Makoto_the_Phoenix

Looking at those charts to answer this question doesn't mean squat, frankly. What you need to know are these two things: - What kind of equipment their servers are running, and - What kind of host package they have with their provider. The equipment will tell you the initial [rental] cost of the servers, and the package will tell you how much per month they're shilling out for bandwidth. You should also compensate for the *possibility* of a Member/Freeplay world existing at the same time on the same server.

To begin with, quote statements help tons. Now, to your responses: I do feel that there is a lot to be said when a "bug" becomes "part of a game", but it still doesn't change my view. Sure, Jagex should have enforced the rules, but again, this isn't like a drastically damaging bug that would have ultimately been the economy's undoing. I've also seen dozens of rants about the experience from that part of the quest anyway. I weigh the extremity of a bug based on who it affected, benefited, or harmed. The mu glitch harmed THOUSANDS, so that's an obvious ban. The penguin glitch affected players that trained hard skills legitimately, so punishments were handed down in concordance with the abuse severity. The Fire cape (and Skill cape) glitch(es) actually harmed the players themselves, and not necessarily anyone else. It doesn't bother me that a player can have an untrimmed version of a cape, or a duplicate copy of the fire cape (as the latter is actually reducing their effective defense, and the former is something that should've existed in the first place). Again, I am NOT advocating that abusing these bugs was right. I am saying that it does not constitute punishment (if any) on the scale that certain bugs would. If Jagex banned players based on principle instead of weighing every side of the argument, then there'd be players banned for junk trading by now. Not if it involves community, and doesn't involve repetitiveness. That's an oxymoron. If training a skill didn't involve repetitiveness, there would be that magical "level-99 lever" in the deep Wilderness that gave everyone what they wanted - lots of experience five minutes ago. Let me tell you, there is nothing in this world (or this game) that does not involve some degree of repetitiveness. There isn't a way to totally eradicate repetition, but there is a way to make it less boring. Believe me when I tell you it already exists to that degree - you just have to look for it. You didn't read my section on time. The game disproportionately favors those who have more time with MORE CONTENT while they pay the same. What? How is that bad again? You'd better believe that I, with all the time I've invested in this game, had better have an upper hand against someone that just started, or started a year ago. Either I misunderstood your point or you made no sense, and I'm leaning towards the latter. Yes, people would find value in a different object. Like skills. Account trading would go on like it does today, but that is difficult to stop. At least Money would not be RWT'd. Fallacy. Regardless of the object that's being RWT'd, it doesn't change the fact that it's being RWT'd. There's also no saying whether or not a person would buy an account solely for their items, their skills, or both. It's still RWT in any form. It's neither unrealistic nor improbable. It's how we get the shields in the first place. Admittedly there aren't a lot of people that do it (like we've done with the GWD), but that doesn't mean that it's not possible to get a sigil for yourself, or earn the cash to get one through Coinsharing the item (which places it in the GE right away). What other context is there to take? You said plain and simple that fighters are self-suppliant, whereas skillers are reliant on fighters themselves. There's only one real case in which that's true (dragon hatchet), and the former is just blatantly false. No one, and I mean NO ONE, drops a whole Godsword, Spirit shield, or Dragon Platebody. [Aside] You would be quite surprised at how many people would love this scenario. Yes. But I am saying that training smithing should be FUN! not a chore which you can alleviate the burden of a bit by playing chess on funorb or wandering around clan chats. I'm sure I would be. I'm surprised enough as it is. Anyway, it's up to you whether or not you make the skill feel like a chore. If you think about it, and I mean really abstractly, everything we do is a chore in this game, it just depends on the spin we put on it. My spin just so happens to be outside of the skill's boundaries, but it's not uncommon - how many times have any of us made cleaning our room a fun chore? Didn't we just put some music on in the background while we did it? -- By the way, don't comment to this entire post at once. It's getting unwieldy, not in terms of argument, but sheer WALL OF TEXT mode; don't go all TL;DR on me.

