So we decided on Midnight tonight. I thought I announced it somewhere that we were doing it at midnight. I thought I announced it through Design Notes but apparently I didn't.

So, midnight tonight, Eastern Standard Time, 8 hours from now, the shop button in Soluna City for April Fools will unlock.

Then on midnight Friday night, it will disappear!

Get ready for it. We're putting the final touches on it now.

So remember, tonight, midnight, EST, New Release panel in Soluna. Woo woo! Power for all!

It's definitely coming up. We have an item in the works that will be available for one day and one day only. This day is of course April Fools Day. I haven't decided if we'll be starting it Thursday night at midnight or not but I'll certainly be sure to let you know. It'll either be midnight Thursday night until Friday at midnight OR it'll be Friday at 6PM until Saturday at 6PM. Open to suggestions.  Not sure when we'll get a preview of the weapon to you. I'm probably going to run through and animate it tomorrow. Maybe while I'm at it I can finally add more animations to the Korin bag head from last year :P

Sorry about the GEARS Games bugging out these past 2 weekends. It's gotten a little ridiculous but Rolith is looking for solutions since I know nothing of server-side database work. To make up for it, I'll likely speed the war up later this week.

You may notice that the Lucky items are gone D: Until next year.

Mae says hi. She's been all over the place lately but optimistically she'll be returning to normal schedule and pumping out quest stuffs in no time.

That's about it for the day. More info later on. Keep in touch!

Hello everybody! Our release is now leave. We've fixed more weirdities that were going on with the GEARS Games. Betraying will no longer lock you out of your mech. It turns out that's helptful. We also released the next preview of the Gameshow planet which is the Wheel of Points minigame. A word puzzle game where you guess various MechQuest terms. There's only 15 terms for you available (5 per stage) but in the final, there will be 15 terms per stage. You'll only need to correctly complete one of the terms but this is for sake of replayablility.

Also once you finish all the stages, there will (hopefully) be a very large database of even MORE terms to guess for fun. It should be fun and surprisingly challenging.

With Maegwyn, Vivi, and Lyris wrapping up the GEARS stuff, we may be going full steam on the remaining Gameshow planet stuff which really isn't much at all.

Things are looking good. And for Mystraven and Runehawk, this weekend may be your chance to make some progress in the games. Part 2 unlocks at 50% and you guys are almost there.

I'm still planning on what to do for April Fools. I literally have no clue. The Maypril mech is currently in production. To clarify, the Maypril mech is going to be the special 1 day only mech! That means on May 1st, for 24 hours, you will have the opportunity to purchase this mech. After that 24 hours, it's gone forever. So remember, May 1st. It's a Sunday and it will likely be released in the afternoon around 6pm EST. So look forward to it! This is the official first warning!

I'll probably do a 1 day weapon for April Fools similar to what I did last year with the Korin bag head. Not sure what it'll be yet but of course it'll have to be something silly.

That's it for now! Enjoy your weekend. Laaaaaaaaaaater.

That's right. It's that time for the next lovely alpha phase of the new and very fancy-looking MMO, Hero Smash! Later today, players that have spent money in ANY of our games will be able to participate in the Alpha Phase 3! Just link the game account that you've spent money on to the master account that has your Hero Smash account. Here's the master account site. http://portal.battleon.com/

If only I knew exactly what was being released. I know abilities are a point of interest. Either way, if you haven't seen it yet, I do recommend checking it out. I think the game has a really neat look and the fact that it can scroll the background makes it particularly unique as opposed to AQWorlds. I also like the weird style of the characters. Either way it's definitely worth checking out so check in at http://herosmash.com/

As for this week, I decided I will indeed be doing a preview of the Wheel of Points minigame for Star Captains while the war continues. It looks like Runehawk and Mystraven are finally closing the gap. Maybe this will light the fire of Wolfblade who have been able to easily take the lead so far.

Anywho, look forward to the Wheel of Points game. I'm super happy with it. And go check out HeroSmash! I'll probably hop on later. My name on there is Baghead. I forget why but I know I'm not wearing a bag. Yet...

The lucky House Mechs are now in the St. Patrick's Day shop located in Soluna City's New Release panel! Get yours quickly! G-g-g-g-g-go!

Not much else going on. Apprently the GEARS Games errors stopped on their own so I returned all the quests back to normal.

I also lowered the war totals for Runehawk and Mystraven. I think I underestimated how many Wolfblade members there are. So seriously, step up and fight!

I'm thinking of previewing the Wheel of Points game from the Gameshow Planet this week but we'll see. Sounds like Maegwyn thinks all the GEARS Games content can be finished this week which woudl be awesome. Then it's just up to yous guys. Might have George Lowe recording tomorrow so woot!

Anywho, enjoy your evenings. More later.

Hi, everyone. First, Artix asked me to share his DN post. So here's a link to that.

http://www.aq.com/gamedesignnotes/japanreliefeffort-667

Sad times indeed. We all certainly hope for the best over there.

