following things have just been released:

• Quibble Coinbiter
  This weekend only: Obtain his never before seen, used weapons. Read below for his bizzare story.
• Bank!
  We added a bank system to AQworlds. See Valencia in the center of town. You can now buy permanent bank slots to store your items with AdventureCoins
• Inventory Merge
  We merged your item and armor tabs into a single easy to use, sortable interface. (Yup, it even has little buttons to sort at the top!) If you were not using ALL of your armor slots, you may notice you now have some free space!
• New Good/Evil Items
  Visit the good or evil towns and check their shops for new items.
• Preloader!
  The game now has a preloader... better late than never. (Thanks Minimal!)
• The Chaos Marsh
  A brand new area with new quests and reward items.

I would like to thank Reens and Llusion for all of their hard work this week. They did this release solo while the rest of us are gearing up for the chaos to come. Also, I would like to congratulate Zhoom on the tricky inventory merge and bank system. Gear up friends.... something wicked this way comes. BATTLE ON!

aeXtras
Third Party Offers for AdventureCoins
There are multiple ways to get AdventureCoins. You can upgrade your acount which gives you a generous amount of coins or buy them separately. Also, we reluctantly added the third-party offers that we saw other applications using. I will be the first to tell you I do not like these offers in general -- but if you see a decent offer from a legitimate company that interests you, it is a great way to earn tons of technically-free AdventureCoins!
See the third party offers

My-brain-adin!

March 26th, 2009
Quibble Coinbiter
Traveling sales-moglin
He specializes in NEVER BEFORE SEEN used weapons. <nods> That is right, the weapons have never been seen in the world before, but he sells them used. How is this possible? Quibble has a connection with a slightly corrupt time travel fairy who supplies him with items that were not even created yet*.

Quibble will be in the town of Battleon this weekend! He never stays in one place long and we have no idea when (or if) he will be back. Remember, he is not selling rares.. he is selling items you are not even supposed to have**!

* Thinking about this hurts my brain.
** Now that I understand. But it sort of makes you wonder... if the item is used, but never seen before. Is the time travel fairy going to the future after you had obtained the weapon and taking it from you in order for Quiblle to sell it to you before you ever found it***?
*** OUCH! MY BRAIN!!!!!!!

Also this weekend

• Bank
• Sortable tabs in inventory and New class / outfit icons
• New Map: The Swamp of Chaos
• New Quests
• New Items
• Quibble Coinbiter & his shop

Storage-adin

March 24th, 2009
Who wants... A BANK?!
Also, new releases and a hint at the chaos to come
Greetings all! For a while now the top issue I have been hearing is, "I need more space for items!". So, Zhoom's top priority this week is building a bank.... which requires changing a bunch of things. Most importantly, ALL of your items (including armors and classes) will be merged into your main backpack. We are going to add little "Sort by" tabs like MechQuest has so it is easy to find your things. More information coming later this week as we figure out what terrible, terrible things this is going to do to our database. Also this week, a new area will be released with new quests and rewards. Meanwhile, the team is continuing to work on stats, combat balancing, and the next major mega release -- The first Lord of Chaos. (Note: You know Artix has a hard time keeping secrets. Three people are holding him down so he doesn't spill the beans on this major release in development. It's going to make all of the previous ones seem tiny!)

New Record: 5 Million Free Accounts!
Congratulations and thank you! AQWorlds is growing at a downright scary rate. As I post this there are 5,116,183 free accounts. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! (Poor database...)

ArchKnight LIVES
WOOOHOOOOOO! This Friday in DragonFable... a moment some of us have been waiting years for.

What is ArchKnight?
Saving Princesses 101: ArchKnight is the story of Ash Dragonblade. A young boy who dreamed of becoming a Knight but could not due to his lowly heritage. However, when a hero told him all he needed to do was save a Princess and a King would be sure to Knight him... he quested to do... um... one stupid thing after another.... that just ends up going terribly, terribly wrong. Best game ever!

Completely recreated in DragonFable!
A complete recreation of ArchKnight inside of DragonFable is being made. The first part will be released this Friday. At least, the full story (as written by Artix, and amazingly recreated with love by Geopetal, Ghost, Tomix, and the entire DF Team) will be told!

This is going to be a great weekend! On another note: we need a new forums contest (to help creative players earn some AdventureCoins for bank space) Any ideas? See you on the forums.

March 21st, 2009
The Good Ol' Hockey Game...
And the server goes *urp*
Yup - it's a Saturday DN! Before I head off to the Hockey Game, I wanted to let you all know that Minimal is hard at work fixing up the Login screen for all of you! He's firing up his computer and will have this thing solved in no time. Thanks for your patience!

