Makoto_the_Phoenix

Too bad that Jagex views AFK training in the same light as botting, then... First, and most importantly, you exclude an important demographic - those that are grossly underweight. Yes, they do exist. "Unhealthy weight" has two edges to it. That, and skipping meals is a HORRIBLE idea. Second, I found going to college (you know, the place where you pay money to get large amounts of knowledge) offered me more than RuneScape ever could. I won't deny that the game is what inspired me to be a developer, but I sure as hell didn't learn how to program from it. Third, finding/having something to enjoy need not be tied to a game at all. It could be exercise, it could be study (this was my haven), it could be socializing. I see this as a muted point. Now, I'm not going to say that RuneScape is bad for you. But anything taken out of moderation is a bad thing. You've got some epic misconceptions about what is "good" for your body and livelihood so I'd strongly encourage you to get them sorted out before debating your points again.

You already store a TON if stuff on your machine that you probably weren't aware of. Search your computer for a folder called .jagex_cache_32 I don't have that folder. Must be for people that play RuneScape. I'm just a passer-by. I suppose my point was more toward, why do I have to download anything besides the images? There are sites that make use of HTML5 + JS trickery without needing to store "large amounts of data" on my machine, too.

[qfc]317-318-490-64252433[/qfc]. Third. Freaking. Post. There's no sense in this shit anymore. Why would they come out and say that they want to rig it? If the community didn't have enough support, let it go. Why give everyone a mulligan come the 28th?

It's been a really long time since the game had an official bestiary. I can vaguely remember the old one. The new one I'm glad for, but less enthused that I have to store stuff on my machine to make it work for any reason.

Okay I admit I wasn't completely clear with what I was talking about. There is a developing cost for new content, right? Because players value content differently, and some content will have more of an affect on the players than other content, it is possible to calculate how valuable different content updates are. There is definitely content in RS that is rarely used, and so the costs of developing that content did not bring back worthy gains. Just looking at the main RS page, I doubt the sinkholes content is going to spark huge interest in retired runescape players, it's not going to suddenly bring in a lot of new players. This 07scape has created a lot of talk, and a lot of talk from retired players who express interest in returning, so the developing costs for 07scape is likely to be a lot more valuable than just your average RS update. Yes, there is a cost for developing features. I'd conjecture that it's harder to gauge the value of an update until it's been around for a bit, although there were definitely some projects that bombed out (Rat Catchers, for instance). To your next point, talk is cheap. Membership will be the true test - the people that talk about wanting this will have to put their money where their mouth is. I'll admit that it's a bit low, but here's why - I'm using a similar thought process to when RSC became a snow globe. The community was fiercely divided on whether or not RS2 represented a good direction for the same, so a fervent faithful delegation of about 12,000 players hung back on the old servers. That number plummeted during what is known as "the Renaissance of RuneScape", when Members' received a smattering of awesome, revolutionary updates (special attacks, clues, more quests than you could shake a stick at). RSC, by comparison, was static - never going to be revised with the latest bot detection, never going to get anything nearly as awesome as what RS2 had, and that's what everyone had to live with. The number really got low before RSC's doors were opened once again, but this time to an even smaller crowd of enthusiasts, ultimately put off by the tedium and dullness of Classic. I find that point interesting since it was the fervent faithful so many years back that said very similar things to today - that this is what the community wanted, that it'd be more popular, that it'd be better than the other way, etc. Dat history lesson. :/ I can think of a few things for those people to develop. This would keep a small team busy for at least 2 months. "Many" years if you want to tack on a good bot detection framework. Java 6 to Java 7 migration - Hell, that code could run on Java 5. They reached their technical limitations with it before it went EOL, luckily. If you're not going to migrate to Java 7, make sure your code works with it. Not many people will use Java 6 anymore, thanks to the Swiss cheese that is its security. Updating the model objects - This means database work, too. A character in RS proper isn't the same as a character in '07Scape. Adding/Ensuring compatibility between chat systems - Database and chat system work, making sure that the chat server can support both games and identify a player from a particular game. May also have to take into account that any player can have 200 friends in their friends list. Doesn't mention Clan/Friend Chat, since that wasn't a feature in '07. Stress test - body-slam your database and see how well it does. (Potentially) Bot framework groundwork - If this gets serious traction they'll need to do a lot of work to do this. If they don't want to hear a lot of players piss and moan about bots then they'll need to do a lot of work to do this. Then again, their track record with this sort of thing has sucked horribly - it's been 8 years since they announced they had systems in place, and every one of them failed miserably. That'll eat up some dev time for sure! Quit thinking about just generic things like maintenance and personnel. There's a lot of hidden costs to this, too. Oh, I nearly forgot - there was this one time in which they blew "tens of millions of pounds" on some project - some Sci Fi game - that didn't pan out. Before that, there was Funorb. After that, there was 8 Realms. They couldn't brush those major losses off, and the effects of that are ever present. Jagex isn't infallible, and they don't have tens of millions to just throw away. They had damn well better know the cost of what they're getting into before they get in it. And it's my very strong opinion that the community should realize the cost of what Jagex is getting into before they think it's "cheap" or "not a big deal if it fails". Every failure will suck for the company.

