Welcome to another Friday!  This is a HUGE Friday, and I am cannot WAIT to tell you why! Except if you've read the other Design Notes from this week, you already know.  But if you HAVEN'T, boy oh boy, let me tell you what is coming tonight!

Cyseroooooooo!

First up, we've got the Clashening quest chain FINALE!  You've come to know Lim and Cysero really well over the course of this quest chain and, if you've learned nothing else, you've learned that where Cysero and Lim get together, there is CRAZINESS!

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What's red and green and very, very evil?

The Resident Sneevil- Code: SALL-IE release this week!  The Red Queen's programming has evolved beyond even what the genious CEO of the Parasol Corporation could have imagined... Log in this weekend to find out exactly what she has in store!

We've got some VERY green, VERY awesome rewards for the Resident Sneevil release this week, too!  Here's a peek at them courtesy of True Mortal:

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Happy Birthday, Rolith!

It's Monday! Monday, Monday, Monday!  Let's get ready to Rumblllllllle!

Except there won't be any rumbling today.  Not on Rolith's birthday! No fighting allowed, only cake. And cupcakes. And chocolate fondue. Now THAT's an ooey, gooey birthday surprise!  Rolith doesn't know it yet, but in about an hour, everyone in the Secret Underground Lab is going to crowd into the DF/AQW room and surprise him with a PARTY!  Whoooooo!

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We'd all just like to say a BIG thank you to Eonaleth, a big fan of AE's games!  She's been telling us for a while about her awesomely friendly project that she was working on: friendship bracelets for the people in the Secret Underground Lab.

So as we were sitting around eating our Chinese food and listening to the AQW birthday cutscenes (Paul and Storm sound AMAZING!), Zazul came in with a very important envelope.  (We do not often get VIE's with gifts in them.  Usually they contain Very Important Notices from business people. Or there are VUS's. Very Unimportant Spam mails.  We just throw those out.)  Zazul handed us the plastic envelopes with THESE in them:

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Hello, all!  Sadly, I have some bad news for you if you're a fan of Ravenloss.  Tomix is feeling a little under the weather and has had to take the last week off, plus an indetermined amount of the future to get better.

We don't want him to stress about work AT ALL, so we've told him not to worry about working on the Ravenloss backgrounds while he recuperates.  We knew you'd understand!

All the scripts are written out for Ravenloss; we just need the background art and cutscene animation to finish the quest chain!  So we're NOT going to forget about the chain, we promise.  What this means for you is that for the next couple weeks, we'll release Clashening quests (only 3 left!) while we give Tomix some time to relax and get back on his feet.

turtle string time machine << These words have NOTHING to do with the three quests in the rest of the Clashening chain. Nope. Not a thing.  Nada. Zilch.  But if they DID, they might give you an idea of what to expect. :)

We'll have the next Resident Sneevil quest for you on Friday (Resident Sneevil: Genesis!) along with (hopefully) the next Clashening quest! AND some new weapons in the Player Suggestion shop from Clyde and Tokijin! 

Please wish Tomix speedy healing while he rests up; we'll definitely be doing the same!

Lim has a kitty! And WE have a release for you!
So, it's Wednesday. We don't usually release on Wednesday, but since most of the people in the Secret Underground Lab are going to be at Dragon*Con on Friday, Geopetal said "Hey, Alina.  Why not release on Wednesday, and then you won't have to worry?"  Geopetal rocks!

So today we have a brand new Clashening quest for you, returning after a Summer-long hiatus!  Lim wants to show you his latest experiment, and it stars his favoritest kitty ever, Mr. Poofles!  His theory is that if you put a cat in a box, it's impossible to tell if it's in THIS dimension or an alternate one.  Makes sense, right?  Of course it does. It's SCIENCE!  There's just ooooooone little problem:  Mr. Poofles doesn't FEEL like being a volunteer, and if you've ever tried to make a cat do something it didn't want to do, you know exactly what is going to happen.

YOU have to track him down; follow the cat-prints through Falconreach and hope you find him before Cysero does!  Because Cysero is in the mood to do magic, and you know what THAT'S like, right? (Pssst, remember the Guardian Tower getting turned into a fish?  Yeah, we don't want a repeat of that, now do we?)

Four different levels of Mr.Poofles will drop as rewards from the quest, so if you sold or never got your Mr. Mangles pet, here's your chance to get another cutetastical cat for a companion!

Dragon*Con update!
Remember, Dragon*Con starts on Friday (and runs through Monday)!  If you're in or near the Atlanta area, why not stop on by and say hi?  We'd love to meet you, and we'll have plenty of Sharpies on hand to sign shirts, socks, hats, foreheads... whatever you have handy!  We'll also be selling some of our swag at our panel:

• "The NPCs Critical Hits" CD
• Upgrade Cards (4,000 BattleOn Points)
• MechQuest Artbook (which you can have signed by our friendly team members for a few extra bucks)
• ChickenCow T-shirts (puchase includes the Chickencow Pet in both DF and AQW!)