That would be the definition in which quincunx is defined as an arrangement of five objects within a square, like the 5 on a side of a die. Moving on... Precedents ----------- Do you recall a bug in which a player could possess two fire capes at once? To preform that was arduous enough (it involved graves), but if you were able to do it in a timely fashion, you would own two fire capes. Know what Jagex did? They made that legal, and I don't think anyone was punished. It's not about whether or not a bug is abused, it's about if the bug in and of itself has the potential to cause widespread damage to the game, or give others unfair advantages. These pures are rejecting gains of experience for their account; although this doesn't make what they (or the fire cape bug) correct, it does mean that Jagex will look at these bugs in a much different light, as opposed to the major POH bug or Penguins or even this PvP bug. Perhaps Jagex should punish those who abused the bug, but honestly, what's the harm in rejecting experience? Skills ----- There's not much that can be said positive about skilling. Yes, it's a grind. Yes, it feels like a chore. But, the only real way to get tons of experience is to do tens of thousands of things over and over again. That hasn't changed since the beginning, although I'll admit, if I tried smelting 25K Iron ores back in Classic, I'd have gone crazy by now. (Just so you know, I'm in the process of smelting nearly around 70K iron.) The easiest way to make the chore feel...less like a chore is to add a little spin to it. I idle in various clan chats and jump into discussions here and there. I reject the notion that a skill should be trained through any side diversion. Know why? Eventually that side diversion will become a chore, too. Time ----- All MMOGs, games, and anything with as much content as RS has takes time. End of discussion. Money ------ This game revolves around money, and any major structural changes to how that's run would cause mass catastrophe. Jagex is not object-dependent like some other games like Maple Story, but that doesn't mean that RWT wouldn't have occurred - it's just people would've found value in some other object. I disagree when you rail against the Spirit Shields - of all items in RS, they require extremely high skills to make or obtain. Even if you don't have money, you can still challenge the Corporeal Beast (which you even think is fun). Lastly, I fundamentally disagree when you say this: Skillers don't need fighters to get Rune tools. All they need is a rune bar or two and the level to make it. The best equipment, maybe (although there are only TWO things that a skiller would rely on a fighter for anyway) - but not everything. Definitely not. Perhaps there's some truth when you say that fighters only need depend on themselves, but they don't get all of their equipment from monster drops. They had to get the money to buy armor from somewhere. Lastly, giving people a fair ground to play on (in terms of wealth) does not reduce the incentive to cheat, but it does reduce the incentive to play. Interpersonal Interaction ------------------------ Didn't you say most of what you're trying to hammer home here in Skills? Besides, when I level my skills, I sure as hell don't expect some random dude off the street to say, 'Hey, you're Makoto D! You got like 99 Smithing! Awesome, man!'; I'd actually be a little freaked out. I think I outlined a way to make the repetitiveness a little less like it's repetitive by wandering around other clan chats, or IRC, or some other forums; it's not really so bad if you have something else to do. Heck, if I really got in the groove with my smelting, I probably could be playing Chess or something else on Funorb. --- I don't share your view that the game is tanking or taking a dive of any kind. It's just up to us now to have fun with what we have. If we rely on Jagex to do that for us, then we're playing for the wrong reasons.

Clearing some of the dust in that thing was definitely the right thing to do. Only thing is that I remember my laptop fans sucking air in to keep the core cool, but if it's keeping your machine cool enough, then it should be alright.

Fey, as much as I hate to say it, the only message [the majority of immature players] are sending is that Members are spoiled rotten brats who have a superiority complex, and refuse to share their dusty old toy, even if they haven't played with it in the last decade, and they know that the poor kid down the block would appreciate the opportunity to play with it. That, in and of itself, depresses the hell out of me. I don't understand how a group of players can be so damn immature about this... I agree that we haven't even really bothered with the forums, which is true - the polls don't lie. A lot of players simply don't use the forums, ironically because of immaturity expressed during updates (especially F2P updates). I'm going to go over there and post a simple, but clear message - it's time for them to grow up and share. Paying for something means only so much, but if you honestly want to throw it back in someone's face like that, perhaps it's best if they didn't pay at all.

The purpose for Pure/Rune essence has outlived itself, so yes, I would love to see it go. Only thing is, there's a multitude of ways that it could be recombined, but each one seems to have its consequences. - A straight merge would cause a run on regular Essence until it was converted. - A merge which involved spending some denomination of cash to "purify" the normal essence would make some players upset. Personally, I'd like to see that Rune essence can be made to make every type of rune again, but with pure essence giving probably an extra 1.25 runes per load. I dunno, I don't runecraft much (at all), but I would definitely like to see the division between pure/rune essence go away.

if you dont mind me saying, i think experience does show some level of maturity... I dont know if 12mil exp counts for much but i know that if you have 120mil your probably not too immature. Yeah, correlating experience to maturity is never foolproof. Consider that 12.5M exp doesn't mean that they're mature, but it all but ensures the worst of freeplay spammers are kept out.