Yes, you can calculate hourly costs for a major project by keeping track of engineering effort...but what does that have to do with old players rejoining? First, the reward is large, I won't deny that, but the risk is just as, if not, larger. However, I prefer to take a more conservative approach to estimates, and 150K players seems way too optimistic. I'd be willing to go as high as 20% of that number, which is a crazy high ballpark, but not more. The reason I say that is twofold - you can have a large number of players voting, but that doesn't mean they'll follow through with it, or be willing to pay the extra cash for it month after month. You'll have a lot of people just drop off the bandwagon and find something else to do/complain about. 30,000 players is optimistic, even for me, and that's only if everything goes flawlessly. You would have to convince not only the players that voted for this to pay their dues, but also those that abstained, as well as those that are optimistically ambivalent. The catch here is keeping them. You can expect it to be as jam-packed as RSC was when the floodgates were first opened, then you can watch the numbers trail off by a lot when they realize that it's not nearly as technically advanced, rewarding (from their perspective), or enjoyable (again, from their perspective) as RS proper. My gut tells me that, regardless of the tier, you'd get 5,000 dedicated players. You'd also get 10,000 enthusiasts; people that'd be interested in the game just as a fleeting fancy. Well, $225K isn't much to sneeze at, but it isn't enough to cover all of the costs to make this happen. Jagex would be swallowing the costs of the project for $5/mo, which - with that level of interest - would barely pay for the dev needed to maintain it in a month. Despite the hype, you have to lower your expectations by quite a bit. For every ten people that chirp up, maybe 2 or 3 of them will actually follow through with it. Even less will continue to stick with it. Developing software just isn't cheap. No matter how you slice it, it still costs a lot of money. And again, I'm only talking the personnel costs here - if we were to talk archiving/SAN, we'd be adding on another $30K easily - and that's for the hardware alone.

I've...I've just got to know. What makes anyone here think that this sort of thing would be cheap and easy to maintain? A little real world experience: My company is preparing to release some software that was in development for two weeks. Two weeks for a development team of twelve people at $30/hr (industry standard) for 336 hours is about $120K. That doesn't count any quality assurance effort, product management, requirements gathering, or any intermediate releases/technical support during that time related to the release. As a general rule of thumb, a developer costs $65K. At $15/mo/player, you'd pay for that developer's yearly salary with 4,333 players. Want more developers? Multiply the base number of the developer's salary by the number of players you need. At a modest level, you'd need ~13,000 players paying $15/mo to pay for 3 developers for an entire year. This says nothing of quality assurance - they make slightly less than a developer, but it's still north of $57K. With a team of 3 developers and 2 quality assurance staff, that'd be about $206,400. At $15/mo, that's ~14,000 players. Then you have the unforeseen costs - customer support, technical upkeep, and ensuring that the code can run on Java 7 since Java 6 isn't supported anymore, as well as server and bandwidth costs. Also, where is all of this data going to live? Which SAN would they want to invest in? Some of the really good ones can be pricey - $5,000 to start, $40,000 on the high end - and if there's a service contract, well you're handing over easily another $100,000 or more to ensure that your data integrity remains. I haven't even started talking about the geolocated servers to reduce lag. Where would they go? Which countries would charge them an arm and a leg for the bandwidth? These are just the prices that are off the top of my head for a project. The only people that could appreciate the other costs besides "resurrecting some old code and slapping it on a server" would be the ones that are in the industry. My numbers for the SAN may be a bit off, since I've not been able to price one of those for about 4 years, but thinking of those other costs is pretty serious. So I'm just curious. Why does everyone seem to think that this is inexpensive?

