AdventureQuest Worlds
Fighting fire with fire is a good way to get burned if you don’t know what you’re doing. But you are Lore's greatest Hero, and you've clashed with Xan before! Now that you have Warlic to assist you in the battle against this insane Pyromancer, Xan doesn't stand a chance! He IS insane and tricky, but with a bit of luck and some unexpected trickery, Xan's going to go down in flames!
Also, be sure to /join alchemyacademy to journey to the Royal Alchemy Academy near Swordhaven. There, you can train your Alchemy tradeskill as Alina and Lim show you how to combine science, magic, and explosions into potions you can use in combat!
www.AQ.com

EpicDuel
Dive deeper into the Infernal Mines and arrive at a crossroads of morality.  The Legion and Exile forces are amassing for War the time will soon come for you to make a decision to shape the fate of Delta V forever.
www.EpicDuel.com

DragonFable
Alexander and Warlic have been at odds ever since their apprenticeships started. Thier rivalry has been punctuated with flying books, summoned fire monsters and elaborate pranks... and it's not dying down anytime soon. This week Warlic pushes Alex too far!
www.DragonFable.com

MechQuest
Jump aboard the S.S. Paladin and prepare for your mission to save Planet Romero. Will you be able to complete the Cure? Can Artix be saved? The fate of the entire planet is in your hands! Amazing cutscenes and exciting quest, plus the long-awaited Valkyrie Prime mecha reward!
www.MechQuest.com

HeroSmash
A new NPC is in town! Come see Zheenx in MainStreet East to get yourself a new bow.
And don't forget to check out the daily random item shop - some items will return and some may never be available again!
www.HeroSmash.com

AdventureQuest Classic
Bizarre Flecks Part 3: War!
You and your fellow Guardians and Adventurers must battle Falerin’s collapsed elemental creatures, the servants of the Network following Atlas, Darkovian monsters, and Dhows' transmorphers!  
www.BattleOn.com

AQ3D
The AQ3D team is still deciding on a name. We all thought it would be official by now, but it's such a difficult decision, that all we've been able to do is narrow down our choices. Check back later for an update from Artix!
www.Artix.com

HAPPENING NOW - The grand finale of AQWorlds:Zombies!

The final showdown vs the DoomKnight Sepulchure is happening now on AdventureQuest Worlds. To get in the spirit of the grand finale, an awesome video by the talented player @AgustinAQW12  from twitter...

For the full story and pictures, see the AQWorlds Design Notes. Also, ShadowScythe mousepads are nearly sold out at www.HeroMart.com.

Daimyo's Birthday

Happy Birthday to everyone's favorite undead slaying battle puppy. He now has over 2,000 likes on his official Daimyo FaceBook page. For each like he gets... I am going to give him... ok, wait... that is WAAAAY too many treats. He will explode if he eats that many. We do want him to still be here for his next Birthday. Oooh, I know! When he gets to 5K likes, I will upgrade all versions of him to a full Battle Pet in in AQWorlds. 

Daimyo says, "ARF!"

Would a game by another name play just as sweet?

In my opinion, the two hardest parts of making a game are 1.) doing the art, database, coding, animation, storyline, servers, game-logic and 2.) naming it. So today I would like to tackle the more challenging of the two. What should we name our new game? "AdventureQuest 3D: <NAME GOES HERE>"

Grimsbane, and other game world facts

The main villain of our 3D game is named Grimsbane. While the new game world will be an original fresh start, it will feature a few familiar and iconic AE-original monsters including gorillaphants, moglins, and chicken cows. The setting of the world will feel simliar to DragonFable's fantasy environment. We will be bringing back elemental resistances to the combat system. So when naming the game, we might want to keep these things in mind.

History of our Game Names

It is a little known fact that before it was called AdventureQuest (it was intentionally named that because it was redundant, and therefore funny), the game was originally called "Land of Rising Evil" which abbreviated to LORE. My friends on Twitter (aka Tweetertrontopolis... the magical land where time dissapears and you wonder why the clock suddenly says 3am.) had some very good insight on this. The new game is going to be for an older audience... more serious and deadly than our previous games. The name should match. This game is definately the evolution of AdventureQuest. It will be the combination of everything we have ever done right in the past combined with new stuff we have not ever tried before. So I would like to see us use AdventureQuest as the series name simliar to how Final Fantasy and The Elder Scrolls name their games. That is... "Elder Scrolls: Skyrim" and "AdventureQuest 3D: ???????" Side note: The reason we are using "3D" is because we have a VERY STRONG reputation for making 2D games and we really need to differentate. It is also the 3rd game in the series... I am sure there is a pun in there somewhere 3.....D? One player on Twitter even said A3DventureQuest.

