| Project News Design Note Archive - See the good, bad, and the buggly -- all the way from the start! |
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 Icecream!  COFFEEEEEEE! |
June 30th 2010 *Brushes the dust off the design notes* Whoo, been a while. Bet you didn’t fancy seeing ME here on sneak peak Wednesday. Why I’m doing the post instead of Alina? Well, the mission she undertook for the Ficus last weekend has left her with a case off poison ivy the likes of which I’ve never seen. She keeps talking about getting back at Wayne Enterprises or something. Hopefully it clears up soon, because Geo’s taking some time off this week herself!
That’s right, we’re actually taking some time off here in the underground lab. (And NO, we're not talking Johnny Fish time off this time. Actual time off.) Last week I spent the weekend back home to the land where all great programmers come from, Rural Pennsylvania, and the land of Chocolate, Hershey. This week Geo’s taking the opportunity to take some time off herself, and next week Alina is going to head back to the great and mysterious land of the wild mid-west. That doesn’t mean that we’re taking things easy here at DragonFable by any means. This week, we’ll have the next Clashening! Lim SAID he wanted to see Cysero show you some magic, and now Cysero is going to do just that! The Clashening continues, now with MORE ELBOWS! (They make better spell components then knees, something about bees. I didn’t pay attention in school.
Coming this weekend DragonFable will see the return of the Liberty Day Shop. We’re celebrating the US’s Fourth of July as well as Canada’s Canada Day (July 1st!) with a shop in Falconreach! We’re also continuing the judging of the Great Dragons Naming contest. Geopetal’s now got the short list of names involved, but the final selection’s going to have to wait until she’s back. With that said, I’d also like to announce a BIG, Artix Entertainment Wide, contest. I’ll let Beleen Introduce it: (Hold on to your hats, there’s a LOT of pink coming.) Make us LOL & win big timeGrab a pencil and your sense-of-humor and prepare yourself for AE’s first ever Comic Contest! A perfect Comic Contest example made by Lim! This Contest is open to all players and has just begun on the AE Comic Contest Thread! Before we get into specific details, let’s first discuss what everyone wants to know: the prizes you could win!!! The Grand Prize is 4,000 BattleOn Points! …soooooo waait what are BattleOn Points? Glad I forced that question out of yah! BattleOn Points is the newest way to Upgrade your account with the Master Account Login system. Obtaining enough Points allows you to get Game Currency in ANY of your favorite AE games and even Upgrade your account to Member Status! BattleOn Points is also how you will unlock features, powerful items, and magic spells in the soon-to-be-released-brand-new minigame, BladeHaven! So what better way to get a head start in BladeHaven than with your Contest prize earnings ^___^ Rules Rule!So now that you know what you’re competing for… on to the Comic Contest rules! I’m only ganna say this once (…and then copy-paste is everywhere else…) so pay attention because ALL OF THE RULES need to be followed for your Comic Entry to be eligible. So if you wanna win, make sure you’ve actually read each rule BEFORE submitting your entry, kthx =D
This contest begins today, June 29th, and will end at 11:59pm EST on Sunday, July 11th. That is a pretty long time to submit your awesome Comics, so I expect to be roflol’ing by then! Here is another example of a Comic that Randor the Red did. It’s great… and huge! Winners will be announced Friday, July 16th and Prizes will be awarded then as well. A special page will be made announcing the winners, and we will provide you with that URL on the Portal Site and your favorite game’s Design Notes and/or Homepage! We cannot wait to see what artistic lol-talent hides behind that avatar of yours. Head on over to the AE Comic Contest Thread and post your Comic today! Or tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the next… or the next… or whenever it’s finished! Good luck to all, and let the LOL’s commence! Cya on the forums! (Or Twitter) |
 Go team! |
June 26th 2010 Go team go! BZZZZZZZZZ!*
To MAKE the merge, you'll need 1 level 40 cape from any of the above teams AND a Yellow Card merge item. The Yellow Card item costs 100 Dragon Coins and can be found in the original World Cup shop (all the way at the bottom of the list).
