Will H

That was co-written by Lauren Faust too, although you probably knew that already. I remember seeing that blog at one point back when episodes were airing and the fanbase was kicking off, and I wanted to look at it again but forgot to bookmark it. Now I can't find it. Does anyone have a link? Wait, hang on...mane cast... ah dear...

I like that you can bank the reward book. Would be useful for 99/120 parties.

Jagex, if you're going to have more custom interfaces, please think about them, reuse them, and make some standards instead of making them from scratch each time. It saves development time and lets you get on with putting out bigger, better, and smoother updates. This is becoming a pattern and a problem. That little screen that gives you 'information' on trolls you select doesn't give you anything that their appearance, name, examine info and what you're told by the Captain doesn't give you already, so it was useless. Everyone knows what wizards, rangers, summoners, warriors and troll generals are, Dynamite, the Troll Father, and Poorly Cooked Karambwan are all thankfully obvious, and Cliff is a boss you're supposed to figure out (answer: think Jad). Jagex really should trust in their talented model designers more. The wave counter could have been a reskin of the Fight Caves one, but in troll grey. In fact, make it the standard for 'wave counters'. This was a solid update, but I can't help but get annoyed when other updates this month have suffered due to inefficient use of development time.

I'm very mildly cheesed off that the server reboot countdown started shortly after I started trying it out, and kicked me out at wave 16. Oh well, still got 39k prayer experience. It's all nearly free xp anyway.

Then I apologise. I didn't know what FEMA was for, I thought it was some kind of social emergency housing insurance deal wibbly thing.

To elaborate my position, I can't agree with a fully fleshed out compulsory ID card, with pictures and DOBs and everything because the ends don't justify the means, although I have no ideological objection to the concept. Compiling and coordinating that information and printing them out on a card for every citizen would be prohibitively expensive (especially in such a vast country), will save comparatively little. Also, there's the question of how long the concept of carrying around 'cards' will still remain relevant when digital wallets are on the horizon. However, you do need to have a proper centralised system for tax, which requires taxpayer identification, which means a nationwide identification number and doesn't have to involve printing off a card (although that's an optional preference). I expect that saved paperwork and the number of caught tax dodgers would easily offset the cost.

Should be, if it's once a month.

It's a small harmless error that only extends as far as that piece of paper, let's be honest, even if it's a funny one. I stopped caring when I found out family's insurance will cover the house, in which case they shouldn't have applied for FEMA in the first place, this family has wasted public money. I think that article is far too desperate to criticise these institutions that are there to help people.

The issue that the first article addresses would be easily remedied if someone at Jagex just spent an hour or two reallocating the quest tiers. Deadliest Catch was an intermediate quest.

Nice topic. I think there's always going to be a need for a way to leave formal messages that people can pick up in their own time. Facebook and IM don't cover the niche of formal non-instant messages, which is pretty important when you're dealing with businesses and such. Also, email has become your own 'hub' for linking services up. It's not it's original purpose, but I can't imagine a system that could do the same job more suitably. On a similar vein, how many of you guys still use landlines for phone calls? I haven't used one for at least a year now, mobiles have completely covered that niche. Everyone has a mobile now, even my otherwise technophobic grandmother does.

I feel an imbalance in this thread, so I'll correct it. Jagex is usually doing a better job than we give them credit for, so wait and see when it comes out.

I'm completely torn about whether to go or not. On the one hand, London is there. Right there. On the other, I'm at uni, and there's the cost, and ARGH.

Discovering that the US's Social Security Number system isn't centralised amuses me. Basically, you're telling me that it's broken to the point that you need to start over. That's going to cost a lot, but it's pretty important that you have that system in place for taxation purposes. Isn't it a bit of a delusion that people think that they can get away with being anonymous from their own government? If the system allowed for that, how could you make sure people are taxed fairly?

Do the new nets fit in a tackle box? Really really really good question. No idea, since I don't own a tackle box. Can anyone enlighten?

Perhaps they've simply reached a point where it's no longer viable to release quality updates every week. Maybe they should start scaling back to monthly updates with higher quality. What are you implying? Are you saying that something's limiting development that wasn't there before? Also, the quality of this update was pretty damn good. It's the quantity at issue here. The problem with last week's update was to do with bug testing. The problems aren't consistent, which makes the source much harder to pinpoint. My theory: They're getting too ambitious with the custom interfaces, and that's become too much of a drain on development time. They should focus on refining and reusing those interfaces in future quests instead of making new ones from scratch all the time.

