November 3rd, 1998

Dear Adventurer,

Welcome to the latest edition of the Famous Adventurer's Correspondence School! By now you must be wondering how many more of these letters you'll receive before getting your hands on the game? Well, apart from perhaps one or two small news flashes very near to the ship date, we intend this to be the last FACS you read, before you run down to the store or go online to buy Dragon Fire (or steal a copy from your friend).

Never in the field of computer game development, has so much been owed by so many to so few.

The talented individuals who have created Dragon Fire truly deserve praise for their soon-to-be released creation. Hundreds of hours of gaming fun will soon be experienced by the many thousands of fans of the Quest series, and also by the many newcomers we're expecting to flock to this genre of gaming. We are very close to releasing the greatest role-playing adventure that this studio has ever created. Quest for Glory V: Dragon Fire is truly a great game and is a wonderful addition to the epic series that has bought so many hours of gaming fun to so many. We mean it!

We haven't accurately counted the number of man years, key strokes, artistic renditions, lines of code, sound recordings, team meetings, cups of coffee (tea in my case), half-smoked cigarettes or sticks of gum that have gone into our efforts, but it's safe to say we're looking at multiple figures. The beta version of the game is in people's hands as we speak, and the feedback is very positive. The beta period is always a slightly nervous time for any development team - when we release an almost complete version of the game into hands of hundreds of people. People who haven't been staring at the same Silmarian native or Weaponsmith day in day out for months at a time (read: "real people... with lives... our consumers... normal folk perhaps?"). So, fingers crossed, we will be prying Dragon Fire from the team's sweaty, (yet highly skilled) hands and into yours within weeks.

Single player Adventuring:
Plans call for us to ship Quest for Glory V as a single player game, with a multiplayer option available soon after shipdate by way of a free, automatic and seamless download via the Internet, as well as distribution of the multiplayer features on gaming publication cover CDs.

Why not hold the full game, and release it later with the multiplayer included, you may ask? Finishing the single player game has always been the development team's first priority, simply because the majority of our fans enjoy the single player experience more. It's not fair to penalize the thousands of waiting fans who don't play multiplayer, when the single player game which they have been eagerly anticipating will be ready to go very soon. The single player version exceeds our standards and hopefully yours too, so it deserves to be on shelves. Conversely, the multiplayer game requires extensive playtesting which is taking longer than expected. Multi-player has always been a part of our product (you'll remember it was even included in its basic form in our Sneak Peek Demo) and we expect we'll have the free download ready about six to eight weeks after shipdate.

We are fully confident that all of you awaiting a multiplayer version want it right, much more than you want it "right now."

Go Online with Dragon Fire and Win!
We've talked about it before, and we'd like to talk about it again - the web site keeps getting better and better, with sounds, new images, screenshots, contests and info. Contests you ask? Well we've had an ongoing contest aimed at all the experts on the Quest series, and regularly get several hundred entrants, with prizes of T-shirts and soundtracks. Well, as you should be aware, sound, music and special effects are going to be a large part of the gaming experience in Dragon Fire, so we've teamed up with Creative Labs(tm) and Cambridge SoundWorks(tm) to give away 30 sets of their spanking digital speaker systems. Visit the contest page on the site and try to snaffle a 4-speaker surround sound system each week, for the next 30 weeks!

Hybrids, crossbreeds, composites - we got 'em all covered!
What we mean to say is, that if you have a PC or a MAC, you'll be ready to rock and roll from day one with Quest for Glory V (sorry, no PlayStation version planned). A large part of the development of Dragon Fire has been on the MAC, and we've been demonstrating the game on MACs at Apple conventions, at Apple's HQ, and even in Paris, France when we tracked them down. So if you are an Apple user, or have friends who use MACs, this is the adventure game for you this season.

Legends Never Die.

Tom Craven
Team Dragon Fire