AdventureQuest

AdventureQuest (also referred to by its website name BattleOn or simply as AQ) is an online single-player RPG developed by Artix Entertainment in 2002. It is implemented in Flash and uses anime-style graphics, some of which are animated.

Each account may have up to five characters. The game allows characters to engage in turn-based combat against monsters to accumulate experience points (known as XP), gold and Z-Tokens, a special currency that can also be bought. Characters have a combat level and six stats to train, and some have a specific class. Players may use gold to purchase weapons, armour, shields, spells, pets and miscellaneous items to aid them in combat. There are areas to explore, and special events such as holidays and wars, for players to meet new types of monsters and complete quests. The game features weekly updates on Thursdays at 7 or 8 pm server time.

Players may play a limited version of AdventureQuest for free (free players are called Adventurers), or pay a one-time fee of US $19.95 to become Guardians and unlock extra features. An X-Boost, which costs an additional US $5.00, if bought with Guardianship, and $9.95 for existing Guardians, grants the player 10% extra XP per battle and other benefits. Guardians may also play ArchKnight, another Artix Entertainment game set a year before AdventureQuest, although it is discontinued. A third Artix Entertainment game, DragonFable, is set 5 years before AdventureQuest. A third spinoff is called MechQuest, set 5000 years in the past; the main question driving its plot is "What could cause a highly advanced civilization to fall into medieval times?" The Gamma release for MechQuest on October 1. All four of these games are set in Lore, a world whose name is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the game's original title Lands Of Rising Evil, although the acronym no longer carries any notable meaning in game.

AdventureQuest was released on October 15 2002. Guardianship was introduced on February 22 2003 to manage the costs of running the game. Artix Entertainment, formed in 2004, introduced a server cap in May 2004, a month before AdventureQuest reached one million users.

By June 2005, the game had 5 million users, and by December 2005, 10 million. By March 2007 the game's 30 millionth character was created, and by June 2007 the game had 35 million characters. By September 2007 the Game had over 39 Million Characters created. As AdventureQuest grew, Artix Entertainment added new methods to pay for in-game content, such as X-Guardianship (in October 2005) and Z-Tokens (in June 2006), and released other games, such as DragonFable (on July 26 2005), ArchKnight and ZardWars.