The Legend of FRIDAY THE 13TH!

Unluckiest thing about this post = Caffine quantity!

Friday he 13th is regarded by the superstitious the unluckiest of day... and by our gaming community, as one of the craziest holidays of the year! Why is this? How did it all start? ...and how come I have not needed to blink for the last hour straight? (Why did all of my friends on Twitter just start laughing after reading that?)

Real Life Origin of Friday the 13th

The earliest account of this unlucky day was 705 years ago (true) on a Friday the 13th (true) on a dark and stormy night (probably not true... but do not let the weather get in the way of a good spooky story) by order of the King of France, the Templar Knights were wiped from the face of the earth! (True, and not unlike Order 66, which wiped out the Jedi.) It was certainly an unlucky day for the Knights Templar O_O. 

Knights Templar by Pulyx

Throughout history, Friday has notoriously been considered an unlucky day, and seperately the number 13 has also been considered unlucky. Combining them together was a natural as combining peanutbutter and chocolate... Mmmmm..... reeses peanutbutter cups.... BRB, snacky snack time.

In the Movies and Media

Did you know the hockey mask wearing Jason from the Friday the 13th Movies did not actually wear a hockey mask until the 3rd movie? (Crazy, right!?) Needless to say, those horror movies made the day popular. But for some reason did not do a thing to help hockey. There has been countless books, movies and comics that have referenced the date of Friday the 13th, continuing the legend... including our games and even our card game!

DragonFable: "The 1st Friday the 13th Event Invasion"

6 years ago,  the concept of a "sudden special event just... because it would be cool" was virtually un-heard of. Most PC Games were still bought from storeshelves (Crazy, right!?) and updating them was a pretty big deal and not a very frequent thing. So AdventureQuest and DragonFable were original and unique, even for web games, and their weekly releases and bizzare humor set them apart.

So in October of 2006 (WOW, 6 years ago!) DragonFable players were beyond excited and ready for battle when news of an undead army marching towards their home town of DragonFable. But it was Friday the 13th, so all of the undead were wearing... Hockey masks. Wars have always been popular in DragonFable -- where all of the players work together to defeat waves of enemies, increasing a thermometer that when filled unlocks the mystery boss monster. It was a massively multiplayer feature in an otherwise single player game. Normally a  wave consisted of 4 to 5 undead... but we put in a joke wave with a single, lonely, and very weak skeleon. His name was Chuckles. But... we are pretty sure he did not think it was very  funny. Players would one-shot skill him and effortlessly win the war wave. It was revealed that Zorbak was the one putting the masks on all of the skeletons.

"ZORBAK!? ... were you the one putting hockey masks on the undead army?"

So, a new tradition was born. Every Friday the 13th a new necromancer would sent his (or HER... this is where Lady Vayle, the Purple

Necromantress first appeared!

Before the video or even the original DoomWood story in DragonFable took place.) army of undead to destroy the town of FalconReach.

A tradition that continues to this day... but tomorrow's DragonFable Friday the 13th event will unlock an EXTREMELY important villian to the games current world-story.

Save Chuckles

We saw Chuckles again VERY beginning of AQWorld's story. He made posts on the Design Notes (pretty funny for an undead guy) as the DoomKnight Sepulchure's right-hand man... erm... skeleton. Remember, players were preparing for the ultimate showdown between Good and Evil as Sepulchure's flying undead dragon castle began what was expected to be the final attack on good. NO ONE forsaw the emergence of Drakath... who unexpectantly entered the fight slaying Chuckles and then ripping Sepulchure's dark soul out of his chest and crushing it with his fist. Almost a year later, the "Save Chuckles" movement started on the forums and the team thought it was so funny we jumped on board... and even made a now-ultra-rare T-shirt (and, LOL, this blackmail footage). If you find a player in AQWorlds who had gotten the shirt and has "Chuckle's head" you can do the quests.

Friday the 13th EVOLVES in AdventureQuest Worlds

If you are still reading this (I think so highly of you) you may already know AE rule #1: Make the next thing you do better than the last thing you did. So, for Friday the 13th events in AQWorlds... we turns the wars into live special events with the spookiest guy I have ever met; Voltaire. The story of AQWorld's 1st Friday the 13th is longer than this post -- but it did get edited/shrunk & published in Beckett's GAMER magazine. It was a pretty big deal. We really got into the spirit of the unlucky day by having, with 35,000+ people watching, one of the worst server crashes in our game's history. (Achievement unlocked)

Then, instead of just re-releasing the same event, each Friday the 13th we did something COMPLETELY different! The amount of work that goes into these is staggering -- especially when you consider many of them are one-time-only events that go away forever once they end. I do not know what exactly makes the Friday the 13th events so special... but we never pull any punches! They just keep getting weirder, crazier, and they have a reputation with our players for being the most fun releases of the year. Or maybe you guys just love Voltaire? (Or flittering with the superstitious danger of the day!?) Tomorrow (Friday's) new event, right on the heels of Easter... is.... going to be EXTRA special :-)

We sure have a lot of crazy Friday the 13th Memories. What was your favorite?  I would love to hear about it on Twitter or Facebook (try to repond to the official post so I do not miss it.) If you are just now joining us for your first -- we hope you enjoy it!  I will see you online tomorrow night at the event...

KhaotiKon & Motion Capture Results

Also, tomorrow we are setting up at the KhaotiKon convention in Tampa, FL. If you are going to be there, be sure to come say hi! I will be with Cysero running our panel on Saturday... we could not help but notice that Chairman Platinum will be running a panel RIGHT AFTER OURS. We will be posting pictures. Unrelated topic: We did the motion capture test today... Thyton & my footage did not come out very well, but Beleen's did! We will try to have a video ready for you on Monday!