Edit: Thanks to the quick work of Minimal (and Zhoom, who answered my first phone call...) the servers were up after minimal (hah!) interruption.

Loves the Early Release!

March 20th, 2009
Another St. Patrick's Day!
Does the Sneevilchaun triumph?
Roy "G" Biv was having a reaaallly bad day. First, Monochrome the colour-hating Dwakel showed up with Lucky Harms and shot down his rainbow. When the rainbow fell, it landed on a bunch of rats who were NOT happy with suddently being fluroescent green, yellow and red. Between the unhappy rats, and Lucky Harms running after him to get his pot of gold, Roy fell off the cliff! He managed to hold on, but he could REALLY use your help!

How to be a leprechaun!

Also today, the Forest of Chaos opens to all players - head in there to help King Alteon and his researchers. Battle On!

Celebrat-adin

Odessa's and Galanoth's B-day!
O is for Odessa (Bonus: Yay for Cake x 2)
Happy birthday to both Odessa and Galanoth :-) Now, if you are a MechQuest player you may already know that Queenadent* Odessa was named after Warlic's little girl. She just turned 2 and is working on her Alphabet. So I made her an ABC book called "O is for Odessa" for her birthday.

* Queen + President = Queenadent

I really hope she likes it. The final copy just came back from Kinko's Copies so I took some pictures before wrapping it. Some other fun pages include "I is for Integer" and K is for Koloring."

(Faith's hands)

Do not worry, I showed Uncle Shelby that there are far more words than Xylophone. ( Warlic is so going to kill me when she grows up spelling the way she learns in my book) Battle on!

Design-adin

Major Villian Design 101
A behind the scenes look at designing Gravelyn
What an awesome week! Now that I finally have a moment to catch my breath I wanted to share the behind the scenes design story of Gravelyn. Hers is an interesting a story... a beautiful girl raised in complete secrecy by undead servants in the confines of her evil world-conquering Father's fortress? Imagine how the world must look through her eyes. She is a strong yet very misguided individual who is now tasked with rebuilding her Father's empire and dream alone.... well... alone unless you choose to join the side of Evil and help her.

Creating her was the result of months of sharing story ideas and tendless redesigns by Miltonious... some of which I posted above for you to see. In the end, there is only one thing we know about Gravelyn... she is a living human girl. Although, we are not entirely sure she realizes that. You will learn more about Gravelyn as she defends her throne from the other major Villians who are currently on their way to Shadowfall. Will she be able to keep control of the weakened Shadowscythe Empire facing the forces of DragonMaster Frostscythe, Safiria and... XAN!?

Green-adin

Roy "G" Biv
Sneevilchaun

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!
Is there really pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?
When I was a young boy my Mother told me there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I remember running endlessly but never being able to reach the end. Is there really a pot of gold there? That is exactly why the A.R.C (Anti Rainbow Cannon) was used to shoot the sucker down! You will have find out the rest for yourself in this Week's special holiday release!

One of most beautiful and tragic maps in AQWorlds

Sneevilchauns
Sneevils are box obsessed goblins. Their entire culture is based around containers. Their status comes from the size and quality of their boxes. They only eat containers... like bannana peals and orange peals. So it only makes sense how a Sneevil Leprechaun would prioritize the recovery of his pot of gold.

Event is now Re-Running!
A Friday the 13th to Remember
I would like to thank everyone who came to our first ever live muscial event. It was an ambitious project. A five act adventure with all new art, voice acting, music, cutscenes, boss monsters, tons of new items for both upgraded and free players AND the introduction of our first war meter! I would like to thank Voltaire for being a part of this historic web gaming event. The songs he re-sang with AdventureQuest references came from his album To the Bottom of the Sea. I would also like to thank the amazing art, animation, programming and writing work of the AQWorlds team, and the testing of our community team. If you liked what we were trying to do with this event, you can help us get more servers and bandwidth by upgrading your account.

Oddly just like his real concerts!

You are the reason we can do this at all... and we are only going up from here! I still cannot believe 32,000 of you logged on. (Important Note: The servers were all maxed with 32,000 players on... A LOT MORE players were TRYING to get on.) The poor servers were crushed like Teenzor (The world's smallest Pirate skeleton) in the hands of Undead Captain Blackberry. We always talk about crashing and destroying the servers with a release... but we never actually did it before. People will be telling tales for years of what happened on this fateful Friday the 13th -- I am glad you were a part of it. Lets get some more servers and do something even bigger next time! BATTLE ON!

"I think we hit something."

P.S. The event is currently in re-run mode and will be available for two weeks.

Event Features

• Full 5 Act Adventure
• Musical Guest Voltaire
• First Talking NPC
• New Cutscene and Bosses
• New Rare Items
• First War Meter

PLAY BY PLAY
11:30pm - Artix updates Design Notes
10:15pm - Re run started
10:15pm - Line up at the booth for Friday the 13th Store
10:01pm - Starting Act V & VI
9:39pm - Started Act IV
9:25pm - Started Act III
9:00pm - Started Act II
8:15pm - Servers back on.. wobbly at best!
8:11pm - Game crashed
8:10pm - Event Started
7:59pm - All servers at full capacity, including our 2 new ones!
7:56pm - OVER 32,000 people online... NEW RECORD!
7:55pm - OVER 29,700 people online... NEW RECORD!
7:49pm - New record! 26,000 Players online at once
7:30pm - Catastrophe! All servers rebooted, we're sure it's ok now
7:12pm - Pirate ship is docked
6:30pm - Friday the 13th is known as the unluckiest of days. Fortunately I dodged that black cat that walked past me by running under a ladder. Sadly, I knocked over and broke a mirror in the process. I am sure that will have no impact on tonight's event!
6:15pm - We expect the ship to dock an hour early!
5:30pm - Off the coast the shadowy figure of a decaying pirate ship can be seen. It is coming closer...
5:30pm - The sun is starting to set...
4:00pm - Two new servers added just for the event. Zhoom and Minimal.

The waiting area

P.S. You better believe there will be rares!
P.S.S. Doom Weapons will increase in power in DragonFable
P.S.S.S. OMG, a musical event in-game!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (How else could we beat last month's Friday the 13th)

UnLive-adin


Vampire Queen

Gypsy Pirate Goth Musician

March 13th, 2009
Today's Un-Live Event
It is officially Friday the 13th
... and it all starts at 8pm EST (After sundown!)
We have attemped some ambitious projects in the past, but attempting to create a game-wide live event adventure with music.... in less than two weeks... well, this is one train wreck you will not want to miss. All you need to do is be in game a little before 8pm EST (5pm PST). We will tell you how to get to the event from there!

If you are not able to make the event we are going to make it replayable -- but trust me, you will not want to miss our FIRST ever live adventure! Sure, we may pull a "Titanic" with our entire server cluster... <Kaaaaaaaaa-rash!>... hmm, wait.. was I really about to use watching us crash down in flames as a selling point for coming to the event?

How this all came to be... STORY TIME!
I promised that I would tell you the story behind this... it started two weeks ago when I was in New York on a SOOUS* mission. During my trip I saw many wonderous things (including a ball room full of Verizon executives doing the Macarana and the Electric Slide**) At the end of the quest Safiria had arranged a not-work-related-in-any-way dinner with Voltaire and myself***. We were telling stories and I told him about some of the things we were doing in the game. Specifically about how I wanted to try doing live events with guest stars. He asked me, "So when would you be ready to do something like this?". I looked him dead in the eyes and said, "There is another Friday the 13th in two weeks." And there you have it... LOL, that is EXACTLY how I keep getting myself in trouble like this. So Cysero and I wrote up an adventure based on Voltaire's lastest CD, To the Bottom of the Sea. Miltonius and J6 went to work on the art while Zhoom and Minimal attempted programming huge new features in the game to make this possible. Voltaire went to a recording studio on Monday and recorded sound bytes, dialog and... yes.. Voltaire will be our FIRST talking NPC in the game. We are just one day away and we are still waiting on a lot of the pieces to come in (like the boss fight mini-cutscene) so we can finishing putting them together. Do not worry.. I am sure we will be ready to test at um... <checks wrist sun dial> 7:50pm tomorrow! It is going to be close -- check back for more -- this is going to be interesting!

* The only organization that has a worse acronym than the Secret Order of Undead Slayers is the Sincerely Ubiquitous Champion Knights.
** As scary as this is, it is 100% true.
*** Safiria was sooooooooooo jealous that she was not there.

March 11th, 2009
Something Wiki this way comes!
The AQW Wiki is ready!
We're having a GREAT time working on this Extra-special live release for you on Friday! But there's a team of people who have been working like mad for the last month getting the AQW Official Wiki up and ready for us to use! And that's right... it's READY FOR RELEASE! I'd like to give a HUGE thanks to Angelique, Burn, Paperclip, Stardot, Azami, Versilaryan and Kitsukaru for all their hard work in getting this ready for all of you! This is our first official Wiki, and it's ready in time for Friday's Live Event!

THE AQW WIKI!

We hope you like the Wiki format!

