Was it Good? - Adventure Quest
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.ย. 2023
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Adventure Quest, the Online Flash RPG made by Atrix, set in the sleepy town of Battleon.
Everyone played this, or at least tried to, it's been around since 2002, and dominated websites like newgrounds, flashgames and miniclip, it was THE free 2d RPG, for a while.
Then Flash player died, but Adventure Quest is still alive through the Artix launcher!
So, I've gone back and played Adventure Quest every day for a month to see how it's held up, and ask, was it actually, any good? - บันเทิง
![[TH] 2024 PMSL SEA W3D1 | Summer | เริ่มต้น สัปดาห์ตัดสิน](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/pWsl9LhC2Uk/mqdefault.jpg)
I'm probably responsible for the execution of at least a few of the design inconsistencies that bothered you. I'm sorry(ish) -- you're exactly right that sometimes the need to get a release together every week meant we didn't pay as close attention to that as we could or should have. And revisiting old stuff to give it a touchup? Yeah... we had a hard enough time trying to reach some semblance of a balance baseline with all of the old items, and those were mostly database values and fairly straightforward code.
There was no design bible, just oral tradition, and calling most of us "professional" would be a bit of a stretch. When you say the game was very much a product of love you're spot on. Everyone I worked with did it because we enjoyed it. Hell, most of us were ascended players. I'm a guy who knew just enough code to be dangerous, and I did a large chunk of the quest and item design and coding for years. (And no small amount of editing, and a bit of writing, and... well, let's just say on a small team, one wears many, MANY hats.)
It's 2am and I'm only halfway through the video as I'm writing this (you're about to dive into the Devourer saga), and I have a long day and a bunch of driving tomorrow so I'm going to have to finish that up later, but I definitely will. It's been nigh on a decade since my time in those mines, but even through all the jank and all the of-its-time humor and pop-culture references, I'm glad the game has had such an impact on so many people.
So a little bit of insight into those inconsistencies...
The biggest thing is _everything_ is self-contained. There's no central "stat roller," "button," "text box," or any other component, which when updated then propagates out to everywhere it's used. No, we'd copy and paste the object from some other recent file. That's also why the Eye of Naab shield you can buy from the shop and the one Uldor holds in the animation are different -- they updated the equipment graphics, but would have to go into the quest to update it there. Monster or NPC art could vary wildly for the same reason.
Second, every single one of us except the game lead was doing this as a secondary thing. I had a day job and spent Monday through Wednesday working way, waaay, WAAAAY too late into the night on this. Others were in school, etc. Monday nights we'd meet, find out what was on the docket for that week, get the base quest and item files, and plan the stats and effects. Tuesday and Wednesday we'd do the coding, and I'd try to do a final pass edit the quest dialogue while I was in there. Everything had to be ready by Wednesday night because the release was Thursday, and I needed the files finished and uploaded so the lead could launch while the rest of us were doing our day stuff. We tried to keep our weekends mostly clear for decompression, because burnout was always over our shoulder.
Ye gods, I miss my 20s, when I could actually put myself through that.
While the tone of the game was consistent only in its WILD INCONSISTENCY, that gave us some freedom to explore some very different things. In a very real sense we were playing in a space without boundaries -- we could write a whole quest leading up to a single bad pun one week, and a dramatic moment the next. If you're not thoroughly sick of the game (and I wouldn't blame you if you are), I'd check out the Assassin questline, or at least give it a read; the official forums have an Encyclopedia section which has the script and descriptions. Some of my favorite writing I've done, manages to capture a small bit of silliness (both Artix-brand and a little more twisted) while building some really interesting characters and choices.
I always felt like the little differences from scene to scene and thing to thing made it feel like something that people actually made instead of just another soulless product.
@@solasslym3 Thanks, I appreciate that. I think "soulless" is the last thing that could be said about AE games, to the credit of everyone who's worked on them.
That said, I can certainly understand how the uncontrolled sprawl of content makes it extremely hard to come into from outside, and the little details being weirdly inconsistent can seem frustrating. It's the kind of perspective that only a decade of being away can give you. It all made perfect sense to me when we were adding things on, but through fresh eyes it's much easier to see how confusing it can be.
I think we'd all do some things a little bit differently now if we could go back 20 years or so.
@@westwind429 YEAH, but that's every project. Hell I look at illustrations I did as recently as a month back and am like GAH, why did(n't) I do that!?
You guys inspired me to get into game design and to believe in myself. I hit a few critical snags, but as much as I hate them, they did make me better evaluate what I CAN and CANNOT do by myself.
Ultimately there's a lot of choices that have to be made, and if we look at the internet at that time, it was very much a case of more was better, even if it didn't make sense.
@@westwind429
i would love to see a maticulous work through of the game where all inconsistencies are fixed buuuuuuut also would like the option to play the older versions of the game.
It's like all the Deveiant Art OC's of an entire state for an entire decade were condensed into a single story. I love it.
Lots of the NPCs are basically the OCs of the devs and mods and some integrate themselves cleverly into the world My favorite one being Kalanyr and Aelthai (Miss Fix It) Kalanyr being an archmage who can cast nerf and buff spells reflects the fact that he is a dev/tester who's in charge of all the actual buffing and nerfing in the game. While Aelthai who's NPC finds artifacts and gear and fixes them is in charge of bugfixing.
Other special mentions are Eukara Vox who's NPC is a teacher since she's an actual moderator, teaching players and being there to guide them and keep them in line etc.
The late Falerin was the former leadwriter before he passed away and his NPC was a Doctor Who like time travelling, space hopping Loremaster since obviously as headwriter he knew what was going to happen in the story.
The thing I loved about early Adventure Quest was it was basically just one big DnD session with the mods and staffs OCs.
Falerin honestly was one of the best story writers of any videogame ever. He could balance the serious and the comedy and the downright nonsense. The Devourer Saga was one of the most memorable and iconic storylines in a videogame, and it spawned a massive following with regards to theories and connections, especially as Falerin had heavy inspiration from the TV series Lost weaved into it.
He will be missed.
hell no
@@tonyjames3541 Something that really shows just how much this was a small team doing their own thing is that I used to frequent the forums all the time as a kid. Back then, the Paxia section had an ongoing 'war game' where people would compete to see how many mobs they could take out for their faction each week, since invading would track how many times each element's group beat a group of enemies. We even had a big risk-style map for it that we'd color out to keep track, with different sides having a player 'leader' determine where they'd attack. Because of this, people would get into joking fake arguments about stuff all the time.