We need a short  and powerful name

As for names, "Land of Rising Evil" is pretty good. But it is long. Imagine trying to fit AdventureQuest 3D: Land of Rising Evil onto.. um.. anything. The best game names are short -- normally one word: Halo, Skyrim, Battlefield, Starcraft, Diablo, etc. So LORE might seem to be a good choice, but there are already trademarks taken on that... /facepalm...  so we cannot use it. Which puts us back at square one. Which I guess is fun, because this is a great opportunity for you to help!

Your Turn! What are your ideas for game names?

Brainstorming time! If you have a great idea for a game name... post it to me on Twitter or respond to my official FaceBook post. NAME ON!

Nightmare Doom Horsey says, "THE END IS NEIGH!"

4 weeks ago, the DoomWood II: Whispers of the Dark Lord saga began in AdventureQuest Worlds. The original DoomWood told the secret story of Artix and is regarded as one of the game's best storylines. This brand new adventure continues after the "true ending" but is focused on legendary DoomKnight Sepulchure -- and his fiery red-headed daughter, Gravelyn. In my opinion, Gravelyn is one of the  most interesting characters we have ever created. A beautiful girl, raised by the undead in a giant flying dragon skeleton castle. She is the daughter of the world's greatest darkness villain and inherhited his throne when he was destroyed at the beginning of the game. Yet... we have never seen her cast a darkness spell or fight. Many villains have claimed she was weak and unfit, and attempted to overthrow her. We could have gone all the way through the game without finding out why... but the unthinkable happened. The cutscene at the end of week 2 re-started the game in the most dangerous "WHAT IF" of all time. It started AdventureQuest Worlds: ZOMBIES!

The zombie apocolypse consumed the entire world one town at a time. The combined forces of the world's heroes battled a losing war against a spreading horde of zombies. Well known friends including Rolith, Alina, Warlic, Cysero, Valencia, and more fell to the green zombifying mists... all hope seemed lost. Oh wait, last time we checked, only three people were left unzombified, taking their last stand in the town of BattleOn, as Sepulchure descended upon a dragon to finish them off personally. Tomorrow night is the absolute and ultimate finale of DoomWood II & ZOMBIES... remember, this is AQWorlds, anything can happen.

Zombie Samba Dance! (See the original video on YouTube)

About working on this saga!

I am literally on the edge of my seat waiting to hear your reactions from the BOSS battles and cutscenes tomorrow.   I would like to thank the team for their super hard work... J6 for all of the amazing background art (the elevator and doomcrawler were perfect!), Yorumi for adding the new "monster intro animations," and for helping redesign the war system that has been getting rave reviews, and especially Samba who has been animating all of the killer cutscenes for this release. I would also like to thank all of the players who have been playing through the releases and giving me honest and encouraging feedback. I doubt anyone knows how much your comments influenced what is about to happen. This week's final showdown was hard to write.... it is Gravelyn's story. Something that many of you have seen coming for a long time now, and for everyone else it is going to be jaw-droppingly shocking. She will never be the same "weak little" girl again. I hope you enjoy it. BATTLE ON!

QUEST: 1.5 out of 15 minutes of fame collected

Last week, the film crew of WFLA News Channel 8 came and took video and interviewed us here at the Secret Underground Lab. They told us our segment would be about 1.5 minutes, shown during the local news segment. We expected it to air last week, but a friendly email from the reporter-in-charge said that they do not know exactly when it will air, but will email us before it does. Hmmmm. This means one of two things... 1.) The footage was SO AWESOME that they are holding it back until there is a slow news day so it can be a bigger story for the day... or.... 2.) The horrific gamer things they witnessed here have sent their crew into a Cthulhulian H.P. Lovecraft-style madness. Sorta like that time I was 4 years old and sent in a drawing to Highlights Magazine. It was a robot. Well, monster robot. They sent me back a letter telling me my drawing was lost in the mail. Several years later... it dawned on me how strange that was.

Go Minimal & Zhoom!  Alpha is on the way.

At the end of the day on Friday, the AQ3D Team logged into a working prototype of our new 3D MMO game. It was very bare bones (it was an undead dungeon) , but we loaded our characters and were able to walk around and chat. As with any prototype there were LOTS of odd things... for example, space bar makes you jump. So whenever you were typing, it would make you(jump)every(jump)time(jump)you(jump)hit(jump)space. Also, because we built this new multiplayer server 100% from scratch, we have not yet completed some very important features (including chat filters, flood filters, etc) yet.  The good news is, because it is so optimized it runs about 300%+ faster than the AQWorlds multiplayer servers. Maybe one day we can go back and retro fit AQWorlds with this new tech. One thing at a time... our top priotity is getting to an Alpha Test #1  where you can all log in, walk around the town of Ravenspire, and chat. (Getting so excited!)

