Ginger_Warrior

I think there is a lot of overprotection when it comes to child sex abuse, yes. The chances of him relapsing due to his work on RuneVillage, and its status as a gold status fansite weren't significantly high. However, before you criticise Jagex for making the same decision as any other company would in their position, I would challenge you to have an argument with the supporters of Megan's Law and remind them of the fact (I repeat, FACT) that that law has had no demonstrable effect on preventing child sex abuse, or even the type of abuse committed. I guarentee you won't get much logic in the inevitable debate, but what you would get is a lot of accusations that you're "cozying up" to paedophiles. Now you understand Jagex's point of view here.

There's a lot of venting on this thread and I'm not sure most of it is applicable to the original question. Creating an end-game past 120 Dungeoneering is not going to attract new players who would still have to spend many thousands of game hours just to get there in the first place. Making One Piercing Note free-to-play isn't going to attract new players because there's enough quests already to provide people with a taster. In order to answer this question, you need to ask why people who try the game for a week or two don't decide on staying any further. In my experience from friends and family, they get told by the tutorial to go out and have fun, they get their skills to level 40-60 by simply playing around, they then realise that to progress any further they need to start grinding for it, and they quit because they don't come out of school/work to play a game that basically makes them feel as though they're running two jobs a day. There either needs to be less grinding, or more of an emphasis on social interaction to make the grind seem less tedious. Creating incentives past the grind hasn't worked so far at attracting new players, and won't work now.

It is refreshing that someone with near totally maxed-out levels has the perspective to call RuneScape for the spade it is. Sometimes people on here talk about 'competing' in the high scores--I remain adamant that the only skill people truly compete in is Dungeoneering, since it's the only major activity on the high scores table which holds a prerequisite for real life ability (organisational skills, communicating, memorising keys/doors effectively, managing others as a keyer) in order to complete efficiently. "Having patience" isn't a talent, and you sure as hell don't need to manage others to grind 99 Woodcutting on choking ivy. The problem you're always going to have with this argument, is the cohort of people (most of which seem to occupy this website) who maintain that 'some people find grinding fun'. How do you change the entire basis of RuneScape in order to attract new players, keep the "grinders" happy, but still provide something unique about the game compared to other MMORPGs? My suggestion would be a greater emphasis on the 'Multiplayer' element of that acronym, since it's the necessity to work in groups of five which seperates Dungeoneering as a skill to other "skills" in RuneScape. One thing I've learned is that when people are in their own groups, they'll usually make fun by their own accord in-keeping with the values/interests they share. This is no less true for the efficienados than it is for those who 'play the game for fun'. I just wish RuneScape itself did more to put people in groups, rather than forcing people to grind in solitary confinement for weeks on-end just to have a chance at playing with 'high-level content'.

Oh, you. :roll: I did laugh out load for real though. Maybe a rainbow-coloured monster too just to make the rip-off complete?

The fact you've counted them implies you're hunting for it. Stop, because that road will only lead to plenty of frustration. Just DG normally and eventually, it'll come.

Normal black cape with purple trim, to go with the base outfit. 10th squad sigil in the amulet slot.

I don't think that was the point I was making, was it? Even on RuneScape, there are about a thousand things more time-worthy than this topic. Jagex own the website, they can put whoever the [bleep] they want on there. As for "E-fame"... on RuneScape's official website? I'm betting Lady Gaga gets more hits per hour on YouTube than Woox ever will in his lifetime, short of assassinating Obama and posting the pictures online. Woox isn't exactly in any danger of doing the next Rebecca Black...

I can't believe Greece is about to plummet the world into financial ruin for the second time in a decade, and the most some people on here care about is whether Woox's use of safespotting versus Nex counts as bug abuse or not. :|

I know right? Facebook is such a silly way for companies to market their products and events...

Which is why MK will be officially banned as of April 2012. It was deemed that, metaphorically speaking, mage and ranged couldn't compete with "melee", so they banned him (about bloody time too). The analogy is true here also, but I'd hate PvP to basically become: 1) See a warrior 2) Put on mage gear 3) WIN It'd be horrible. At least give something to counter it slightly so an upset might be caused if the player is clever enough to use it.

It sounds good, and it would certainly be a welcome improvement to the current situation where melee > all, but what you described doesn't necessarily make for a healthy PvP metagame. An example I would draw upon is SSBB, where a character might have a 60% advantage over another character (say, Snake (2) versus Ice Climbers (5)) . The 60% indicates that in a normal situation, we would expect the first character to beat the second, however the 40% represents that the second character might be able to use the metagame to their advantage in order to upset the odds and win. The combat triangle's main fault, however poorly this had been implemented, is that it expects a 100% advantage everytime. If they're going to readdress the combat triangle, then they need to consider that occasionally, melee should beat magic. Otherwise, the metagame is too shallow for it to be of any real interest.