Eventually, a new quest dropped for Paxia where Eukara took some of the more active people from that section who were making these points and, because you could link your forum account to your AQ character page, she just put them in the quest. Yeah, just random characters in these factions get captured by the new villain and they each give their reason why their side is the best, and they're all based on the real characters from real forum members using their real arguments, lol!
Because the section was always pretty small, I actually got my own character (Dethhollow) into the game like that, goofy geko hat and everything! I know it's a pretty small cameo, but I think it really does just show how close the staff were to the community, overall.
LMAO, So True
Never in my wildest imaginations would I ever see AdventureQuest again. I'm so happy this video exists.
I'm downloading that launcher
I remember before dragonfable you could use a memory reader or whatever its called, and fight stomg enemies, hit them once find their hp, hit them a second time insure its their hp, drop it to 0. Then rinse and repeat to get xp and things.. also then found out that you could find your attack value, then just ramp that up to one shot everything hahaha then they fixed that cheating, but by then I was totally fine with my level and power/money whatever they had! Was a fun time
Imagine getting the Guardian Upgrade now xD
This game is still on in 2024
adventure quest 3d is a thing now
My best memory of this game when like 20 years ago I went heavy into doing water damage and ended up randomly fighting a kraken or something like that. It was so resistant to water damage that it healed double the damage I would do but since I was so heavily water focused it couldn't hurt me either. I just kept hitting it anyway. At the time getting healed while at full would overheal you and you'd lose that bonus health at the end of battle. Well I kept overhealing the kraken until it reached a certain number and its HP overflowed and the game got confused and just killed the kraken for me. I wasted like 40 minutes of my life doing it but it became a core memory and I still test other games with similar systems if they will also do it but they never do.
Oh man, as soon as you started that anecdote, I was like "Oh how I hope this results in some kind of integer overflow error..." Hehehehehe
Brute force
Pure kino.
"Like putting too much air into a balloon!"
Interesting concept. Corrupted healing or healing abuse leading to unintended consequences sounds like a Junji Ito story. I've played games that allow you tinker with healing like "any heals now deal damage and vice versa" which is a common theme with holy/undead type enemies e.g. Minecraft's splash potion of healing instead damaging undead enemies. But I wanna see corrupted healing like cancerous tumors and using it to rearrange enemies into "I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream" abominations. I wanna heal someone's face into Deadpool's ballsack
This is the game that kept my son off the streets. Can't wait to watch later and see what it's actually about haha.
damn you're like the kind of dad who brings home a TVBoy when the ps2 was just released.
W for you
It’s incredibly wholesome and about as poor quality as a video game can get while still, despite everything, somehow managing to be engaging. It’s more fun than it has had or will ever have any right to be. The story is crap in an endearing way. The characters are caricatures of what they’re meant to represent, but it’s less offensive and you love them for it. If your son liked cheap puns, some of his cornier ones likely came from this game.
@@spadeofhearts713poor quality? You are a grown man with an anime pfp, please don’t speak about quality of anything when the quality of your life is pathetic
Keep us posted, I'd love to know what you think
I'm a UI developer and I can not figure out how they got the interface to be so inconsistent.
It's impressive in its own way
Flash doesn't have convenient ways to keep these things consistent.
It's like they had a team of people design each page at the same time, except the team of people didn't speak the same language and the only instructions they had was a black and white mockup of the finished page.
that the magic, i love how it looks like simple and easy to use, more in those years haha
Well I had actually downloaded and deconstructed the game files long ago it was using Macromedia Flash 5 I believe and archaic actionscript 1, that’s pretty much a ‘game engine’ from the year 2000 and was mainly for internet movies or VERY simple games. It was heavily outdated even by the time Flash 8 and Actionscript 2 was released not to mention AS3 which was much more in-depth.
I guess they didn’t change it because with each new version you’d have to change all the coding for it to work, but it must’ve been such hassle to work with and they basically could only upgrade the graphics to make the game feel up to date.
@@HimslGames no, but people do if they think hard enough... many people in the early days of programming also did not have "convenient ways" to keep "these things" consistent yet they still managed it. we have this thing called documentation and it's very useful at telling other people what things do, what methods they should stick to, and also reminding your future self what guidelines to follow. the point made in this video when it comes to the design of the interface and graphics is that... there clearly was not any documentation, and if there was, it was not followed very closely... if at all
One time, after a doctor's visit as a child, my mom gave me a coin to toss in a fountain to make a wish. When she asked me what I wished for, I told her that I wished that the Adventure Quest servers weren't full when we got home.
were they full?
@@themajorfreedomandfriends5446 No
I remember begging my dad to get me the Guardian upgrade. I was so happy when I was made a Guardian for my birthday. Spent ages becoming a 'Dracopyre', which I thought was the coolest thing at the age of 12. Good times, good times.
I was so god damn obsessed with becoming a dracopyer my aqw account was dracopyer123 crazy no one had it but I started hacking to op my profile Because it was taking to long
@@charsta2072 I used a bot trainer thing in aq worlds to unlock the necromancer class... Still wasn't as strong as the normal mage was before they fixed the glitch that let you almost one shot bosses lol..
This is a weird game where I played it a ton as a kid, barely remember it but when I see something from it I immediatly recognize it
You never forget your first frogzard
wdym forget. It's flipping all samurai ninja spellbladezoombladeomguawesomebladeofawesomenessswordofawemaiknoiasfcnoawipallthingsonthatlevel.littlejokesnotseriousnotreallyqbfuabutpeopledie.rnowaifjwasjlfckinwalsad,..////.... was pretty cool story mode.
Man i hate how right you are at this moment.
Yes.
same, frogzard is unforgettable
I remember playing this like 20 years ago, and Artix was really active on the game forums. I asked for a XP bar to be put under the HP/MP bars (I don't remember if SP was a thing back then). Artix responded like "good idea!" and it was in the game a few days later. That was really neat.
that's actually really cool
and nice suggestion :)
Yo thank you for that! Really a cool and handy feature
i spent so much time on those forums! the RPs, the clans, it was really fun
As someone who wanted that feature,.., thank you!
Is it really _cool_ that a talentless hack took your idea and ran away with it? You helped develop the game, you should be compensated!