True, but it's still my time. Telling me that my time is as trivial as a dancing pixel is a slap to the face. It's like telling someone with a Ph.D that their diploma "is only paper". What an ego. We're not defining real life vs. RS here, we're simply defining that items in RuneScape were not as simple to accrue as the common idea misleads people. Yes, I play RS in my spare time, but if you were to simply take my achievements away (so-called 'pixels'), I know that I'd be pissed.

...and members have generally agreed to this idea for how many years before F2P showed up to the forums? C'mon, they're just capes. It's not like they're getting Thieving or Agility...

[before I begin, I'm surprised that this whole thing escalated into this heated debate about torture and what-not. It's about the 4th Amendment, security, and stuff like that - and perhaps torture ties into that in some mutated, convoluted knot. This'll be my last post on that matter, and more on to the 4th Amendment in subsequent posts. Don't dwell on this side discussion too much longer.] You know, I was trying to give you a graceful out, with what dignity you had left. But no, you had to go and throw THIS in my face. It pisses me off royal how ignorant someone like yourself can be, but let me at least TRY to enlighten you... To begin with, your very definition of "terrorist" is skewed beyond imagination. It's not just soldiers that deal with them, you know - police do too. Remember Timothy McVeigh? He was responsible for the Oklahoma bombing, and by every definition of the word, he was a terrorist. Would torturing him have gotten any valuable information? NO. How did they handle the situation? For the bombings he committed, he was arrested, tried before a jury, and eventually put to death. Without exception, this is how we should treat everyone that we believe is a terrorist. They should at the very least have the chance to defend themselves, or be detained with some kind of justification. Next, you view terrorists in a racist light. I'm not going to bother pointing this out to everyone else (since it's not hard to read between the lines), but that's just wrong. Terrorists come from any country, even the USA. Third, if you can't interrogate a terrorist suspect without putting your hands on them, then you should quit your job (if your supervisor is merciful), or you should be thrown right along in there. Period. If you can't control your temper around suspects, then you do NOT need to be working with people. Regardless of whether or not they're accused of being a terrorist, that doesn't make them any less human, nor does it subject them to any less fair treatment than any other prisoner in our system. You said that your folks were in the armed forces. Ask them how they feel about torture. I think you'll be radically surprised, as many of the soldiers I know are beyond adamantly against such a barbaric thing. Are you ignorant or just plain STUPID? Americans shoot at Americans ALL THE FREAKING TIME! Does that make them terrorists too, in your screwed-up little world?! Or are you only concerned with the Americans being shot at in some country where hostiles are expected? Okay. I have a friend who's in a battalion over in Afghanistan RIGHT NOW. He's been on the front lines, and I thank God every day that he not only comes back from dogfights with insurgents alive, but that he's doing this for our country. They're not all terrorists, you know - some of them are just defending their lands (and they feel that we're intruding on their ground), or are being otherwise coerced into combat. That doesn't make them terrorists. Besides, all of the murders and attempted murders involving Americans didn't get the accused (or convicted) labled as terrorist...why should it in this situation? Think about it - we've declared war on some insurgent group, we go to some insurgent group's home base, we get shot at. Automatically makes them terrorists, huh? Isn't this the same as any old war - we go to their stronghold, they defend their stronghold in a fierce battle...that sort of thing? I guess by your definition, this would make the English terrorists in their own right, when they were defending THEIR castles against France in the Hundred Years' War. My advice to you: go read a freaking book. Peace may not be the solution to everything, but neither is violence. We don't have to be [kitties] to not want to torture someone; we just have to be human. [EDIT] Looking back, there was a lot of stuff here that I said in the heat of fury. Sorry if it came across too strongly, but that's how I feel about it. You should read up on what torture actually entails, since it's not just a few slaps across the face, or threatening folks. Use buzz words, such as "Iron Maiden", and "Spanish Inquisition", and while you're at it, take a look at a "rack". There are some torture methods that were employed against the Americans in the Vietnamese war as well. Perhaps you're not as stupid as you sound; perhaps you just don't understand.

