Questions by Mohammed Afzal (MageMoa), Onrpg Journalist
Answered by Adam Bohn, Founder/CEO Artix Entertainment, LLC.
Adventure Quest Worlds is a MMORPG created by Artix Entertainment. Artix Entertainment is known for games such as Adventure Quest, Dragon Fable and Mech Quest. Artix is so incredibly popular because of their browser based games, which allow you to play an amazing game in your browser without having to download something, that the staff is sometimes a bit… scared of all these people playing their games, but they are always willing to help you!
AQworlds is a great and easy playable game with extraordinary game-play full of amazing features and a helpful community, still there are a lot of things that we are unsure about, so we decided to ask our friends at Artix Entertainment if they were willing to answer a few questions about the game.
Onrpg: Could you introduce yourself, please?
Thank you for taking the time to interview me about AdventureQuest Worlds at www.AQ.com! I am Adam Bohn, the founder of Artix Entertainment, LLC. The players of our web based online games may know me better as Artix.
Onrpg: AdventureQuest Worlds looks like a second version of AdventureQuest. What did you want to accomplish by making this game?
We wanted to battle monsters together in our first ever, massively multiplayer game! The goal was to create a true MMO based on the original AdventureQuest that you can play from any web browser in the world. It features chat, real-time combat, live events, wars, cut scenes and a continuous supply of crazy new releases for you to play.
As our biggest and most challenging game project…we are often surprised that it actually works!
Onrpg: Is the plot of AdventureQuest Worlds the same as AdventureQuest’s?
AQWorld’s first major storyline is the 13 Lords of Chaos. It is completely new and full of epic embarrassment. You play one of the Kingdom’s greatest heroes (level 1 with no skills and newbie gear… of course) who arrives just in time for the final showdown between good and evil! When both sides are wiped out by a mysterious new threat you and your fellow players must determine the fate of our world…
For the record, I am very proud that your character gets electrocuted, shot out of a giant crossbow, and then makes an emergency crash landing on Dragon-back in your first sitting of game play. Not to shabby for a web game! Our team is building the adventure weekly as you play it. So if you are caught up with the story (very easy to do) you can help come up with ideas for the next release and give us feedback on our forums.
Onrpg: AdventureQuest Worlds isn’t turn-based like most of your games. What is the reason for this?
I love the combat in our other games, but real-time multiplayer combat is a must for a true MMO like AQWorlds. Nothing beats the thrill of battling a boss monster with your friends… like the evil fire Dragon, Vasalkdar. Most monsters drop rare and valuable rewards: weapons, armors, helms, pets, designs. One of the best cooperative features of AQWorlds is that all players who participate in a battle get the reward if it drops. So there will be no loot fights between friends in this game!
Onrpg: Could you describe the combat of the game?
Combat is fast, easy and fun. Click on a monster once to target it. Click on it again to attack! That will get you started, but soon you will want to start using skills. Your skills and abilities can make the difference between life and respawn. Each character class has a unique set of skills that unlock as you rank it up. You start the game as a Warrior, Mage, Rogue or Healer. But you can be as many classes as you want and switch among them at any time. Just go to a trainer and learn a new one. This includes Paladin, Pirate, Berserker, Ninja, and many more. We will be adding an insane number of classes with new skills types in the future including Necromancer, Illusionist, and the highly anticipated DOOMKNIGHT!
What happens when you die? AQWorlds has been accused of being the least punishing game when it comes to the BIG SLEEP. You have to wait a few seconds before respawning, and poof… you are back in the game. No XP loss. No armor repair bill. Of course we have nothing to prevent your friends from rubbing it in that you could not solo that level 5 chainsaw wielding sneevil on your own. Rumor has it that Death is at full capacity so he just keeps sending people back… more on this story in an upcoming release.
Onrpg: What unique features does AdventureQuest Worlds offer us?
AQWorlds offers…. Hmmm. Would it be alright if I just made a jumbo list?
- Become Good or Evil (and switch if you change your mind)
- Multiple Classes on one character, and the ability to switch at will! (Need a healer? *poof* No problem!)
- Instantly teleport to any friend on your friends list
- Levelable Weapons: Enhance any weapon to make it more powerful
- Customizable Look: Put any armor on over your class to look however you want
- Special Holiday and other random events
- Wars! All players work together to overcome an army of monsters and their leader.
- You can enter the Konami Code on our homepage (shhh, I did not say that)
- You can make your friends earn your gold and exp while you are offline with our friend referral system
- Fully Animated Cut scenes
- /airguitar emote
- Room Instances – When a room fills up, a clone is made and that one starts filling up. You will never be crowded trying to access an NPC
- Because we are creating the game as you play it… anything can happen. Which means ANY of the Chaos Lords could potentially win and destroy the world… or whatever those crazy Chaos-y types would do if they won
- LIVE EVENTS with special guests!
Onrpg: AdventureQuest Worlds has a wide variety of younger and older players. Is there anything that protects the younger players?
We have “Moglin Safe Servers” for our younger adventurers. These servers replace chat with a pre-generated list of things to say. Moglins are the cute mascot characters of our games. We named all of the servers after famous moglins including Twilly (the red healing moglin) and Zorbak (the 100% ebil blue moglin.)
Onrpg: What are AdventureCoins and how can you obtain them?