In AQ worlds it would announce when the devs got online and they would go to their houses and talk to people. It would happen frequently to, since they we’re unique characters like artix it was awesome as a kid to hang out with them. When Steve Irwin died they added a sand shark adventure quest in memory of him. They did alotta cool stuff
Core memory unlocked
I still hop on AQ Worlds to see how things are going and run around on my character for fun, lol.
@@Gabriell1126 Same, I always log in every year for a little bit.
My favorite thing was following the vampire and werewolf conflict and then the Draco-werepire armor where you can be a dragon, werewolf, and a vampire. It was dope as hell
Same! Seeing the character model appear on screen for the first time, I was so hyped to get anything similar to that in the future
Many years and wars later the vampires still haven't won once.
I haven't touched AQ in years, and I remember that they're called Dracopyres. Coolest shit ever
Thank you for the retrospective, Josh! And thanks to everyone for the love! It was fun watching Josh descend into madness but be too in*vest*ed to stop. If the nostalgia bug bites, stop by Battleon, we're still updating AdventureQuest every week!
The puns! The puns never stop! (Like the weekly updates!)
Ah my childhood game is still alive and well, I'm happy
Still ?? Gonna help me get back onto my acc 😂
Ha! Last Login 2014..... Well I guess we need to update that
Sadly can't recover my main account or I would. 😭
Listening to Josh critique UI issues for like 20 minutes is the modern equivalent of Totalbiscuit critiquing the lack of an FOV slider and number/percentageless sliders in option menues. Josh is truly a man of classic talent
It was also hilarious, every moment you think he is done, nope, there’s more! I ran out of breath midway through the rant.
@@Kyle_Riel If I were you I'd ask for my money back
@@Kyle_Riel I farted
@@Kyle_Riel You might wanna read the channel name again bro.
@@Kyle_Riel "your criticisms are tedious"
"omg, are you censoring me?!"
Adventure quest and then DragonFable were my absolute favorite things as a kid. Underrated flash mmos
I used to use a hex packet editor to hack dragonfable back in the day, absolutely terrible with technology nowadays. Incredible.
Damn, i miss dragonfable, i remember actually crying when celestia died. In hindsight the storylime was cliche and pretty basic but for 12 year old me it was rhe greastest story ever told.
DRAGONFABLE! Holy hell I had gaslit myself into believing that DragonFable never existed and I made it up! Thank you so freaking much!
@@Tinyness95same, thankfully this video made me aware of the launcher so I can play it again, and now that I’m an adult I can get that dragon amulet
They were RPGs, but they were not MMOs. MMO stands for massively multiplayer online. Adventure Quest Worlds and Adventure Quest 3D are MMOs.
I didn't play much Adventure Quest myself, but DragonFable was my jam. It's amazing how it's still getting major story updates to this day.
Dragonfable rules!
It’s certainly the best thing AE has to offer, it’s a shame most people don’t know how polished the game has become, active the devs and community are, and it’s sheer level of consistency
@@ericalbanese8783it can buggy at times like a running frog are I couldn’t target for a few turns but overall really good and a improvement for a simple game like it
I honestly really like how convoluted the plot is. I also had no idea an official story from a game could feel like a fanfiction. AQ sure is something else
It really was stream of consciousness from whomever happened to be at the keyboard in the office that day.
The Devourer Saga spans not only the in-game quests labeled as officially being part of the saga, but also other quests in the game not so officially labeled, novellas written by the late Falerin, and literal IRC roleplays he ran (of which many logs exist).
It kinda is.
Like the writers are literally fans who do good work. They play the game just like players do.
Yup early Adventure Quest was basically just the late Falerin's DnD sessions even some of the NPCs were just the staffs OC's. That's why it felt so endearing to me it was basically just a bunch of nerds and geeks making a game out of their OCs and letting the player be a part of it.
@@tonyjames3541 Both that and a lot of Copy-pasta from other videogames. Lots of rips from WoW and FF
We are holding you to that dragon fable video. So many people have played Artix Games, but so few have actually seen the storylines, the end game, Artix deserves a lot of credit. He followed his passion, and gave us the most out of this world random rpg experience he possibly could.
Dragonfable is gunna be nuts. Chapter 2 was actually pretty bonkers. Chapter 1 is a bit conventional and Chapter 3 is a bit preachy, but Chapter 2, peak DF to this day. I wonder if/how Josh will react to the Inn at the End of Time though, and the true Endgame: Fashionfable.
I've actually been blown away by the storytelling of late. I got up to Book 3 in Dragonfable last year, and I just finally caught up to finishing the second saga in AQW, which was... wow. I know they hired a new writer relatively recently, and it's certainly paid off. When Artix Entertainment wants to do serious storytelling, it really shows just how rich this world really is, and how good the storytelling can be. This might sound dumb, but I actually regard AE's fantasy as my favorite fantasy world. So many unique ideas and concepts, and the entire world feels every bit fantasy.
MechQuest was my game of choice. It was probably the best Artix game from a mechanical standpoint, I miss that.
@@auctoritate8254100% my favorite to next would be dragonfable and aq really wish I had a computer I’d be playing them still over AQ3D on mobile it’s getting disappointing fast imo
Dragonfable chapter 1 will always have the nostalgia factor for me but I really love Chapter 3. We don't talk about the rushed and abandoned chapter 2.
Anyone else remember running to get the plunger as soon as possible? Man this game is a large part of my childhood
That plunger was honestly OP
Every time he went into the rift in the sky I was hoping he would mention it.
Still have no idea what was going on there
Just realized dragon quest verse is literally just artix’ dream overarching connected DnD world, like what every DM wants to make. Nothing in it is perfect, but the story is gripping and engaging because you care about it and want to make it fun for everyone.
This game was my childhood, I remember wishing I could become a paid member. We used to sneak onto it in IT class at school or during lunch break😅 This, Runescape and WoW got me through some very quiet days!
i was all over flash games in the mid 2000s. Played every day in the school library.
But never heard of Adventure Quest until Josh talked about it 😅
my computer class it was free Halo online.
I remember the whole class (guys) were trying to get in on the 4 or 5 servers available lol.
Same here. Back in 2002/03, i remember me and my cousin used to run away from school to play at internet cafes all day long. Oh, sweet memories
Looking back, I really don't have any right to trash on the modern games kids play....when this is what I sneaked onto at the school internet.