Catching up... it has been a CRAZY WEEK!

The past 6 days have been the busiest of my entire life. You already know about our 1st action figures being released on Friday at Toys"R"Us and HeroMart.com, and you probably know about the CRAZY twist in the DoomWood saga which started  AdventureQuest Zombies too. Not to mention the weekly updates in all of our web based games this weekend. So, if we can share a personal moment together... I would like to tell you everything else that was going on at the same time. In reverse order...

• True Grit Challenge
  This Sunday, "Team Artix" participated in the ultimate physical fitness team challenge. It is a charity event benefitting the Huntington's Disease Society.... and was a half mile of over 20 obstacles in the gritty sand of St. Pete beach. Our team's time slot put us against the ABC news team! (We...  made friends... and shamelessly gave them our weird anime-style business cards.) Maybe they will bring their film crew to the lab and interview us? Thyton, Roam, myself and 2 other members of the team gave it their all. We got 4th place.
• 48 Hour Movie Making Competition
  The night before, a film team used both the lab and my house to film their entry in a 48 hour film making contest. They used the actor of the "Zombinator" as their final boss villain.... he is officially our "BIGGEST" fan. Literally.  Unknown to me before I agreed (BIG /facepalm) there was heavy use of firearms in the movie. The cast of the film ended up firing over 400 rounds of ammunition "blanks" until 1:30am. My neighbors are so used to weird things like this happening at my house that they do not even bother to call the police. Three days later,  I AM STILL finding bullet shells in my living room and kitchen. 
• American Ninja Warrior
  One of my favorite TV shows started airing on Sunday. You are going to be surprised who might be on it. See... at the end of a long series of advesarial emails between Chairman Platinum and myself, we escalated into a high stakes open challenge over the ownership of Artix Entertainment and EbilCorp. We decided the best place to solve our differences would be on the course of American Ninja Warrior. So we both sent in submission videos... and BOTH got invited to come to the preliminary round and run the American Ninja course. But, they did not announce when the filming would take place until I was already in Japan... and while Chairman Platinum was on his way to run the course, I was stuck in Japan. Luckily, my good friend, Roam, went to do the course against Chairman Platinum in my place. There will be more on this soon... keep an eye out for when the South Eastern Qualifying rounds air! Chairman Platinum ran it in his suit and Roam ran it in a full set of chainmail armor!
• New team members: Web designer, Programmer, Intern
  This past week we created two new jobs and... brought on our first AE intern of the year. both the web designer and the programmer will be working on this site, Artix.com, and the 3D game. To test out the designer I gave him 3 hours to create the Action Figure page. Great job! The intern will have an interesting story to tell when he gives the report to his school in New York. He has done everything from working with each team on their releases, to writing scripts, and arm wrestling the Zombinator (I will post a video on YouTube of this later in the week when I get a free moment.)
• Channel 8 News Crew
  Do not tell the ABC news team... but the local Channel 8 news crew (NBC) called me and are coming tomorrow morning to film and do a piece on our indie game studio tomorrow morning. I am going to ask them for a copy to post online after it airs! I asked everyone to come in to the lab dressed and acting just like normal... (which means, in many cases, not wearing shoes, with their pets, and ready to do crazy suff.) I was told that we should not have a zombie or a ninja army attack the news crew... at least not on their first trip. I do not know... what do you think?
• Script Writing
  O_O So... far... behind.... sorry, Samba! Aso, this October the original AdventureQuest will be celebrating its 10th anniversary. (10 years of weekly updates!? O_O) The team asked if I would like to come help write the anniversary event. :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) Any suggestions on what should happen?

Did that make up for last week's missing daily DNs?

Back in the days when we were first building DragonFable, we always posted personal things and interacted back and forth on the Forums. It is weird now, because we are supposed to act more like a "real company," but honestly, I prefer you knowing and being on the inside of everything. There has been a lot of debate as to what this website, Artix.com, should become. We are going to redesign it and move everything that is currently on Portal.BattleOn.com here. Obviously, all of our games will be listed here... but should we keep this fun, loose, anything-goes site, or should we make it a stale, corporate homepage like every other game company? Maybe somthing in the middle? I would realy like your input. Please write me on Twitter or Facebook and let me know if you like these kinds of posts mixed with the gaming stuff.

