progressus imprimis
News Archive
New Windows Version
The Twentieth Anniversary Platinum Edition of Progress Quest (version 6.4) is now available for download! This is the first new Windows version in over seventeen years! What's new? What have we been working on for decades? Not much, but you can read about the specifics here.
[Jan 5, 2022]
| It's 20PQ! Today marks twenty years since Progress Quest was first released. The amount of levelling-up we have achieved in that time is staggering. We've got eleven players in the Hall of Fame that have risen to level 99, and even our first and only* level 100 character. These people have been running the game for a long time. Thank you to everyone who's enjoyed PQ over the years! *There may have been others who made it to level 100 and were branded as cheaters, due to a smaaall bug, which has since been fixed...sorry about that... [Jan 3, 2022] |
| Multiplayer in the Web Edition The browser edition of Progress Quest now has the option for online play. Go head-to-head with Hob-Hobbits from Baden-Baden to Bora-Bora. Keep a close eye on the leaderboards in the new realm as characters vie for top honors. [Dec 13, 2021] |
| Progress Quest Discord These days the most vibrant home for discussion of Progress Quest and related technologies (outside of instance raids, PvP, and other in-game interactions) is probably the Progess Quest Discord. (Tip of the helm to TuxMan!) [Nov 9, 2021] |
| Command Line Version Marcin Kurczewski has created a command line interface version of PQ. If that isn't progress, I don't know what is. [April 30, 2020] |
| Progress Quest Theme Jayden Steffe has been a PQ fan since the earliest days, and the slow cooker of his warm heart has now produced a Progress Quest theme song.Keep it looping in the background as you play (also in the background). [July 14, 2017] |
| New Platform for PQ: Windows93 Progress Quest has been integrated into the excellent Windows93. It's a perfect fit, you'll have to agree. [July 5, 2017] |
| Is Progress Quest to blame for Cookie Clicker? According to this Gamasutra article, "idle games" are the "youngest and most interesting video game genre". [March 3, 2015] |
| Advice for completing Spite of Gromth quest As any player who has participated in a Spite of Gromth instance will no doubt have discovered, once Aco Rogbath is down in health a ways he will cast Big Sister. At that point, if any player moves before the effect decays it will chain geometrically, as both Curse Family and Acrid Hands will most likely be already active. This will blow up the raid, causing multiple base kilodamage with significant overdamage lingering. (This is particularly true on Spoltog and Pemptus, where trilobite familiars are disadvantageous in mountain marsh biomes.) So as a public service I've put together this reminder to keep still until Big Sister winds down. I recommend all party members light some incense and give it a listen before each raid. |
| Even More Simple In the interest of historical preservation and in support of quality gaming, I've resurrected Haanz's SimpleRPG from the Internet Archive. [November 30, 2011] |
| Days of the Week of the Weeks of the Realms Did you ever wrap your head around the Calendar of the Realms? I never have really. But a discussion of the days of the week was absent; it's there now. [Slake 1, 2011] |
| Progress Is Not Just Fun and Games My Progress Bar shows your progress towards the end of your work day. It's inferior to Progress Quest because it doesn't actually do the work, whereas Progress Quest actually does the play for you. But it still has some value, perhaps. [August 23, 2011] |
| Chrome Web Store Users of the Google Chrome browser will find Progress Quest available in the Chrome Web Store. (For free, naturally!) [June 21, 2011] |
| Progress Art This is Asher B. Durand's painting "Progress (The Advance of Civilization)" (1853). Perhaps it will inspire you to attain new levels.  [June 21, 2011] |
| Source Code Released The source code for Progress Quest has been released to the public. You have one day to look at it before the world ends tomorrow. [May 20, 2011] |