In real life, due to my job and voluntary work, I'm well versed in giving out advice to other people on health-related issues, but the same is true for any form of advice giving. There are two things you just have to accept: 1) Expect lots of resistance - If people weren't so convicted in their own misinformation in the first place, they probably wouldn't have got to the situation where they needed to ask other people for help. It stands to reason that you will get people (arguably a majority) that won't take your advice onboard at first. Some people need time, some people need showing an example, and some people won't change their mind anyway, so why bother arguing? It's their choice, however bad it is. 2) Rudeness kills you - In the heat of an online FPS match, or even a TF floor, the situation is different. People need to brought into line quickly, efficiently with as little dispute as possible, otherwise the team's objective is in danger. For this, shouting and intimidating others into action are effective tactics. The advice board on an Internet forum is different. If people present their opinions in a rude, snobbish and offensive manner, no matter how strongly they're backed up by evidence, the other person will look for ways to refute the advice given as a resentment against the treatment they were given. As such, you cannot afford to be rude... ever, no matter how frustrated you feel. I've seen so many doctors/nurses who acamedically were brilliant and I'd never doubt their clinical competency as health-care professionals, but their refusal to accept the above two as a fact of life made them a much lesser clinician for it, believe me. ------------------------------------------------------ Back to the issue of clans specifically, the article touches on a frustration I personally feel with the elite dungeoneering clans. Almost all of them started out as 'teacher' clans, willing to provide training and hands-on experience to all who were wanting to try the skill out for themselves. This worked very well, since dungeoneering efficiently is a complex art, and as such it's something people need to learn for themselves rather than inherit as natural skill. This makes it all the more saddening that many of those clans have now lowered the portcullis and started accepting people by application only, usually with the caveat that they require no further training on arrival. I understand there is a need to prevent the clan being inundated by inexperience, but there are ways of dealing with this without shifting the clan away from its entire raison d'etre. I see lots of these clans complain that people "don't know how to dungeoneer", and that "dungeoneering is dying" but their own attitude frankly has been counter-productive to keeping it alive. There needs to be a shifting again of the goals. Instead of worrying over floor times and exp/hr graphs, perhaps just focus on producing new talent, so you've got enough recruits to dungeoneer in the first place. If you do this properly, an increase in efficiency will look after itself. Have your elite divisions and promotions based on dungeoneering competency, just don't kill the whole thing off at grassroots level.

I'll always be a Nintendo fanboy at heart, but the Xbox 360 has laid down the foundations for future generations on what online interactivity should look like. Xbox Live was indesputably, in so many ways, more successful than the Wii's and the DS's Friend Code 'network'. The only criticism I have of the 360 is its over-dependency on photorealistic gaming, which I think sadly has become synonymous with "good overall games design" in neglect of other areas such as music soundtracks and plotlines.

Congratulations, sorry I couldn't have been there. You need 100, tbh. So I'll see you in a TF. :wink:

It's a seperate issue to the problem I was trying to address. You guys are talking about RWT, I was talking about reducing the threat of scamming through dicing in the Grand Exchange. Although, bringing it back to original point of discussion, RWT'ed gold should now be far harder to acquire at any rate thanks to this update. Sure, there's legit players who RWT, but simply not on the industrial scale that botters previously were. Supply will be hit hard.

It's a seperate debate so I don't want to go into it in too much. I'm aware of the connection between dicers and RWT, but the same would also be true of the non-RS examples I cited (anything with a purchaser theoretically has a real life price value) yet they're generally safe places for under-18s to 'gamble', which is quite some distance to Bly's original claim of "they can't do it". Well actually, they can with appropriate safeguards.

