There are a few companions the PC can get based on certain choices during the tutorial. Have you ever thought about the PC getting a companion based on the PC's gender?

Also, I read on a Pirate101 wiki(not Central) that Fin Dorsal is blind. True, false, or that would be telling?

Hey, Blind Mew! I get that you're quite busy, but I have this to say.

I... REALLY liked how the instance quest in the Governor's Mansion in Port Regal, "A Felon's Employment", was extended, and that change wasn't part of the Update Notes! Must be one of those sneaky surprises, no doubt, eh? I also liked how many new additional dialogue lines were added in the quest, and the additional battles! I don't know who came up with that suggestion, but whomever it was, was surely a genius! You sure know how to bring Pirates small surprises! Just a few additional requests about this quest, though.

1. The MooShu 5 should each have a new dialogue line added in after we defeat Beemish again.

2. Ratbeard's dialogue line, "There's the exit! Charge!", should be played after we defeat the Redcoats that tried to sabotage our escape with Mabel instead after of one of them saying, "Halt, or, we fire!".

3. After we reach the exit, Bonnie Anne should have a new dialogue line added in.

Say, after the next update goes live, I have a small request. Would the instance quest in Cool Ranch's Dusty Cave's Infested Tunnel's instance quest, "Miner Threat", be revised to have more new additional re-playable dialogue lines placed in, both from the distressed miners and our speaking main story Companions? I've been through that quest before, and from what I've been through, it lacked plenty of dialogue lines, from start to finish, besides the only dialogue lines from Old Bird Jenkins at the end of the instance, that is, for the moment. Why, even after defeating the Big Bad Boss Bloodbat before facing him, I don't hear the echoing insane laughter from Old Bird Jenkins himself, that should be similar to many crazy old miners giving out their crazy laughing seen on TV and more. Just play through that quest again, and you'll know what I mean.

Can all of these changes be done shortly after the game update goes Live? Other than that, I'm really looking forward to many of the new changes in the game!

Thanks once again for hearing me, Blind Mew!

Diogenesis on Mar 29, 2014 wrote:

Hey :)

I am from Germany and right now we're reading the Book Der Sandmann (The Sandman) by E.T.A. Hoffmann at school.
In this book there is the "automaton" Olimpia, which is comparable to an Armada clockwork (although still more a protopype).
When first reading it, there came this mysterious "queen" clockwork to my mind. Is she influenced a bit by her (if you have read the book before) or would you think about making something like a (side) quest line, maybe as the first prototype clockwork the Toymaker ever made ore something like that?
It would defenitely be awesome.

PS: I love your work, Mr. Mew.

~Diogenes

Welcome to the message board family Diogenes. Great questions, I can't wait to hear what he says.

I know this is such a strange question, but.. I see faces everywhere in-game. I see doors, wall fountains, decoration top of doorways as faces. Is this intentional or not?

And no, I'm not barmy lol!

I have a question about the lore behind ships horns and the powers they manifest
1)Who maufactures ships horns?
2)How are ships horns able to call forth creatures?
3)Are the ships horns magical or mechanical in nature?

I also have a few questions about the spiral in general
1)Is the spiral more like a solar system with one central sun and all the realms orbiting around the sun or is it more like a galaxy with the different worlds we encounter in their own star systems?

2)Are the distances between worlds comparable to the distances between planets in real life? If not are the distances longer or shorter?

3)In one of your other threads you state pirates hold their breath while traversing through stormgates yet in another you state that windstones protect ships from the stresses of the stormgate. Wouldn't it make more sense for the windstones to generate an artificial atmosphere? Correct me if im wrong but I believe you stated somewhere that traversing through a stormgate could take minutes to hours....that's an unbelievably long time to hold your breath.

@ValkoorTheVictorious (continued)

4] Do you think that in future gameplay we will see any more classic SNL phrases/parodies tied into the story? Like perhaps, "...living in a raft down by the river", "...just 2 wild and ca-razy guys" or "...and we're here to a-pump...a-you up"?
Potentially - the joke needs to fit. The Marquis mark was where that joke started, and the rest grew out of it pretty organically.

5] Will we be revisiting CR, at least for a CR companion promotion?
That's a safe bet.

"I just gotta have more cow bell".
Good call! That's a favorite gag of mine, though it might be better suited for MooShu...

6] Lastly, I know you stated you were a child of the 80s and you had the Electric Boogaloo Thread. Was this just for amusement or were you in fact an avid breakdancer...and perchance one of the original B-boys. If you did enjoy it, were you a fan of the Breakin' and Beat Street films?
Heh. No, not at all. Never got into that stuff at all. The way me and my old friends append "Electric Boogaloo" to anything ending in the number 2 is just a joke based on how utterly ridiculous that title is. I was more of a Billy Joel/Pink Floyd/Talking Heads/U2/Peter Gabriel guy myself.

@Trimond927

After pulling the final switch in the end of Beachhead's last dungeon after Bishop's battle #2 in Book 13, I hear and see the explosions, but didn't hear no warning siren sound effect played in afterwards. Plus, that large Armada station doesn't give out a larger explosion after we leave the place via our ship as the quest's goal. In many adventures, when many evil villains' lairs built from technology start to self-destruct after either the heroes finished destroying the control panels or hitting the self-destruct button or mechanism on purpose, or villains accidentally hitting or pulling it, or et cetera, they usually give out a warning siren sound effect, or numerous alarms playing at the same time, with small explosions and various falling debris to follow, giving the "Escape!" feeling it should need of leaving the said lair before it explodes via a larger explosion that decimates the lair in it's entirety. I'm sure a usual countdown to that isn't necessary for that one, though, so there's no need for that to happen in Beachhead, but maybe in later Armada stations after that. Think that could happen after the next larger update goes live?

