Geopetal

Friday, October 26, 2012

Catalytic Converter

From the Kensai:

It’s getting to be that time of the year again… when the walls between our world and the next are said to be their thinnest… When ghouls and ghosts emerge from the shadows to give a scare… it’s a time of year that has its own special magic.  The air is beginning to get cooler, the days grow shorter, and the nights grow longer.  It’s a great time to be going to the Necropolis!  The MOP have come to help, and they brought some new trainees with them!  The skilled archer; DeathArrows, the fierce warrior known as The Baron, and of course, the bold BraveSirRobin have come along to help investigate the goings on.  It’s their task to scout the Necropolis ahead of you and find out where Sally and Bubbles are, and see if they can find out what nefarious plot is afoot.  

It’s always a bit of a challenge to capture all the aspects of a player that they envision for themselves.  We have to infer a lot of things when we want to make it a surprise, like we did this year.  Nobody knew who was picked to go in game.  They were chosen for reasons that varied… from the potential for a few good jokes and a spoof, to the visual gag that some forum terminology has inspired.  Some liberties had to be taken for the sake of design and story, but we tried to capture as much of the essence of the players in question as possible.  

Next Week*:
The confrontation!  What have Sally and Bubble done?  This monster needs to be taken down  a peg, and you’re just the hero to do it.

Also; Poor M.O.P.!  Nothing ever seems to go right!  Now they are stuck having to trek back to Croft and hope to reach the Cauldron Sisters before the spells have been cast!  Join them as they wander through the woods on their way to safety and possible help.

* Due to the time that it took to get this all out to you, the event will be left in game for an additional week to give you plenty of time to trick or treat for your masks!

You'll see some new MOP recruits this week as well.... thier awesome helms would be awesome to get... for CANDY. Maybe, just possibly... we can be persuaded!

Pyromancer Updates!
Verlyrus has made a few updates to Pyromancer as well! 

Changes:
-Moved some of Malcifer's effects to Charge and Triflame
-Made mana costs consistent
-Altered some cooldowns
-Rebirth retains cooldown between battles
-Minor damage tweaks
Rolith and Alina Wedding Shop
The wedding shop will only be available for one more week! 
Geopetal

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Thursday with Tomix!

This week Tomix brings you a spoiler-y sneak preview of the new MOP members that are being recruited this year! You'll find out their names on Friday!

Spoilers!

HeroMart
If you check out the coming soon section of HeroMart, you'll see lots of cool stuff on its way! The tenth anniversary shirt will come with this awesome scythe in DF, crafted by the legendary Dracelix!

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Geopetal

Monday, October 22, 2012

Pyromancer Testing

Testing has begun for Pyromancer!

Once the armor has been tested by players with Dragon Amulets, debugged and finally rebalanced, it will be available from Cysero in the Superstore of Savings!

Please do NOT attempt to save the class, it WILL bug out your account.

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Geopetal

Friday, October 19, 2012

Happy Mogloween!

Yay! We made everything work and without bothering Rolith before his wedding! (Alina would have hunted me down and ground me up for mana potions....)

Eric Greydawn is in charge of the story this year and, well... he's starting you off on a hunt! Can you find all the cat items to help the Bubbles? They could be hidden anywhere! Book 1 through Book 3! Quest or Towns! Cats and Dogs living together... no wait... it's late and I'm getting tired I think.

Make sure to check out the new shops in the Quest Log before they're gone too! Alina herself made all the items in her and Rolith's wedding shop! There's also a new Good weapons in the Gamocide shop, as well as a Chairman mask, to celebrate the utter decimation that you DF warmongers brought to EbilCorp!

Rolith

Groom-Captain

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Out of Time

How’s it going guys?  It’s been a while.  I wanted to stop by and give you a heads up as to what’s going on with me and DragonFable lately. 

As many of you know I’ve been helping out with Oversoul as it gets ready for beta.  I’ve been working on the Server while Warlic has been making great strides on the server.  That said, DF is still my number-one priority whenever possible.  We’re making great progress into Book 3, and while I’d like to be keeping up the to-do list in front of me is very very long.

