AdventureQuest

AdventureQuest is a free online single player RPG developed by Artix Entertainment in 2002. The system requirements for the game are a web browser and version 7.0 or later of Macromedia Flash Player.

The game is free of cost, but a one time upgrade grants players the Guardian or X-Guardian status, allowing them to acquire certain in-game perks and features not available to other players. You can play it at http://www.battleon.com

Guardians are allowed to play ArchKnight, DragonFable, 2 other RPGs based loosely off AdventureQuest; as well as Zardwars, which is a "mod" created to test multiple databases. Guardians also have a separate server which is used for testing possible changes to the game and participating in special game events open only to Guardians. Guardians have the advantage of being able to play whenever they want on Adventure Quest servers, while there are a certain amount of slots for free players.

Wars

As well as random encounters and quest battling, there are sometimes events called wars. These are server-wide events that call for a certain amount of monsters to be defeated before moving on to a boss battle. If a player defeats the boss he/she may be able to claim a rare war prize. In the past players did not actually have to slay the boss to get the rare prize. The matter was resolved by implementing a system where items are now purchased in-game. Weapons are the most common items. They often do more damage than weapons available normally or have other advantages, such as powerful specials.

Several new war methods are being held currently, including a manually updated percentage bar, and a quest-style war where there is no waiting bar for the boss. Both of these sell the rewards in a War Chest, which you can access after you defeat the boss. Some wars have had a limited time to be completed for the rewards to be made available. Now, the servers can handle 2 different wars at the same time.

Events

Adventure Quest celebrates Halloween, Christmas, and other holidays. Halloween is known as Mogloween, Christmas is known as Frostval in AQ. There are many quests avaliable.

Mini-Games

There are currently at least two mini-games from Artix Entertainment: Undead Assault and Dragonfable: Firespawn. All users and non-users alike were allowed to play or download the games into their own website.

Undead Assault was the first mini-game which features a Paladin (which resembles Artix) as he slays the undead on his path thus earning experience to which the next level and gold to spend in Aria's shop, with special weapons that give you more experience and/or gold, in between each level.

Dragonfable: Firespawn features Galanoth, the head of the order of dragonslayers, as he rides atop of his steed and shoot the arrows from his crossbow at the vicious fire dragon while avoiding obstacles such as cacti, rocks and fireballs.

More AQ related games are being produced and will be released in the future.

DragonFable

Main article: DragonFable

The newest game by Artix Entertainment entitled DragonFable. For Guardians, the game has been released! DragonFable is something of an interactive serial web comic the storyline of which will consistently evolve over time. It has been stated that DragonFable will interact with another Artix Entertainment game, "AdventureQuest"

To see recent updates on the games' progress view the Design Notes page. It will be intertwined with the Adventure Quest storyline so that players will play both games to get cool stuff. Even though they will focus on Dragon Fable, Adventure Quest will still be updated. And unlike "AventureQuest," "DragonFable" will be a 'walk around' game, where players can walk their characters through towns and quests, however, the game has no character interaction besides "NPC's" It has also been stated by Artix himself that AQ Guardians / X-Guardians will have a special "Guardian Class" armor at their disposal for making the payment on AQ. New, free players from "AdventureQuest" who want to become Gaurdians on "Dragonfable" will have the option (along with gaurdiains) to buy the special "DragonAmulet," allowing players to go to special places and get rare and powerful equipment.

DragonFable will take place two-three years before "AdventureQuest". All characters from AdventureQuest will appear in "Dragonfable" as well, with character such as "Galanoth" and "Artix." The game will tell the origins of things such as the missing "Gaurdian Towers" how "Battleon" was founded, and how the "DragonSlayers" came to be. New Characters will also be added, and the "DoomWeapons" and "DragonLord's" weapons will make their mark as some of the most powerful weapons in the game (currently, that is) However, the DragonLord's weapons will need the DragonAmulet to activate them

Currently, you can create both male and female characters as a guardian. At the moment, the only classes are Warriors, Mages, and Rogues. More classes ,such as Dark Knight and Paladin, are due to release in the future. Minor additions such as weapons and enemies are constantly being introduced, along with the new town that has just been added, so the game is beginning to take form.

Community

Artix Entertainment maintains forums for all Artix Entertainment games. They can be found here, and includes around 60.000 people.