For AQ and DagonFable (I think that's what it was called?) you could get hacks that unlocked everything (because apparently there's no outside checks for the Guardian status, just a line in the in-game code). The only bad thing that happened is that when you log in your class was changed to "Cheater!!!" and you probably got a bunch of trojans and keyloggers on the computer.
I get the feelng that the UI inconsistency was a minor point when Josh started playing, but like seeing one ant on the sidewalk, suddenly it was EVERYWHERE
I mean, the whole game was stylistically inconsistent, buggy beyond belief, but despite all of that it's probably the best flash game ever made, and all the "flaws" add character.
Would I take up the game again, holy hell in a handbasket, never. But does it hold a fond memory yes, there ain't nothing bad about the game, it's just horrendously weird. And sure thing the game could be repackaged with better consistent graphics etc, smoothing out the gameplay loops, etc.
Some of the inconsistencies he speaks of is because when the game kept adding new content back in the day that was their way of highlighting new content.
I couldn't watch the whole video but it seems like he isn't speaking from the perspective of people that grew up with the game which is pretty important.
The older versions of the game were better and at least those graphics were all hand drawn compared to the very CGI art in the newer versions
@@ryans6309
I mean, he is speaking from the perspective of someone who played it way back, and even then all the same criticisms are just as valid
No he isnt. His/this review is strictly on a version of the game you play today where its frozen at a much later patch then when the game was at its peak.@@Hwyadylaw
I remember being a kid, my dad had an office downstairs in the house's basement and he'd rarely use it. There was an old computer in it with internet access and I'd sneak in everyday to play some flash games. I found a lot of great ones but Adventure Quest is the one I remember the most because of its sheer expansiveness and ambition. Most flash games at the time were a few hours long at most but this one always kept surprising me with new quests, new items, new mechanics. Felt endless.
A friend from back in 2015 showed me this game cause he was an animator for it. I remember him working on a poison sword and showing me how he makes the poison animation effects on it. Thats what got me into animation.
I still remember the old sounds associated with the game: “The Woo Woo” for the sun spells, the “scary sweeep” for dark spells
Dude i'm so old school, I remember when they added those to the game.
I read "Woo Woo" and heard the exact light spell sound effect XD
Woooo woooo
Oh the scary sweep brings back memories, I used to cast those spells just for the animation/sound effect even though they did less damage (I didnt know how to RPG)
Elden ring is a great modern game highly polished great gameplay awsome lore and world building
You HAVE to cover Dragonfable, it kind of became its own thing. Over the years it got a massive whiplash in story telling quality, I was replaying DF for the nostalgia doing the first chapters and laughing with the silly early 2010s internet humor and upon stumbling into the third part of the game things go on a drastic shift in tone that is genuinely impressive.
Dragonfable was my favorite out of AQ, AQWorlds, MechQuest and that other one. Such a damn good game
I still remember the Tomix story, it fr was really good.
Agree 100% after finishing the first two books the lighthearted nature of the game almost entirely shifts into a complex political story with very real and depressing consequences for story beats previously glossed over. Dove over at AE is doing a great job with the game currently, though some of the "Revisted" updates in book 3 make small detail changes that can make it a tad difficult to follow. Overall, a very very impressive flash game with great storytelling.
Loved Dragonfable.
And fucken mechquest . God I'm old .
The Demon telling everyone their brother is their nephew to hide the family relation from everyone is so funny. It's like he can't feasibly deny the resemblance so goes for the family member that has the best chance of looking similar whilst being disconnected enough to not be an issue.
This game's quest-lines play-out like a fan-fic that's gone so far off the rails that the author forgot what they were even basing it on. It's glorious madness!
"There are two types of people. Strive to be the third." is actually a brilliant quote and it's original to the game's creator as far as I can find. I'm writing that down because it's really resonating with me despite my lack of ninja-catered business dinners.
I also immediately saved it. It's not just profound and inspiring, but also funny because of the unexpected twist.
Yeah I think that's actually really clever, and is a good message on top.
I watched this in the background (ya know, because its 2 hours long) and didn't catch that quote. Could you time stamp it for me?
@@kassadwulfsige8760cba to find it but its somewhere in the very beginning where hes talking about real life artix
like 3:20@@kassadwulfsige8760
This game as well as RuneScape raised me. I played AQ in the public library as an x guardian. I can’t thank you enough for giving this game the respect it deserves.
Runescape AQ and Poptropica aaaah the nostalgia
Runescape and AdventureQuest
Name a bigger duo.
(You can't)
Library gamers represent. You canadian by any chance?
@@RexChentheking library canadian gamersssss
@@GamingTopTen They even have the same problem, being consistently inconsistent
It's so cool that we all kind of had the same experience, like I don't think most of us came anywhere close to actually "beating the game" but the fact I remember the "drink me potion" questline beat for beat and watching you play that was so cool, this is one of those games that you just discover randomly because you see someone playing it on the computer at school and I don't think the dev could have possibly imagined that being how word of his game would spread.
The way they keep forgetting their own lore had me in stitches every time.
This game was the gateway to RuneScape for me! All I remember is being extremely confused about what I was meant to be doing and why the difficulty was so inconsistent.
SAME! I miss 7yo me playing this game and barely understanding as I was learning english
When the schools firewall wouldn't let us get to RS we found a way here lol
Funnily enough, Runescape was my gateway into AE games!
Same dude haha
I think runescape was first for me. Not sure. it's been closer to 20 years than 10.
Josh pointing out inconsistencies in UI design is one of my favourite things, so this is now one of my favourite videos.
You can say its inconsistencies is its consistency
It's great to fall asleep to
@@inn0c3nce7 Consistency inconsistent.
I know it is his pet peeve, but personalized dialogue text sounds cool, like distinct dialects or something.
I mean, imagine going from an English inspired town to a French inspired village and seeing the fonts change accordingly.
I just did a programming course, and it feels like each dev gets to choose their own style and there's no guidelines for the devs at all lol
I often remember these games as they made my love for rpgs and jrpgs honestly. Without these games I don’t think I would have loved rpgs as much as I do now. These games are so nostalgic! I still follow their artists they have improved so much.
This was a web game that oddly wasn't blacklisted by my school district (along with NewGrounds) and so there were always a bunch of us huddled in the computer lab at lunch playing this game. This video dredged up a TON of super happy memories, so cheers man.
