It’s been a while since I addressed you all in a formal capacity and I wanted to give you an update on our 6 month plan for AdventureQuest 3D. Since January we have been full steam ahead pumping out some awesome updates for you all! From the Moistverse, to Westmere, to the new Siege of Souls we’ve been having an absolute blast making content for you, and we’ve got so much more in store! So let’s take a look over the current state, what’s been happening over at AE, and how we’re moving forward!
The Moistverse was one of the biggest single updates we’ve ever done! We had a fun storyline, an awesome boss, tons of new items, and a speedrun! With that comes major team investment though. Artix and Memet wrote an amazing story. Oishii did great balancing and setting up the quests and drops. Dagger did a fantastic job on the Goblin Fuel fight. Aveleon made an awesome parkour section and worked with Yergen to make a beautiful map. Korin really came through on the animations, working with Xero to build new tongue technology and making the visually stunning Golbin Fuel fight background! We saw some feedback that we weren’t progressing the story, but this was an amazing opportunity for all of us. We had known a deal was in the works and we were not sure of the timing so we made our plan assuming that at some point we’d pivot to a massive event. I think overall the moistverse event was definitely something that was great for the players, but also great for the team. It was incredibly gracious of MoistCr1t1Kal and his crew to allow us to keep it in game as permanent content. We had a blast working on it and it really set the tone for this year. It was undoubtedly the right move.
Westmere was another massive update that was received very well. We loved seeing you all post pictures of your explosive escape from the mines! Llussion did an amazing job on making the map, working closely with Thyton and Clarion to really bring this area to life. This update helped us progress a storyline while also increasing the quality of early game content, which was one of our explicit goals. On top of that, we were able to do a bit of work on the adventure menu to make the early user experience better as well. There’s still work to be done in the early game but this was a solid start.
It is expected that any MMORPG worth its salt has PvP, and oh man did our PvP bring some salt. Love it or hate it, our new game mode was a pretty big step forward. We really wanted to deliver a Player vs Environment vs Player mode so that there was a little for everyone, and I think that we did deliver on that. On top of that, because we were able to reuse lots of assets and resources, we were able to move towards our goals of looking at combat overall. We looked at combat as a whole, from fighting trash mobs, bosses, challenge bosses, or other players, and determined the best way to improve the feeling of combat was to emphasize the fun in every class. If you look at our round of changes on the classes, they were all designed to make the classes overall feel better to play. Overall I think that the Rabble and Baht did a fantastic job, and next we’re going to be doing a pass on cross skills, so be on the lookout for that!
We made the announcement a bit ago, but it is worth noting our new release schedule. Doing one large scale release a month and having a light release really helps us focus on giving you guys bigger updates that can really knock your socks off. Moistverse, Westmere, and Siege of Souls were the first 3, and you’ll have to stay tuned for the next ones! We’ve got really exciting stuff coming up. I know you guys are fiending for more stories, and I’m glad to tell you we have one coming soon!
The community has always been what makes our games great. The AQ3D community has been awesome with the way you guys help each other and help us, which is why we have been working with the community more! The community spotlights in the design notes, having staff appear on podcasts, interacting on social media, it’s all been super fun and we intend to keep doing this moving forward.
We get a lot of feedback from you guys. Whether that’s from social media, support tickets, whispers in game, ect. We love hearing from you all! Seeing this many people care enough to reach out is truly incredible, and we are trying hard to act on that feedback. One of the biggest pieces of feedback we get is about mobile optimization and connection. We hear you. Honestly it’s not as easy a problem to solve as you might think BUT, we’ve got ideas and it is a problem that we are hoping to have some solutions for this year.
We did have an awesome time working with you guys on the PTR this month to make Siege of Souls a success and I want to shout out to the PTR crew. Everyone waking up early to join in our tests and giving us feedback on the changes was a huge help. That really felt like we were making the game with the community again and I’m really excited to do stuff like that more in the future!
As we look over the next few months and then the rest of the year, we are very excited and optimistic. A new saga is on the horizon, with big events in between like Grenwog and a Friday the 13th coming up as well. While we are moving towards our goals, we still want to deliver high quality content for you guys! Additionally, there’s some new improvements coming to town and the early levels so be sure to be on the lookout for those in future Design Notes!
Battle On!
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