Santa Claus Makes A Dragon Quest IX Cameo

Can't wait for the US release. This just makes me want it even more!!! So cute it hurts.

second!
I'm really curious how SE and Nintendo will promote the game here. It would be nice if they gave out Slime plushies as a pre-order bonus. ah, but that is just wishful thinking. =P

That's absolutely adorable, but I wouldn't pay for it.

Good that it's free, then!

I wasn't trying to imply it wasn't, did it seem that way? I just don't like the idea of paying for quests.

Uh... sorry, it seemed so to me, but then again I'm not a native speaker.

But back on topic, whether I like to pay for something is not so much dependent on what it is, but more on if I think it's worth paying for. If people dedicate time and resources to create something I enjoy, I gladly pay, and if only to make them keep on creating stuff.

As soon as money is involved, competition for it starts and that is usually a Good Thing(tm).

Funnily enough, SE giving away these quests for free is a way for them to make money. People who completed the main game are not as likely to sell it as SE promised to make new stuff available every week for one year. That means late comers do not have access to a sprawling used-game market, and may buy a new copy. Obviously SE makes money from sales of new copies, but not from sales of used games.

So in the end, somebody paid for these quests, too.

a year? is it one every month? or week? if it is every week then my god L5 crammed a lot of stuff into this game. I hope that doesn't make the main quest shorter.... :/

@Mirko: oh wow, 100 hours. I was just a little worried because everything looks really nice (graphics, customization), so I was wondering if L5 had to cut some content somewhere. Wow, I don't think any game has pushed the DS storage limits like DQIX. This just makes me think that FFVI could be done on the DS without cutting stuff out.

Yes, it's every week (on Friday, IIRC). They promised only one quest per week, but sometimes 2 or three come out. There was at least one "special cooperative quest", and that provided very interesting results. The deal was that SE wanted players' save game files, and promised a special character (Setia from DQ:S) would appear for everyone if enough people submitted their files, PLUS that they'd share statistics about the collected saves.

More than 600k people uploaded their files and about half of them had already played the game for more than 100 hours (that was when the game was out for only three months). That was almost uniformly in single player mode, as almost all of the 600k files showed that time spent in multiplayer was 10 hours or less.

BTW, the quests sometimes flesh out things you encounter in the main quest, tie up loose ends and continue some characters' stories.

I don't think SE is the one who had the idea to have FREE downloadable quests, I think it's probably a result of being developed by L5, considering they do the same with Professor Layton.

I've always wondered if the DQIX "downloadable" quests are actually downloadable or if it's just some kind of "key" to "unlock" and be able to play it.

It's a key to unlock the quest. The game goes online to check with SE's date and quests gets unlocked. People have used action replays to unlock the quests.