Makoto_the_Phoenix

It was an alright event. I enjoyed the reference to it and also heard of the house party event as well, which were pretty good touches to add to it. However, since I work during the day, I didn't really get to see the whole event unfold; I just arrived in Falador where everybody was fighting each other. That was the major bummer, but I still appreciate the gesture of it all. Made me laugh when I walked into Falador and got the message to bank my items, even though I was on World 2. As for those who argue that it glorifies a rule breaker and celebrates cheating: no, not really. It's more about a bit of fun than rulebreaking, and it was done in a controlled (enough) environment. To be fair, the whole "Bank your items" statement is memetic at this point, and newer players have only really heard of Durial321 through whispers and rumors. Besides, it demonstrates that Jagex has the capability of turning a city into a PvP zone for future events, which seems valuable. It'd be tough for Jagex to move forward as a company if they couldn't acknowledge some of their biggest moments in history - good or bad - in whichever form they felt appropriate.

I suppose I'm nonplussed about this. That is, I'm not entirely convinced that this is something that people immediately need to get up in arms in. Maybe if this sort of thing were done five or six years ago, back when Jagex really was looking tall and proud, then perhaps this would sound some alarm bells. This would align with the near timeline that SoF was introduced into the game and the sudden rush of microtransactions that the game has become flushed with. But primarily, I'm not entirely sure what could come of it. It could be a wonderful and merciful thing in that Jagex can finally have a successful game that isn't RuneScape. Studios that are relatively one-dimensional don't survive all that long, and for Jagex to have done so for so long is nothing short of impressive. Every other platform they've attempted has crumbled in spectacular fashion, and if a new owner can get the game studio to that next step, then that'd be amazing. It could be a terrible and devastating thing that sends the game into active disrepair. I would say something along the lines of, "introduces X bad thing", but c'mon, we've already got microtransactions, higher fees for Membership, active playership is already at an all-time low, there are multiple versions of the game active...What else is there to take besides maintenance? But we've got to identify that a company being bought out is how the industry works, and has been how the industry has worked for a very, very long time. It could be good, or it could be bad, but the one thing that I believe to be certain is, it's too early to react to anything being thrown around outside of concrete details. ...This means that the MassivelyOp article is horribly skewed. It hasn't been sold off yet, but they're in early talks.

How did this differ from the original premise of the Wilderness? How did this differ from the first few weeks of players using the Abyss to craft nature runes? How does this differ from the standing recommendation that Lava Strykewyrms be placed on one's ignored task list? There is always some prick out there willing to mess with you just for their sick, twisted satisfaction. Even if you're minding your own business. At least with DarkScape, you're going into it eyes open, and you realize that it's a threat. The difference here is that you can at least do something about it; fight back. Yes, this means that the road to maxing out all skills in DarkScape is going to be long, hard and arduous, if nothing else, but for the sake of some jerk wanting to slow you down. But, at least you know about it. And, by the time you elect to go for 200M in all skills, one would hope that you would have enough equipment to fend off a pesky one-itemer or two. You're absolutely right. This sort of serial escalation wouldn't be very fun, but the only way to solve it is with more serial escalation, or with self defense. A single player probably can't take on three or four trying to strongarm them out of an area, but if only one guy were there? Why not stand your ground?

Actually, I'd imagine that anyone admitting to any sort of power levelling has just put a giant target on their backs... Can confirm this is true. When I told someone I was racing to be the first 99 in the same skill as he, I got camped for hooouuurs. That is just sad :| Though now I kind of understand why jagex didn't put up highscores... What's sad about it? You don't get players sitting on their laurels anymore, thinking that a 99 is just a matter of time. This adds some more excitement and a bit more danger to skilling, so I'm all on board with it. If Jagex did add high scores it'd cause more problems than anything else. Hopefully this keeps 200M in all skills very difficult to attain for a very, very long time.

Actually, I'd imagine that anyone admitting to any sort of power levelling has just put a giant target on their backs...

You can play in browser using this link: http://world202.runescape.com/ World 200 worked out for me in-browser. Thanks for that! I was worried there. Well, I shouldn't have to. It's still Java in a browser, and Firefox still supports it on Linux. Why should I use an unofficial method if a more official method exists?