Don't know. Frankly, no change to live stuff is truly trivial - there's been a lot of sound polish, so the first item may already be on their list. As to a big boom, scripting that stuff and making the conditional visibility for it can be pretty hard. It eluded us for live, and getting it done now means spending those man hours on something other than new content or systems. I know very well the behavior evil boss lairs undergo after heroes win, and I think there's quite a lot of it going on already. The sequence is not perfect, but it ain't broke either.

@Trimond297
Ooh! Really? That's nice! If you're doing that, then I recommend you go for that one! I can't wait to see how that Puppet Show musical turns out! I could be dancing to it real soon when this happens... I may feel my heart beating to the rhythm, even going so far as to... (singing) ...SINGING! (back to speaking) Hey, maybe the forthcoming musical could be one of the... actually, the first actual musical made for an MMO game!

Whoa whoa whoa! I mentioned more puppet shows, not necessarily musical ones. The Ballad of English Bill would work as a spoken poem as well as a song, and believe me, if making it a full on song proved too difficult (which, I expect, it might) that's the route I'd go. A musical would indeed be neat, but it might push the limits of what we can do too far. I make no promises.

Note that in general, if I ever say "I'd like to see that" or "that would be cool/nifty" that means precisely that - I'd like to see it happen, but it may well not...

@Bearkat904
is the entry into ithaca skyway in aquila a reference to the lord of the rings after the fellowship leaves lothlorien?

I take it you mean the Argonath, the great border monument of Gondor? Yup.

@Filly412
I have one quick question! Will we ever get more "boss companions" that we unlock through badges?

I expect so. These are the sorts of things that get worked out as worlds are developed - that's kind of a Ratbeard thing too. He'll know better than me.

@Diogenes
I am from Germany and right now we're reading the Book Der Sandmann (The Sandman) by E.T.A. Hoffmann at school.
In this book there is the "automaton" Olimpia, which is comparable to an Armada clockwork (although still more a protopype).
When first reading it, there came this mysterious "queen" clockwork to my mind. Is she influenced a bit by her (if you have read the book before) or would you think about making something like a (side) quest line, maybe as the first prototype clockwork the Toymaker ever made ore something like that?
It would defenitely be awesome.

PS: I love your work, Mr. Mew.

Tanks for the kind word! I must admit, I'm unfamiliar with the book or the character. If you rummage around the old archived story threads, you can see where the inspiration for the Armada and the Elites came from. Though Clockwork people as a meme are very very cool - there may be parallel evolution at work here. As to a prototype, we shall see. The Toymaker definitely has a big to do list...

@Trimond927
Say, after the next update goes live, I have a small request. Would the instance quest in Cool Ranch's Dusty Cave's Infested Tunnel's instance quest, "Miner Threat", be revised to have more new additional re-playable dialogue lines placed in, both from the distressed miners and our speaking main story Companions? I've been through that quest before, and from what I've been through, it lacked plenty of dialogue lines, from start to finish, besides the only dialogue lines from Old Bird Jenkins at the end of the instance, that is, for the moment. Why, even after defeating the Big Bad Boss Bloodbat before facing him, I don't hear the echoing insane laughter from Old Bird Jenkins himself, that should be similar to many crazy old miners giving out their crazy laughing seen on TV and more. Just play through that quest again, and you'll know what I mean.
Wow. See the above answer. nYour mileage may very, but the sequence isn't broken. There are lots of refinements I'd make to Cool Ranch before I'd tinker with this instance. Bear in mind that Cool Ranch was done first - before Companions even spoke. They've also gotten much chattier as time has gone on. Putting more companion chatter into Cool Ranch is a worthy goal, but it would be a lot of work, and i think we'd get as much (if not more) bang for our dev cycle buck focusing on other CR polish items.

Can all of these changes be done shortly after the game update goes Live? Other than that, I'm really looking forward to many of the new changes in the game!
Shortly? Nope - there is, as I've said above, a LOT that goes into making these kinds of things happen, and most of it is well outside my department. Someday? Maybe. Your observations are all good polish stuff, but there are many other targets that loom bigger in my sight.

Blind Mew on Apr 1, 2014 wrote:

@Trimond927

After pulling the final switch in the end of Beachhead's last dungeon after Bishop's battle #2 in Book 13, I hear and see the explosions, but didn't hear no warning siren sound effect played in afterwards. Plus, that large Armada station doesn't give out a larger explosion after we leave the place via our ship as the quest's goal. In many adventures, when many evil villains' lairs built from technology start to self-destruct after either the heroes finished destroying the control panels or hitting the self-destruct button or mechanism on purpose, or villains accidentally hitting or pulling it, or et cetera, they usually give out a warning siren sound effect, or numerous alarms playing at the same time, with small explosions and various falling debris to follow, giving the "Escape!" feeling it should need of leaving the said lair before it explodes via a larger explosion that decimates the lair in it's entirety. I'm sure a usual countdown to that isn't necessary for that one, though, so there's no need for that to happen in Beachhead, but maybe in later Armada stations after that. Think that could happen after the next larger update goes live?

Don't know. Frankly, no change to live stuff is truly trivial - there's been a lot of sound polish, so the first item may already be on their list. As to a big boom, scripting that stuff and making the conditional visibility for it can be pretty hard. It eluded us for live, and getting it done now means spending those man hours on something other than new content or systems. I know very well the behavior evil boss lairs undergo after heroes win, and I think there's quite a lot of it going on already. The sequence is not perfect, but it ain't broke either.

Ok. I understand that. I was quite descriptive on that. Just thought that adding in warning sirens might do well in part of the sound polish. And if implementing the larger explosion on Beachhead may take much time that strays away from our adventure continuations, then I understand. I'll let the team continue with the new stuff they make. I was only suggesting.