Will H

As far as I'm concerned, it's a coalition of the losers. Nokia just didn't innovate where Google or Apple did, and their lack of a proper reaction to the booming smartphone market has cost them dearly. Microsoft came into the market far too late on a OS model that really didn't have any benefits over Android (open source, tweaking and flexibility) or iOS (reliability and performance). It's a walled garden that still isn't reliable, the worst of both worlds. As much as I dislike Apple's philosophy and practices, at least they do it properly. The two of them are going to have to come up with something revolutionary and new, and I don't think that either company is capable of that.

Yes Then you get a cookie.

Is it really possible to judge that while the game is still going strongly in terms of numbers of players? People come and go, very little of the players nowadays are the people who joined, and they may have become more mature or later on left to be replaced with less mature players. Runescape could have 'jumped the shark' multiple times for all we know, for an MMO the concept doesn't apply. There is no shark. EDIT: Is 'Nuking the Fridge' a reference to that Indiana Jones travesty of a film?

With the impersonal machine like profit minded Jagex that we have had recently I doubt that. Everything that Jagex does now except for Mods doing events and going on the forums is to make profit, and even that probably has an alternate goal in mind. And the fact that you need to have a membership to have any chance of winning shows that this is another scheme to make money. Like really postcards for F2P haha. How on earth could they do it any other way? If they didn't require membership to be eligible (I'm ignoring the whole postcard thing, since that's going to be pretty rare), then everyone could enter the competition by making loads of throwaway accounts. I don't mind if people point out when Jagex does something as purely a moneymaking scheme, but it doesn't mean that everything they do is a moneymaking scheme. It's pretty unlikely that this is going to give a profit to Jagex anyway.

Isn't the best conclusion that they didn't want them to look like garden gnomes? The original gnomes did, but they've been changed to move away from that and look more like 'fantasy' gnomes. Basically, small humanoids with different proportions to humans, like dwarves, giants and ogres. It takes getting used to, but I'm starting to like the rework. I think it's more the clothes that I like than anything. Also, what is it with gnomes and unreasonably long capes for their height? They pretty much trail along the ground.

Well, Quest Complete, that was a hefty chunk of experience there, especially the Runecrafting one. The puzzle was weirdly satisfying, difficult, but not frustrating. My kind of puzzle. Also, I really like that I haven't heard any swearing spam at all, even in crowded places like the GE. We're getting the best of both worlds, good job Jagex.

*sips cup of tea, puffs on cigar, then looks out of the window over a large estate with immaculate lawns* Yeah, uh, silly, aren't they?

Oh phew, I have all of the requirements. Weirdly enough, I got 61 Runecrafting yesterday for a completely unrelated reason. It's also my first quest I need to do to retrieve a quest cape! Also, optional filter = awesome. I really hope that we won't get too much unnecessary swearing in the long run, since I refuse to believe the stereotypes.

It's the natural progression of business, or rather, successful business. When a company grows large enough and still shows promise of continued growth, investors come in to the equation. More money means things get done faster. I'd be more worried if there weren't any investors by now.

Gridless movement, with optional use of WASD keyboard.

You're taking the whole thing the wrong way. We all know that freedom to trade provides much more engaging gameplay, it's a question of whether the side effects are manageable given the benefits. I think they are, and I think that given the 'yes' vote got 91%, it's reasonable to say that the majority agrees with me. - Scams are only frequent now because a) people aren't used to them and b) there's been no incentive to put in better preventative measures during the restricted trade era. Both will change with time. - This was the crux of the argument we had back when the vote happened. Jagex says that bots with free trade can be managed. Nobody can really deny or confirm that, so I'm passing judgement until about a month later. - Isn't that a good thing? One of the best ways of destroying RWTing is to sow the seeds of mistrust throughout the market. - If you buy your account back, it's not likely that you're ever going to cheat again, otherwise you wouldn't pay the money in the first place. Being able to effectively fine cheaters of their real life money, as well as potentially getting continued membership from these reformed players is a dream come true for any games company. Also, the accounts are stripped of anything that they gained from their illicit actions. Is Runescape doomed? No. It's going to be better.

I think that will die down over time.

I don't think that's true. Some scams are quite complex and manipulative nowadays. The continued existence of Telegroup Ice Plateau isn't helping either. I very nearly fell for that one myself.

I'm pretty sure evolution didn't account for gnomes having heads as large as their torsos. That's seriously creepy.