I miss AdventureQuest fiercely, and I hope we see more from that world in a single or double A quality game in the foreseeable future.
Holy nostalgia, Adventure Quest hasn't crossed my mind since the 2000s & suddenly the algorithm recommends a 2h retrospective. You brought me back to the days when kids had to constantly subvert the early internet child-lock or smuggle CDs to play games on those blocky beige school desktops. Newgrounds, miniclip, albinoblacksheep, armorgames, kongregate- this vid unlocked core memories, subbed.
funnyjunk and ebaumsworld too !
Same here
Adding halo from a CD onto the school's shared drive
Ah the days of smashing a pirated version of a freshly-released Minecraft onto a USB drive and playing it on a Dell computer at a smooth 15 fps. Simpler times. Good times
You know what’s really weird, I actually thought of adventure quest but only in my head like as a memory and a thought couple of weeks ago. Call it a coincidence or what not but it randomly come up today within the algorithm, I do play games to this day and search a lot of WoW content on TH-cam so it’s not too far fetched that this would be recommended to me somewhere within the algorithm.
What I find odd is though that, recently I’ve been thinking of different topics or subjects in my head and somehow not too far off it gets recommended to me on on some online platform. This has been by far the weirdest occurrence of it happening, anyone else experience this ?
I had no idea the loremaster passed away. I had played this game so much in elementary school. Lot of the other kids who played as well almost looked up to my character cause I was always the highest level.
Rest in Peace, Falerin, thank you for the memories.
This game came out in 2002, and i played it in 2004, I am happy :)
@@akaeka I created my first character in ‘05. I have vivid memories of some of my friends being jealous that I had various classes like necromancer and assassin fully completed. Good times
What an adventure he created.
Watching you achieving your childhood dream of completing Adventure Quest makes me wanna buy the Dragon Amulet and complete DragonFable.
I always felt it was Adventure Quest 2.0 and spent way too much time with it as a kid!!
Never did I expect adventure quest lore to be more exciting than any other rpg I’ve ever played.
I love the jank of this game. Every triple A company could learn something from its charm
Me watching this now, never knew how different all the different design styles and decisions ended up being, creating so much clashing in design consistency. Me back then, "I'm a ninja, pirate, necromancer. Look at my pet, isn't it amazing? Check out my favorite sword and shield!"
It reminds me of the daydreams I had when I was a kid. Did I care that nothing made sense? Nope it was just fun
Most of the different character designs are nicked from somewhere - artwork, anime or games. When they introduce the order, the guy carrying a girl is a linetrace of Issei from HS DxD, and so on. About 85% of the characters are line traces, the rest are heavily "inspired" by some other characters, which is why design is so eclectic.
I begged my mom to get me the membership as a kid. She came and looked at the screen, the old family computer at the time, and noticed all the little avatars walking around. She was staunchly against online games and I could only wait for the question. "Are those other people?" I look back at the screen and say no of course not, those are all npcs.
Got my one month membership.
The one thing I'll always remember about Adventure Quest (and to a lesser extent all the other Artix games) was their unique method of free to play monetization. If you didn't want to purchase premium currency, you could get a small amount of it three times per day by going to one of the vendors and willingly sitting through an ad. I always remember this being way less intrusive than other advertisement, since I was the one choosing to see the ad.
Thank you for reminding me about this, this was a staple!
It unironically made me respect them far more than any other game dev since then. They allowed me to choose, it made an impression on young me.
@@StarboyXL9I never knew about it. Would have loved to do that instead.
It's a shame that you could never upgrade to Guardian with Z-Tokens. 13 year old me was hoarding those things like real cash
Man the nostalgia is hitting me heavy with this one. I totally forgot that mech spin-off even existed
God...I spent literal days on this game. In fact, it was the first game I ever spent actual money on for something in game (X Guardian membership). I LOVED this game!
One of my long-time friends worked on this game back in the day for years and put his character in as a cameo. The character Zhilo is this character, and I got to delight in seeing all his over-the-top pixel art he'd make of him over the years, becoming more of a cyborg horror monster with fangs and blades erupting from him willy-nilly. While the axe the AQ version uses is simply called "Zhilo's Axe," it's proper name from what I recall is La Grande.
Now that's a throwback! If you're still in touch, could you send your friend greetings from the AQ team? I could poke our lead Hollow if he'd like to get in touch for the sake of nostalgia.
Man I spent hundreds of hours playing Adventure Quest and Dragon Fable as a kid. Thank you for this trip down memory lane !
I've played thousands upon thousands of hours of this during my entire childhood (age 8-17), it really was such a special gamr
im currently playing through all 3 again, its a nice trip honestly, and nice to know it will always be there
Watching each update go live and being able to play through it as it was being released really was a once in a lifetime experience. I remember it being one of the most exciting things during my childhood lol
Falerin really did write an amazing story
Dragonfable is still amazing and has matured with its audience. Still has weekly releases
@@noxus7462 I am still hoping for Fleshweaver :p
I seriously enjoyed your bit about the UX design not being uniform. It shows how important a company design book is (where standards about such things as color palette, font choice etc are defined first and ppl can always refer to)
It just blows my mind how much work must have gone into making... every... single... screen...
A good dev would be able to make a screen by writing:
new NPC(text = "Hi!", replies=["Yo", "Sup", "Bye"])
But some poor sucker had to design the whole thing from scratch? Every single time?
Thank you for sloghing through this blast from the past! The memories came flooding back and i feel good knowing how things id never finish ended
I remember thinking Nightbane was the coolest thing to ever exist as a kid, as well as Wolfwing. That said, I'm gutted you called them werewolves! They're the extremely cool and original and not at all nonsensical species of Dracopyre and Werepyre, respectively.
Also, Wolfwing is Nightbane's father. A LOT of people in AQ are related and have those relations revealed as a big twist, it's actually staggering how often it happens lol
On god, Underworld just recently came out and everyone was playing Vampires vs Werewolves on the playground. And little me having played Adventure Quest brings up the "I'm a werepyre" card
All i remember about Nightbane's creation is that he was a werepyre that drank the blood of a thousand dragons and honestly thats metal as hell
I was absolutely gutted when I found out that the Werepyre armor/class no longer ate health potions
I have never forgotten the Werepyres (I was one)
Don't forget Gracefang! These two are the leader for each Dracopyre clan AND two of my top five favorite class guild in AQ (well, technically it was one, but they split it into two for E's lore IIRC), Nighthunter and Shadowslayer. Also, I'm a Nighthunter if you guys wondering
Dragonfable and AdventureQuest felt like a childhood fever dream to me consisting of lying to my parents about money for projects, sneaking into internet shops and playing there for hours.
