Gonna rewrite my review, I'll give you my experience with this as a free player cause these kids gonna learn.
This is the less talked about middle brother of the lore series of artix entertainment games, if you wanna be technical a majority of their games are interconnected in some shape or form but their 3 core titles, in order of release were adventure quest, dragon fable and aqworlds. For me this is by far the most compelling of the 3.
In their sophomore outing you can see some surviving features of original AQ, such as the focus on combat arenas and boss encounters, the equipment system being largely the same, and a whole lot of member only features, a lot of the cringe-kino that makes aq endearing to some today perseveres here and frankly fares better as a result of DF's shift favoring elements of retail level rpg features, such as crafting, upgradeable classes, customizable parties, minigames, exploration that doesn't happen exclusively through a GUI, achievements and questlines. For a good portion of the initial run it seemed like they really meant for this game to be as open of an exploration game as possible by having every area be interconnected in a convincing way, with branching paths and bosses as well as scripted events occuring organically in this space rather than through instanced areas like they had to previously.
Long story short, yeah the post game isn't much different from what's going on with aq, I think the technical limitations became pretty clear early on and the team was forced to scale down a lot of their initial plans, and so a lot of features like professions and the interconnected world, as well as the books' plotlines ended up being put to the side in favor of a more realistic content model, which is a shame because this was an extremely ambitious game for it's time with lots of different styles of gameplay that could have come together cohesively to form a AAA level flash game.
Part of what sets this game back is ironically what makes it so endearing all the same, and it's how amateurish it really plays out, with silly animations and plotlines, enemies that show this game doesn't take itself too seriously, attempts at epic medieval music interspersed with emo rock and metal that was so ubiquetous to the internet of yore, were some of the things that set it apart from undoubtedly better polished competing fantasy titles such as runescape or world of warcraft, and that's another field where I feel both ways in that, it's unfortunate that artix had to coexist with titles as successful as those, but it was a blessing that it existed in the shape it was, as it was extremely refreshing, it differentiated itself greatly despite it's limited ability to do anything incredible or move large amounts of investor money, it's never been ashamed of what it was and was at every turn unabashedly weird, clunky, unfunny, western otaku, disjointed, original, creatively bankrupt, emo and retro as possible, and today it continues to those things, unaffected by the passage of time, every week for as long as the developers lives allows them to.
AQWorlds and 3D have carried over the spirit of this continuously developed game, but there is something incorruptible about dragon fable that I can't accredit to those other titles that sought to redesign it's core gameplay In a way that better fostered repeated spending on micro transactions over the permanent membership model their single player games mostly relied on, I was also not a fan of how much their mmos lifted from other mmos where ironically I feel the community aspect of those games is less to that of what's possible in df with item trading, fight with or against other player characters and the discussion story driven content, or strategies and builds for boss fights and so on, those other games are much more like looters with an underused co op component and probably more effort is put into adjusting balance as new issues arrive, and it feels like a dramatic fall from grace. Its what happens when beloved single player franchises shift to the wow money chaser formula of mmo
With its antivaxxer homestuck level writing. Also weirdly cool point and click and JRPG hybrid. Still play it from time to time. If you want to play a story of the purest breed of ludo possible in macro media flash from bookend to bookend, this game has that and you don't have to spend a dime on it if you don't want to. To me this game is priceless for what it is and is likely responsible for maintaining the industry's faith in web based games for a long time, I love this game.
This is the less talked about middle brother of the lore series of artix entertainment games, if you wanna be technical a majority of their games are interconnected in some shape or form but their 3 core titles, in order of release were adventure quest, dragon fable and aqworlds. For me this is by far the most compelling of the 3.
In their sophomore outing you can see some surviving features of original AQ, such as the focus on combat arenas and boss encounters, the equipment system being largely the same, and a whole lot of member only features, a lot of the cringe-kino that makes aq endearing to some today perseveres here and frankly fares better as a result of DF's shift favoring elements of retail level rpg features, such as crafting, upgradeable classes, customizable parties, minigames, exploration that doesn't happen exclusively through a GUI, achievements and questlines. For a good portion of the initial run it seemed like they really meant for this game to be as open of an exploration game as possible by having every area be interconnected in a convincing way, with branching paths and bosses as well as scripted events occuring organically in this space rather than through instanced areas like they had to previously.
Long story short, yeah the post game isn't much different from what's going on with aq, I think the technical limitations became pretty clear early on and the team was forced to scale down a lot of their initial plans, and so a lot of features like professions and the interconnected world, as well as the books' plotlines ended up being put to the side in favor of a more realistic content model, which is a shame because this was an extremely ambitious game for it's time with lots of different styles of gameplay that could have come together cohesively to form a AAA level flash game.
Part of what sets this game back is ironically what makes it so endearing all the same, and it's how amateurish it really plays out, with silly animations and plotlines, enemies that show this game doesn't take itself too seriously, attempts at epic medieval music interspersed with emo rock and metal that was so ubiquetous to the internet of yore, were some of the things that set it apart from undoubtedly better polished competing fantasy titles such as runescape or world of warcraft, and that's another field where I feel both ways in that, it's unfortunate that artix had to coexist with titles as successful as those, but it was a blessing that it existed in the shape it was, as it was extremely refreshing, it differentiated itself greatly despite it's limited ability to do anything incredible or move large amounts of investor money, it's never been ashamed of what it was and was at every turn unabashedly weird, clunky, unfunny, western otaku, disjointed, original, creatively bankrupt, emo and retro as possible, and today it continues to those things, unaffected by the passage of time, every week for as long as the developers lives allows them to.
AQWorlds and 3D have carried over the spirit of this continuously developed game, but there is something incorruptible about dragon fable that I can't accredit to those other titles that sought to redesign it's core gameplay In a way that better fostered repeated spending on micro transactions over the permanent membership model their single player games mostly relied on, I was also not a fan of how much their mmos lifted from other mmos where ironically I feel the community aspect of those games is less to that of what's possible in df with item trading, fight with or against other player characters and the discussion story driven content, or strategies and builds for boss fights and so on, those other games are much more like looters with an underused co op component and probably more effort is put into adjusting balance as new issues arrive, and it feels like a dramatic fall from grace. Its what happens when beloved single player franchises shift to the wow money chaser formula of mmo
With its antivaxxer homestuck level writing. Also weirdly cool point and click and JRPG hybrid. Still play it from time to time. If you want to play a story of the purest breed of ludo possible in macro media flash from bookend to bookend, this game has that and you don't have to spend a dime on it if you don't want to. To me this game is priceless for what it is and is likely responsible for maintaining the industry's faith in web based games for a long time, I love this game.