It's not poorly thought out. Jagex set the bar, the price, and the terms - if the players don't rise to the cause and meet those targets, then they're essentially lying in the bed that they made for themselves. They know more about their financial situation than we ever would, so if they feel $15/mo is what it takes to have these servers, then that's what it takes, period. It really doesn't matter if one preaches about how awesome or good 2007scape was, or how it would be a waste if they had to pay more than three times the amount of membership to get into it. The messengers of 2007scape need to get out more to spread the word and accept that, if they miss their target, then they'll have to pay a premium to get back into the game.

I somewhat expect Jagex to come out with an announcement like that this week. Very few people will be willing to pay over $20 a month to access a game from 2007. First, to PoorLepRecon's point, why wouldn't you want to pony up the cash? When you voted in the poll, you knew going into it that, if the numbers couldn't be reached, then you'd have 2007scape but at a high premium. It's like saying you want the nostalgia filter, but don't want to pay the costs of bringing it back - one who thinks like that can't have their cake and eat it too. Next, to ItsASpork's point, why would Jagex reverse their stance on this? They knew what they were saying when the poll came out, and my gut feeling says that they wanted to see just how vocal this group of players - that claimed that they'd want 2007scape - were, just to see if the numbers they were quoting off could really materialize. Just because it's slowing down/isn't projected to reach whatever mark doesn't mean one can start looking for outs. Even if the number misses the [self] desired mark by 1 person before 1 March, Jagex should stick by their plan and execute - whether this means an additional $5 on members, or $20 for the whole kit'n'caboodle.

Wait, are you being reasonable? On this thread? :shock: Well, someone had to be... :P

Be the better person, and vote for what you think is right. Don't let anyone else pressure you, feed you any other information, or persuade you. Listen to yourself and trust your own vote.

I think a year because of both effort to bring to market and the remainder of time to maintain. I don't see the costs of this project being anything less than $200K, even for a very small team. Color me skeptical - I just think that bringing in $50K from this experiment isn't really bringing in squat - the costs would far outweigh the gains.

Who lied to you? A dev on contract runs about $55K in the states, and a skilled full-time dev can cost upwards of $75K. Even as an entry level dev (< 2 years experience) I pull in something between that. Add in some QA effort to ensure things run smooth, and maybe a few hallway testers, and you're looking at $200K for your costs of a small team (2 developers, 1 QA). Not just that, but wouldn't it suck if your job was maintaining over a million lines of code, especially if bugs and performance issues had already been ironed out in a newer version of the software? The difference here is that everything has already been developed, and tested for that matter to make sure bringing back the server was even possible. Only things they have to develop is a way to make 07 and current chat systems integrate. No. There is no difference. You still have to pay that developer's salary. Sure, the costs of the project overall change if they were doing it from scratch, but the bottom line is that developers like to get paid. Giving them anything less than standard industry rates isn't going to fly, not unless they stick a college CS student on the project (they could pay them $40K/yr contract).

Who lied to you? A dev on contract runs about $55K in the states, and a skilled full-time dev can cost upwards of $75K. Even as an entry level dev (< 2 years experience) I pull in something between that. Add in some QA effort to ensure things run smooth, and maybe a few hallway testers, and you're looking at $200K for your costs of a small team (2 developers, 1 QA). Not just that, but wouldn't it suck if your job was maintaining over a million lines of code, especially if bugs and performance issues had already been ironed out in a newer version of the software?

Seems to me that Jagex is telling everyone who claims that 2007scape will be better to "put their money where their mouth is". Also seems to me that they're playing an epic game of Chicken - you can have your nostalgia filter back, but there won't be a damn thing on those servers at all. Gutsy, risky move. I don't see it working out, though.