... and how does one get this in-house currency that cannot be bought? :unsure: No, you seem to have misunderstood (as usual). Gambling is dangerous in real-life because it becomes a preoccupation of the addict, to the point where they need to spend excessive amounts of their money in order to sustain the addiction at the expense of other vital needs. If someone becomes addicted to dicing on RuneScape, they'll lose all their GPs and... then what? Whether someone loses 1gp or 100 billion gp is irrelevent, each player on RuneScape can lose a maximum of £3.50 per account per calander month. Gambling on RuneScape is not as dangerous as gambing in Las Vegas is, just as the three dozen or so free-to-play poker apps on Facebook/IPhone/Blackberry/Android which use "made up" currency aren't really dangerous either, all of which are quite routinely used by under-18s. Hell, even Super Mario 64 on the DS had a spoof version of five-card poker. I'm not personally seeing the hoards of prepubescent Mario addicts you seem to be suggesting would be the inevitable consequence of said feature. In any case, I actually see this discussion as being besides the point. The fact is, Jagex doesn't need to facilitate dicing in order to essentially allow it on a de facto basis. They simply need to not stop it, even when it's clearly obvious it's taking place. You're right in saying gambling is dangerous, however I'd rather have the gambling controlled and monitored, than being left to simply run riot in the middle of the Grand Exchange.

A virtual casino using in-house currency which can't legally be bought with real-life cash? Seems pretty harmless, actually.

Trust-trading is against the rules because Jagex said explicitly that trust-trading is against the rules. In any system, there is room for discretion outside of what is written down on paper (or computer screen). I don't necessarily oppose dicing--it's not like RS avatars are getting chucked out of their homes for excessive gambling as they do in real life--I just wish Jagex would make something in-game that facilitates dicing, such that the risk of scamming would be far lower than it currently is. That said, many would argue gambling is itself a form of scamming. It's about perspective.

The first thing I did was look at the number of people online, and I'm pleasently surpised that 93K people are still online during peak-time in the US. Although this is far lower than the 100K+ figures that existed prior to this update, it's relieving to know so many people remain "legit". Granted, that 93K people might include people who previously botted, read the news post last week, and stopped before being caught red-handed. The medium-term playing figures in the future will be very interesting, to see if those players simply drop-off because they can't cheat their way into becoming uber-strong anymore.

They're always cute until their first religion post. Then they lock themselves away in a bedroom, grow hair in certain places and start smelling funny. EDIT: Sorry, just noticed. Isn't EoE a 'community'? :angry:

They didn't. Fletcher switched to right-back and Smalling filled in the hole. :huh: Highlight of my first aid duty at North End tonight had to be when I was told this: http://www.dailymail...y-campaign.html Brilliant. Worth missing today's bot-nuking for that.

Not quite sure there was any need for that tone. If you'd have just used common sense it was fairly obvious he meant his fishing rank (which was where the link was directed to), not his mining rank. And yes, his graphs back up what he's saying; although there is a minimal increase in his magic experience on Wednesday 10th October, it's not a significant enough increase to explain a rise in his magic rank of 400,000. His fishing graph is even more conclusive, baring in mind he's gained literally zero experience over the past month, but has still seen a significant increase in his fishing rank of just under 300,000. There's at least around 400,000 data entries simply "disappearing"... that doesn't happen without some kind of intervention. The implication being that that intervention is Jagex banning accounts.

I agree that the dots seem very hard to connect, but if you play devil's advocate, you have to conclude that they really do have something up their sleeve. Botting has been a hugely contentious issue for some time in RuneScape's legitimate community, who for many years have held strong grievances that their own achievements are devalued by both people who bot on a personal scale, and those who buy gold from farmers to essentially "buy" skills. Let's pretend this really is all "bread and circuses" with no substance. To use such an emotive issue to launch what can only be described as a PR stunt would backfire massively if Cluster Flutterer turned out to be anything other than an admittence to Jagex's ultimate failure at gripping hold of the botting problem. It might the last straw for the consumers of Jagex's solitary notable product, if the court of public opinion ruled that Jagex had let them down too badly over the years, and many would withdraw their subscriptions in disbelief that a company they've given lots of hard-earned cash to would attempt to deceive them so blantently. In short: Failure to do as promised (98% success rate) could possibly kill the company as a major force in gaming. They're surely not that stupid that they would risk the whole company's profitability on a game of pitch-and-toss. Caveat: I realise skilling isn't the be-all and end-all of this game, so botting may not bother some as much as it bothers others, but it forms the massive majority of it. Even if you aren't a "skiller", the chances are you do something that requires certain skill levels.

I went to their gig in Blackpool about five years ago now (after Liberation Transmission) and I still say now it's one of the best concerts I've ever been to in terms of pure energy. The whole auditorium of a few thousand people was bouncing, top to bottom. When Shinobi started the place went mad, me included, and I'm not even into heavy stuff. It's a great album. Gambling Man - The Overtones. Just got back from seeing them in Preston's Guild Hall. I've lived here for seventeen of my twenty-one years and I've never seen the place so full of dancing. Did an acapella section featuring Rihanna's Only Girl (In the World) and Cee Lo's Forget You. Massively entertaining live.