Counting all players in the world, AdventureQuest RPG has over 15 million characters.

Further Artix Entertainment maintains a chat community via Caelestia.net IRC network and has two channels. #battleon which deals specifically with AE game discussion and help and #yulgarsinn which is a location where Artix Entertainment members can gather to discuss anything. Both channels can be accessed via a web chat applet hosted at the Caelestia.net website.

Links

Adventure Quest - Main site for Adventure Quest.

Adventure Quest Forums - Main forums for Adventure Quest.

Ultimate Adventure Quest - Great site for info on anything Adventure Quest related.

Ultimate Adventure Quest Forums - Forums for Ultimate Adventure Quest.

Adventure Quest Statistics - Great site for in-game statistic questions.

Caelestia - Official IRC chat site for Adventure Quest.

DragonFable - Another great flash-game in the making by Artix Entertainment.

Undead Assault - First mini-game made by Artix Entertainment.

Dragonfable: Firespawn - Second mini-game made by Artix Entertainment.

Trivia

In the desolated town of Granemor, there is an apothecarist named Lucretia. This is likely to be a reference to the mythological woman Lucretia

If you ever go to Darkovia and choose to go to VampireSlayer E, the screen will say that he dumped his girlfriend 'Buffy' for some good old vampire-slaying. Buffy is the title character of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The name of VampireSlayer E is itself a reference to the anime character Vampire Hunter D.

Moglins, especially Twilly (the prototypical lead moglin) frequently break the fourth wall in the game. A good example of this occurs during the Mogloween event when a moglin says that he will not turn into a moglinster — something that occurs when a moglin is insanely hungry, angry, touched by darkness or monster cure, or if a trick-or-treater on Mogliween is not wearing a mask — because the AQ staff doesn't have time for that. Also, during the Frostvale season, when Zorbak tags along with the player, Zorbak sometimes casts a spell where a pencil erases the game.

Another frequent fourth wall breaker, the Guardian Dragon, (a being that is summoned from the Guardian Blade) will often say "Sorry I'm late, talking to Artix about lowering my summoning rate" or "Don't blame me for my bad lines, all the idiots on the forums made them up" or some such.

There is a reference to the Lord of the Rings series with the weapon Glamdung. It is a wordplay on the weapon Glamdring, Gandalf's sword in the Lord of the Rings.

There is a door on the second floor of the Battleon weapon shop that says 42, an obvious reference to Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and one of its descriptons is "This door has the answer to the universe", which is another reference (there is an untrue rumor that between 3:00 AM EST and ten seconds after 3:00 AM, you may enter the room and buy extremely rare armor.) It has a sign on it that says "Beware of Leopardzard", a parody of the "Beware of Leopard" sign on a disused bathroom's door where a local planing office had hidden the orders to demolish Arthur Dent's house and build a bypass.

On Friday 9th September 2005, a quest relating to the Leeroy Jenkins meme was introduced into AdventureQuest. Leeroy Jenkins is a craze that originated in World of Warcraft, when a Paladin called Leeroy ran ahead, luring hundreds of monsters to the main party, butchering a very well planned operation. The quest's point is to get past a nest of Vampragons. Also, in the quest intro, there is some poor grammar and no punctuation, stereotyping the average MMORPG player. With that said, during the intro, they mention "Divine Intervention", which is a reference to a spell in World of Warcraft which was also used after Leeroy botched the plan in the movie.

After you do the Zorbak and vampire queen quest to destroy all the bases, after you do so Zorbak yells out."ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!!", a reference to AYBABTU from Zero Wing.

If you go into the Lounge section of the Inn/Weapon Shop, in the second area, there is a bottle with purple fluid in it that says "Drink Me", and drinking it makes you tiny, obviously a reference to Lewis Carrol's Alice In Wonderland.

There is also a quest with the Frogzard Hunter by talking to Twilly. The Frogzard Hunter is obviously a reference to the Crocidile Hunter

A series of weapons called the Master's Blades was also released as a limited rare item. They refer to the Master Sword of the Legend of Zelda series in both look and name. Another zelda referance is When you ask Robina Hood (who in turn is a referance to Robin Hood), She responds by saying ",By the Great Tri-Farce, I am a ranger." The Trifarce is a pun on the word Triforce.