Support your team by wearing their country's colors and cheering with all your might. Goooooooo Tean! * It's SO good that the Design Notes don't come equipped with sound. That buzzing noise the vuvuzuela makes sounds like a herd (flock? school?)** of angry bees descending on your head. |
 is it Friday already?! |
June 25th 2010 It's been a crazy Friday! Between the live musical event in AdventureQuest Worlds, Rolith and Alina both getting kidnapped (seriously?! Where'd you guys go? I blame the ficus) and Lim having World Cup Fever, it's been a busy day. Luckily I was able to trap Ghost and wherever Rolith went he forgot to unlock Khelios! Dragonsgrasp: An Icy Wind Nythera Cape Upgrades! The Programmer Formally Known as Personator... is Khelios! Cracking the case: The meanings of the Eggs Egg 1: This egg swirls with toxic and sickening colors that, when unleashed, are poisonous to your foe, giving them a severe allergic reaction to it. I hope you all enjoy this week's release! The summer is just beginning... and I think it's going to be unseasonably cold.... |
is glad it's Monday! |
June 21st 2010 We'd better get to work! Have you every wondered what your egg choice meant when you first did the Dragon Egg Saga? After 3 years of waiting, this week you'll find out! Khelios is coding that part of the birthday surprise while Rolith works on the other half of the DragonLord gift.
Lim is making the non-DragonLord gift (possibly as we speak. He looks like he's concentrating pretty hard over at the other end of the table...). Release news about this week's quest!
* If you read this and thought "new minigame!" you were right!** See you on the forums, Twitter! PS - The Color Custom DragonLord helm has been adjusted so that the eyes will match the color of your trim. That fix will roll later this week! |
recolored her character's armor. |
June 18th 2010 It's party time for DragonLords! The first of the gifts are upgraded DragonLord weapons! You might remember finding the DragonLord's Loss, DragonLord's Prize, or Staff of the DragonLord as a low-level character. They were level 1 weapon which have had new levels made! You can now talk to Lim in his Falconreach Weapon shop to access the DragonLord weapon shop! It has levels 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60!
Cysero also has a gift for you in his Superstore of Savings! You can purchase levels of the Mirrored DragonLord Helm from him and, even better, they're all color-customizable! We know you've been asking for this one, so happy birthday! (You probably want to take your helm off before eating any cake. When frosting dries on armor, it takes forever to get it polished again!) And last but not least, visit the Armor Paint Fairy at the portal in Falconreach to check out the new colors you can paint your armor! We have many new colors for you to choose from, both lighter and darker shades! From reds to purples, blues and greens, and especially shades of brown for you rogues who want more choices of leather-looking colors! DragonMage raging!
Play as Nythera as she heads to Sunbreeze Grove to get some help from more dragon-friendly people! Surely THEY will be able to help her, right? And if they don't know how to, well, SOMEone must know what Nythera needs to do in order to get her magic back! And Nythera is bound and determined to find them! An unexpected trip lands her in hot water, though, and you're going to have to stay on your toes and keep from getting blasted if you want to ever get Nythera's magic back! Silver weapons drop from the Nythera quest this week in levels 53, 43, and 33!
The hunt is on!
You'll be able to talk to use the Troglomite Eyes and Troglomite Pelts which drop from the quest in Teral's merge shop to create a wide assortment of items! The Card Shoppe is open for business! You'll find helms, capes, trinkets, and weapons in Ellial the CardMaster's shops! The weapons are in levels 14, 24, 34, 44, and 54. The trinkets are all level 50 to account for the high amount of stats they raise.
Father's Day shop is here!
And for MY father, I just wanted to say: I love you, dad! I hope you can take a break from running barbed wire around the new pasture on Sunday! And thanks for never using grillware as weaponry in REAL life, though I have a sneaking suspicion you've already considered doing so. Some help with next week's birthday gifts! Have a great weekend and happy Father's Day to all the dads out there! See you on the forums, Twitter! |
has a hot doughnut |
June 16th 2010 It has pictures and text with teasers and hints for you! First up is a sneak peek at an outline of an NPC you'll meet this week in the Nythera quest, "No Loss without Gain."
If you've been pining away, hungering for more dragons in DragonFable, the above teaser should be reassuring!y Next up is an image that comes from Ghost, and will give you a glimpse of what you'll be hunting in the Hunter's Paradise quest this week!
You've never encountered troglomites (no relation to togs!) before, so you should be prepared for ANYthing! And last but not least, we have an image straight from Tomix which will give you a preview of some of the weapons and items you can expect from the Card Shoppe in Ravenloss this weekened!