A warm, happy, and friendly town that needs your help

As a long time reader of our various design notes... you know many strange and unusual things occur when we are develop new games. I am, not by nature, superstitious - although, never shy to get into the spirit of something fun just because (foreshadowing). So when we created he story of Ravenspire we envisoned a beautiful and peaceful town. Named for the hundreds (if not thousands) of Ravens that call the town home. It is a simple town with a few lovely houses, a fountain with a COOL looking statue, and a chapel. Oh, and a graveyard. Wow, look at all those ravens circling the graveyard! (Is there something strange about this?)

(Ravenspire art concept by Llusion)

So yesterday, while talking about this town I stepped out of my house to take Daimyo on a walk... and I am not joking... there were 5 black ravens sitting on the top of my house. The ravens sat still, most of them staring at me and Daimyo. Did, um, we stumble onto some sort o raven secret in this script? ...do they think we are onto them?  Then, for good measure, as we crossed the street a black cat ran past me. THEN, several large black bats started darting back and forth through the night sky above us. WHEN EXACTLY DID MY NEIGHBORHOOD BECOME A LEVEL OF CASTLEVANIA!? I am changing my name to Simon Belmont and carrying a cool looking whip with me from now on. (Everything but that last sentence was true.)

Onward, to the Alpha!

As you read this, the team is working as fast as they humanly can to get us to the next alpha test (I keep them hooked up to a caffine IV to make them go even faster.) We are building 3 zones: The town of Ravenspire (first!), the forest outside (for farming type quests), and a dungeon (for instance-run type quests.) We are also building monsters, armors, weapon, props, and animating the male and female base models. It may seem similiar to what we do in AQWorlds -- but so far, because it is 3D, it has been as different as apples and oranges. Zhoom and Minimal have officially switched to working on the multiplayer socket server full time this week. I asked you on Twitter if you would be interesting in testing walking around & chatting before combat was working and almost all of you said yes. So, that is our current goal for the next alpha test. I am looking forward to hanging out with you in the town of Ravenspire soon! How soon? Pretty soon. (They threatened to hurt me if I gave a solid date.) But if we do not run into serious complications... we could be looking at *OOOOOOF!*

New Feature: Towns that can change dynamically

In our older games, we have one town per entry in the database. This makes sense. Town #1 = Battleon. When we update towns, we actually have to change the town file. There is really only one town... and we continuously update it. But we are changing that in this game in a creative way that will let towns actually change as the result of what you and the other players do in game! You will be able to help NPCs build some towns, destroy others, cause certain leaders to rise, or... well, pretty much anything. It is an advanced version of what we used to do manually back in DragonFable-style wars. Talking about NPCs.... we have 4 coming up in Ravenspire, and they need names:

Twitter/FaceBook/Forum Question: Can you help us name a Blacksmith (female), Knight (male), Shopkeeper (male or female), Magic user (male or female)?

P.S. Be sure to check out my lengthy and telling Action Figure post that I made earlier today on AdventureQuest Worlds.

"Sepulchure"

In anticipation of tonight's DoomWood II release in AdventureQuest Worlds, Dage the Evil painted this horrifically dark and foreboding picture of Sepulchure! If you are a long time player of our games, then you already know that the DoomKnight Sepulchure was the main villain of DragonFable and was expected to be the main villain of AQWorlds -- until the unexpected twist at during the game's intro that changed everything. Now, Sepulchure's Daughter, Gravelyn, leads the evil forces of the Shadowscythe. Although, she secretly wishes her Father were still there to guide her. I uploaded a high res image of Dage's painting for you to download and use as a wallpaper: 1920x1200 Sepulchure Wallpaper

Fan Mail! :-)

We get a lot of awesome fan mail (THANK YOU!!!!!) But this is the first time I was sent a magical unicorn summoning horseshoe.... so.... um.... photo/screenshot or it did not happen.

Collectors Figures coming May 18th

The Artix and Sepulchure collectors figures will be available at Toys"R"Us (US locations) May 23rd and HeroMart.com (shipping world wide) on May 18th... which is next Friday. The cards that come with the figures turned out really good and let smart players pull off some exceptionally brilliant exploit moves in the card game. All of the items that come with the figures (including a class and Castle with working trap door) are now in the database and we tested. Yesterday, Kiara, Galanoth and I did a little photoshoot of the figures and will be posting figures on the Artix Krieger FaceBook page.  Both HeroMart and Toys"R"Us have some of the extremely rare Black Variants. A lot of players asked if they come with anything different -- the answer is no. They are exactly the same, except the variants have Black Armor, and are limited quantity. Considering that this is our 1st game figure ever, it will most likely become our most valuable collectors item ever. I would recommend not taking them out of the box. Talking about which, Faith has "banned" me from the HeroMart chamber and told me now that my photoshoot is done I am not allowed to play with the toys until everyone can get theirs. It would be pretty funny to go to a player's house put 1,000 Artix figures, with their Battleaxes drawn on someone's lawn and blast "Battle On!" by One-Eyed Doll and see what happens when they walked outside and saw it.