...anyway, I'd get bandos chestplate and tassets, an armadyl plate for void range, a whip (long story), berserker ring, and then I'll just train Prayer. I guess it will at least get to 92 for Soul Split, but 95's obviously better. I'm not good at calculating these kinds of things.

My sarcasm detector is making noises. The worst thing we can do is misunderstand the scale of the problem, because it will only mean solutions that harm more than heal. Here's another argument: Pretty much everyone remembers when the Wilderness ditch turned into the Wilderness wall right? There were all of those bots trapped at the wall because they were programmed to click a different object. The bots were sent out as soon as the update happened without any adjustments, and only changed later on. They wouldn't show up in any unusual patterns in the graph, so this graph can't be used to measure the maximum number of bots either. I really don't like showing the fact that the graph is useless because it gives people the impression that I'm denying that there are loads of bots. There are, but we're measuring them badly. Your sarcasm detector is 100% operational. I agree that the graph does not constitute a proof that 30K bots are active at any given time, but a while ago I estimated that roughly 10-15% of players of any given members world that was not PVP-Bounty hunter was botting. I was not trying to make fun of you in any way. I just saw "casual players" and an image of a botter playing "casually" popped into my head. Heh, sorry, the fault's mine for giving that impression. Sarcasm turns into something weird when it's written out and not said. As far as I know, your estimate for the proportion of bots may well be spot on. I just didn't like the justification of the graph. Let's use other ways like in-game sampling.

Nope, I think I've taken every reasonable precaution. Bank PIN, a reasonably unique password, recoveries, email, don't play on unsecured networks, no 3rd party software. I've never been hacked in my life, I'm an advocate that getting hacked is almost always because of a bad move on the player's part, instead of a hacker's skill.

I think it was Mark Gerhard who was screenshotted in either the forums or his clanchat saying that 2011 was going to be the year of clan support. Hopefully we'll get more than just clan support, or else I'm going to have to join a clan. Actually I think it was the community and clan jmods (as well as the contetn mods hu do most of their projects) hu said 2011 was gonna be a big year for clan support. Meaning alot of the stuff they been dev lboggin bout n chatting bout for like a yr or two prob be coming. hopefully this comes soon ( was send to all that has the access in clan leaders area) I didnt know there was much of a need for teamspeak/ventrillo/skype on runescape :unsure: Voice chat, even when not strictly necessary, improves any online game. It's pretty good for Dungeoneering, too. Sounds great!

My sarcasm detector is making noises. The worst thing we can do is misunderstand the scale of the problem, because it will only mean solutions that harm more than heal. Here's another argument: Pretty much everyone remembers when the Wilderness ditch turned into the Wilderness wall right? There were all of those bots trapped at the wall because they were programmed to click a different object. The bots were sent out as soon as the update happened without any adjustments, and only changed later on. They wouldn't show up in any unusual patterns in the graph, so this graph can't be used to measure the maximum number of bots either. I really don't like showing the fact that the graph is useless because it gives people the impression that I'm denying that there are loads of bots. There are, but we're measuring them badly.

Heh, that reminds me of this:

I sometimes DIY, it can be fun when you're doing it for a proper reason. I remember getting four quest requirements with little cost by mining gold ore, smelting the bars with gauntlets, crafting gold amulets, using magic to string them, before alching the lot. It was very satisfying and elegant. Alright, so I didn't craft the runes, so it's not perfect DIY, but I didn't need Runecrafting levels. You have to be reasonable about it.

Not that I'm trying to deny that there were and are a significant amount of bots in the game, there are, but that graph doesn't prove anything. You're assuming that Runescape is the #1 priority source of entertainment by its players at all times, in that whenever Runescape is online, all other forms of entertainment are ended prematurely so that they can get back to playing the game. Runescape is quite casual amongst MMO's, its players are generally more likely to be interested in a wide variety of entertainment. When Runescape goes offline, a lot of players will move on to, say, watching a TV programme or playing a different game. When that happens, they won't return to Runescape straight away.

I'm pretty sure Talk Like A Pirate Day is celebrated and loved more by the UK public than Valentine's Day. And that's really a good thing. Who needs love when you have pirates? Yarr!

Isn't it the GE's job to keep up with prices? An approximation of prices, yeah, but it needs both a settled market and a bit of time to do that. For now, people are going to have to find out more exact prices on their own, a necessary evil. It'll be able to do its job properly soon, now there's no limits. :) Major economic transition periods are never kind to systems that try to keep track of them, or worse, predict them.

Bwahahahaha! Well played. RWTing sites are doing more to discourage people from RWTing than Jagex is. Hope the backstabbery (that's a word, and you know it) continues.