Featured above are the Sword, Dagger, and Staff of Hearts as well as some of the helms and capes that Ellial the Card Master will be offering for sale! We hope these images have whetted your appetites for this week's releases! Check out the Newsletter for more information on this week's coming DragonLord birthday gifts! See you on the forums, Twitter! |
Go BOOM |
June 15th 2010 So, today was a fun day. I got in the office fairly early, said “Hello” to those who had managed to beat me to the Lab. Alina reminded me that I was supposed to share my to-do list with you today too. Then, well, before I could pour a cup of coffee the wall of interruptions washed over me. Zazul’s internets were clogged. Maegwyn needed access to something. Warlic and I were talking about two entirely two different problems on a project we’re both working on (If you’re both working on a project together, it’s a good idea to be working on the SAME project). Safiria wanted updates on my progress on various behind-the-scenes projects. The shop Alina was working on was blackscreening. Lim’s pet was, well, Lim’s new pet had some behavioral problems that resulted in some funny animations involving accidental monster dance parties. (That last bit may or may not have happened, but it’s funnier to imagine than me having to go line by line in Actionscript to fix a freezing bug.) Needless to say, it’s now pushing past 4pm, and the number one item on my to-do list, hop on here and write a quick design notes post, is left undone. Let’s fix that shall we? I don’t think I’ll bother posting the to-do list, as it exploded in a crater after today’s many, many, many, MANY distractions.
But what I will do is let you guys know that the plans to go ahead in DragonsGrasp will be put off one additional week; Geo and Ghost are both hard at work on the big event for DragonLords this summer (the Vilmor Saga is going to be BIG), but they want to do it right so they’re going to take the extra time and make it even better! One nice thing about having so many projects going on is that we are able to make up for delays like this with a little creativity and lots of overtime. That said, along with the next Nythera quest, the DragonLord presents (yes, plural, and no you guys don’t know all of what’s coming), and the RavenLoss card shop, we’ll be releasing another quest in the Hunter’s Paradise zone. There’s some other projects I’m working on, but if today’s lessons taught me anything, it’s best to keep in mind the clock’s hands and make sure I get things done instead of explaining how awesome they’re going to be. (But oh man, they’re going to be so awesome!) Cya on the forums! (Or Twitter) |
has a giant lollipop. |
June 14th 2010 It's Monday today and there's so much to do! Alina's To Do List for the week of June 14
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
What's coming THIS week! We'll have the FIRST quest in the Vilmor Saga! If you haven't checked out the new layout in DragonsGrasp yet, you won't have met the newest NPC there, Lestrad. He and Doyle have some really important information to share with you; details you'll NEED to know for the storyline. So make sure you talk to them! The second Nythera Saga quest will also release this week! You'll meet a brand-new NPC, who is much more than he appears to be. You'll learn more about the Void, including some things that Warlic DIDN'T know! There will be battles and information and new Wind weapons releasing from the Nythera quest this week!
A completely new, unexpected, VERY sweet Card Shoppe is coming to Ravenloss! It will be run by Ellial, a CardMaster! She's got 18 new weapons, two capes, and four new helms in stock for you! All are based on different suits of playing cards (Hearts, Clubs, Spades, and Diamonds)! She'll also have some super stat-raising trinkets for you, sold for gold to DragonLords! Some of her helms will sell for Dragon Coins, too! (She must have a deal going on with Cysero.) And last but not least... Birthday presents!!! We've got a 3-part gift for you this week! Three smaller things, but things that you've been wanting for a while. One of them is color-custom! Try to guess which!! Daisies are white, carnations are pink... See you on the forums, Twitter! P.S. - Head to the AdventureQuest Worlds Design Notes to read all about Cysero's wedding! |
is still cheering for Team Cysero! |
June 11th 2010 Part II And home before dark! Rise of the DragonMage: Nythera's Saga, part II!
Warlic is unable to affect anything in the Void because he's not attuned to that element like he is to Water, Wind, Earth, and Fire, so it will be up to you as Nythera to handle the battles with the Void Elementals and Void Elementals (called Void Spawn)! No one- not even Warlic- knows what lives in the Void, so there's no way to tell what ELSE you'll encounter. But the Void is such a twisted and corrupt place, you're sure to run into SOMEthing that you'd rather not face. A late release is better than no release! Sometimes he has had me test his quest and I have got to say, it's REALLY fun! It makes me want to go hunt down other old text-adventures and play them to see what he's based thinjgs off of. So, just how do YOU get to play his awesome quest? Head to Oaklore and talk to Captain Rolith! Click on the Quests button, then click on the Pactogonal-tastic! You'll need to be at least level 20 to do this quest.
