AQ2D
Artix Krieger
| Wednesday, October 29, 2025
I really wish you could have gone trick-or-treating with me when I was a little kid. We could have had a blast!
Ever since I was a little kid, I loved Halloween. Vampires, zombies, mummies, monsters and caaaaandy. Each year I would go trick or treating.. alone... or with my friends on Halloween night. We dressed up in costumes and went door to door... knocking and saying "trick or treat!". Almost all of the houses gave out little pieces of candy. There were so many types of candy that I had never heard of before.
Some houses.... played tricks. They would jump out from the bushes in werewolf costumes and try to scare us. One house gave out toothbrushes. (They possibly believed that was a nice gesture, but I count that as a malicious trick on all hallow's eve. Possibly worse than getting apple-jacked. That is when they give you an apple. Heresy) There were rumors though.... rumors that were hard to believe.... kids talked about houses that gave out *gasps* FULL SIZED CANDY BARS. You heard me right. Not those little pieces of candy, but a full Hershey's Chocolate Bar. I thought it was a lie.
Spent most of my life thinking it was a lie. Because something terrible happened when I was a teenager. I *sighs and drops shoulders* eventually became too old to go trick or treating. But that all changed once I had children. My secret, elite candy acquisition techniques were at long last passed down to a new generation. I will never forget my first child's trick-or-treating adventure. He filled that little pumpkin bucket to the brim! He struggled to carry the weight of the candy. He looked up at me, his little watery eyes straining for help. There are difficult things you must do as a Father... if you want to raise a true trick-or-treater. I looked at him and said, "Alas my son, there are but two rules.... first, you do not come home unless you have filled your bag with candy. Second, honor demands that you must carry your own bag of candy." Sounds cruel? Good. Because Halloween is not for the faint of heart.... also, I was already carrying his little sister and emergency baby supplies. (Secret rule #3. Always be prepared with Halloween baby wipes. For the baby... and, uh, the big scares.)
The next year his sister donned an adorable fairy costume and joined her Godizlla-clad brother for an even more memorable trick-or-treat adventure.... memorable.. because... it happened! I saw it with my own eyes. They went to a house and got a FULL SIZED CANDY BAR! I cried at the beauty of the moment. My children had experienced something I never thought real or possible. With a warm heart and watery eyes, I gazed down at them.... holding those bars triumphantly to show me. "In THIS economy?", my wife added. I looked at her with an eyebrow raised. She just witnessed a Halloween miracle! I may never understand normal people. But I do know that this Friday is Halloween. Should you be going trick-or-treating alone, with friends, with family, or inside our video games.... be safe, have fun, and may your bag of candy be so heavy that you need to drag it with a forklift.
On a cold dark night in October of 2002, AdventureQuest was officially released. If you were there, you would remember it was not much back then. Just the inside of an inn, with a few NPCs and a random adventure button. I wanted to have holidays in the game. But not the ones in the real world... I wanted "our own" thing. So the following year, we celebrated the first ever Mogloween. The idea was the normally cute and cuddly moglins would transform into hideous creatures and eat you.... unless you were wearing a mask. So you had to dress up in game... OR ELSE! It was fun. Now, Mogloween takes place in almost all of our games. As you know, each year we added to our unique holiday with haunted and spooky releases. ...and our biggest releases are typically around Mogloween. A terrible idea in hindsight.... we are so busy during the Halloween season that we do not have any time to actually enjoy it XD. But, at this point in life, it really is about creating fun and joy for others. We released areas like Mystcroft in AQWorlds... a haunted place that is only accessible through the fogs during this time of year. Actually, now that I am thinking of it, most of our games were launched during Mogloween. I will never forget the night before we would launch AQWorlds. It was 7:30pm at night and I had not finished the intro yet. Got a Pumpkinspice Latte from Starbucks on the way home and worked on it until I fell asleep at the keyboard. No one will ever know just how last minute most of that release was. The original intro started with your hero standing on a giant cliff.... you dramatically raised your sword in the sky and ZAPPPP you were hit by lightning! You fell comedically fell down the hill to the true start of your adventure. You got the Book of Lore and then shot yourself from a giant ballista to land atop a flying dragon for an unexpected boss fight.
A lot of players figured this out that the /join artix map that is in the Tech Demo now was actually a re-imaging of the original AQWorlds intro. JX drew new art for each frame of the adventure. Sepulchure's undead flying fortress is in the background. The undead threat will be an important theme to setup the story. The new maps feature larger scrolling & parallaxing backgrounds.
I am so proud of what the team has been putting together for this. I hope you love the re-imagined intro as much as I do. As you read this, Reens is working on the quests and map machines. Ghost is starting the cutscene animations. The rest of the team is working on the remaining UI screens, new item conversion tools (Spider & Warlic just keep making them better), and we have finally started converting and animating the first pets.
In the previous post I talked about the next release being the Dragon's Lair. *Checks sundial* Yup, we are late on that. Decided to wait until DragonSlayer class was finished being converted (needs some bug fixes and animation tweaks) so we can re-release it in the Tech Demo complete. Because there is now only one DragonSlayer Class (There is no longer an "Infinity DragonSlayer Class") it will not be necessary for long timer players to farm the class. You will be able to use your existing one. We are adding at least one Infinity-exclusive DragonSlayer item that you can obtain through our craft shop (previously called merge shop) after you are done with the story quest.
CREDIT: This awesome animation of Cysero was created by Arkcon (@ArkconLyran) for Korey's server's "Forge Enhancements Channel". (Thank you to CryoPhoenix for helping me find the creator of the GIF.)
Today I am working at the Secret Underground Lab. (Yes, the same one. Yes, we still have it. Yes, we have been trying to rent it because everyone happily works from home now and no one wants to drive all the way here to work... but it is hard to find someone who wants this much space. You ask really good questions.) Re-building AQWorld's intro in October fills me with nostalgia. Also some legit anxiety. We have been working on this for so long. It freaks me out that we are now doing actual production content. Back when we released the original AQWorlds, it had so little content. But that is not acceptable in today's world. AQWorlds Infinity must be fun, polished, and filled like a trick-or-treat candy bag with things for players to do the live launch. We really appreciate everyone who has been helping test on the Tech Demo. Granted, there have been like what, 2 or 3 people on at any given time since there is nothing to do after the current quests are complete? That is OK. I like that the servers are stable and online and supporting players can log in and check it out. When the next release comes out we will probably get a swarm of players testing and then it will simmer down again. Then we will do it again. And again. And eventually we will have so much to do, and everything will be so stable that we can open it up to all players. We will remaster the entire 13 Lords of Chaos, Darkon Saga, Throne of Darkness, DoomWood, and more things that you love. Including new ones. Both for you... and for you to share with new generations of gamers following in your foot steps.
Mogloween on!
Artix & all your friends at Artix Entertainment