I had the wildest crush on Artix for some reason.
with a last name like von krieger you know hes packing
"for some reason"?? dude's a fuckin snack, of course you had a crush
@@HappyDragneels_page the "von" stands for long and the "Krieger" stands for girthy alfhf;afa
@@rowanoak_ TBF I was 11 at the time and had 0 introspection on my feelings, 29 year old me now is very very familiar with why I had a crush on Artix.
God, such a himbo aughahgalhafg
This is by far one my most favorite videos in recent memory! Such a nostalgia trip. So many good memories grinding through Adventure Quest and AQWorlds with one of my best friends. As janky as Artix games are, you can’t deny the love that goes into them. Thoroughly entertaining and stupid at the same time. Loved it!
oh the memories, this was the first online rpg game i played. I remember i created 5 different characters in my account and each one had their own made-up origin and story. (thus being one of the first instances of me creating OCs)
Yo josh, I'd like to give a quick correction. The special item you get from Epheel used to serve a purpose. It's art assets and flavor text would change as the devourer saga progressed. Back then the devourer saga was kind of an open mystery and updates to it were specifically left out if design notes and game news and left for the player to discover, so every week veteran players would check Epheel's gift.
that's actually rly cool.
this, the experience of this game came from the weekly updates, also him not even mentioning anything related from carnax leaves a lot of the game's essence out
@@TheMalcomrj Yeah. I've been playing since the 2nd war, the fire war, tho since 2016 I've been playing on and off. I'm legitimately impressed that he left out Carnax and Akriloth. They are arguably some of the most iconic AE characters.
This video made me more aware of my inevitable death than anything I can think of off the top of my head, while also being massively nostalgic.
It's a weird mix of feelings, let me tell you.
I miss Toon Town and Club Penguin.
And my Tamagotchi, and my Pocket Pikachu.. man, the early 2000's ruled.
Same man same 😂
Thats actually kind of pathetic.
@@toddtherodgod1867 Please accept our apology, Todd the rod god. Please.
Lmao stop hatin
@@ZeranZeran Hatin? What is Hatin?
I got introduced to this game when I was 8 and one of the best times of my life along with playing dragonfable, mechquest, club penguin, and eventually aqworlds
I remember getting the pieces for the blade of awe when I was a kid and the begging my parents to let me buy Guardian since I played so much. I think it was one of the first games online I ever really spent money on. A lot of what I had experience with at the time was F2P. This brought back some good memories.
This game is like a forever cooking stew that they keep adding ingredients to. And it somehow still tastes good after all these years
A dish you go back to and go: "Yes, this is home."
I wonder if I can login into my account still❤
@@jessevandez If you remember your user and password, it should all still be there.
@Dualblades47 I'm excited. I remember countless hours going into this rotting away in the boys and girls club computer room hahaha. 💀
@@jessevandez Me too my friend, so many good memories. Hope you're able to get in and enjoy it.
Starting from now on, I will patiently wait for Josh's take on Dragonfable. For a flash game that comes out on 2006 and still ongoing with weekly story updates and reworks despite being under budget and only having 3 developers, it needs all the honest review and recognition it deserves as Artix Entertainment's best game (by a far margin).
Were you waiting impatiently prior to this video?
wait.... dragonfable gets updated?
@@jama655 Every week. The Main story of Dragonfable is till ongoing (the latest release is actually yesterday), and the devs give out end-game challenges, map reworks, class or feature revamp in weekly rotation. Occasionally it gets seasonal events and community based wars.
@@cruenssafari3057If my memory of playing the game is anything to go on, this October should have a big event since they'll probably be connecting the Friday the 13th and Halloween events.
dragonfable always was the most polished and seemingly well designed of the games.
I started playing this game when I was seven, and nothing has truly excited me like this game did. I remember coming home from soccer practice and my mom telling me she'd let me sign up, I remember getting guardian status, I remember it all. This game fucks.
My god man, you can't just hit someone with a bang of nostalgia like that. I remember playing this game (and probably all the other main Quest games you mentioned) all the time back in the day. Love it.
Also that entire segment about going through the story just made my head hurt, SO many names, Christ
AdventureQuest, DragonFable, MechQuest, and AQWorlds.
Those were my childhood :)
No better free games to play at School or when I finished my homework. You could literally pick back up from what you were doing in an instant!
I was trying to remember the name of the sci-fi one while watching this. Thank you!
RuneScape too
AQ3D is honestly a great homage to the old AQ vibe. Fun casual mmo and cross platform
god this was a great nostalgia trip. i spent hours playing this game at our computer lab at school with friends comparing notes and trying to progress faster than each other in our limited time during class.
same. i think a lot of us 90s kids played this in school as our first internet memories lol
Good old times, Dragonfable and mechaquest as well .
Hehe, we made the same - but with DOFUS.
Shout out to all the computer lab kids ❤
This is one of those where you just had to be there! I played all of the Battle On games and they kept me out of a lot trouble
This game was my childhood man! So many memories brought back from watching this. You got me wanting to play it again and AQ worlds. Thanks for the content!
DragonFable holds one of my core memories.
I was in a bad place in my life. My parents had divorced and I was being used as a pawn, and the stress of that was causing me to fail school. I considered my only value as a person to be my intelligence, so getting bad grades was the clincher. I had nothing left to live for.
I remembered these old, weird flash games that I played as a kid, Adventure and Mech Quest. I went and checked them out, but ended up clicking on DragonFable instead.
It was weird. New, because I'd never played it, but old - so old, like my earliest memories were returning. I sunk into it. After a little while there was a popup for a new mission that had juuust been released. It was like this old-style zombie thriller with slimes on people's heads, led by a pop star who sang an incredibly improvised-seeming song about Battleon as the backing music.
Something about that mission, that song... It formed a core memory. I barely remember most of that point in life, but I remember that song.
Amazing friend, I loved dragon fable my parents put us through hell but wouldn’t divorce, this and the other stuff helped me not hate being a kid so much , have a blessed night Jesus loves you
Every time i get depressed i just boot up ye olde reliable AQ. There's definitely something soothing and comforting about it that is hard to explain.
Haven't needed it in a while, but its worked wonders a few times.
glad you could be here to tell your stories freind. that story alone has proved that life was worth to live for :)
JSH: “..so grab a cup of tea and settle in, because this is one long adventure.”
Me, just finishing my tea: “well shoot”
adventure.....QUEST!
Always room for more tea :)
May I advise Yorkshire Tea Gold?
@@Dong_Harvey quite the spiffing Britt, aren’t you?
A very well prepared gentleman, I see.
Played this back in college. Every few years I used to remember it and go check on my house or whatever it was. I still remember being impressed by how frequently they added fairly significant feeling content--and how much better the art got for each expansion. What a blast from the past.
I lost lord knows how much time during my elementary years with this game. Seeing it again (and all of its successors) made me feel all warm and tingly inside.
Some of the monster designs for this game are actually really cool and unique. There are some designs in just this video that I've never seen anything like before.
Werepyres 🥰
The zards are a favourite of mine to this day, they're just silly dragon heads with legs and I love them
@@Megumi646DRACOPYRES>
The character designs are also awesome. Galanoth, Artix, Aquilla, Warlic, etc.
for me, what really hooked me was the armour design. It felt magical but somewhat real....same feelings as I personally get from Heroes of Might and Magic 3
I loved playing AdventureQuest as a kid but the price gate was an issue growing up. MechQuest was the browser game I wasted hundreds of hours in and never had to pay. Finishing the pizza delivery quest line and getting the Pizza mech was such a great feeling as a kid!
MechQuest omfg 😭
Bro I remember playing Mechquest for hours while Linkin Park and Nickleback played off of TH-cam in the background. Middle school man...
unlocked my memory thanks lmao
Hell yeah mechquest, wasn't there like a Jason Mech or something??
i loved how there like a hogwarts house you can join in the academy
I never thought of this game as being low budget. I loved it back in middle school. I loved the monsters and different world. Im 100% going to go back and play this
I remember discovering all the classes in the game, necromancer, vampire, werewolf, werepyre, dragomancer, etc. So many cool ideas. Since I was F2P the necromancer large form did the most dmg like 200-300. But the grind with the dice rolls, OHhh so much pain!!. Then dragonfable came with even cooler classes like soulweaver, technomancer. Such great memories.
This just unlocked a core memory of a game I played for countless hours as a teenager way back when, but completely forgot existed. Thanks Josh.
The fact that AdventureQuest still gets coverage after 20 years is a beauty to see indeed. 🙏🏾💯
Oh, an Adventure Quest video. I remember this game, although I played the Dragon Fable one. Childhood memories.
What? Uploaded 14 hours ago??? Is this game still alive? (Kinda)
shame the game is garbage
@@Moumszk like all artix entertainment games
I mean there are also still youtubers talking about 45 year old atari games so this is not a big deal.
They have 7 different games and they update each weekly.
So every day there's new content for Artix games.
The absolute madlads.
Josh : "oh god, i'm going to have to make a 2-hour retrospective on another flash game aren't i?"
Me : "i would definitely watch that."
AdventureQuest was to me what FFVII was to everyone else at the time. I grew up relatively lucky because in the days of dialup internet, my family had a dedicated phoneline just for the computer. Speeds were, well dialup, but for a game like AQ, it didn't matter. I could play a few hours at home, run a quest during lunch at school on the library computers while everyone else was discovering Runescape, or spend a whole weekend diving into a questline when I had nothing else to do. AQ is peak childhood to me, and it has NEVER lost it's charm. The game feels the same, even after all these years and all these additions. I got the X-Guardian pack by saving spare change, dived into old forum posts to figure out how to get the BoA, introduced myself to theorycrafting while attempted to take on bosses well beyond my level, became a zealous fan of Lycans as a subrace, etc. The game and it's dev team hold a very special place in my heart.
Thank you for giving this ancient game the attention and respect it deserves.
My god. This game hasn't been anywhere in my brain for well over a decade, but watching this video reignited long-dead neurons like a molotov cocktail in a hydrogen blimp. Amazing stuff - thank you!
This game is perfectly imperfect. While seemingly amateurish and unrefined, silly and cliche, it has just about everything you could ask for in terms of a quintessential RPG experience, and you can feel the passion and dedication that was put into it. I was a kid when this came out and I got hooked pretty quickly. The immense amount of content really made me want to explore everything the game had to offer and being able to buy a lifetime membership for just a few dollars at the time was such a great feeling. It was like a marathon DnD campaign that never took itself too seriously. Other games eventually stole my interest (looking at you, Runescape) but the time I spent with AQ was pretty great. Cheating was a big problem though, there were various programs and clients that autobattled for you and picked the moves and items needed to farm things effectively. I also vaguely remember godmode being a thing, but I could be wrong.
this video is unlocking some deep childhood memories and giving me extreme nostalgia. i remember opening multiple tabs on the login screen and continually refreshing until 1 tab could log in, then i'd log in on all of them to bypass the player limit. good times.
Thank you for your videos. This is the 2nd video I have watched from you. Granted, I put you on my second monitor while I play my own game, but Dawn of War and now this? Thank you for putting in the effort to allow people like myself to relive their childhoods.
A 2 hour Adventure Quest video. Hell yeah! I'm going to watch this on my second monitor while playing the best second monitor game OSRS.
Please let there be one on Dragonfable. Legit some of the most engaging story and art I've seen on a 2d game.
The tonal shift of Book Two obliterated me when I first played through - and the insane jump in quality for its writing in Book Three has had a vice grip on my brain for years now. Legit the best game ever made with the Flash engine.
There's a reason it's called AE's best game (it's not even close). I am especially interested in seeing Josh experience the Maleureous saga.
Not to mention the ravenloss saga@@Keldor1152
I'm pretty sure he's already done one
A quick search dosen't turn up anything@@NeoAstrisk
Not sure if it's just nostalgia but I always found the weapon and armor designs of these games super satisfying to look at. Maybe it's just because you're swingin around huge swords with exaggerated designs and animations but there's something special about that.
Fantastic video bud you just earned a sub and i cant wait to watch more during work i distinctly remember traveling into high level area getting stomped and just it wasnt very clear where to go or who to go to but had funt as a kid
Huge part of my childhood. I remember begging for a guardianship and playing it religiously for maybe a year, past that point I would jump on and off in my teens for a couple days every few months. Even now as an adult programmer I still come back maybe once a year and am pleasantly surprised to find my character still there :) Good memories
This is literally what I did with specifically Adventure Quest Worlds last year to fulfill a childhood dream of mine, see and do everything the game had to offer, got to Lv99, cleared the story I never got to clear and did both of the worst grinds ever that were Void Highlord and Legion Revenant.
My verdict: The game's dev team needs to get their priorities in order. The game went years upon years without any QoL changes until one fan decided to do it themselves and that got permanently implemented. It took a fan for QoL updates to happen. Hopefully they're able to get the balancing of the game in order when the steam release comes
Have you been following the game since then? That fan, Spider, got hired on the dev team and all the qol he made are now official. And the stuff he does now on the game are a breath of fresh air. Even if others don't like them, Ultra Bosses are good content for me.
Brother there is one more grind that needs to be finished... necrotic sword of doom
@@johnn3987 jesus necrotic farming is one thing that i probably will never do lol.
I haven’t played in a few years what are the qol changes? I remember spending way too many hours in this game and sneaking away to buy membership cards with birthday money every chance I got. So much love for this game.
@@raigamer1415 well grinding levels are way easier, and this game has a lot of good solo classes which you can get very easy, the hard part in the game are the ultra bosses, which are basically raids, so you need potions, scrolls, and the meta classes which takes age to get, and a lot of coordenation between the players, now some weapons deal extra damges, like the necrotic which is one of the strongest weapon in the game which 51% extra damage, also the enemy respawns are way faster so completing quest and grinds are way faster, i reccomend only play aqw if you have a lot of time to get some decent class and level up, but the game is pretty fun.
This game is a year older than me, I used to watch my dad play it when I went to see him and along with Maple Story I don’t think I could experience more nostalgia
To be fair to Dragonfable bacon being an element is something the current devs and writers dont really like, its book 1 early 2000s quirky humor thats been mostly phased out with the more recent (and much better) book 3 writing
EDIT: Which reminds me Dragonfable being a prequel of AQ is also a relic of old writing but is no longer the case, each game exist in their own "universes" even if they share characters.
The sole exception is Mechquest which acts as a prequel to Dragonfable, you´ll understand how if you ever watch Mechquest final quest
One thing to give these guys props for is their prices are the exact same as I was when I was a kid lol, so with inflation accounted for, they've actually lowered over time.
Bro I’m 1:37 minutes in and I genuinely think that you’re so cool the fact that you actually completed our childhood goal and beat this game and now I’m gonna listen to you talk for two hours about it. This is crazy bro thank you.
The best part of watching this video is that I just bought the membership guardian thing last year and fulfilled my childhood dreams and I still play it now
I think i needed this video to close this chapter/memory, been thinking about this game a lot and how much time i spent on it. Thank you
Dragonfable was a defining game of my childhood, such an incredible game. Please do the retrospective on it!!! The people who worked on that game over many years and made it as amazing as it was really owe it.
I've recently picked the game up again and I've really been enjoying it. It even added a lot of things into the game to make it easier to follow the main storyline, like a timeline you can view in each book that will direct you to the quests as they would have occurred chronologically. The game is still grindier than hell, but for a game that wants you to potentially be playing it for months or years anyway, it's paced well enough to essentially keep a player going through it with no real dead-stop moments that halt the progression unless you personally choose to level up a new armour set or something like that.
That was my first one, adventure quest back then feeled more cartoony/goofy but Dragonfable was more serious. I had many characters maxed out and spend lot time playing it, trully nostalgia trip 😭
@@injan112DF really felt more mature recently, back in Book 1 they had all that goofy dialogues but Book 3 turned out to be darker (esp Ravenloss & Caitiff saga where they k1lled 2 very important NPCs).
Not to mention the Doomwood story, even when we're fighting the undeads during Book 1 the dialogues still felt hilarious but here in Book 3 we literally witnessed someone's skin getting peeled
@@altsadhara welcome back, you might want to catch up to the story since Book 3 is (slowly) reaching it's end (after 12 (?) years).
And while the enemies are getting harder (thicker HPs on the non-elite enemies, you can't one-shot them even with whale setups, see TheRuinedShadow walkthroughs) some armors are getting revamped. I'd recommend raising Necromancer, Pirate, Ninja, or Evolved Pumpkinlord if you're non-DA, I'm struggling to progress with only using the Mage class but I can with those classes :P
@@xxx_lolidestroyer69_xxxuwu58 when book 3 was added tho? aprox year bc i left loong ago xd
The idea of DragonFable being done in this series is amazing to me. I recently replayed the entire story, so it'd be fun to see where you find points to comment.
dragonfable imo is surprisingly good, combat is really good and the story can get pretty good.
i personally never played adventure quest but dragon fable was fun for my young self
@@davids7646 imo dragonfable Worth playing even by today, the graphics is better, cutscenes better, the game is begginer friendly, music is awesome, is My Second favorite artix game, losing only to aqw because aqw was the First one i played.
@@tecmangames6457tip for anyone wanting to play dragon fable, nothing important happens until the storm war.
Do your dragon hatching and some other stuff then start storm war which leads into the main part of book 1.
getting one for dragon fable and mechquest could be really cool
I saw the thumbnail for this video and it unlocked a core memory. I remember playing this as a kid but i had completely forgot about it until now
Man, this was my childhood. Even at 27 i’ll still come back to this game and play for the hell of it
Mech Quest was a super awesome game and i remember loving how you could use lightsabers but it played like final fantasy in a way. Really inspired me to love beam swords
Oh man I loved the mechs. F2P player obviously because parents wouldn't pay but man, I remember making my anime pilot. Repeatedly opening up the bay doors on the opening ship to get the astronaut helmet. Never got far in it but man it was fun as a kid
There's something just so charming about design that's utterly haphazard yet brimming with content, such that it always seems on the verge of self-destructing at any moment, like if the Hoover Dam was constructed of popsicle sticks and used bubble gum.
I loved this back in early '00s
I dont think i would have remembered this game if you hadnt posted this. So many great childhood memories came back to me the very second i saw the thumbnail. Thanks for posting this.