Makoto_the_Phoenix

Jagex and the entire RuneScape community would have to have a revolutionary cultural rethink to implement any sort of cash shop that wouldn't enrage veterans or alienate new players. I'm not sure either can invest the time into that right now, nor do I think that Jagex would be able to successfully implement it, in their current business model's mental state. Or better yet, let's borrow form the spirit of what the article suggests - free to play isn't a bad business model, nor does it bleed money. Think of it this way. If RuneScape were not free, would you have ever considered playing it in 2002? In 2003? How about in 2005, when WoW was its major competitor? What about 2 years ago, when the MMO market was overflowing with options and opportunities? A company can use free to their financial advantage, if they are both careful at how they approach the model, and earnest in their free offerings. If Jagex were to give F2P a positive reason to pay - not necessarily just through Membership or in-game items - innocuous perks like slightly more bank space or better account security or such - then they could make the F2P model, which drove them to such success, work for them once again.

It's a bad thing for players to take pride in a totally free game, he says. It's not a good business strategy, he says. I don't think that argument gets you very far nowadays.

Okay. This goes too far. I don't mind free trials, but I also like opting out of anything I wouldn't want to be a part of. There's nothing wrong with being pure F2P now, especially in a time in which F2P is being slowly phased out. If this is the way they want to play/enjoy the game, don't despise it.

You may certainly withdraw your $5 if you disagree with their personnel moves, which is something I see no problem with. About it not being our business? It's very clearly a PR matter, as well as his past and his current position within the company being very prominent and in the open. If it isn't our business, we're just not paying enough attention. That aside, I don't see much of a problem with Jacmob getting hired. (Déjà-vu; I think I replied to this thread earlier.) It's tough to overlook what he did in the past, no doubt about that, but it's better to have someone that's exploited your weaknesses on your side than not. This is why hackers can find work (one example: George Hotz), and are often respected in the field that they work in.

I can only echo what RU_Insane said; the items still belong to Jagex. Only Jagex in any reasonable case can demonstrate a legitimate claim to exclusivity.

This is not true. Knowledge of even an IP, registration e-mail, and enough guessing can be enough to recover an account (which is ridiculous, Jagex). Finally, someone else knows how things really work, instead of people just guessing that they are right. Fine, I'll give you that. But at this point, you effectively argue against any RS account being secure, let alone one that has a lifetime membership. I don't share your paranoia in that someone that has a lifetime membership may become a prime target for recoveries or attacks, but it's not outside of the realm of possibility. Seriously, though. If you're that worried that someone is going to compromise your account, then don't participate in the competition. Or post your RSN on public forums, for that matter.

1) Read what I said about 1 above 2) Read again what I said please. And it isn't an argument, it is an opinion. 1) Even keeping your recovery questions secure is a part of keeping the account secure. End of. 2) Fine then; I don't see what your paranoia is. You don't lose any cash when you've won a lifetime membership, and it's always in your best interests to stay within Jagex's rules. Then again, this rationale is similar to buying membership anyway - if you're going to make an investment in the game, be it of money or time, you don't want to break the rules to get banned. Jagex doesn't just ban players on a whim, contrary to popular fear.

Of that 70%, 70% are the ones that react on a specific part that they don't care for. So it's only like 49% of players that resent change illegitimately. On topic: The armors don't look that bad. I'm not much of a fan of the Dragon armor for females; the breastplate portion on the chain looks out of place. Everything else looks quite alright; shiny is good. Does anyone know if they revamped the Ancient Warriors and 3rd Age?

1) When one is compromised, the intruders are more concerned with the goods on the account, and not so much the account itself. If the account is found engaging in RWT or something else against Jagex's policy, the lifetime membership would be removed. This alone is incentive enough to keep the account secure, which is something that the player should always be doing. 2) Jagex makes no money from someone on lifetime membershp, so I fail to see your argument. Well, if entries are only taken via official forums, and their posting privileges were revoked - either fairly or unfairly - I would believe so. It sucks, but if that's how Jagex wants to do it...

So, they're going to get more people to join Members to get more SoF rolls to potentially get lifetime membership on a tribal tattoo that you have a[n estimated] 1:10,000 chance to win. Clever. As much as I hate to admit it, I see this actually getting more people to join up, since you never know when impossible odds are going to be on your side.

When I still played, I was pretty up front with them, let them know I'm looking for a meaningful and interesting conversation with them if they want to be friends. Instead of saying "yes" or "no" if they asked to be friends straight away, I'd try to engage them in [what I considered] meaningful and interesting conversation. If they took well to it, I added them. If they didn't, I wouldn't. I played with Public on, and the ones that I enjoyed talking to resonate pretty strongly with me, so if I remember the conversation that I had with them, there's usually no problem. If I don't remember it or I didn't like their conversation, then I didn't reply, or I'd try to figure out where we met up. Anyway, that's how I did it.