The very fact that the government has some sort of legal premise to listen to me must mean, in turn, that I did something wrong. If I did something wrong, I have the right to learn what I was charged with (I believe this falls in-line with your Miranda rights, correct me if I'm wrong). If I didn't do anything wrong, then the government simply needs to back off of my phone line. I'll tell you this much - you never know how an agent will take your casual conversation, if they use key words often enough. Besides, why is the agent in my lines anyway? Who cares if I have nothing to hide? I have nothing for them to investigate, either. Oh. So just because they're terrorist suspects, that doesn't make them human? What if they genuinely did nothing wrong, would that justify torturing them? What if they were minding their business on a day in question, and they get manhandled by federal agents, and torture them to get information that he doesn't have? That's unjustifiable, not in the case of national security; not ever. Well... assassination is a believable charge for me because I have -jokingly- spoken with friends about getting rid of a certain someone but then the person who would fill his place would be even worse. There are, and here is one: there is a known attack on a large surveillance plane carrying 20 navy/marines along with classified information. They are sure of this attack and one of the accomplices is in CIA control. The attack is in 2 hrs and the guy knows exactly which of the 3 planes its going to happen to. They torture him and find out which plane it is and they send F17's to escort the plane to the final destination. Had they not done what they did, 20 more American lives would have been lost because they were too afraid to torture some crazy that only wants "death to the infidel". Would you want someone who wants to kill you hett slightly hurt or 20 Americans dead because your too much of a pussie to torture his [wagon]? If I were to be tortured, which is very unlikely considering my family's history, they would have a damn good reason for torturing a 14 year old, straight A, student. At first, I was only going to make an off-the-cuff response to your quote (which I correctly cited), but after reading it, I'm more appaled than I thought I could be. Let's start at the top. 1) The agent listening in on your conversation does not give a damn about your "joke". He'll simply interpret the conversation as a threat, and that's all it will take for you to be arrested. 2) Your entire scenario reeks of ignorance. Torturing people in real life is not only unethical, but you'll probably never get the information you want. You're telling me here that torturing (or as you so ignorantly put it, "slightly hurt") one person to save 20 lives is justified? No, it's not. There are ways to glean information from people without resorting to torture, and if you can't see that, perhaps you shouldn't be debating the issue until you really know.

Force the mixture of both. Get us exposed to it so that we're not entirely dependent on one type of measurement. IIRC, the kind of work that I'll probably go into (Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, NASA, etc) will be exclusively using the metric system, so we'd better know it.

Congratulations, you've successfully contradicted yourself. There are no circumstances, ever, that could justify torturing another human being. What if the loophole existed that allowed authorities to torture you, under suspicion of some grave charge (perhaps regicide or assassination or the like)? Would you believe that it's justified then? Probably not. More to the point of this thread, my feeling is simple. If you defend one right, you are compelled to defend them all. If you waive one right, you are coerced to waive them all. I'll never support wiretaps without warrants, simply because it gives the government too much leeway into invading our privacy. Terrorists can't meet up in a coffee shop, in a park, on a bus, in a movie theater, in a library, that sort of thing...? You're telling me that by having our phones tappable without due course (read: getting the freaking warrant first), this prevents terrorism? What a load of crap.

:lol: <- My reaction to this thread. Thank God I didn't read it all the way during a lecture, that could've gotten some bad looks from the professor... You only need to read up to the line containing "Encyclopedia Dramatica" to get an overview of the entire post, then you can skim through the actual justification of why RS makes kids fat, if you're up for a good laugh. The whole post is nothing more than a joke; don't reply to it seriously. Please.

I suppose the one thing I'm afraid of now is rabid prejudice against players. If someone posts an idea that relates in any way to F2P, or comes off as immature (which is the unfortunate stereotype of F2P, I don't believe it's true), they'll get flamed ten times harder. It's gonna be a real test of mettle whether or not F2P will tolerate the forums. And yeah, 12.5M experience is insane for any freeplayer, let alone player. It's enough of a barrier that allows only the best to post on the forums thus far. I've heard the idea of a 'members only' forum tossed around, and I must confess that it's utter garbage. There'd be no point in having something on the forums that's exclusively members' only; hell, we get enough stuff that's exclusively members' only as it is.

This is great news. To begin with, it keeps mass spammers (those that can create throwaway accounts) out, and it introduces truly high level F2P players to the forums. I see this as a step in the right direction. [i'd also like to keep the flame war out of here...it just doesn't belong.] They're angry because they think they pay for the forums, but they don't normally use them anyway. Besides, and I'm really ballparking this, the TCO of a customized forum (including maintenance, upkeep, servers, and initial programmers) probably only cost them about $90,000...Think about that number in comparison to the $5M/month income they take.

Before I delve too far into this, is 192MB ALL of the memory you have? If it is, we might've solved this mystery already. If it's the video memory, go ahead and tell me the rest of the system memory (not paging file).