There is a very rare pet which you can only get if you upgrade one of your accounts to Guardian within 24 hours of creation. This pet is the "Guardian Darkzard", more info here: [1]. If you are a Guardian but upgraded after 24 hours you can still buy the "Guardian Firezard" which is mostly the same except it does fire damage, not darkness.

Controversy and criticsm

Guardian Only Login

There is a limit on the number of Adventurers which can log in simultaneously. In the early days of AdventureQuest, the limit was fixed at 4000, but now the limit is always at least 8000, and the number of extra slots fluctuates according to time of day and server load.

Once the limit is reached, only Guardians may log in, until sufficient Adventurers log out to free up slots, or the limit increases. There was previously a bug which allowed Adventurers to log in even if the limit had been reached, but it has since been closed. Adventurers believe that by making them wait a long time to log in, Artix Entertainment is trying to force them to become Guardians, and this is often cited as a reason for quitting AdventureQuest.

It should also be noted that new accounts get 24 hour login time. During that time, they can bypass the limit. Guardians can bypass it anytime. It should also be noted that because of limited server space, the game servers would crash after handling more then a specific number of games. This has happened in the past.

Lack of in-game interaction

AdventureQuest provides no means of in-game interaction between players. Some commonly-requested in-game interaction features include:

• Battles between players. High level players may find the monsters too easy and wish to challenge other players.
• Item trading between players was once offered but was taken away since staff had to do it manually and there were too many requests.

Monotony

AdventureQuest is sometimes accused of being repititive and boring. Almost all of the gameplay activities involve killing monsters to gain experience, and there is little else to do. Training up and levelling takes a long time, and often requires repeating tedious tasks. However, on the flip side, many people enjoy it because they can multitask while playing.

Lack of features

AdventureQuest is often accused of lacking basic features present in other RPGs. Artix Entertainment rebutts by reminding users that AdventureQuest has weekly updates and is ever-changing. The reason no user interaction is possible, is because it is a purely singleplayer RPG.

X-Guardian Boost

In the guardian information page, it says that if you buy the guardian status, you will recieve all future guardian updates and features, but guardians still have to pay for the X-guardian boost, but they won't have to, if they do not want to. In X-Guardianship, there are only 2 things you get what are different from normal guardianship: 1. 10.000 Gold starting boost 2. X-Guardians get 10% more Experience from every battle, normal Guardians get normal amount of Experience

Special Players

Special Players

Some players have recieved special bonuses from the staff for paying large amounts of money or preforming other favors. Long ago there was a way that you could pay a certain amount of money and could get armors that were RARE or sometimtes armors that weren't even out. One low-level player raised a large commotion when he bought Sage Robes for $60 or so. Another such player is numbuh 1000, who's character [Andrew] was hacked and had his items replaced in an incorrect order so that his steel plate was in the third slot, instantly making him a unique, special, rare, and valuable character. Numbuh 1000 is known online as vasilicus (vasilicus@gmail.com). There is much controversy over whether these characters should have their specialties removed but so far little has been done.

7. Character Classes

Fighter:A basic warrior who practices swordplay- and then uses it.Recommended Skill: STR, END. Rogue:A quick warrior that uses daggers to assassinate. Recommended Skill:DEX, LUK, CHA. Mage:A magic user that is good with spells and staves. Recommended Skill:INT, LUK. Guardians can train up to level 10, and unlock the "ultimate attack" for the class. At level 5 some advanced classes are unlocked as well. Also there is ranger: uses bow and arrows.

8. Myths

Over the history of battleon a few myths have appeared that have spawned dozens of rumors.

When the game first came out there was a rumor that if you clicked on the sister 100 times while it was not your turn the monster would automatically die.

During the great fire war there were rumors that the Ice Katana would cost over 1 mil and many players got extremely rich trying to save up for it.

During the final part of the great fire war there was a myth that if you saved the fire orb ( didn't use it to fight Drakkonnan) then after the war was over you would get it as a shield.

There were rumors when Galanoth died that you would get his armor if you attended the funeral.

There are rumors that between 3: AM and 3:00:10 AM eastern time you can go in the secret room and get extremely rare armor.

During every war there is a myth about hitting ALT+F4 that will only frustrate you by closing out your game and creating more space for others.