| Writeup on Incredibly Strange Games Paper fanzine Incredibly Strange Games has a writeup of Progress Quest on their web site. (Implying that PQ is incredibly strange, presumably!) [August 24, 2010] |
| PQ on your iPad You can already play the online version of Progress Quest on your iPad; while the game is running, touch the '+' button and select 'Add to Home Screen' for the optimal gameplay experience. It's just like having a native PQ app on your iPad! Look how much fun this guy in the Wallabies is having!  [July 21, 2010] |
| Interview with Radio K The Twin Cities' Radio K aired a story on June 17th about Progress Quest and related issues on their weekly Culture Queue program. If you missed it, you can catch the whole program on their site (the PQ story is towards the end), or check out this clip of the story. (Props to Eric Dolski for the great story!) [July 21, 2010] |
| Progress Quest in Your Browser Hot off the iron: Play PQ right in your web browser! It is no longer necessary to download the client to play the game. (But some browsers and features are not compatible with this new version yet.) [July 16, 2010] |
Now Driving Can Have All the Excitement of Installing Software [December 2, 2009] |
| PQ on Facebook Devoted friend of progress Peter Kazakoff has implented a Facebook application to keep track of your character's progress, just an easy click away from pictures of your friend's cat sleeping. [November 22, 2009] |
| PQ More Popular than NetHack Progress Quest has today beaten out NetHack (the premier RPG on Unix and other related systems that nobody uses since 1980 (if you count Rogue)) in popularity on Ubuntu, ranking 3791st vs. 3795th. A convincing drubbing by any reasonable measure. [October 27, 2008] |
| PQ/U Hits 1000 Installs The Progress Quest Ubuntu package install base has just crossed the 1000 mark! (Naturally, Windows was conquered long ago.) As I write it's the 3836th most popular package, but falling off just lately. Help us out, Ubuntu users - nethack sits so near at 3603! [August 13, 2008] |
Best Place for Progress Quest LARPing [July 26, 2008] |
| PQ is Ubuntu's 4500th Most Popular Package Watch the popularity of PQ on Ubuntu eke its way upward (so far at least) on the PQ/U Popcon page. We just sneaked up above 4500th most popular, up more that 2000 slots compared to a month and a half ago! Better luck next time, vegastrike. Watch your back, hexter![June 14, 2008] |
| PQ on Ubuntu Ubuntu users rejoice! Toni Ruottu has written a comprehensive guide to installing Progress Quest on Ubuntu. It uses Ubuntu's PQ package, also his work. And he didn't leave n00bs hanging there; his tutorial will help you get the game up and progressing. [May 23, 2008] |
| Spoltog Reopened The realm of Spoltog, long exclusive of new characters, has at last been restored to full operation. Bring us your tired, your halflings, your huddled Battle-felons... [April 5, 2008] |
| New Server Progress Quest has migrated to a new server. [October 3, 2007] |
| New Realm The venerable realms Expodrine and Oobag have become hopelessly overcrowded. The spawn point campgrounds are cesspits of disease and abandoned rat whiskers; XP is scarce and the coopering economy is hyperinflated. Thank goodness, then, for the new realm of Pemptus! Let there be a bold new progression! [February 8, 2007] |
| Character cards on your Google homepage Arguably the two greatest technologies to appear since sliced transitors are Google (striving to make the worlds information available and accessible) and Progress Quest (which needs no parenthesized explanation). Now these two innovations have come together, in some handwavy sense: You can now display your character's vitals on your personalized Google homepage. This will help you keep track of the little cuss while you're away from the game for some unavoidable reason. Here's what it looks like:  [December 14, 2005] |
| Drinkin' Song Here's a little drinkin' ditty very popular amongst the natives from Knoram to Oobag.