This is the information that I gleaned from my program, which I wrote in relation to the tools. Keep this in mind: This is only as relevant as the information that I got, and it only covers the period with which it will last. For instance, the hammer lasts the equivalent of 32K Smithing experience, but the net will actually be double that. private final int PICKAXE = 7140, HAMMER = 32063, HATCHET = 9140, HARPOON = 13750, NEEDLE = 21500, KNIFE = 46875;

Before the waxing of Crossbows, the MSB was the holy grail of Range. (If you look back, you can ironically debate the inverse view of the point of crossbows...) Today, it has little use, but I do find it somewhat useful in situations where a crossbow is too painfully slow, although I haven't trained Range in nigh three years. I suppose it's there for a faster damage alternative to crossbows...I think...

The idea is that a CD (or any optical media for that matter) only needs a smooth surface to be read, so in theory, toothpaste and something that's lightly abrasive will smooth out any scratches on the surface. Your mileage will vary, since toothpaste can only really work for light scratches.

I'm stunned that Compfreak is still going as strong as he is. You'd think that he'd drop it after 24 consecutive hours of debating, but no... Anyway, I'm going to put this nail in the coffin once and for all. Compfreak, the CEO himself came out and said that freeplay isn't a demo, and Members is more of an expansion pack to the game itself. That's as cut and dry as you can get, and if you can't believe that, then it's unfortunate that you can't recognize truth when it spits at your shoes. On top of that, if Jagex really was hellbent on making a profit, don't you think that they'd only be offering a paid version of RS, or even worse, restricting the levels that one can get while on freeplay? But before we go down that slippery slope, what the HELL does that have to do with opening the forums up to 20,000-200,000 high level freeplayers? You've taken this thread and turned it into a P2P vs. F2P flamewar, which isn't the point, and you're reacted to the situation like a spoiled 7 year old, which I alluded to in my first post. Grow up with this nonsense already. Whether or not Freeplay contributes anything to Jagex, or whether or not they deserve anything, at this moment, is entirely irrelevant. If you were mature, you'd have realized this by now. Second, the state of the RSOF, which has been commented either here or abroad, is such that not many members would want to use it anyway, and those that do use it only use the Rants section. Do you use the RSOF? If you don't, why the hell do you care that F2P gets it? Lastly, once you pay Jagex $5, it's their money. They can spend it on whatever they like, including (but not limited to) updates for Members, updates for Freeplay, updates to the forum, system updates, and all that stuff. You no longer have the right to complain (or comment, for that matter) how they spend their finances. Just because you're a paying member does not automatically make you their CFO, and you need to drop the "holier-than-thou" attitude about it. If you genuinely hate that Jagex is spending development resources into making the forums freeplay, then STOP GIVING THEM MONEY and disappear quietly. I know I said that I wouldn't argue any longer, but this is getting out of hand. Be mature about the situation, or stick your bottom lip out, fold your arms, and sit quietly in a corner.

"High level" doesn't just mean combat level, although it's a large factor in the mix. I think it breaks down to: Combat: Level 120 F2P/P2P Skills: Between 1,800-1,900 total level

I see 280 million, not billion. Now, although I feel that Summoning is ridiculously expensive to train, consider the other money sink, Construction. It was put into the game to remove money from the game, without gaining too much collateral in return (although Scrying pool is perfect on PvP worlds), whereas with Summoning, you get useful familiars with certain levels. In conclusion, I feel that although that kind of price is obscene, the cost of getting 1-99 Summoning can be well justified.

It looks like I got to this thread just a little bit late, but I suppose I can echo or further reinforce what dsavi said earlier. I haven't had any problems with PS2 in Wine, but to err on the side of caution, I'd have a separate (and aptly sized, probably nothing bigger than 8% of a 500GB hard disk) Windows partition specifically geared for those applications (especially BF2 and Sony Vegas). Your mileage may vary, and it's relatively safe to run PS in Wine, but being sure is better than being shaky. As long as the partition on the external is FAT or FAT32, you'll be fine. I use a VM Windows XP for tiny applications (ARM emulator). Typically, VM emulation isn't used to play intense games or run intense applications, as there's little chance that the VM would be able to sustain it without some decent portion of RAM assigned to it. If you had something relatively undemanding or moderately small (I think you could get away with Starcraft in VM, but that's only my guess), using a VM would be pretty good. I personally recommend Sun xVM Virtualbox; it's been rock solid for me over the last six months with my Windows-mandatory applications, and fits very nicely with the (Ubuntu) Linux OS.

I'd siggy that if I had the space. Well done. :lol: