OverSoul Beta Revolution continues! Everyone is hard at work making OverSoul THE BEST online card game ever—using YOUR comments and suggestions, of course! Warlic is working his magic on the new User Interface. Nulgath is giving makeovers to game assets and the OverSoul homepage. Rolith is mastering card customization. What else do you wanna see in OverSoul? Let your voice be heard in the Comments below!
Feelin’ so fly like J6! Continue your adventures through the J6 saga and finally uncover the secrets of this mysterious bounty hunter. Now that J6 is about to finish his Doomsday device, it’s up to YOU to stop him. Gear up in Evil Undead Limited Time Rares, eggsperience the eggcitement of Grenwog, claim the new Dragon Blades in Galanoth’s Birthday shop, suit-up in the GI J6 armor sets, find the whereabouts of Datadisk 3, and embark on the J6 saga finale Part 1!
It seems you have done a great job collecting eggs...I mean egg-shaded fuel containment pods...for the Lagomorphs. The bunnies are so pleased that they're adding even more to Brachylagus' secret shop! Don't have any eggs? All you need to do is fight! Now hop to it, Eggpic Dueler!
Dage the Evil came to DragonFable on April 1st…but in a form like you’ve never seen before! Meet Dage the Sneevil and fight his Undead Sneegion during this year’s April Fools Day event. After swiping that smirk off Dage the Sneevil’s face, head into the Sandsea and confront Sek Suat. What does the decaying despot want from you? Find out as Sek Duat opens up to you about his past... and his current goal!
Happy (Belated) Birthday to Gibby! Grab a Limited-Time Giblet Kebab Energy Blade and skewer your enemies in honor of the occasion. To boost the Lucky War victory incentive, all Lucky quests will add bonus XP and credits rewards. Also, a L50 version of the Clover Shot reward arm will be in the shop when you reach 100%, with NG DPT and a Power boost of +5 for the standard price of 5000000 credits. If you can hit the 100% mark by Sunday at midnight I'll increase the Power to 20 (same as the Primary stat of a L50 mod)!
Smash into Spring time! Pytor the Bunny has returned along with his shop of seasonal goodies. Where? You will have to find that out for yourself! Also get your new April Fools Day items at the fairgrounds—and that’s no joke!
Donovan seeks to rob the life essence of Lore's mightiest creatures! Not satisfied with werewolves, vampires, and dragons, he now has his sights set on the Verewog! Can you stop Donovan from conquering Lore and save the Grenwog from the vamprism and lycanthropy it is now infected with? Also get your April Fools event items: a new weapon, 4 new House Guards, 6 new mobs, and previous years event items with updated tiers!
When most people see a Knight in full plate armor the first thing they usually think is, "COOOL!" But not you. Not any more at least. Because the next time you look at a Knight you are going to think, "Oh man, how hard is it to go to the bathroom in that?" It takes around 10 minutes for a squire to properly strap the chest piece, arms, shoulders and legs on you. So... answering the call to become a Paladin? Easy. Answering nature's call? Well, think about your evil undead foes, not... waterfalls. Doing the pee-pee dance in full plate armor is sorta embarrasing.
Lothalis:
I thought that's why the Fauld (the metal "skirt") was created?
Artix:
Have you ever tried using one of those in a urinal?
Lothalis:
...
Eonaleth:
Are you wearing the special pants?
Artix:
?
Eonaleth:
I learned about it when I was in England! How do you not know about the special pants!?
Artix:
*changing subject abruptly* ...when you go to wash your hands the gauntlets rust.
Lothalis:
This is exactly why I became a Witch.
Lothalis:
Wait... now I am a Defender so I get to see first hand. #UpgradeClassProblem
This post is a personal story about friendship and the best (not so) scary movie that changed our sense of humor forever. Possibly yours, too. This will not be a controversial post, but it is REALLY WEIRD that the Founder/CEO of a family-friendly video game studio is about to praise and credit a horror film series with being the inspiration behind the growing success of Artix Entertainment's video games. Why? Read more to find out.
Something you did not know about me...
I had a real hard time fitting in when I was little. If you found anyone who went to middle school with me and asked them about me, they would respond, "OMG, him? Yeah, he's that kid that wore black all the time and never smiled. Probably why he always sat alone at lunch." I was really quiet. Rarely, when I did open my mouth it was always about vampires, robots, ninja zombie aliens and so on, and was heavily shunned by the other kids for doing so. The thing that would surprise you most is that I had NO sense of humor. No puns. No jokes. No self-deprecating sense of humor. The guidance counselors were worried because I never laughed.
Warlic & Artix were childhood friends
I met Warlic when in 5th grade during an embarrassing complication resulting from my real first name being the same as his last name. We nearly ended up in the principal's office. It was complicated. But it did not take long for us to figure out we had a very important thing in common... we loved video games. The very first time we got to hang out, we made a video game, "DragonLord." It was a super-cheesy, simple RPG fighting system built with Basic. Sadly, we had only gotten to hang out together twice before we both moved hours away in opposite directions.
Evil Dead 2
In 9th grade, Warlic and I finally got a chance to hang out. That night, we stayed up late and saw an R-rated movie that, for us, was life-changing. It was called Evil Dead II and starred Bruce Campbell as his iconic and legendary character, "Ash." (Note: Yup, this is why I named the main character in ArchKnight Ash.) It was supposed to be a horror movie... and it was dark and gruesome, but for some reason, it was sooooo absurd that we started laughing. Laughing hard! We had never seen anything like it. Each scene seemed to be unintentionally more bizzare and quirky than the last. The main character goes to this creepy cabin in the woods where he finds a book of ancient evil called the Necronomicon. He foolishly causes a passage from the book to be read which brings back evil spirits. At some point Ash's hand got posessed and started punching him, flipping him, and smashing plates over his head. Eventually, he had to remove his own hand... and then spent a good portion of the movie chasing it around the creepy house, fighting it with embarrassing results. Every scene felt like an "epic fail." But back then, we could not tell if it was intentional or not. The highlight of the movie... was when Ash needed to go into the basement to collect the missing pages of the Necronomicon. To prepare himself, he does a brief Rocky-style preparation montage where he puts a chainsaw where his missing hand is, saws off his shotgun, cowboy-twirls it into the holder behind his back, and as the camera zooms up onto his face, he holds an unflinchingly-serious face and says, "Groovy."
We were literally rolling around on the floor laughing. Did you ever laugh so hard you were worried you were actually going to die?
If this is your first time seeing the scene, you might not find it AS funny as we did, because it has been imitated and spoofed hundreds of times in movies, video games, and other media. It did re-define our sense of humor. If you play Artix Entertainment games, you have seen that "epic fail" throughout almost everything I have had a hand in creating. But there is something else that director Sam Raimi did that changed the way I thought about making things...
Secret: The Movie was actually a remake of a remake....
When director Sam Raimi and actor Bruce Campbell made their first scary movie featuring a creepy cabin in the woods, it was called, "Within the Woods." Then they got a professional camera and a budget and went on to make Evil Dead which was almost an exact copy of their original movie. It was scary, and attempted to be a legitimate horror movie. But there was something comical about it. They decided to remake the same movie a 3rd time... and made Evil Dead II. Yup, it was not actually a sequel, but ANOTHER REMAKE of Evil Dead... except that they added that epic fail humor. Does this sound familiar?
It should sound familiar. We did the same thing. That first game that Warlic and I made, "DragonLord," was sort of our "Within the Woods." That is, DragonLord was our prototype concept for AdventureQuest. Then DragonFable was a remake of AdventureQuest, updated with that "epic fail" style sense of humor and fresh new game design. Then we did the same thing with AdventureQuest Worlds, where we quite literally built the exact same game a third time... evolving it as a massively multiplayer game.
Army of Darkness
They made an actual sequel to Evil Dead II... and it was released in theaters under the name Army of Darkness. It was FULL OF UNDEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I highly recommend that everyone over age 13 watches Army of Darkness. In this movie, Ash had fallen through a vortex in time with his shotgun, chainsaw, and car into a medieval time full of knights and castles. To return to the future, he had to once again quest for the Necronomicon. He epically failed and unleashed an army of the undead. The end of the movie was a giant undead war. Yup, an army of the undead attacked a castle of human defenders who were fighting for their lives. Needless to say, I have been trying all my life to recreate the feeling I had watching that battle.
Everything I make is original or a very blatant parody. What I wanted to recreate was that FEELING, because I wanted to be on that battlefield fighting that army of skeletal knights so bad I could nearly taste it.
In highschool, a friend gave me access to the BBS door game "Legend of the Red Dragon." It was a text-based fantasy game. I creatively created fake players who were skeletal forces and put a message that an undead army was attacking the town. Players battled to defeat the army, but once the minions were gone, the undead dragon boss suddently appeared with an insane number of health points and incredible attack damage. Many players died over the course of 24 hours trying to defeat the beast. Once slain, I changed the game so that the undead dragon's head became a permanent fixture in the inn. The players had never experienced a "real-time event" that actually ended up changing the world before.
Not long after I created the original AdventureQuest, we had the "Undead Invasion." It was a re-imagining of what I had done in that BBS door game. Because I was creating all of the monster's art, animation, and code alone back in those days, you could see how I was trying to incorporate the humor into the monsters themselves... in their descriptions and animations. The war was interesting because it was the first time a "war meter" appeared. All players working together to defend the town from an unstoppable army of the undead? If an event like that was not a 1st in games period, it had definitely never been done before in a web game. (Remember, this all happened in 2002... years before games like WoW or TOR existed) We were pretty cutting-edge. You can replay a version of this war in the original AdventureQuest's "10th Anniversary Quest."
AdventureQuest Worlds "Evil Dead II" Spoof
I finally got to do a full parody of the movie that inspired me most during our AdventureQuest Worlds Friday the 13th "Creepy Campfire Tales" with George Lowe. The event had 3 segments, each one doing a parody of a horror movie genre. For my segment, J6 built a semi-perfect 2D replica of the creepy cabin from the movie. We replaced Ash with a chainsaw-armed Artix. In the movie, they call their undead "Deadites." In our script, we had Beleen as the Pinkomancer, so she created undead "Pinkites," which were basically pink skeletons with bows on their heads. Just like Ash fought his hand, in the game you had to go fight Artix's missing pink hand... which was GIANT and pretty comical. Doing a PG-parody turned out to be pretty easy, and the fans of the movie definitely loved the references. If you are a Member of AQWorlds, you can play the parody as part of the "Creepy Campfire Tales." Many of our players were too young to know the movie, and many thought we were referencing other movies and shows they saw which were (LOL) also actually parodies of Evil Dead II. Funny how most people do not know the origin of things. That is a large reason of why I am writing this post. I think you should know.
Evil Dead Reboot & AdventureQuest 3D
This week they are "rebooting" Evil Dead with the launch of a new movie. Yes. They are remaking the same movie AGAIN. It is rated R and marketed as "the most terrifying film you will ever experience." Reading the reviews, this movie IS NOT FOR KIDS. (Actually, none of them are.) What is fascinating is, while Army of Darkness was more main stream, built for a wider audience, the reboot of Evil Dead goes back to its roots. It is serious. No jokes. No epic fail. It is down-right horrifying. It features a brand new cast, some familiar things, some completely new things. For example, instead of Ash, they are introducing a new character, Mia. Yup, just like how they replaced Battlestar Galactica's Starbuck with a female, they are doing the same thing in the Evil Dead reboot. I think it is a great idea. Because NO ONE COULD EVER PULL OFF ASH! Putting a new female character is brilliant. Especially because there are rumors that they are making an Army of Darkness II and a chance that Bruce Campbell as Ash could be side-by-side with the Mia character. #HopeForTheFuture
Meanwhile, we are also "rebooting" AdventureQuest with our new game, AdventureQuest 3D: Legend of LORE. We too are aging it up for an older audience, like the original game. (Although most younger players will still be able to enjoy it.) It will have some familiar things and some completely new things. We are refining our sense of humor to be older and more dangerous. The combat system will be deeper and it should reflect the times we live in. But we can all agree on not having a female Artix... right?
I am going to be working on AQ3D until 5pm tonight... then I am taking Warlic on an "emergency out-of-office meeting." Secretly I scored two tickets to a pre-screening of the new Evil Dead from Gofobo... and he is going to be pretty surprised when he sees what our "emergency out-of-office" meeting is.
Meanwhile, if you have not seen Army of Darkness.... *GIVES QUEST* Watch Army of Darkness! (Is it on Netflix?)
QUESTION: What movies, TV shows, and games heavily influenced your life?
Our artists endlessly create fresh and original art for our video game's weekly releases. Open this book and take a look behind the scenes. These pages are filled with inspired sketches (most never before seen) by popular artists who draw our games including Nulgath, J6, Diozz, Thyton, Samba, Mido, Nightwraith Charfade, Llusien and Dage the Evil. The book includes their personal story of how they become video game artists and what inspires them.
The book also includes a code that unlocks in-game items for AdventureQuest Worlds (7 items), EpicDuel (2 items), MechQuest, and DragonFable. See the full details and get the book at our online store www.HeroMart.com
We heard your comments and suggestions, and so OverSoul is getting a complete Over Haul! All efforts are being put towards the complete OverSoul user interface overhaul, new game engine, and new card customization. The new User Interface will be released next Friday! Until then, play OverSoul and let us hear your thoughts in the Comments section below!
Prepare for the Chaos Lord showdown! Storm headstrong into Thunderforge and pit your blade against Chaos Lord Lionfang, and choose whether or not to spare his life. Become the all-new Darkblood StormKing Class, embark on egg-citing egg hunting quests this Sunday, and gear up in the Limited Time Evil Undead Armor Set arriving Monday!
EpicDuel's resident interstellar sentient rabbits need your help to recover the fuel supply of their demolished ship. This fuel is stored within containers that closely resemble eggs. You can collect these eggs by winning PvP battles across Delta V for this limited time event. Visit each rabbit to see your progress and redeem your eggs for big prizes! Collect all the eggs to claim a special Egg Head Achievement!
In honor of April 1st, Dage the Sneevil and his Sneegion have joined DragonFable! Hit the Dage button in your Book of Lore and test your might against the evil Sneegion—you might even win a Captured Sneegion Minion! Then, seek out Sek Duat in the Sandsea and deliver justice as far as the eye can see. Visit Cinquefoil in Book 3 Surewould to start your own quest for Sek Duat!
Queenadent Odessa has a plan that could knock a huge dent in the Shadowscythe numbers! Talk to her at the Shadowscythe War Camp for briefing on this major mission!
HeroSmash Phase 1 of the Super City Mall has been released! Instead of 3 difficulty levels, we've raised the bar and released 4! And since there are no diseases in HeroSmash, what should Zombies be immune to? New Boss monsters and a Member-only Arena are coming soon, where you can test future bosses and earn rewards through a Points shop!
War has come to Grenwog! The Werewolf King and the wererabbits have decided to capture the Grenwog and infect it with lycanthropy! But the vampires aren’t about to let him get away with this so easily, hoping to use the Grenwog’s wererabbit army against the Werewolf King! Use your Limited-Time Emerald Wizard Staff, capable of summoning a flying monkey to aid you in battle, and keep Grenwog safe for everyone!
As a 2D video game studio making its first foray into the 3rd dimension, we have certainly been climbing our way up the learning curve. It continues to be challenging and fun. This week we built a volcano dungeon with some wicked looking pouring lava and a pixel shader which gives the illusion that the boiling hot magma is rippling like water under a waterfall.
Samba is animating the half-dragon creature known as the Dravir. There are two versions. A wild feral version and a noble warrior-knight version. Meanwhile, heavy work has been going on under the hood of our 3D game engine. We have equippable armor, capes, boots, gloves, belts, and unique multiple styles of each working for our characters. Next week, Korin will be animating the extra pieces... so, you know, you can have cool fluttering capes while you run around and do jump spin attacks on monsters. There are an extremely large number of small detailed challenges our programmers Minimal and Zhoom are solving. And I mean, literally, solving them right now as I type this. Things that most people would never think a game developer would ever have to take time on. For example, when any player in the room changes a piece of armor, there is a tiny blip of lag. The reason for this is the real-time compositing of a character's texture takes a short, but intensive moment for a computer to process. To fix this, they created this really inventive queue system so the game spaces out when it attempts to change someones armor. It is almost ready. Which brings me to... OUR NEXT ALPHA TEST! We are aiming for mid-next week. The purpose of Alpha Test .004 will be to test equipping different pieces of armor on your characters. Maybe battling in a Volcano. Check back often for more news about the next Alpha Test.
UPDATE: Zhoom just ran the database query to give everyone who obtained Gems in the last test their Alpha Points! You can earn more Alpha Points by participating in the next text.
It has been 4 months since Halloween night, when Oversoul's public beta started. Since, the game has been haunted by a never ending plague of weird and complex problems. Rumors are whispered that the game itself may be cursed. Which... is sorta awesome and exactly the type of game I am interested in playing. But there is one major problem that is not supernatural in nature: The card gameplay is confusing and hard to play. That is why Nulgath, Warlic, Rolith and I reviewed all of the comments you posted over the past few months and are making HUGE improvements across the game. The card game battle interface is being re-designed. New card art, in-battle chat, and "intelligent & responsive game design" which will make this card game easier and more fun to play. Warlic is nearly fininshed completely recoding the battle system -- which which make it easier to add new types of cards and solves "unsolvable bugs" like the absorption bug. There will be no game update this week as the team is aiming to release as much of the new Oversoul interface as possible next week. (Meanwhile, the curse watches... lingering... waiting for the best moment to strike.)
QUESTION: Are you going to try out the new Oversoul once the new interface goes live?
Unleash the Chaos Beast! Take on Chaos Lord Lionfang’s Chaos Beast Manticore as we near the exciting conclusion of the Thunderforge Saga. Prepare for the ultimate battle that pits the Manticore's venom versus your blade with many massive Manticore items! Galanoth the DragonSlayer has leveled up in real life, and to celebrate, the /lair map has been updated with NEW quests and NEW loot: Evolved DragonSlayer armor sets. /Unsheath out your sharpest blade and slay tons of Dragons to prove your worth as an Evolved DragonSlayer!
Titan, Rabblefroth, and Charfade are building content while Nightwraith is at PAX East, reporting on the latest industry goings-on from my Twitter feed. This week we will have bug fixes and balance tweaks, plus a restock on our Limited Quantity Shop items. Next week, Delta V's sentient bunnies will emerge from hiding and guide players on an epic egg hunt for amazing rewards!
Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in the Park! Check out these super lucky items that will make you friends green with envy. Now, test your newfound luck against the Zombie Terrornator monster!
Prepare for UnZardly terror as a massive mystery, a war for the ages, and many new Zards flood the land of Lore! An ancient force has caused many new and strange Zards to rise up, but who—or what—is responsible for this monstrous force? What does SmartZard, Czard, and the equally warlike Ceaszard have to do with it? And what could be behind the secret forest meetings of The ZardMaster and The Zard Hunter? Collect your Rare Item Hunt Clue and smash some Zards!
First... yes, the rumors are true. I faced the evil Chairman Platinum in a "Stink Face" match at the MegaCon 2013 convention last weekend. What is a "Stink Face" match? Trust me... you do not want to know. But I get the feeling that is not going to stop you from watching the video that will be posted here later this week. I regrettably promise to post you a link here on Artix.com as soon as it is live. But until then... it is STORY TIME!