"Useless" is subjective, especially if the future strategy is driving finances and resources in the front door, then it ceases to be useless. No, they derail their current workflow to accommodate this new project. Normal game development would be incredibly strained. They may not have to pay for new servers, but they'd have to have the ability to run both versions of the game, and that could be seen as an administrative nightmare. After six months they realize it was a flop, and they've pissed countless hundreds of thousands of dollars out of the window. That's a problem for a company that had to resort to tactics it swore it'd never do just to make ends meet. :wall: It's not that simple! There's a lot of work involved in porting over that code to Java 7. There's a lot of legwork that needs to be done to ensure that the servers that this is deployed on can handle both versions of the game. There's a whole BUNCH of risk involved if no one ever likes these servers for whatever reason. All for what, a nostalgia filter? That time would be better spent researching what players really want and developing towards that. It's not as simple as pressing a few buttons or clicking a few modals. Trying to revert to the old system could be financial suicide. The risk involved in that project is far too great to consider it "an experiment".

If it died after a few years. They can easily reduce servers. They really are not risking anything but a weeks development time (give or take with complications). Personal I would be very excited to start as a noob again. Mining that copper and tin. Getting my first set of armour. Building the economy up. It would be a better adventure than the live game where everythings gone to chaos because of poor development vision and expecially EoC. Near 0 risk. Not really a problem at all. Now you're going out there just a little bit. There's a lot of development time involved in reintroducing RS from 2006. Just because you can get it working with the old dependencies doesn't mean that's a good idea. Java 6 is being deprecated in favor of Java 7, so any new development on a Java platform would have to take place in Java 7. And no, they're not 1 to 1 compatible with each other - there are a few gotchas and traps in porting over the code. The way it's phrased to me would be, "Is the juice worth the squeeze?" I'm thinking that, even back in '06, the code base was very complex, and had a lot of parts to it. Porting that over to get it to work with Java 7 to appease a smaller-than-the-majority demographic of nostalgia fans doesn't seem like a viable long term strategy. That code base won't drive their bottom lines forward. If they do elect to move forward, they'd be taking a major risk, since not everyone cares about the nostalgia filter, and the newbies would get fed up/frustrated that the game isn't similar to the one they play. No, there's not 0 risk. The risk approaches something closer to infinity.

My point was more towards, 'From an IT/Developer standpoint, if the company doesn't have some form of archiving old code, or keeping track of old code, or some way to version their old code, then they've royally screwed up.'

RSC they likely preserved, since it was running on its own dedicated servers for a few years. RS2...I'd be absolutely floored if they didn't have a version control system, like Git. Here's an example of what a successful implementation of Git would look like - you could then retrieve that older version of RS2. (If it were done properly, all they'd need are the appropriate libraries and dependencies, and it'd run in its checked-out state.)

For the time being, it looks like it only affects the browser plugin (see http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/625617). Also, there's no involvement of Javascript here - unless that's the delivery path of choice for these attackers. Disabling Javascript may help, but it won't make you 100% safe from this. The only real way to be secure is to remove Java, full stop.

I'm definitely on the outside looking in - as I've never heard of these players before - but it just feels like a publicity stunt. If the state-of-the-art bot detection and account relations we hear about so often was really this great, then wouldn't these players have been busted long ago? I mean c'mon. Enough is enough.

It'd be safe to assume that P2P is providing the resources. I'm still a bit shocked that W1 and W16 went Members, though. Those have been mainstays of the F2P game. Hopefully someone at Jagex knows what they're doing with this move.

It's kind of tough to read posts like "I'm an __ year veteran and ...". I never really know what the point/meaning is of stating how long you've been around, since feedback from someone debating if they'll play the game in the first place is just as valuable, if not more, than some ol' vet. Honestly though, the piece reads neutral. They're not swaying one way or another. It sounds like something that anyone could honestly arrive at. I was hoping for something a bit more earth-shaking in the wake of these new changes, but that's just not the case this time.

For some of the rankings provided by The Floating Pen, I think there are too many unknowns to objectively make ratings. Initial impression and optimism can be high, but I wouldn't give something like Player Owned Ports an automatic 4/5. All one can do is speculate anyway, and speculation doesn't do this community good.

I really do love the new site, have ever since it was in Beta. One minor nitpick - when reading some of the Times articles (really, when scrolling down), the bottom toolbar pops up. It's visually jarring, and perhaps would be nice to have a more gentle notice - perhaps just the "go to top" link, and when you hover over it for a little longer than a second, show the rest of the menu?