From what I recall, Chrome removed NPAPI support (which removed the Java plugin), and Firefox hasn't done so yet. I'm still able to play through Firefox, but if that's not supported...that's not a good thing. There's some bitter irony to that. I used to maintain that Linux help thread (in general), and I intentionally never wanted to make a client since, at the time, there were still a lot of players and there was still a lot of concern around third party clients and their use. The convention has been, of late, to recommend the use of the clients, which is something I'm opposed to. If that's the only option, though...I guess I ain't playing DarkScape. :(

So, I had intended to give this a try this Thursday, since I have some down time before heading out to Boston, but I've discovered that you absolutely require the RS client to play it. I don't see a way around this. This wouldn't be that big of a deal, and considering I've been on Linux full-time for the last eight years, I'm accustomed to not getting much of anything for games. But...I've at least been capable of playing RuneScape in that period of time. Wonder what changed.

Dammit. The one thing that I never much cared for suddenly looks very interesting to me. It may be worth giving this a try. On paper, I feel like this was the motivation that PvP worlds were going for. Probably the best thing to do here was to give it a clean slate and force everyone to start fresh.

That's a legitimate concern, but I presume that the use case here is that an account would already have an authenticator code on their account so that they don't have to encounter this scenario. I mean, the means to secure one's account are there and aren't too hard to implement; why take your chances with it?

Maybe he'll give us spawns every 13 hours for a month? This why you write unit tests to catch this "else" condition so that situations like this don't suddenly manifest themselves in production. (Not to say that tests or devs are infallible, but still...) Frequent spawning may make getting this title slightly more reasonable.

Even without getting into other games, isn't $10/month the cost of a Netflix subscription? Sounds about right. I don't have Netflix myself, but I do have Crunchyroll (about the same amount), Amazon Prime and Play Music. Not to mention, there's tens of thousands of hours of free entertainment on YouTube. There's also a lower barrier of entry to my platform; I can enjoy content from those providers on Linux without any hassle; Java's web plugin is so maligned that the entire NPAPI backend is to be ripped out of Chrome, and Linux got hit first. Only way I could play the game was through a stupid workaround...which still weirds me out. Not to go too much further, but I can enjoy all of the above on my mobile devices. I'm too terrified to melt my laptop while playing 'Scape (and I nearly have before), so I'd only ever play it on my tower. Limited device options don't make for an appealing case to pay up that much when there is just so much out there that my $10 could go towards.

What during that three years has come out to supplant the target audience of an MMO like 'Scape? A lot, actually. To boot, it's on devices that are far more convenient to play games - namely, mobile phones, tablets, and all manner of Nintendo handheld. Raising prices is fine, but raising value should come along with that. Much respect to Jagex for keeping the game somewhat entertaining, but the value grab isn't like it was when they first decided to raise the membership price.

I wonder why some people still think that a price increase like this is meant to entice new players... Interesting choice, though. I'm really grateful that I got my closure with the Elf City, but even with my current job, $10/mo for what I play now is too rich for my blood.

This only goes to further the point I made earlier. But that aside... - Jagex has to face a real reality in which their game studio is only really known for a one-hit wonder and a lot of blunders. This game has the potential to change that. - A game that big will always have issues to fix. And "fix" is very subjective, depending on who you ask, and what you're asking.

To play Devil's Advocate, Jagex's last few forays into new games mostly sputtered out. So you could understand why both the RuneScape community and them have a bit of PTSD regarding any new game announcement from them. This one shows promise, though. Better yet, it's on Steam. They stand a better chance with this one than they did their last few dozen games.

For the time it takes to obtain and maintain, yes, it's a cosmetic item. I'd say that it's more like a "bragging rights reward". You've got the best cape in the game, but do you really need it? As for the requirements to get it including PvM - I only recently started playing again because of the Elf city. But when it was released (back when I was still kind of playing), it seemed more like a reward for those who've done all of the doable content out there. They're expanding it to include PvM, which precludes those of us with physical disabilities and poor network connectivity, but ultimately that's their prerogative. It sucks that they want to do that, in all honesty. Wouldn't be the first time that Jagex has pulled something like this (at least, in my mind). It'd be nice if it were added to trimmed requirements, but it's their call.