A bloke I met in Midmotheringhay [October 6, 2004] |
| New Bugfix Release The new 6.2 release of Progress Quest fixes various bugs and adds various minor features, as explained in the release notes. Enjoy and destroy! [September 27, 2004] |
| Calendar Reckoning If you've ever been confused about why there are two Hipsember 11ths every year but only one Fourth of Dipnorther, or how many days there are in a plusperpentual year, now you can learn all you ever hoped to know about the reckoning of calendar time withing the realms of Progress Quest. [September 10, 2003] |
| Character Lists Your PQ Account Page now lists all of the characters associated with your account. (The list only includes Spoltog characters, of course, since Spoltog is the only realm requiring login to create a character.) [February 23, 2003] |
| Oobag With the population of Expodrine near 50,000, a new realm has been introduced. It's called Oobag and it's progressing nicely. There's plenty more progress to be had in Oobag, so never mind the pungaroles; get in there and slay! [February 22, 2003] |
| DNS Troubles The PQ site fell out of the DNS tables for a couple days, but we're back now... I just can't leave town without trouble a-brewing, can I? [February 4, 2003] |
| The Horror Funny story, really, if you think about it hard enough. Progress Quest's webhost seems to have dropped off the face of the earth (forever, I hope, and curse them to hell). Our offsite backups are weeks old, so that turns back the clock on new characters, new guilds, guild changes, and new user accounts from October 27 through most of November. Older characters should not lose any progress from the intervening time. Sadly, there are no offsite backups at all of the PQ Forum, which is therefore making a fresh start. We apologize for any loss of progress you may have experienced. No one knows better than we the importance of foward progress, and the terror of backward progress! [November 30, 2002] |
| Mass Extinction An unnatural catasrophe has meant the deaths of every Expodrine character born in a two week period at the end of September and beginning of October. Efforts to resurrect these characters have failed, due to local MP shortages. May their progress be not for naught -- we're backing up the database daily now... [October 14, 2002] |
| Guild System Players may now create and chieftain a guild. Guilds are displayed by rank and vying for cred even as you read. Don't miss the boat! Throw in your lot with those of a like mind or start and the very bottom! [September 23, 2002] |
| The Ice Menace Spurred on by the broad acclaim he received for his first Progress Quest adventure, Joe Cabot has done it again. The adventures of Runix the Dung Elf Battle-Felon continue in The Ice Menace! [September 15, 2002] |
| Primitive Guilds The ability to join guilds has been added to the realm of Spoltog, the beta realm. This feature is in a fairly primitive state at the moment. You can't yet create guilds, or do much else with them, but you can join one of the existing guilds if you're playing on Spoltog. More to come in the fullness of time, of course. [August 25, 2002] |
| The Big Quest Those hankering for (optional) interaction and pleasing images will love this Progress Quest adventure by Joe Cabot, the tale of a Dung Elf Battle Felon named Runix. It is not to be missed and is wonderful in every way. [August 17, 2002] |
| Winamp Skins Another talented PQ fan has come through with the goods, and taken the time to create PQ-themed Winamp skins. [Update: The original link has died, so Internet Archive to the recue!] Available are skins mirroring the acclaimed game window itself, in both 2D and 3D modes, as well as skins which harken back to the PQ Forum. These skins go perfectly with the sounds of Forum denizen Seven's PQ audio marketing experience. [August 16, 2002] |
| PQ Group A devoted fan has set up a mailing list on Yahoo Groups so you can receive still more massive amounts of email on the compelling subject of Progress Quest. Join up! [July 11, 2002] |
| Accounts Page The accounts page now includes an option to receive email updates about the goings-on of Progress Quest. If you don't already have an account, sign up for one so you can be notified when new realms or new features appear. You'll be glad you did, one supposes... [July 10, 2002] |
| All Your Progress Are Belong To Us Progress Quest seems to be popping up all over the place. Diligent fans have been posting photos of their sightings from all over the memesphere, and these pictures have been collected here from the PQ Forum. In the name of all that is holy, please take a look. [April 30, 2002] |
| Forum Upgraded The Progress Quest Forum has been upgraded to phpBB 2.0, which means they have a new look and more nifty features. The content is of the same quality as ever. [April 28, 2002] |
| Tales of Adventure The new Tales of Adventure page relates the exciting triumphs and travails of Progress Quest characters. Reporting in this time is Fung-Shway, fresh from a complicated encounter with a succubus. Submit your tale for consideration at tales@progressquest.com! [April 25, 2002] |
| Welcome to Expodrine A new online realm by the name of Expodrine has just been introduced. Unlike with Spoltog, the beta realm, login is not required to create characters in Expodrine. Meanwhile, it is now no longer possible to create characters in Progress Quest's oldest realm, Knoram. This means that players with the old version of the game must download the latest version of Progres Quest to be able to create new online characters. [April 20, 2002] |
| Progress Quest article in CGM Progress Quest is featured in an article by Tom Chick in the latest issue of Computer Games Magazine where it is called "the most refreshing innovation in RPG's since the Angband bot". It is part four of a three part series called Three Finger Salute on page 100 of the 100-page magazine. [April 11, 2002] |
| Hall of Fame restored The Hall of Fame died some days ago; the culprit was database corruption; all the data was lost. Luckily it could be rebuilt from logs, and it has now been restored to its former glory. [April 10, 2002] |
| New Developer Diary page Get a preview of what's to come in the upcoming Progress Quest expansion. Check out the Developer Diary page. [March 17, 2002] |
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