Quests and new NPCs

As posted in previous blog entry, the current focus is on the quests and NPCs.
I added 45 new NPCs, and 3 quests, and I don't plan to stop from doing that any time soon. Most players seem to enjoy the quests, and a lot of them actually talk to the NPCs and finish the quests. The increased rewards do help a little, I guess.
I also started to upgrade the scripting engine, such as adding the ability to make objects dissapear, and get notifications when a monster is killed. There were very few improvements to the scripting system since I originally added it in 2004, so now it's time to add a few more things to reflect the changes in the game since then. For example, there is no way for the script to know if mines or wards are in an area, and that can be used for some interesting quests.

There are a few quests that are kind of hanging in the air since 2004, and some players expressed their desire to have them continued, so I am brainstorming on a big quest related to the pirates that plague Portland.

Hopefully, by the end of the year we will have at least 10 NPCs in almost every map of the first continent, an by the next summer in almost every map of the game.