This came up a long time ago. In fact, here's an old Tip.it post dealing with the matter. I'd be willing to bet that there weren't any changes made to the quest due to the period setting; it's a medieval game in which you are often forced to marry someone else, mostly for the sake of continuing the bloodline. Also, I doubt that Jagex wanted to broach that subject there and then with a bunch of teenagers.

Simple ".txt" files would have been one hell of a lot better. My spreadsheet programs are trying to jump in the way, when I would rather simply view a text-based ".csv" as a simple text file within my browser first. I don't know what the nuts at Jagex are thinking, but that's going to make it easier for bots and other auto-processes than it will for your everyday average legit player. People shouldn't have to fight with an outright download before they can view it anyway. Like, excuse me while I go mentally ragequit on even trying to view that file. :wall: ~Mr. D. V. "I just picked up one more reason to be disgruntled." Devnull Exporting from a database is frequently done through a CSV file. The only other, human readable and non-schema-revealing approaches would be tab-separated, or XML. And God knows we need more XML in the world. What would've been slick, though, is if they provided a SQLite database so that everyone could just use SQLite to read from it and find a nickname that they wanted.

I see no reason why you would forgoe experiencing batch 1 in order to wait for the whole of it. Also, it's likely that there will be many unbalanced things in batch 1 - may as well take advantage of them while you can - the early bird always wins in RS. Also, this way you won't be completely overwhelemed by a large swathe of new content if you don't do any of it and just wait till december. Well, I can think of a few... - I'd be starting from scratch, essentially, as I dropped all of my stuff many moons ago. - I'd need time to figure out RuneScape on Linux (as I am not a fan of using a client to play something that should "just work" in a browser). - I'd need time to get used to the interface and figure out its intricacies. - I'd need time to get some gear. - I also work 40 hours a week, and my primary off-time focus isn't gaming, it's programming-related stuff (OWASP, AngularJS, better programming in Java, etc). December seems like a fine time to me, especially since I could take my time with everything that I would care about consuming for the elf update. The rest of the game just won't appeal to me as much, since the elf city is the last bit of closure from '04.

Do the quest and then stand at the gates to the city and logout and don't log back in until they release the city. I may wait 'til December, since that's when everything will be fully released and the balance can be tweaked to the way Jagex likes it.

I've wanted this city in the game for over ten years. It's finally happening (well, sooner than ten years, at least). I wonder if I should wait for the whole city to be out, or start when the quest is finished (and there is no city).

If you're in the States, there are a lot of legal options for you. Funimation has a service that goes through Hulu, and their own YouTube channel on which they allow whole series to be watched. Hulu also has a ton of content, too. Then there's Crunchyroll, which is where I'm getting nearly all of my anime. If you're not in the States, Crunchyroll might offer some shows, but otherwise, good luck!

Why do I keep forgetting this post exists... Nichijou is definitely one for the collection. It was too funny, and I'm flabbergasted as to how it flopped in Japan. I mean, really. C'mon. Anyway, Winter season surprised me. The notables I've got coming out of this are probably Haganai NEXT, Maoyu, and Sakurasou na Pet no Kanojo, and the dark horse winner which I didn't see coming was Kotoura-san. (To those who have trouble with depressing backstories, Kotoura-san probably isn't for you.) Getting bored of Oreshura, since I read the manga and thought it'd be interesting, but the plot's just too predictable at this point. Thankfully it will end mercifully with twelve episodes...

Personally, I feel that the community being divided is fine. What's not fine is Jagex attempting to cater to both sides of the aisle at the same time. It's going to exhaust their resources, and neither side will feel like they're getting precisely what they want. Again, I'm fine with the community being split - it's always been like this, even going back to the era of: Miniclip RS2 vs Classic Fansite Loyalties "Products" of any kind (Pest Control, Make-X, etc) PKing Clan loyalties ...and it seems that the community will remain fractured, so long as opinions differ on a particular way a person plays the game. It seems like an seriously foolish waste of resources to try to cater to the communities who love one way of doing things, and the communities that love the polar opposite way of doing things. But hey, maybe Jagex knows something about this development process and ROI that I don't.