3D Game Update, "GO FASTER!"

When things become "eerily quiet" it only means one of two things... 1. Everyone is working so long and fast that there has been no time to post or... well, ok, it is #1. As per the last update, we have characters and maps loading and a good amount of the animation done. Next week Zhoom and Minimal are starting on the multiplayer-side stuff while the 3D artists build the artwork for... well, check back here on back Monday and I will share a first look at our "alpha town" and tell you what we are going to be doing for the start of Alpha Testing.

Until then... have a fun, safe and adventure filled weekend. (... and DO NOT FORGET, Sunday is Mothers Day!)

3D Town Concept Art by Llusion

Now that the character models are finished the artists are designing their first real sets of clothes and armor  (Very important unless *coughs* were are making an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT type of game.) So this week we are starting the focus on world design! you may have heard the name Llusion a few times. He, like many of our team, has skills in a variety of areas. He can program game clients and servers, draw 2D, and build and animate in 3D. He drew the concept sketches below!

Each of the towns in AdventureQuest 3D (working title) are going to be themed to a different type of mythological creature. There will be a legend and a storyline in each of the towns... which will interweave creatively through the main storyline of the game. The other feature we have been figuring out.. is how to have players take actions that will permanently change the town. That is... if a force of undead attacks and the players fail to save the city... the city should be permanently taken control of by the undead. Until, of course, you or other brave players can raise an army big enough to take it back and rebuild it.

I love Llusion's concept for the Catherdral. Probably because it has a graveyard. Ok, definately because it has a graveyard. I asked if we could make the graveyard bigger. Spanning approximately... the rest of the surrounding area and filled to the brim with evil undead. If you are new to AE you may be thinking "He sure has a lot of undead on his mind... must be because DoomWood 2 is coming up in AQWorlds this Friday." To which our awesome long time players will quickly (and accurately) reply, "Um, nope. He is always like this."

The Action Figures arrived today... going on sale in about week?

A truck full of the action figures arrived at the lab today. We formed a human chain of about 25 people to move the boxes out of the back of the truck, into the building, through the elevator, down the halls of the lab, and into the HeroMart chamber. Dage and I were at the start of the line pulling the boxes down from the truck. I does feel really special that every member of the team actually helped carry the boxes (so if you get one, it was carried by pretty much everyone here at the lab.) Faith is now taking inventory and making sure they are all perfect and entering them in the database. We are going to give Toys"R"Us a week to sell them before we make them available on HeroMart.com . 

HINT: It does no decode into "Enjoy your Ovaltine."

01000111 01101111 01101111 01100100 00100000 01101010 01101111 01100010 00100001 00100000 01001001 00100000 01100001 01101101 00100000 01100011 01110101 01110010 01110010 01100101 01101110 01110100 01101100 01111001 00100000 01110111 01110010 01101001 01110100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01000100 01101111 01101111 01101101 01010111 01101111 01101111 01100100 00100000 01010000 01100001 01110010 01110100 00100000 00110010 00100000 01110111 01101000 01101001 01100011 01101000 00100000 01110000 01110010 01100101 01101101 01101001 01100101 01110010 01100101 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01000110 01110010 01101001 01100100 01100001 01111001 00100000 01110011 01101111 00100000 01001001 00100000 01100001 01101101 00100000 01100010 01100101 01101000 01101001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01101111 01101110 00100000 01101101 01100001 01101011 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110000 01101111 01110011 01110100 01110011 00101110 00100000 01010100 01101111 01101101 01101111 01110010 01110010 01101111 01110111 00100000 01001001 00100000 01110000 01110010 01101111 01101101 01101001 01110011 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01110000 01101111 01110011 01110100 00100000 01110100 01110111 01101111 00100000 01100110 01110101 01101100 01101100 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101100 01101111 01110010 00100000 01110100 01101111 01110111 01101110 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101110 01100011 01100101 01110000 01110100 01110011 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00101110 00100000 01010011 01100101 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01101110 00101110 00100000 01000010 01000001 01010100 01010100 01001100 01000101 00100000 01001111 01001110 00100001

Hint #2: Maybe you could use google to find a web based binary translator?