Artix beckoning Chairman Platinum into the Ring
This weekend, we had a cross over event in AdventureQuest Worlds with the stars of the TV show Hulk Hogan's Micro Championship Wrestling. While their wrestlers appeared in our game event, I participated in their LIVE Wrestling Show at the convention. Originally, I was just supposed to show up and say a few words. But during as I was throwing action figures into the crowd and addressing the audience, EbilCorps Chairman Platinum snuck into the ring behind me and broke a briefcase over my head. The result? We decided to end this once and for all. A special match was agreed upon... but instead of facing me himself, Chairman Platinum chose the dark and spooky MCW Wrestler "Blixx" as his champion!!! Realizing I was in an awkward situation, the MCW Wrestler "Meatball" offered to be my Champion. But there was a catch... this was to be a Stinkface match. Whomever's champion lost was to get a "Stinkface" from Meatball. I dare not utter what this means, but there is a reason why we did not put Meatball's signature special move in the video game. The match took place at 4pm. Needless to say, Chairman Platinum started cheating and we both finally ended up in the ring. If you want to see the outcome... you need to wait for the video. Until then, You should check out the event in game!
Chairman Platinum could not get more BOO's if he lived in a haunted house
To the Hospital!
No good match ends without a trip to the Hospital. But this trip was not for any of us. When we heard via Twitter that an AQWorlds player was sick in the Orlando Hospital. So... the ENTIRE MCW Wrestling Crew and I went over to cheer him up :-) The nurses were surprisingly cool about an armored Knight and 13 midget wrestlers storming through their Hospital. The young patient was certainly happy to see us and we all had a blast. I am even more excited to let you know that as of today he has been released from the hospital and is recovering.
Basket Ball On!!!
Meanwhile, warriors wearing the Artix Entertainment Dragon are waging war on a very different type of Battlefield. (Backstory incoming...) A few weeks ago I got word that a highschool basketball team needed help getting funds to enter a tournament. We were honored to help. We created some shirts for them (Yergen designed it) and they sent us a picture back! Thank you guys and do your best!
The next AdventureQuest 3D Alpha Test
We are excited at the feedback from the Alpha Tests and are preparing for the next one. If you collected any of the colored gems, you will get Alpha Points just prior to the next test. While the next test is scheduled to be pretty big, we may do a smaller, simplier test just to see if all the crashing / pink item bugs are finally fixed. Minimal is working on elemental combat and Zhoom is working on the final pieces of character customization -- which includes the new armor, belts and cape shapes that Xero is working on. Please check here every day until we have a data scheduled for the next test.
Orcs and Ogres find refuge in OverSoul! Can you capture and master the Ogre Shaman, the Ogre Maiden, and the Orc Savage? You can also unlock the Pactonal Captain from the shop… but how it’s unlocked is determined by your lifetime of Soul Gems…
Get ready for 3 feet of 2D fury in 1 ring to battle them all! The stars of Hulk Hogan’s Micro Wrestling league duke it out in the Battleon Coliseum during this special Dwarves versus Giants event. Explore the newly redesigned Battleon town and gear up in the exclusive DragonClaw Armor set—only available for a limited time! Then test your luck in 7 Shamrock Fair Minigames, win Lucky Day Seasonal Rares, and permanent Lucky Day RARES: the Guardian o' Sláinte Armor set. ShamRock n’ roll all weekend long!
Spring into action: the Spring Event has begun! Botanical Battlegear goes live with the 10,000 Varium package, and comes with 2 mutating weapons plus an exclusive core: Growth Serum. Seasonal rare Spring Event weapons have also returned, so speak with Charfade, Naomi, and Valestra (in Frysteland) to get them! Now that Spring is here, the Winter / Frysteland rares will be leaving until next year. The missions and Heartbreaker / Azrael weapons will remain a bit longer to let everyone participate in the epic clash against the Elite Yeti!
This weekend is the Lucky Day celebration! The Lucky Day Storybook is now live in your Book of Lore for you to replay through past years celebrations. New additions to Lucky Day include a quest and a treasure hunt so that we can continue with Sulen'Eska next week. Dracelix has made some amazing things for you to hunt down! Feelin’ lucky? Turn your Fable into Reality!
Accidents have been happening all over Lore, as if someone had drained all the luck from the world. Leprechauns do not seem to be immune to the effects either. The scheming banker Uncle Sham is now in danger of losing his kingdom and now seeks the help of the bravest of Lore's heroes! Battle on in the 2013 Blarney War!