Well, they're wieldable in the shield slot. There's a big and a small version, and you can easily get multiples, for placeholder purposes. It means you can catch one more fish before you need to bank. That's it. I doubt it does much for XP rates, but every little helps.

Wait, what? That was a master quest? That was intermediate at best. Jagex really should revise the quest tiers.

Really? I like it, it's a proper attempt at balancing out the almost total isolation Dungeoneering had with the rest of the game initially, and it's still not really done yet.

Was a bit of a 'meh' quest. It just wasn't interesting, and it was too easy and too short. Oh well, out of the way now. My Quest Cape is still retained.

This is Jagex. A few days to them equals two weeks. Even then there will still be some glitch or bug that will be with the update. I'd take buggy content now over buggy content later. That's not their fault, and you're underestimating the scale of the job that Quality Assurance is presented with. At a guess, they will only get through about a hundred man-hours of work each day on this given bit of content, with a regular team working full-time, intensively. Release it to the world, and you're subjecting it to thousands and thousands of man-hours of bug finding work for the first hour, something that QA will never achieve without delaying it for months. When you're dealing with work done on QA, quite literally a few days for us equals several months/years for them. It's a fact of the development process. There's a balance to be had. As a paying customer, there's a level of quality that I and other members will come to expect. I would rather wait and get acceptable content later than unacceptable now. There's a grey area between buggy and not buggy where we all live. Hang on, give this a read if you're interested, it's an old DevBlog from the QA team: http://services.rune...st_id=25&page=7

"I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road." ~ Stephen Hawking That's only generally true if you're thinking on the macro-scale and apply the uncertainties that our instruments introduce, and even then that's relying on a less than 100% probability. On the atomic scale, where the real meat and physics of the reactions happen, certain quantum effects like quantum tunnelling can alter the product compositions of certain reactions fairly significantly in a way that Newtonian physics can't account for. It's not uncommon for an electron in a bond in a molecule to tunnel to the next bond over, even if it doesn't have enough energy to escape from either bond. If I wanted to take it to the relative extreme, say I put a lump of sodium in a glass of water. I know every conceivable thing about the sodium, and every conceivable thing about the water that is possible to know. I still won't know if the sodium will just fizz in the water like lumps of sodium in water have always done in the past, or if the entire lump will suddenly quantum tunnel outside of the glass, until I try it. It's human nature to say that if something has always happened before, it will always happen again forever. But the universe doesn't work like that, and that's why I don't believe in predestination.

the character's will idle every X amount of time. And will ignore marks if they are standing too far away. But if you are aware of these two properties, you can control the three characters with good precision. I look forward to future multi-NPC quests anyways. Granted Jagex should really fix some of these bugs. But I'd rather have more multi-NPC content over bug fixes. I think you're right, although a healthy blend of bug squishing and content is probably for the best. Most of the bugs are due to this multi-character interface being something completely new and alien to Runescape (I'm ignoring MA. We don't talk about MA.). I'm actually surprised it didn't bug out more than it did for me, these kinds of projects aren't normally given the resources to get away with something so different. I think it's got potential, and visually it looks quite neat. The algorithms need sorting out (especially pathfinding), but the concept and visual style works.

I'm guessing that you mean in terms of pure rewards, instead of lore or general enjoyment. In that case, no. They are quite fun though. EDIT: ^^ Beat me to it.

Nothing need be done for Thok, Thok get everything Thok need with fists! All of them were really good. I await more sagas for the Abandoned 2 Furnished, Occult and Warped floors. I still can't stop smiling at the Ferret of Doom though, Thok's a hilarious character. Fixed. Saga one is unlocked in floor 1 - 11 so Frozen Saga 2 comes 12 - 17 aka Abandoned 18 - 29 is the furnished floors (not exactly but mostly) 30 - 35 - saga 3 in abandoned 2 Oh yeah. Didn't really think about it too hard. Was still in Thok mode. I think grammatical structure not going to be too easy to restore yet. This problem.

Nothing need be done for Thok, Thok does everything Thok need done with fists! All of them were really good. I await more sagas for the Abandoned 2, Occult and Warped floors. I still can't stop smiling at the Ferret of Doom though, Thok's a hilarious character.