Category: maxeditpls

Adventure Quest Worlds

There are a lot of things that go into me writing about a game for the blog. Sometimes it’s a sorta desperation, when Sunday roles around and I scrounge around through anything I’ve been playing recently to find something to talk about. Most of the time, I’d prefer it was joy, when I find something exciting or new, something I want the whole world (or at least the portion of it that reads my blog!) to see. Occasionally, it’s a sort of vindictiveness, where my writing transforms into my one little jab I can make at the developer for taking my money (replaceable) and my time (not so much).

Today we’re not doing any of those, because this is something different. Ultimately, this is a post about nostalgia, and frankly, it’s probably more about me as a person then it is about Adventure Quest Worlds.

Just to be as clear as possible: If you do not want to listen to 30+ year old man ramble about a flash MMO from his childhood, now is the time to leave.

Adventure Quest Worlds is a Flash based pseudo MMO by Artix Entertainment. I call it a pseudo MMO rather then a true MMO because most zones are instanced at low player counts, but if you’ve ever played an MMO, you’ll be familiar with most of what’s present here: fairly slow combat, fetch quests, grinds, all filtered through the lens of Flash, and what’s technically capable in Flash in 2009.

Normally where I’d elaborate on mechanics, but I don’t think that’s really necessary here, because even in the context of the game itself, most mechanics can be ignored. The one thing worth touching on is the class system. Unlike most MMO’s, classes are an equipable item that can be swapped while not in combat.

In theory, this is useful because it lets you swap from tank to healer to DPS on the fly! In practice, it lets you swap from your trash clear to your boss sustain class. I quite like it, and getting new classes was my primary motivation for playing in most cases.

Now that you’re caught up, put on your rose tinted glasses, pull out your finest rage comics and le reddit memes, and step into this time machine, because we’re headed back to 2009.

Welcome to 2009

Welcome back! It’s Obama’s first term after the Bush administration, there’s literally any hope for the future, and I’m in high school. It is a better time then middle school, but still not a great time. My interest in games growing, and there’s just one problem: I never get to actually play them. My screentime limit is 20 minutes a day and the family computer is a Mac.

Enter Adventure Quest Worlds. It’s Free*. It’s engaging. And it plays in a browser, so I can play my account anywhere. Home. Library. Friends house. Relatives at Thanksgiving. Home again.

It’s this ease of access that is going to define my experience with the game. Please remember that the iPhone is only 2 years old at this point in time. I won’t even get an iPod touch until 2013. While PC gaming and many of its all time classics exist, (TF2, Myst, Doom, CoD4) they are completely out of my reach.

From this standpoint then, Adventure Quest worlds is going to define my gaming habits until I finally get a personal Mac laptop, and move on to things like Starcraft 2, Team Fortress 2, and other Steam offerings.

In a world controlled by parents and tech limits, it is quite literally the first time I have ever played a game like this, and unlike Runescape, the only actual competitor, it’s much simpler. Even better, it’s got weekly content drops. There is always something new, always something to do.

Glasses off, analysis on.

With the value of hindsight, there isn’t actually much that Adventure Quest World does that it hasn’t been beaten to punch by other, bigger games. Everquest has been around for a decade. Wrath of the Lich King has just released.

It’s defining feature to me, a highschooler living on a day to day basis, are its weekly updates. These incremental storylines, drip-fed advancement and progression content dropped each Friday. I’m sure that other games had things like this, but I suspect that what defines Adventure Quest Worlds was just how consistent these things were. Some were just quest chains and zones, but some were wars, events in which the community had to work together to defeat the oncoming horde or all would be lost!

As a cynical adult, I look at these and suspect that the story would continue on regardless of the communities success or engagement, but as a teenager, I wholeheartedly believed that if failed, if we faltered, the entire narrative would shift.

The defining feature then, of AQW, was that it truly optimized the live service game before we were even using that term to describe video games.

Rose Tinted Glasses Back On Now

I look at these things now as a cynic, but back then I was fully onboard. I loved the design notes, a sort of a patch update combined with lore that would be published each week with all my heart. AQW and the Artix Entertainment team is perhaps the only thing I’ve ever felt some sort of deep parasociality for. Of course, that wasn’t a word we would have used for it back then. We didn’t have that term.

But it existed! I wanted to be them so badly. They were the reason I got interested in game design. They were the reason I started to try to teach myself Flash. More then anything else, this game probably defines my taste in music, to the detriment of my friends and anyone else unfortunate enough to pass me the aux cable. Voltraire, Paul and Storm, these were things I learned about through Adventure Quest Worlds.

If you want to know how old Adventure Quest Worlds is, there is a cross-promotional area with Cntl-Alt-Delete. Not the keypress, the webcomic. That webcomic. The one loss is from.

If I had to describe how foundational this game was to my personality, it might be this: At some point in Highschool, my family took a trip out west to visit the great American national parks. Outside of glacier national park, I remember very little of it.

But I remember being in the very first PvP match of Adventure Quest Worlds, because I was matched into Artix, the owner of the company, and just being completely and utterly awestruck. I have no evidence that this is a real thing that happens. I doubt even he remembers.

From 2008-ish, to 2012, this game, the developers, the community, and everything about it was such a critical portion of my life that it remains in my heart over a decade later. A little part of my soul that cannot be taken from me.

Returning to 2026

I recovered access to my AQW account sometime month. I was thinking about the game again after a 10 year stretch because the company ran a crowd funding campaign to try to modernize it. They netted a bit over 2 million dollars for the effort, not exactly chump change, but not anything exciting enough to be in the headlines.

Disclosure: I was some of that 2 million.

I cannot really recommend playing this game as who I am now. Despite it’s update cadence, it’s surpassed in every way by other games. It’s a worse grindathon then Runescape, it’s less mechanically exciting then any other premium MMO on the market, in an era of Roblox and Fortnite it’s less interesting or accessible.

The story is at best mediocre, and at worst bad. As a weekly adventure serial, it was compelling. As a constructed story whose beats I have spent the last two weeks working through, it’s deeply underwhelming. It’s end-game hyper grinds are the sorts of things that provoked a sort of twitchy, nervous reaction from me, the sort that I get whenever I’m playing a clicker game, and I find myself opening up the AutoHotKey documentation. Or even worse, looking at Github repos of bots!

But in 2009, I can’t see any of that.

Back to the Past – 2011

This infatuation won’t last forever. In 2011, Minecraft will release. It runs on Macs, I have a personal laptop now, and college is on the horizon. Adventure Quest Worlds will fall by the wayside to modded Minecraft servers, and trying to run a server myself. I’ll try to write my own mods, but will be so overwhelmed by the complexity and community that I’ll give up.

There’s probably a true story of Adventure Quest Worlds. One that tracks the drama, the weirdness, the major players. One I’m not part of, not in any meaningful way. I was never more then a player. The game means more to me then I do to it.

Please Step Back Into Your Time Machine

This isn’t really a proper game review. In a real review, I’d break down and give examples of why the story doesn’t work (relying on parody more then anything else), I’d dissect why the games player base has cratered (failing tech stack, poor mechanics, and lower ease of access) and I’d skewer the monetization (why grind 2 weeks when I can spend $5?). If I wanted to take a positive spin, there’s probably a strong piece in considering how well the SVG art style has aged, even if the re-use of rigging for animations has not. But I’m not doing any of those things.

Here we are! 18 years of Adventure Quest Worlds. It’s still alive. You can still play it. It’s outlived better games. Fucking hell, it’s outlived actual honest to god human people I know.

But here it is. Here I am.

May 10, 2026
Path of Exile 2 – The (Beta) Campaign

The Path of Exile 2 beta is out. I got a demo a few months ago, but now that I’ve fully played through it, I have even more thoughts. I’m going breaking down my thoughts on it into two writeups, one on the campaign, and one the endgame. Technically, they are the same game, but mechanically they are very different experiences.

Now, before I get into that, there’s some brief background that is necessary. Path of Exile 2 is a sequel to my 2nd most played game of all time, Path of Exile. (about 3000+ hours?) My thoughts are going to be at least somewhat in comparison to it’s predecessor.

As a brief filter, I offer the following phrases:
“juicing maps”
“6L”
“Farming blood adqueducts for a Tab”

If you know what any of these mean, just click here to skip ahead. If you don’t, you are likely to find the following background information helpful.

ARPG’s in Brief

Path of Exile 2, hereby abreviated to PoE 2, is a isometric ARPG from Grinding Gear Games.

For those who might not know, ARPG stands for “Action Role-Playing Game.” ARPG’s are defined by having virtually no roleplaying elements, and the action parts dominated by spamming your abilities every second you have the mana/rage/potato points to do so.

Here’s a less cynical definition: ARPG’s are traditionally top-down or isometric real time action games defined by extensive skill trees, character customization and itemization. Combat generally has two modes, fighting against trash mobs, which are pinatas for stacks of loot, and fighting against bosses, which are also pinatas, except this time they have a baseball bat.

Trash mobs are fairly brainless and just rush the player, while bosses tend to be more correographed experiences, closer to something from a Bullet Hell, or Hades.

The first Path of Exile differentiated itself from other ARPG’s by making everything into game an item, and making those items tradable. Skills are items, (skill gems) which got socketed into other items you wore, and those sockets had colors determining which gems could be socketed.

The ability to refund skills points was an item. To enter endgame areas, specific items were needed. Same to fight endgame bosses. To buy items from vendors, it was necessary to have more items to trade them.

It’s other big differentiator was a skill tree so massive that one of my favorite things to do is pop it out as a joke, just to mess with people, who did not believe it was real.

Finally, there was the gem system. Gems could be supported by other gems. Take a fireball, link it to a multiple projectile gem, and now it shoots three fireballs. Link it to a piercing projectiles gem, and now they penetrate. Link it to a faster cast speed, make a few more tweaks, and now your character is a Fourth of July fireworks display.

Changes between PoE and Poe 2

PoE 2 makes a lot of changes to the above underlying systems, most of which serve to make the campaign much less punishing for inexperienced players. Gold exists as a flat currency to use with vendor NPC’s. This makes getting leveling gear a much easier process.

Gold can also be used to refund skill points. This is possibly the biggest change between the two games, because in PoE, a badly built skill tree would softlock a character. This would make it impossible to get the items needed to respec, and pretty much force the player to make a new character.

Sockets on items and their associated colors are also gone. Skill gems are socketed into a general skill gem menu. The types of support gems that can be used are limited by primary stats. There are even more small tweaks to make suggestions to players on what gems to use, and to prevent them from making choices that simply don’t work.

The skill tree is still massive. There’s now a dodge roll. Movement is a much more flowy thing then it previously was.

The general changes though result in much easier on-boarding experience with the games initial systems, instead of purely being thrown into the deep end, like the player was with the first Path of Exile.

Does all of this mean the game is easier?

Well, yes and no.

The Campaign

Generally I like the campaign. There are some incredibly sloggy bits, notably a single map in Act 2 that just goes on forever, and three or four of the Act 3 areas really tested my patience for just wanting to see the next few things.

That said, outside of these, I really didn’t have many complaints. The bosses feel far more diverse and interesting then their PoE 1 counterparts, and also much harder. The final boss of Act 1 in particular killed me about 10-20 times before I finally defeated it. It’s worth noting that I actually killed it right as it killed me, but that still counts, so on I went.

They’re also just much more fun as a general visual spectacle. My personal favorite is probably Crowbell, a giant crow-man thing that tries to beat the player to death with a bell. The fight isn’t particularly hard, but does have a fun transitions, with Crowbell running around, powering up, wrenching a bell off it’s stand, then using it as a bludgeon.

The trash mobs… well, they’re ARPG trash mobs. The nicest thing I can say about them is that they did in fact contribute to my /deaths count.

Finally, there’s the story elements. I generally quite liked these, even if the current content kinda ends on bit of a cliffhanger. I’m also the only person I know who cared about the lore of PoE, so maybe take that with a grain of salt. There are some callbacks to PoE, but I don’t think missing them will have any impact on your enjoyment.

I will say that I personally experienced a moment of glee getting to fight a character whose only ever been hinted at in flavor text from PoE, but another friend of mine who played the game before me didn’t even realize he was a recurring character, and thought he was someone new.

If you’re playing through the campaign without a build guide, or information about the game, I’d estimate it’ll take about 12-20 hours to play through? There’s a good chunk of game here. That said, the campaign does not currently conclude the story, as that’s planned for the games full release, so if you’re playing the game just for the campaign, I’d hold off.

Overall Thoughts

I like PoE 2. I have problems with the game, but they’re not present during the campaign. It changes a lot of esoteric bullshit that was required to play, made the boss fights more interesting, and is just generally more friendly, if not easier.

Some parts are a bit of slog.

That said, I think the main reason to currently play the campaign is to get to endgame. The campaign is not a finished game yet, with a complete story, and the beta is currently $30.

If the full campaign maintains it’s current level of quality for the remaining acts on full release, Path of Exile 2 will be worth playing purely as a standalone ARPG just for that. But for players who aren’t in a rush, or want a new ARPG, I would say to wait.

January 15, 2025
How to Get the Lorcana Starter Decks for Cheap

So, maybe you read the last post, and despite the fact that Lorcana boosters are currently going for a street value of $5 an ounce, (a ratio that really feels like it should be reserved for a different type of substance), you still want in?

All right. It’s a pretty fun game. But instead of buying those starter decks at prices people are selling them, we’re instead going to use the power of the free market in our favorite for once.

Deck Sealed Cost Singles Cost & TCG Player Link
Amber & Amethyst $34-38 $24
Emerald & Ruby $23-25 $16.28
Sapphire & Steel $30-32 $24.37

Here’s how it works. First, click on one of the above links. This will bring you to TCG Players bulk entry page. It will look something like this.

If this all looks good, click the add to cart button! And presto, we have a cart with all the cards in the starter deck!

It’s also going to currently be costing you a lot more then the starter deck. No worries. We can fix that by clicking on the Optimize button in the lower left corner, right under the Paypal option.

After this, TCG player will try to optimize for shipping and buying from the fewest number of sellers. If everything looks good, you can send your purchase though, and end up with your very own Lorcana starter deck for less than a retail video game.

Ed Note: This writeup contains links to TCG Player, the management of which is a bunch of union busting corporate weasels. These aren’t affiliate links, (we don’t ever do that) and we don’t endorse their anti-competitive bullshit. That said, they’re owned by eBay, so it’s not like there’s a better place to go buy cheap singles that isn’t tainted by a desire to screw the employee.

Ed Note 2: This was written when Lorcana was being CRAZY scalped. It’s possible that the prices have gone down to a sane range by the time you look at this writeup. Such is the internet, and writing about collectibles. The general approach to using TCG Player, and the optimize functionality for buying singles likely remains the same though.

August 26, 2023