Ravenspire

A warm, happy, and friendly town that needs your help

As a long time reader of our various design notes... you know many strange and unusual things occur when we are develop new games. I am, not by nature, superstitious - although, never shy to get into the spirit of something fun just because (foreshadowing). So when we created he story of Ravenspire we envisoned a beautiful and peaceful town. Named for the hundreds (if not thousands) of Ravens that call the town home. It is a simple town with a few lovely houses, a fountain with a COOL looking statue, and a chapel. Oh, and a graveyard. Wow, look at all those ravens circling the graveyard! (Is there something strange about this?)

(Ravenspire art concept by Llusion)

So yesterday, while talking about this town I stepped out of my house to take Daimyo on a walk... and I am not joking... there were 5 black ravens sitting on the top of my house. The ravens sat still, most of them staring at me and Daimyo. Did, um, we stumble onto some sort o raven secret in this script? ...do they think we are onto them?  Then, for good measure, as we crossed the street a black cat ran past me. THEN, several large black bats started darting back and forth through the night sky above us. WHEN EXACTLY DID MY NEIGHBORHOOD BECOME A LEVEL OF CASTLEVANIA!? I am changing my name to Simon Belmont and carrying a cool looking whip with me from now on. (Everything but that last sentence was true.)

Onward, to the Alpha!

As you read this, the team is working as fast as they humanly can to get us to the next alpha test (I keep them hooked up to a caffine IV to make them go even faster.) We are building 3 zones: The town of Ravenspire (first!), the forest outside (for farming type quests), and a dungeon (for instance-run type quests.) We are also building monsters, armors, weapon, props, and animating the male and female base models. It may seem similiar to what we do in AQWorlds -- but so far, because it is 3D, it has been as different as apples and oranges. Zhoom and Minimal have officially switched to working on the multiplayer socket server full time this week. I asked you on Twitter if you would be interesting in testing walking around & chatting before combat was working and almost all of you said yes. So, that is our current goal for the next alpha test. I am looking forward to hanging out with you in the town of Ravenspire soon! How soon? Pretty soon. (They threatened to hurt me if I gave a solid date.) But if we do not run into serious complications... we could be looking at *OOOOOOF!*

New Feature: Towns that can change dynamically

In our older games, we have one town per entry in the database. This makes sense. Town #1 = Battleon. When we update towns, we actually have to change the town file. There is really only one town... and we continuously update it. But we are changing that in this game in a creative way that will let towns actually change as the result of what you and the other players do in game! You will be able to help NPCs build some towns, destroy others, cause certain leaders to rise, or... well, pretty much anything. It is an advanced version of what we used to do manually back in DragonFable-style wars. Talking about NPCs.... we have 4 coming up in Ravenspire, and they need names:

Twitter/FaceBook/Forum Question: Can you help us name a Blacksmith (female), Knight (male), Shopkeeper (male or female), Magic user (male or female)?

P.S. Be sure to check out my lengthy and telling Action Figure post that I made earlier today on AdventureQuest Worlds.