UnLive-adin

March 9th, 2009
Friday the 13th Un-Live Event!
Happening THIS Friday at 8pm EST
Who would be crazy enough to board a ghost ship at night on Friday the 13th and sail through monster-infested waters in search of an uncharted island containing a cursed instrument? What.. you? Are you insane?!?!!?!?!! Good! You are hereby invited to join us on our first ever live musical event featuring VOLTAIRE!

How else could we top the last Friday the 13th? The ghost ship and its crew of undead pirates will arrive this Friday. We will set sail after the sun sets at 8pm EST. They say dead men tell no tales, but these salty boneheads will not stop talking about the cursed Guitar of Skull Punch island! It is said that whoever obtains the guitar will be be granted fame, fortune and... immortality! We are going to help Voltaire get it! Prepare yourself for a live adventure unlike anything every done before!

An Un-Live Adventure!
We would have called it a Live Event if not for all the undead! Musical guest Voltaire will be playing three songs from his newest albumn while Artix, Safiria and AQW Team try to survive the adventure with you. Be a part of history and experience it in real time as the event is broadcasted to all event rooms, on all servers. Following the live event, we will release a replayable version of the adventure (But trust me, you want to be there live as it is happening!) There is a good chance that this event will bring down our entire gaming nextwork... and because it is live... ANYTHING can (and probably will) happen.... see you Friday!

March 6th, 2009
Forest of Chaos
King Alteon sends you on a most dangerous quest!
Something wicked this way comes... and is is coming through the forest. King Alteon's chain of quests continues with dangerous mission to explore a forest being overrun by THE CHAOS.

New Release Features

• Forest of Chaos (Brand new Map & Quest)
• Two New Monsters
• Chaorrupted Bear Cub Pet
  Barbarian Tribesman Armor
• Bear Skin Cloak
• Feral Druid's Headdress
• Chaos Bear Head
• Bear Clawed Axe

ill-adin


ill-pyre Queen

ill-ranger

The Lab Plague
Not to be confused with the Lab Plaque
We are sick*.... <cough> <sniffle> <nose blow> <cough> The lab has become a highly infectious place this week. Thyton, Safiria, Cysero, Zhoom, and well over half the team are in home** with fevers and sore throats. I would cast heal... but I am sick too! <cough> <hack> <slash***> <cough> Do not worry, just because the ENTIRE AQWorlds that works here at the lab is incpacitated -- we still have a release coming for... <falls over and faints saying one word> "Reeeeens....****"

* "...and twisted!" Hey! That is not what I meant.
** Believe it or not we do (occassionally) leave this place to sleep, eat, and um... well.. we do sleep at home.
*** Battling undead germs
**** At least it might have been Reens. Could have been REAMS (maybe he was out of paper) or RINSE (Like he forgot to wash his hands after blowing his nose) or.. or...

Rescue Reens-gers!
Here we go again....
Fortunately, the majority of the AQworlds team works remotely. Reens and the team have an exciting release for you today.

News-adin

March 5th, 2009
Coming This Week
King Alteon's Quest
Chaos is spreading throughout the land. Whilst Gravelyn gains power, King Alteon seeks to understand the nature of this strange new threat. See what danger is approaching for yourself in this weeks

AQW Wiki
Encyclopedia Loretania
I would like to cheer the amazing effort of Burn, Paperclip, Angelique, Stardot, Azami and Kitsukaru who are working on an AQW Wiki. It is getting close to completion (I saw a sneak peek) and wow there are things in there that I did not even know where in game.

Back-adin

March 3rd, 2009
Special UN-LIVE Event!
Oh yes - there is ANOTHER Friday the 13th THIS month
I am back from New York -- I missed you! Reens and the team did a GREAT job, I am really impressed. While there are dozens of stories to share from my trip, including "why you should never, ever put a graveyard that big next to an experimental power plant..." I am going to jump straight to the main event... brace yourself!

Be a part of our first LIVE Adventure
You are hereby invited to our FIRST EVER, LIVE, Friday the 13th special event featuring musical guest Voltaire (Best known for the song "Brains!" from the Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy), the AQW Team, and a.... well, lets just say the end of this is something you will not want to miss. It all starts Friday the 13th at sundown.

I have never seen anything like this in a game before. A musical performance alongside your adventure? Parts will be prepared in advance, but you and your fellow players will experience it live, for the first time as it happens. We only have two weeks to get everything ready for you.. prepare yourself for our biggest AQworlds event yet! (Zhoom is setting up some more file servers)

P.S. You better believe there will be rares!
P.S.S. Doom Weapons will increase in power in DragonFable
P.S.S.S. OMG, a musical live event in-game!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (How else could we beat last month's Friday the 13th)