Maegwyn

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Birthday Celebration Preparations

Birthday Mecha Model: Golden Katana! This year, the Katana is getting a huge makeover to celebrate MechQuest's four-year anniversary.  Korin is creating new animations for its new head and body attacks, and has updated the look and action of the arms and shoulder animations.  This model will have default weapons in all slots.  Blues has designed exciting specials with Star Captain and Nova Gem exclusives. I'm putting together the merge "recipes" for the NSC and SC versions and setting up the Nova Gem pricing and levels - there will be lots and lots of levels so there's something for everyone.  This year's NG models will be priced at 800 Nova Gems (previous years' models prices will remain unchanged) - so if you grab one of the 2000 NG packages you have a lot left over to use for commemorative Starship items, or Salvage quest weapons, etc.  Don't forget you can also use your Artix Points- you can still earn points via the Ballyhoo ads in Cinemech in Soluna City (or in the Dropship) and of course earn via the Portal where you can also purchase Points.

Another Anniversary: Vivi!  I haven't kept detailed records about the MechQuest team member dates, but a phoenix happened to scrawl a fiery message across my screen that tomorrow, the 6th of October, marks the one-year anniversary of Vivi's MQ coding debut! He's been an enormous asset to the team and in fact thanks to him, the Dodge function is getting an update this week!  Keep an eye on the Design Notes this week and don't miss the Birthday Celebrations for more about Dodge!  He's been coding all the weapons and mechas and also has been coding some of the quests - and now this update to the MQ Engine really marks another milestone.  Hooray for Vivi!

Fireworks, Birthday Boost, and More:  Friday will bring fireworks to Soluna - AND with the engine change for the Dodge update we're also going to roll an XP boost!  Star Captains will get NEW starship items, and you'll all be able to get mechas from the previous birthdays like last year.  

Also I wanted to mention that I have gotten a lot of questions about the ETA for the next SCMM - Arklen has been busy with the 3 new House Mechas of course, and that comes with the Level Cap raise to 50 - so we're estimating that the next SCMM will be sometime in November.  

We're finalizing plans for all the Fall and Winter holidays that come along so quickly - not just the MQ Birthday but also Mogloween, Turkey Day, and Frostval - along with all the permanent content updates listed in the Coming Soon section of the newsletter - so Korin and I have been working together on juggling it all to set down into dates for the team.  We have a lot of things in the works for upcoming releases.  Lyris is prepping for more of her awesome animated cutscenes, I'll be writing some quests, we'll be collaborating on some - blues has been working on updates to some of the older mecha models and the SC Xtreme Challenge - Vivi coded up a tough Boss version of one of our recent quest encounters so I will be setting that up as an SC Challenge... we're looking at your suggestions for Tek's Mechs and more - much, much more.  The year ahead is shaping up to be exciting already! We're excited to bring it all to you - log in Friday to kick off MQ's New Year with a brand-new mecha!