Once you're in the quest, after the cutscene plays, hit the Enter key on your keyboard, then type Help for a list of useful commands. The aim is to beat the monsters, but how you'll need to do that, YOU have to figure it out! One key that will help you in playing the game: when you go to use something, the syntax of the command is "Use <X> on <Y>". Rolith: Make sure the players are aware this MIGHT blow up. It IS one of my releases, after all! If it does, I'll fix it in the morning. Also, the quest does not work in fullscreen mode, so you'll need to play in regular screen mode. Quest rewards will be pet versions of the monster bosses, and they are pretty awesome! They really bring back some old-school arcade game memories! DragonsGrasp's revamp (and MUCH more diaogue) is ready to go! And the revamp of the town file is looking great! This should help people who were confused by the perspective shift in the center of town. Geopetal says there is new dialog with Baumbard, the Barracks is open, there's upgraded security outside the jail, brand new dialog with Captain Lestrad and Inspector Doyle, and the winning contest banners have been hung! Let us know what you think on the forum! Don't forget to look down! Teams that make the Tournament** will have their scarves in DragonFable upgraded to level 60! All you have to do is purchase the level 60 scarf and use the free Soccer Cleats item and merge them together for the higher level item! We also put items in-game to celebrate Cysero's real-life and in-game wedding to his bride, Nursey! You can see pictures of those helms down below: the Cysero's Wedding Tophat and Nursey's Wedding Wreath. They come in levels 30 and 55 and sell for either 100 or 300 DragonCoins each! You can purchase the items to show your support and happiness for Cysero and Nursey by talking to Cysero in Falconreach and looking through his Wedding Shop! * In DF, that is element ???! (Remember the Braydenball? Ooooh yeah, it's Void element!) |
is cheering for Team Cysero! |
June 11th 2010 It's a Pre-Release release! Cysero's getting married! But YOU can be a part of this happy, happy occasion by celebrating with them in AdventureQuest Worlds! Just log in at https://www.aq.com and go to the main event!
And because Cysero was originally the head designer of DragonFable (and still offers us ideas from time to time), we thought it would be great for all his DragonFable-based fans to be able to celebrate with him, too! Earlier in the week, we asked Lim to make a Cysero Tophat and Nursey Wedding Wreath, and make them drop little green socks. They look greentastic! (My character is wearing the wedding wreath right now!) You can see them below:
From the entire DragonFable team, we'd like to offer Cysero and Nursey our best wishes for their future together! Who are YOU going to cheer for? Rolith: Hey Lim! Ol' buddy! Pal! Compadre!
So there you have 'em, 32 different team-themed scarves that you can wear as capes to show your support for your favorite Football** team! The rest of the release is coming in a few hours! * Rolith is cheering for Uruguay. Go team! |
 Congrat-adin |
June
* Time Travel Faerie says, "Teehee, Missed you... so i've been saving them up!"
Forum Question: What was your favorite DragonFable memory so far? |
Jamming Out to Kansas |
June 8th 2010
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thanks for the reminder, Dwelling Dragonlord! |
June 7th 2010 Poetry is nice, it adds a little spice. I am typing this on the backup-spare-extra-auxiliary laptop, which I have named Glimmer because it is so shiny. My normal laptop came back from the store where it was getting repaired but was still broken! We booted it up and it kept typing tttttttttttt, even after they replaced the keyboard. Fail! But on to happier news, like what we'll be releasing this week! Release news so you're not confused! Of course, if you've been around for a while, you know we release things EVERY Friday, but you won't know what until I tell you! Which I'm going to do right now. So get ready to get informed! (You might want to write this down, because it's pretty awesome.)
It's going to be a GOOD week, I can feel it! Geopetal has a secret project she's working on, which is why she's not putting out a quest this week, but with Rolith's quest, you'll still have two to do this weekend! DragonLord birthday present, week TWO! The gift this week is one that you've been asking for since the birthday release TWO YEARS ago! (And if that's not a good enough hint, you'll just have to wait and see what's in the gift box!) Lim will be working on the gift tomorrow, and we'll have it ready for you this week. Enjoy speculatinjg!h DragonFable contest judging continues! We will try to get the long list made by the moderators into a short list we can pick the final winners from! Remember that we will always reward creativity that goes above and beyond the normal contest-amazingness! See you on the forums, Twitter! *My character in Rolith's role-playing game spoke all in rhyme. It drove Lim's character crazy but was a REALLY fun challenge to try and pull off! |
hails the ficus tree. |
June 4th 2010 Are you ready for some randomness? In DragonsGrasp, you'll be able to talk to Knox in the Armory to help quell a riot in the prison in the first random quest. In the second, you'll be able to go on a training quest with Jonath where you battle illusions of past boss monsters! The rewards for the training quest are level 50 reforged versions of old war rares (with changed titles, so rare collectors can tell which are which). Old rewards are:
And in Ravenloss, you'll need to talk to Tomix to do his newest random quest. You'll be defending Char, one of the children running wild in Ravenloss*, from the denizens of this dark city. And if you're feeling generous, buy some merchandise from Char's Chest so that he and his little brother, Kinder, can make some money to buy food. Char will be selling:
Check out the Pet Shop! Aria will take over her shop. She might be young, but Grams has been training her in the ways of pet training, and her lessons were true, even if her motives were diabolical. The Spy of Falconreach quests will now be available in the Pet Shop if you'd like to redo them! We know that some of you want us to make it so that Grams is still in the Pet shop if you haven't done the Spy quests. Although we were able to do something like that for the Nythera Saga (as you guys noted on the forum), we aren't able to do that here. The reasons are long and technical, but just take it on faith that if we COULD, we would consider doing it that way. This will roll later tonight, so be sure to check back in a bit! Week one of the DragonFable Birthday Extravanganza! Don't try to eat the cake, though. It's still only batter.
