Design Notes

November 02, 2012

New Beginnings

Welcome To Game Improvement Friday

We love releasing new stuff for you every week but sometimes it means that we get behind on some of the the stuff that we NEED to do. So on rare occassions we will take a week off of the insane stories and thrilling adventures and take care of some business.

This week we devoted ourselves to three main tasks.

1) Get the AQW Tutorial ready for launch.

2) Get the new Book of Lore ready to be released.

3) a TON of Minor Bug Fixes.

The Tutorial will be ready tonight. If you don't know a tutorial is, It's a small part of a game that teaches you how to play it. Right now AQW just dumps you into Battleon without any fanfare. Good luck, hope can figure out how to play.

This is TERRIBLE for new players. It's intimidating and frustrating and causes a LOT of players to create accounts, log in once and run away.

The tutorial introduces a new NPC, Serval. Just after you fall off the mountain in the intro you wake up to Serval and twilly running for their lives from Sepulchure's Minions as they swarm the countryside in his assault on Swordhaven (remember that?).

We designed this new experience for people who have never played AQw or any other AE game before so the monsters will seen very easy and the directions very simple to you, but it might be just what a new player needs to feel at home in AQW.

We're asking for you to help us out with some feedback. Please read the directions then let us know what you think on the AQW Forums!

The Book of Lore overhaul was too large of a project for one week but Yorumi assures me that it will be ready next week. I think you guys will be pleased with the interface inprovements and enhanced experience. I think people will use it a lot more often.

The minor bug fixes are stuff that you'll probably never notice but hoipefully it will smooth out some catches here and there and stop a few of you from getting randomly disconnected.

OVERSOUL: OPEN BETA!

Nulgath, Warlic and Rolith have been pushing really hard in order to get OverSoul ready for this week and som far things are looking great.

If you haven't yet, you should really get in on some of the Open Beta madness that's going on but you'll need a AE Master Account to play.

In honor of this HUGE news, Nulgath has provided the OS Founder Knight set for all AQW players who wish to buy them. There's even Ulric the Alpha Warg.

These items are all going rare in a week or maybe two so if they interest you, if you have played OverSoul or if you're just a fan of Nulgath you don't want to miss these items.

Mogloween and Committed Rares Boost!

The art team has also delivered a host of new weapons and armors to the Mogloween 2012 seasonal rare shop and the Committed Rare Shop including Dage's Legion Raven set!

Unlike most Legion items, this amazing set requires nothing more than buying it from the shop but it IS going rare when the Committed Event Rare shop leaves. Fair warning.

48 days until Just Another Day

October 30, 2012

Take Care Up North

Hurricane Sandy Has Landed

Quite a few of you felt the wrath of mother nature as Hurricane Sandy hammered the northeastern coast of the United States. This storm broke a lot of records and has already left thousands without power or homes. My own sister had to evacuate her apartment building in New York City last night as Manhattan lost power and the gas main for her building burst. She spent half the night wandering around with no safe place to go. She's fine now, if a little soggy, and so are all the rest of my friends up there in The City but it's a pretty bad scene.

I hope that all of you, your friends and your family are all safe up there in the frozen north.

If you want to help people who have lost their homes and find themselves without food or shelter you can donate to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund by clicking here.

Game Improvement Week

It's not a great name because we improve the game every week. Or try to, anyway.

This week we are spending time adding in the new revamped Book of Lore, and adding in the new Tutorial.

Before we set new accounts to go through the tutorial, we're going to release it for you guys and ask for your honest feedback on the AQW Forums. Once we've tweaked it out and made it as clean, fast and easy to understand as possible then we will add it to the beginning of the game. Yorumi is also fixing a lot of older bugs and TRYING to discover a new way to handle the inventory that might allow you to get more inventory space.

As you know we can't just add more as we are at the current possible limit that the game can handle.

You will help escort Twilly and Serval through the new tutorial!

We will also be adding a new wave of Mogloween Seasonal Rares and Committed Event Rares to those two shops this week. Don't forget that we still have the Birthday Event, the Alina and Rolith Wedding, the Committed Mogloween Special and the normal seasonal Mogloween releases in-game for a limited time. If you haven't played through all of those, now would be a good time to get caught up!

ONE DAY LEFT for 4th UPHOLDER!

Don't forget that tomorrow is Oct 31st, which is the LAST DAY to Upgrade and become a 4th Upholder. You will have a chance to become a 5th upholder next year but you will miss out on the rare Star Swords, the Character Page Badge and the sheer awesomeness of being a 4th Upholder!

51 days until Just Another Day

October 26, 2012

Happy Mogloween!

Are you Committed?

The Mogloween 2012 release is LIVE! This is a very special Mogloween release with musical guests One-Eyed Doll!

/join Asylum and you can watch One-Eyed Doll's brand new viceo for the song "Committed"! You'll also a new Mogloween 2012 shop, an Event Rare Shop and you can start the Committed Mogloween event!

Earlier today we released the new video in-game with most of the new items, but each of the previously released shops have had at least one more new item added to them.

If you can survive a night in the abandoned Asylum with Kimberly and me, then you will unlock the Committed Character Page Badge and the special Committed Merge Shop.

I think you'll find the Merge Shop to be especially difficult as it requires three merge items, all rare drops, all from bosses in the event, and two of the bosses are only found in the completely random maze of mirrors! So have fun with that!

Special thanks to One-Eyed Doll for allowing us to use their music and their voices in this event. For my own voice acting, I make no appologies.

Happy Mogloween 2012!

4th Upholder, Time Is Running Out!

If you haven't upgraded to become a 4th Upholder yet I should tell you that you're running out of time!

If you HAVE become a 4th Upholder, then I hope you enjoy the especially Member heavy Mogloween Shop and the other Member Only items from tonight's release. Along with all the other great benefits of supporting AQW with your Membership. Remember that you get Bragging Rights, another Character Page Badge and TWO rare Star Swords!

HeroMart Super Launch!

Today HeroMart has released THREE new items!

• NEW CD: One-Eyed Doll's Something About a Dragon, which contains three of the songs from tonight's event PLUS Battleon! and the Pony vs. Pony theme song!
  
  
• MOGLOWEEN 2012 SHIRT: Which comes with the amazing NeverMore armor and snazzy Mogloween 2012 "Haunted" Character Page Badge.
  
  
• AE 10th ANNIVERSARY SHIRT: It's been 10 Great years with you guys and we made a shirt to commemorate our BIG TENTH BIRTHDAY! This shirt comes with items in ALL 6 of the major AE games. AQW gives you the AE Dragon Conqurer Armor and Helm along with the BIG TEN Character Page Badge.

There are limited amounts of ALL of these items so don't miss out!

55 days until Just Another Day