Design Notes : Feb 18th, 2009

Workaholic-adin

Feb 18th, 2009
WTB Time Travel Machine
Paying top gold!
Because I really want to go to the future and see what you think of all the amazing things that are in development*. This week's release will be a light one**, but the big one we are working up to is going to drop jaws faster than that time we swept all those evil skeleton skulls off the cliff out back of Swordhaven***. The design notes have been very plot heavy for a while, so you might enjoy some behind the scenes development secrets....

* Also, we want to see if there will be flying cars.
** You know... JUST the first look at the crash site of Sepulchures undead flying dragon fortress and meeting Seppy's daughter..
*** Which is technically next week... after which we will finally see Swordhaven not under attack for the first time.

In the background, we have so many projects in progress it is crazy. The biggest project is the 1st Lord of Chaos. It is going to be our first full size questing zone full with quests, dungeons, items, new classes, new monsters, and of course the first Lord of Chaos! Not to mention it will have a great number of surprises and side objectives for you. In the releases building up to the big one, we are going to focus on gameplay elements including stats, high level monster balancing, new skills, monster AI, adding potions, etc. We have built many new features during the past months that have not had a chance to shine in the game yet.... interactive objects, dungeon crawls, social objectives, live events... the list goes on and on. Poor Zhoom and Minimal have been so bogged down with the never ending stream of problems that it is really amazing how far we have gotten. Meanwhile, we are also working on the public character pages, the ability to see which of your friends are online while outside of the game, a way to quickly get to your friends who are online and playing in one click, and a way to link up minigames to AQW so that you can earn points. Once stats and monster balancing is complete we will be back to adding new classes and skills. This paves the way for PVP which I would love to launch before summer. I am told that it may be possible to release a less serious version of PvP sooner that does not care about balancing and you can just go cause havoc for fun -- but lets add some stats first, ok? We are making good progress down that major to do list I announced -- and we are not pulling any punches. Oh, inventory has become a huge concern. We need more space.... Zhoom and I have had a lot of talks on how to add a bank like DragonFable and creating a secure version of the weapon rack system they use in MechQuest. More coming on this as we get closer.

Meanwhile, the DragonFable team has gotten bigger and is producing more content per week than ever before. They are working on two major zones at the same time-- and I get to help in writing one of them (and if you are a long time DragonFable player... you might have already figured out why. Hey, I do EVERYTHING I say I am going to do -- sometimes it just takes a while ;-) OMG, I cannot wait. Cysero and Geo will kill me if I say any more, but Rolith has been figuring out how to make an entire unlockable character slots which can be used to play NPCs in order to pull this off. The OTHER zone will be our first steampunk zone with mechanical monsters, introducing a new race and a strange new minigame. It is the energy orb zone and... if there is an orb involved, you will find Sepulchure. DragonFable is the only place you will learn Sepulchure's full story... and he has a MUCH different destiny in that timeline.

The next MechQuest planet is my pick for the most popular. I saw all of the art in Thyton's battle room before Korin and Jemini started coloring and animating it. I have no idea why Warlic has not been posting sneak peeks at the theme of the world and the mechs.... it is going to be MechQuest's greatest planet. It is cool enough to be its own game! Also, Johnny Atomic has been working on the MechQuest Artbook. We have a "layout party*" on Monday to review the book. In addition to being our first ever art book, it is going to feature a how to draw mecha section by Thyton, a code with a collectable mecha model, and tons of never before seen art and information (including background info on MechQuest's main villian Lord Valoth, and schematics on 'The Paladin', which is Artix's transforming Star Ship -- note: all the major Star Ships transform... just a hint.) Also, MechQuest is very close to being FaceBook compatable -- which means if you are a FaceBook user you will be able to play right inside FaceBook and do some interesting social things with the game. If you are also a MechQuest player I would recommend pleading to Warlic for a little for sneak peak at the new Mech and NPC sketches.

* I hope there will be clowns and cake!

On the TV Show front we have a roller coaster ride story. I think some projects just flow naturally... LOL, this is not one of those. If you are just joining us, the story goes that we made an animated short a while back and a while later suddenly a bunch of interest appeared. So we teamed up with a Producer and a Writer from LA and created what they call a Bible for the show. We pitched it to all the major networks and wacky chaos ensued. Now we possibly have the best opportunity anyone could dream of in front of us, but I have to decide between giving away the rights to everything in order to do it or passing up the opportunity and doing it the way we have done everything else -- from scratch, with our own hands, and and asking if you can help and be a part of it.

That is the thing I love most about the games. The only boss we have to answer to is you.... and that is great, because you are the best :-) What we are doing is unique. Reglardless of whether you were here from the beginning, were in beta, or will be helping test the new 1st Lord of Chaos's zone... it feels special being a part of it. Not just in this game, but all of them. I am doing a call to arms... if 2009 is the year of Adventure -- let us make it our quest to take ALL of the games to the next level. Lets hear some ideas! See you on the forums.