If you have a Dragon Amulet, this week you'll be able to use the Baby Dragon Elementalizer available from the DA symbol in your game interface! You'll be able to use this anywhere inside OR outside of battle. No more having to run all the way to Sunbreeze Grove!**** Next week's birthday present is something you've been asking (and asking, AND ASKING) for for years now. (Two years, to be precise.) And we're ready to give it to you!***** It's my unbirthday! And probably YOURS, too! See you on the forums, Twitter! * Do not actually try to tame wild children. They bite. Hard. |
loves giving presents! |
June 3rd 2010 That's right, it's GOOD to be a DragonLord! Dragons! DragonFable is all about dragons! And if you think that there haven't been ENOUGH dragons in DragonFable lately, just you wait until this Summer's storylines start. We're exploring the story of DragonsGrasp as well as Nythera's quest to regain her Dragon magic while helping the Void dragons!
In yesterday's Design Notes we asked you what you'd like for this year's birthday present. Whoooo boy, did you guys come up with a TON of ideas! So many great ideas, in fact, that we couldn't decide! We were going to run a footrace and the winner would get to pick which idea to do, but there was a huge thunderstorm outside, so we couldn't do that. Then we were going to have the members of the DF team each try to pick the number Galanoth was thinking of and THAT winner would decide what the gift was. That didn't work either, because Galanoth's number was "Dragon." So no one got that right. Then we decided that the BEST way to pick would be for everyone to battle to the pain over the last container of Cysero's yogurt, and the one who got it would get to pick the gift idea. But once all the dust and nerf weapons had settled to the floor, we looked to see who had the yogurt and found Cysero in the corner with an empty yogurt carton! So geo looked at me, and I looked at Lim, and Lim looked at Rolith, and Rolith looked at Cysero, and Cysero looked at the ficus tree in the corner, and we all simultaneously decided that we'd do FOUR gifts! One each week of June!
We hope that gets YOU excited about being a DragonLord, because we're really excited about the gifts we've picked for you! And if you're not a DragonLord yet, now is the perfect time to become one by upgrading your account!
Let us know what you think of our plans for June! See you on the forums, Twitter! |
snuck a pre-peek |
June 2nd 2010 Do you remember what she did LAST Summer?! You got to play AS Nythera, and we're bringing back that functionality, in a slightly different way this Summer! You'll still be loading the Nythera class, but it will be a NEW Nythera class, completely remastered thanks to Tomix's hard work!
This time around Nythera isn't tackling any higher powers, she's just trying to regain HER powers! You'll start the class off with some basic attacks as well as the elemental skills that she's learned while acting as Warlic's apprentice:
Over the course of the quest chain, Nythera will unlock NEW skills as she regains more and more of her magic! And it won't be just ANY magical skills she unlocks, but her Dragon and Void magic powers, so you'll definitely want to play to see what she can get up to using THAT kind of magic! New Pet Shop coming to Falconreach on Friday! DragonFable's birthday is coming up! The big quest is, what do you want THIS year? We've got a few ideas, but we really want to see what YOU guys come up with! Be sure to post your ideas in the Design Notes thread on the forum! See you on the forums, Twitter! |
needs your help! |
June 1st 2010 We could really use your help, guys. We are going to take Grams out of the Pet Shop in Falconreach (we should have done that LAST week, but we ... forgot. Whoops!) and put Aria in her place. We'll also be adding the two Spy quests there. We'd ALSO like to add in ALL the quests/cutscenes where the Spy is mentioned. We think that'd go a long way towards helping new players understand what just happened these last few weeks. There've been a few places in-game where we've mentioned the Spy. Do you know them all? (Who's going to be the first to list them all? We know you guys remember!)
You can list where you've found mentions of the spy here, and we'll look through it and put together the quests today, and release the new pet shop this week. What's coming this week?
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