And remember, if you come up to us at ANY point throughout the convention and say hi, you can ask for a free non-member pet in AQWorlds! 

Here's the official stats for our panel and party (remember, we recommend Dragon*Con for players 15+, but if your parents are alright with it, come on over and have fun!):

AE/AQW Panel (3 hours of gaming madness)
When: Saturday, Sept 4th, 2010
Where: The Sheraton Hotel - The Savannah Room
Time: 1pm to 3:30pm... unless we fall asleep

Gaming Party
When: Saturday: Sept 4th, 2010
Where: The Sheraton Hotel - The Capitol Ballroom
Time: 10pm to 3:30am (Although... we will probably grab everyone and flee to Voltaire's concert which is scheduled that same night.)

We hope to see you there!  I've got a bit more work to do, then I've got to run home and make sure I'm all packed.  Kata is staying at a boarders, and I miss her already! But she will get to play with Rolith's kitties, so she won't be TOO lonely!

Enjoy the quest, and we'll have more to release for you this Friday!

Happy Monday!

Schools are starting up again, which means it's time to wrap up our Summer storylines.  The Rise of the DragonMage Saga, starring Nythera, ended last week, and soon the DragonsGrasp storyline will end, too.  But not THIS week!  Oh, no.  This week we have something we think is REALLY fun for you.

"Fun, you say? I like fun!" Well, so do we! Using your imagination is fun, right? We think so! Like Willy Wonka, we try to imagine 3 new things every day. 

Stretching your mind and giving your brain a workout when you were younger involved taking your imagination to places it'd never been before.  And THAT's what we're going to do this week in DragonsGrasp!  More details as the week progresses; I don't want to give away too much today!

Also releasing this week will be the next Clashening quest!  Lim needs your help with an experiment (doesn't he always?  It's a good thing you are a VERY helpful hero!).  It involves a cat and a box, but it's NOT what you think.

                                                 Meet Mr. Poofles!

We are very pet-friendly here in DragonFable,* our heroes take their responsibilities to their beloved companions seriously.  That's why we're giving this old favorite of a thought exercise a definite DragonFable twist to keep it in line with our humor!

Good luck going back to school!  Khelios and Beleen are going back to school, too.  In fact, she just zoomed out of here in order to get to class on time. (I LOVED schedules in college. Class 3 times a week, and you could sleep in til 10am! Not to mention all the FREE food. Bonus!)  What are you guys looking forward to about going back to school?  Or are you dreading a new year of pop quizzes, crowded hallways, and cafeteria food?  Let us know on the forums or Twitter!


* Your backpack inventories are VERY spacious.  Your pets are not at all crowded due to the compartmentalized nature of the backpack.  A space for weapons, a drawer for trinkets, and a large fenced-in grassy area in the side pocket for your pets to frolic in. Gotta love Hammerspace! /nod

PS: Look for the Decadere Youngling pet to go live this week in Cysero's Superstore of Savings!  You guys asked for it, and we're going to give it to you!

PPS: Sometime today we're going to be rebalancing the Defender's Belt series.  Khelios worked up new stat numbers for it, so look for those later on!

It's that kind of Sneak Peek day when we show you something WE'RE really excited about!  And we hope YOU are, too!

With the Nythera Saga ending this week, that means we can return to finishing the other side storylines we've already begun: The Clashening chain and the Ravenloss Saga!

There will be a brand new Lim-laden, Cysero-soaked Clashening quest next week while most of the AE team is at Dragon*Con. (I finished this quest parodying a famous paradoxical thought experiment ahead of time for JUST this reason!)  And the week after the Clashening comes back, you'll see the return of the Ravenloss Saga!  We're very excited about this; it's been such a fun chain to build!  So for your Sneak Peek this week, we have a gloom-filled glimpse of one of the backgrounds from the next Ravenloss quest!

Are you up for  venturing into the dimly-lit and deserted depths of the Dark Tower Pentientiary?  Get ready to start the hunt for Riadne and the Icicle Key in two weeks! 

I hope that's whetted your appetite for some of the releases in the coming weeks!  We'll also see the return of the DragonsGrasp quest chain starting next week!  Get ready to have fun, because we are going to be throwing some seriously awesome releases your way!

And if you want to join in ALL the fun we'll be having, now's the perfect time to upgrade your account!  DragonLords get the best weapons and some of the most amazing battles and storylines in DragonFable, not to mention perks like Titan battles and getting to customize your very own Dragon companion!

We appreciate all our players (you guys ROCK!), but the DragonLords keep our game going and the server hamsters fed so we strive to make sure that when you buy a Dragon Amulet for your character, you are getting the very best game we can make for you!