As for this week in MQ, I plan on releasing last year's St. Patrick's Day weapons. I haven't decided yet about the mods.

And as for the war, things are moving a long. I think Mystraven and Runehawk really need to step up and fight! The first part to the GEARS Story unlocks at 25%

I have Thyton drawing up new weapons for each of the Houses. Those will likely be ready next week. I also have him thinking up a 1 day only mech forrrrrrrr MAYPRIL FOOLS! Not sure what I'm doing for April Fools Day but the one day only mech will be in May again just because it's the easiest way to celebrate the Maypril Fools blunder from last year that seemed to be enjoyed.

Meanwhile, I've got all of the minigames programmed and I'm currently working them into the game engine for use in the towns and quests. I'm still making the puzzles for them as well but they're coming along excellent.

I guess that's all for now so keep up and check back for updates probably tomorrow for St. Patrick's Day info.

GEARS Games were certainly continuing. I'm happy to say that Mystraven and Runehawk really aren't far behind. One good weekend of effort could even things up. Right now you're all moving at the same speed.

We have weapon updates and mech updates in the works. I'll be having Thyton draw more weapons for each House next week. I meant to do it this week but I was preoccupied with my project this week.

Maegwyn and Vivi are still working on their quests for the end/near end of the Games. It sounds like they have a good idea of what's going so that's fantastic.

Lyris is still working hard on cutscenes which is awesome. They really are coming out great and I agree that she does a great job giving the NPCs some depth instead of just looking like cardboard cutouts.

As for me, I've been working on the Wheel of Fortune gametype all week and I'm happy to say that it works! All I need are words and phrases for the puzzles which shouldn't be hard to come up with tons and tons so that it's fun to play even after the storyline is done. It's really thorough and working quite well. I'm super excited about it and may have to do ANOTHER Gameshow planet preview.

THAT said. I have the first half of George Lowe's script all setup and it's ready to go to George as soon as his laryngitis passes. So I should have that audio in a week and then the rest of the script in April. Everything is coming together!!!

Next week we MAY have a St. Patrick's Day quest. If not, we'll at least have last year's weapons and mods. The weapons should have higher level versions so look forward to that.

So keep fighting. I want Runehawk and Mystraven to really push it this weekend. Let's see some competition!!!

Have a great weekend and battle on!

That's right! It's that time again for all the house's to battle against each other to see who is supreme. This year the games should be scaled a bit better. I plan on tweaking them over the weekend to ensure that all houses have an equal shot such as, Wolfblade having tones of members so giving them a higher number to defeat than Runehawk, etc.  It shouldn't be over-powering any individual team but it'll just give everyone an equal shot to go above and beyond their own abilities to pull ahead.

We're not completely done with all the content yet but I think we will be around next week. We do plan on bringing higher level weapons and higher level corrupted house mechs as well as some new house weapons at some point (not sure when but they'll just be added to the existing shop). It should be an eventful GEARS Games. While largely Maegwyn, Vivi, Lyris and I'm sure Minar will be involved are working on the GEARS Games themselves, I'll take whatever free time I have to finishing the Gameshow planet to launch as soon as the games are over. More on that later. I have the Trivia show coded and I have a wheel for my wannabe-wheel-of-fortune game setup. I just need to make the win, lose, and word puzzle mechanics for it. So things are coming along! I don't think there will be enemies against you so I might make it to where you have to earn a certain numvber of points and that may work well with you solving the puzzle immediately or you may have to spin again and risk defeat to earn more points. We'll see.

Anywho, enjoy the Games. There is more to come!

Cutscenes For the Games are being done by Lyris so big "rock on" for her. Maegwyn is also helping and Vivi is learning quests too. We should be getting even more awesome in the very very near future.

That's right. I think it's time. Since I'm adding more to the Gameshow Planet (which is going great so far), I decided we should go ahead with the GEARS Games!

So this week, we should be releasing the first chunk of the GEARS Games which includes an intro cutscene so players can get caught up with this event. We have that intro cutscene pretty much ready to go, courtesy of Lyris. We'll be rushing to get the other cutscenes done and a bonus task at the end of the Games but it should be interesting.

I do plan on trying to make the games evenly balanced since I'm sure Wolfblade has a large number of members so I'll try and figure out the details on that which might mean the numbers may be weird at first depending on whather or not I need to wait for teh games to start first to see the differences (I'll be asking Warlic about that).

That said, I have the functionality of the Trivia game all setup. I just need questions which I'll be having Maegwyn gather plenty of. So we officially have 2 gametypes that players can choose from. I'll be working on a 3rd when I have a chance. I think I'm going to make it to where you can choose either of the 3 gametypes per level. So say you get through 3 obstacle courses and can't get past the 4th, you can try the 4th level of one of the other 2 games and still get the same story advancement. So that should be nice. In the end you'll be able to play any level of either game.

So I'll be sure to post more info on the Games whenever it comes around. For right now there is much to be done. Probably more than we should sanely attempt but since when have we ever been sane?