I swear I am not trying to pull a shameless plug.

Has anybody heard of this game company? They've made Adventure Quest, Dragonfable, Mechquest, AQworlds, and WarpForce in that order.

The series is rather entertaining, given that it's only half serious all the time (bad puns are very, VERY common). My favorite part is how involved they are with the fanbase. They practically rely on fanbase comments and suggestions, while at the same time not showing such a lack of talent.

It should be noted that ALL of these games are made completely in Flash, and AQworlds is an MMORPG. That alone is impressive, but what is even more impressive is how good their games are. You usually don't expect Flash games to excel too much, but these games are amazing.

I won't link, as that will be advertising. If you know of these games, feel free to discuss.

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Back in the early days (probably 2003) I used to play Adventure Quest. I enjoyed it for couple of years, and everything was different. They stuck with the retro graphics, Black Wartexx was the strongest weapon, Guardianship was only $12, there was only one multi-hit armor and everyone struggled beating the Vorpalzard.

Their dedication to their fanbase was admirable during that time. They updated with Launch Nights, an event every tuesday night where they include new equipment and quests and attendees got a discount or a beta version weapon. Their community was open and (somewhat) friendly, and I spent my youth growing up on their chat roomm.

I quit because they changed too much. Now they're favouring their flashy new graphics, they've become money hungry (X-Guardian, Z-TOKENS?), the quests are tedious and repetitive and the new characters they introduce are outright boring and uninteresting. I just lost interest and stopped playing.

I still remember my character's number though, and I could always cough up my page for old time's sake.

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Huh. I wouldn't say that AE is TOO money-hungry. They're rocking five games at once. That's bound to cost quite a bit.

But I have noticed that they aren't adding in too many suggestions now.

Also, how does graphics have anything to do with changing too much?

And yes, their plots are very difficult to follow. They admitted that much with their Devourer saga. They promise they won't do anything that crazy again.

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You didn't know them when they just had Adventure Quest. As I said before, the only payment option was Guardianship, which was at a low price then. I'm sure they made some sort of promise that it would remain friendly and not very restricted to non-paying members.

They eventually went against their word, even having shops exclusively accepting Z-Tokens in abundance. They even had houses for larger storage options, when limited slots was a key part for strategy in the past. Their greed only started showing when they started DragonFable, their second game (third if you count ArchKnight, which was more of a walkabout test demo). If they're running multiple games and the cost to run them rises too much, that's understandable. But to completely butcher their original work, which they promised would not go commercial, to serve as their primary money making plan was a kick in the nuts for those who enjoyed the game before that stage.

I'm not quite as miffed about the graphics update as I made out to be in the first post. As they go on, they'd update newer quests, new characters and towns with better graphics. That's fine. But nostalgia took a blow when they rehashed the classic Frogzard Hunter quests with updated graphics. That was probably the most memorable quest back then, I missed the pure blue water.

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True, not too many people are happy with the Z-token crap. I myself find it completely unneeded.

What really kicked me where it hurt were those damn server caps on AQ, though they are understandable, given that they have so many players on that game.

I am at least thankful that they aren't as commercialized as Neopets (they even said that they wouldn't go THAT far, despite having Ballyhoo in it).

And yes, the nostalgia kinda was a bit of a pain when they re-updated old quests with newer graphics, though they made a very funny lampshade about that in one quest:

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Oh look. I found my old character.

http://aq.battleon.com/build30/charview.asp?temp=83141

I have a little story to my character's cool name. When I first started playing, I had a normal character with a normal name. The first quest I entered was the one on the new post, this Dragon Wars event. Anyway, I started there with my level 1, and got my rear handed to me by the monsters there. I joked around and made a new character with that name. And I happened to stumble on some newbie quests which helped me understand the game, and I didnt want my effort going to waste. Therefore I stuck with that character, and that rockin' cool name.

You can tell I've been around a long time, if not by the date then by the rare equipment you can't get anymore (unless they changed that too). Vampire/Necromancer/Werewolf Form, Guardian Ice Dragon Rider, and I have one of the most broken weapons of all time. The Mana Scepter. This weapon replenished mana in real time, while the game waits for you to make your move. You could wait an hour or two and have replenished enough mana to cast another Heal Wounds.

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Impressive.

I'll bring up my character now, just so we can exchange info.

Just for the record, I used to have a lot of ubers with me, and a few rares, but some hacker sold EVERYTHING and left me with a Ultra Chiken. I'm still trying to recover from that blow.

My AQ character

My DF character

And my MQ character

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I don't personally play much flash games, so I don't know many internet-game developers.

-SS

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Indeed, AE isn't that well-known. And their games have their flaws, but they're still entertaining.

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Dragon quest i used to play, i didn't like AQ or MQ. I got up level 23 Paladin but i never upgraded. And Well know wise? I see ALOT of adverisments for them like on the side of webisites. I think that what put poeple off (including me the first time) since most of them are either spam or virus filled.

Still they addictive. (But i play World of Warcraft now so i'm settled with my nerdiness)

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Ah World of Warcraft. One of the most addictive games in the world. I know a few friends who got addicted to the game.

I myself don't play the game.

Oh yes, and the advertisements are many, but at least they are honest.

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