Most items in the game are available for gold. However you will need a few AdventureCoins if you are looking to buy something from Valencia, the rare item hunter. She sells bag slots, bank slots and permanent member-quality items. A generous sum of AdventureCoins comes with an upgraded membership and refills are available if you ever run out. It is also possible to earn AdventureCoins through our forum contests, a character in-game named Ballyhoo, and our upcoming toolbar.
Onrpg: What are the benefits of becoming an Upgraded Member?
Honestly, we work really hard for both Free and Upgraded players of the game. If you enjoy our game and want to help us continue growing, becoming an upgraded member will ensure we do. In addition to a warm and fuzzy feeling, you also get exclusive access to member-only areas, pets, special class armors, special enhancements to increase weapon damage, and access to the Member-only server. Coming soon: Upgraded players get to ride the free players as mounts. (Kidding!)
Onrpg: A few weeks ago, you had a big event on Friday the 13th and it was a great success. Are you planning on doing these kind of events again?
Thank you! Yes, we held our first live event with musical guest Voltaire on Friday the 13th. It was a multipart story with new art, monsters, items, music and our first voice-over NPC! We controlled the live event from a secret location controlling every instance of every room at the same time. Over thirty three thousand people attended and crashed our servers like the Titanic. All in all, it was awesome. There were a lot of interesting and rare items. The event was available in re-re-run mode for two weeks to make sure everyone got a chance to play through the adventure. We are currently setting up new live events… and getting a few more servers!
Onrpg: Which characters from your other games can we see in AdventureQuest Worlds?
Thanks to a cleverly crafted plothole (about the size of the Grand Canyon), it is likely that every one of your favorite heroes and villains from our previous three games will make an appearance in AQWorlds. The storyline is bringing in hordes of new villains who will displace the old ones. They say an enemy of my enemy is a friend. So it will be interesting seeing how you do working side-by-side with former arch-nemesis to battle an even stronger new foe.
All of the well known heroes have been appearing in the game. Artix (Hey, that is me!) and Robina can be found on the way to Battleon. The town of Battleon is almost an exact replica of the on in the original AdventureQuest so Warlic, Aria, Yulgar and Valencia are there. Cysero from DragonFable can be found in the tub, upstairs in the inn. When first playing the game you will run into the 100% ebil Moglin, Zorbak. Moglins are our cute mascot characters. Twilly (good), Zorbak (ebil), and Twig (cwazy!) are the most famous Moglins and can be found in all of our games.
For our special holiday events we have been drawing heavily from the lore of our previous games. For Mogloween (our Halloween event) we introduced Safiria the Vampire Queen, and the three witches Bubble, Toil, and Trouble from DragonFable. For the Winter Frostvale event players battled the infamous Dragonmaster Frostscythe and Frosty the Snowgolem. Just recently during Easter Break, the Genwog (a menacing yet bizarre egg collecting monster who wears boxing gloves) made his appearance. (He was haaaaaaard. But he dropped a rare tooth that eventually turned into a little Grenwog pet.)
In the real story… long time players were SHOCKED at what happened in the final duel between King Alteon and the DoomKnight Sepulchure. The introduction of AQWorld’s main boss caught everyone off guard if you know this characters long, dark and terrible history. It is unthinkable that he could rise to such power after everything we put him through.!
Onrpg: It has been said that AQW’s site is getting 400,000 visits a day. What is your response to that?
Wow! I really hope they do not all suddenly decide to show up at the exact same time.
Go team!
Onrpg: There have been rumors about the possibility of transferring your characters from the other Artix Entertainment games to AdventureQuest Worlds. Is this true and when will this feature go live?
Great question! This is the “import your character data” feature that we are excited about. When we were first building AQWorlds we made it possible to link your accounts. Right now, you can access selected items if you are upgrade in one of our other games. The original idea was to give the game one-time, one-way access to your other characters, items, and achievements. This was a great plan, but then we thought… “why just one-way, one-time?” So we came up with a bigger and better idea. We are currently building a master account system for our players that will allow for achievements, chat, and character data transfer across ALL of our games and mini-games. It is a really ambitious project and this is the first time it has been publically mentioned. If you listen carefully you can already hear our Database servers crying. This system will do a lot, but here is one example: If you unlock the Blade of Awe in the original AdventureQuest, it will unlock an achievement making that weapon design available for you to use in the AQWorlds MMO (and possibly unlocking something special in the other games as well.) Another example: If you play Moglin Punter 2: Twigby and complete it, you will unlock a special achievement that will open the Twigby shop in select games allowing you to by special items, weapons, pets to reward your accomplishment. The system will make it possible to transfer gold and specific items between games… and even entire characters depending. For the record, this is exactly as scary as it sounds.
Onrpg: What things are you planning to do next in AdventureQuest Worlds?
Right now we are working on Player owned Houses/Castles, and Guilds. We are really excited about this. Individual players will own houses that they can customize, personalize, and upgrade them to towers, fortresses, castles, underground lairs, flying citadels, etc. Guilds will own entire towns made of the players houses. It will be pretty crazy. We are also working on STATS which must be completed before we can start releasing the newest classes and start work on PvP. We want to try some new things with PvP to make it a really fun experience for players who choose to step into the battle arenas. Finally, we have a HUUUUUGE master account system project. It is going to be a great year for AdventureQuest Worlds!
Onrpg: Is there anything else you would like to mention?
BATTLE ON! And don’t forget to visit us at www.artixentertainment.com and www.aqworlds.com.
Onrpg: Thank you for answering our questions!
Thank you!