Here’s a list of things I am not sworn to secrecy about and are on there.  These are not ordered by priority, and not all may be accomplished “soon” but will hopefully all be accomplished.

  • Mogloween Badge Bugs – I’ve got to play through all of Mogloween 100% legitimately to test the fixes I’m working on for these.  I’ve been doing that while live streaming with you guys (Follow me on Twitter to see when those happen) but it’s a big process. We’ve had a LOT of Mogloween content to play through and a lot of masks to unlock.
  • Warmonger badges – These require a special unique bit of code that we don’t have in the engine, and new engine builds are usually pretty big projects.
  • New Badges added to the Character Pages.
  • Fixes for DragonLord, both sound and color customization issues. – This is being held up by Ghost’s recent computer issues.  We were trying to make sure we weren’t walking over each other’s progress on them and are still trying to sync up. 
  • Fixing the boat minigame for the bay release.
  • Player Created Content design finalized – The new plans for Player Created content are a massive improvement over the original goals and still very much in the cards.  But it’s also such a large scale project that we more or less need it 100% designed before we really start getting involved.

There’s a lot of other things that need doing, but the major one (Pyromancer) is already in Verlyrus’ capable hands.  He’s making huge progress and we’re loving Tomix’s animations on them.

There is one other thing... Something small.  I’m forgetting it.  Man…

Oh Right!:

  • I’m getting married to Alina in a week!

That puts a lot of the rest of my todo list in a bit of a perspective, huh?  I’ve been running around the state of Florida (home of the Secret Underground Lab) and calling people across the continent to make sure everyone we can manage will be able to be here in comfort and style for our wedding.  It’s been a long, crazy, process that started over 2 years ago.

Now, it comes to the point of the design notes I’ve been dreading.  There’s no easy way to say this so I’ll be blunt:  I ran out of time.  There were big plans to get a wedding event in both AQW and DF now that Alina is running AQW’s releases and I’m lead coder on DragonFable, but things just aren’t going to work out.  I’m not going to have time to get a wedding event in DragonFable.  There will be a huge party in AQW, written by my lovely wife-to-be, but DF’s not going to have one by Friday.

Alina tells me she won't accept that answer, but I've convinced her to wait until AFTER the wedding to try to put something together. She needs to stay as sane as I do.

It stinks, but it’s the only way I’ll be getting through this week happy and as calm as possible.  We love you guys, and thank you immensely, and I’m sorry I’m disappointing so many of you. Alina promises that she'll have a Wedding Shop in Falconreach for you, though, so look for that this Friday! (Remember the Cysero wedding shop? It'll be like that.)

Geopetal

Thursday, October 18, 2012

A Word from the Kensai

The Kensai is riding the storm out.

Off in the distance, the storm is rattling its spear, threatening in a loud voice to bring all it could in a huge storm.  The tornado sirens are wailing, and the skies are pitch black, punctuated by lightning. The patter of rain pounds a tattoo on the roof as the wind howls through the trees… a perfectly creepy spooky night. In the living room, the Lady is watching Friday the thirteenth movies and setting herself up for a scare.*  And here I am, working on Mogloween.  What a way to set the mood.  And over it all, the crisp clean scent of the air, rinsed by rain, spreads out and permeates the cave.   

I was sitting here trying to think of what to say about the release this week.  I could say how much fun it was to do this.  I could say how eagerly I jumped at the chance to do this project.  I could say that I was looking forward to writing these characters, and how much fun that was… but that’s sort of a given. So, well, let’s just jump into it. 

First, Bubble has an assignment for you.  She’s found a possible cure for both her and Bubble..  So you’ll need to go out and grab a few things for Bubble.

Next Week:

Finding those things was easy, but now something funny is going on.  It’s time to follow a familiar trail.  What could those two have in common?

And:

What’s this?  The MOP has been recruiting?  A lot has changed.  New recruits join with the MOP and undertake a mission to help you, the Hero, as you try to find out exactly what’s happening THIS time.

*I’m debating it… but it would probably result in a horrible scene that would probably be best avoided.** 

**But boy would it be worth it.

*** The storm had the last laugh by the way, the power went out a total of nine times last night. Yes, that’s right, the lights came back on and off about nine times. Once it lasted for about thirty minutes, but the rest of the times it was only a few seconds. Yay for reading a kindle by flashlight and candle light while munching on M&Ms!

Geopetal

Friday, October 12, 2012

Help!

The Underground Lab has been compromised! I'm not sure how much longer I'll have access to the DNs....

A video from The Chairman has been blaring on most of the monitors at the lab. Please, everyone, all six games are under attack! You'll have to fight for your tenth anniversary scythes! You have to help us defeat EbilCorp! 

I... I should go before...

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Geopetal

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Tomorrow!

Friday is Artix Entertainment's tenth anniversary! We'll be having a special celebration in DF where you'll have your choice of any of these gorgeous scythes!

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Geopetal

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Zorbak Tshirt

HeroMart has new Zorbak Tshirt! Show your love for the little blue guy and get one!

Friday!
Oh noes, Tomix is sick! No worries, though, DF still has something special planned for the 10th Anniversary!

Artix

Friday, October 5, 2012

Next Week: 10th Anniversary!

A special event across ALL our games

When did you first start playing AE games? How long have you been playing? How is it possible that we will have been creating weekly releases together for 10 years next week? 10 YEARS!?!?!? We need to do something special. Not just special, we need to do something bigger and crazier than we have ever tried before. We need to do a new "1st!" you are hereby invited as a VIP guest, October 12th @ 6pm EST for a special event that will take place not just here in DragnoFable... but in ALL 6 of our major games! (Next Friday!)

Artix Entertainment's 10th anniversary special event

Geopetal

Friday, October 5, 2012

Locks, Books and Bugs!

Well, unfortunately, some things went BOOM this week! So, we're not going to be freeing those docks just yet....

What we wanted to do for this week was present you with this!

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Geopetal

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Thursday with Tomix!

Tomix has been working on the quests for the Atrean armors! This week, he's bringing you a preview of the Milkgrass Arena, where you'll fight to earn your Riftwalker armor!

As you know from Book 2, Somorah was destroyed by Wargoth! Most of the Atealan people escaped, with the help of The Professor, by ripping the grand city of Atrea from the ground and bringing it to Lore. 

Now Somorah is reduced to thousands of rocks floating in space. One small section of land survived though, untouched by Wargoth's hand, and has been secured by Atealan's and protected by a magical terraform bubble.

The Milkgrass Plains!

It is here, in the Milkgrass Arena, where you'll face Ateala Riftwalkers and finally, Alz,Ein, in an attempt to earn your own status as a Riftwalker!

More to come on how you'll earn the Cryptic and Ascendant armors!

Geopetal

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Sailing, Sailing...

... over the Bay so blue!

Ghost

Monday, October 1, 2012

Dear Dragonfablers,

For almost six years I've had the pleasure of contributing to this wonderful game.. We've been through a lot, y'know? Like that time we hatched our dragons, or when we beat up that noob Drakath.. or like how he morphed into the biggest and deadliest weapon that Lore has ever seen and we whooped his sorry behind again!  I remember when I animated the Dragonlord armor the first time, thinking “MAN, I sure hope these guys like this cause I am having a blast!” and then years later thinking about what a nooby animator I was back then and re-animating it from scratch, putting everything I had into it because I wanted to give you guys the best stuff I could make.  It’s been an absolute blast, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.

Yep, been through a lot of changes and developments…  and I won’t lie, there’s another one coming.  I’ll just say it straight up, because really, is there any other way?  I am transitioning to the AQW team. 

This week I am still making content for DF but also beginning to work on AQWorlds.  Tomix will be taking up the reigns as lead Animator, and DF has also acquired another animator, Hizu! You may have seen some of his work on HeroSmash and AQWorlds already. I know you’ll extend him a warm welcome.

The decision to make this change was not made lightly, but I am certain that DF is being left in capable hands. Geo, Rolith, Tomix, True Mortal, Eric, Dracelix, and Hizu all want to bring you the best DragonFable possible. 

Thanks for all the fun, it’s been an awesome ride.

Battle On!