I'm sure one day I'll remember what I wanted to put here for real...had to move computers since mine was the only one with a free scanner at work. Anyway, this doesn't come as a surprise to me. Stellar Dawn is the new Duke Nukem Forever. Looking back at their portfolio though, I'd be really worried if I were an investor right about now - Funorb is pretty much on its deathbed, that one flash game Jagex published War of Legends mostly faded from everyone's memory, 8Realms doesn't seem all that interesting of a Facebook game, and RuneScape's popularity has been on a downward spiral since the first time they removed Wilderness/FT. Five years is a long time in the game industry. Almost too long to wait to get a good product out for a demographic that is ridiculously fickle.

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Gnomes finally get a graphical update, so that's a plus. I don't see anything eye-jarring from this BTS, so it's not a bad looking March. Then again, most everything that gets players riled up is in "In Other News" anyway, so...yeah. [EDIT] To above picture: Not a bad look for Green d'hide armor. Overall though the Dragon armor looks too..."ornate"...for my tastes. Also, didn't they mention something about a kiteshield?

Took me a bit longer to sit down and digest what the update really was today. I'd write a longer spiel on it, but I don't have the inclination to yet. TL;DR: This update was a waste of development resources, and does nothing to encourage/entice players to become serious Members. The amount of time to develop or place this code in could have been better spent working on updates that would truly get players interested in the game again. A new look on what content the game has, and what should be revamped would have been a more welcome update than this - what looks like it was thrown together in three hours. Even more problematic - if Jagex decides to "nerf" this update, and make it so the lucky items have a degradation period, then the update will become absolutely worthless; the rarity of the item coupled with the duration of the item won't be of any benefit to anyone. It doesn't really affect the market (except for panickers), since the item is still rare. But it doesn't include the risk of losing equipment fighting the NPC to collect it, which doesn't balance it properly enough in my opinion. Aside from that, it is wildly removed from canon. A random goblin with a magical random wheel with these epic lucky items just appears out of nowhere and gives you a chance at winning stuff...the [bleep] is that? Why is this relevant to RuneScape? Why not just add them to the Loyalty Shop? I mean, as much as I dislike the Loyalty Program, you could add the tats, horns, katana, or whatever the heck you wanted to toss in there to it. That is actually something that has a chance of retaining Membership, and it would appropriately display the value of these cosmetic items. The true salt in the wound is the chance to get Members' items, and then forcing the player to either keep the epic item with Members, or discard it. This part pisses me off the most - it's like saying you'll give away 12 batches of ice cream for free, but the extra awesome batches are only for long-time paying customers. If you're going to do it half-assed, it's not worth doing at all! Overall, Jagex doesn't accomplish a damn thing with this update. They want to get more Members, but they're only listening to short-term gimmicks and ploys, instead of building on a rich mountain of existing lore and content. My hope is that they fire whomever is pitching this crap to them, as well as whomever is forcing them to develop this, and get back to making RuneScape a more engaging game to play.

Don't speak it into existence...it would be scary, but ironically more fulfilling. Loved your post though. On another note, did anyone get above 30fps? I managed to pull 5fps in the lobby yesterday when no one was speaking. Hope they get that sorted soon.

I don't see this as a beneficial update at all. It gives more benefit to luck than actual time spent in-game. Although this is something analogous to lucky drops at boss monsters, it doesn't add the balance of having to fight the monster to get the reward in the first place. Possibility of a F2P account getting Members rewards? How is this, in any shape, beneficial? How does it interest people into becoming members? Really, what the heck were they thinking when they deployed this? </flame>

All the bots and bot types are back now, it seems. There's definitely "more players" showing on-line and the typical botting locations from before are all populated with the same bots, once again. These aren't screen srapers, either, they're reflection-type bots, too. I am hopeful in hearing that there may be another bot nuke in March, especially since March is only a couple of days away. If this goes on much longer, we're going to see the same pre-nuke scenario we saw last time. I only hope that, this time, Jagex actually bans them all, instead of giving them amnesty and a roll-back. I think that the weakest portion of the bot nuke was the granting of amnesty. I'm not too sure if Jagex can keep nuking bots and continue to have a playable game much longer (DRM slows games down), but I'm ambivalent about their potential for success. It's definitely been said before that a technical solution alone can't solve this problem.

I don't see how the early bird bonuses are "positive", per se, as opposed to holding on to an effigy. One can get an effigy at random on a task without the skills to open it (which implies guaranteed experience), but depending on one's schedule and play routine, one may indeed miss out on the early bird bonus because their Agility or their Magic wasn't high enough at the time. Not to mention, the apology is in a similar tone that has been heard before.

Regardless of how effective this anti-Reflection update is, technology will march on. Jagex did a great job by technically crippling them (and coming out victorious in lawsuits), but so long as the system can be exploited, and so long as there is a market for these goods, technical solutions alone will not resolve the problem, nor will lawsuits deter them - it may even get to a point in where lawsuits are too costly for Jagex to maintain.

I'll take the leap of faith and assume, for the sake of argument, that there is indeed a free trial. There's evidence to suggest that it's true. (This also explains the swell of accounts in the HS that are lower than level 30 in some skills, or the fact that the Membership "count" has exceeded 750K.) The only issue I see - with this new promotion, Jagex is admitting that their F2P content isn't as good as they claimed, and is taking a more proactive approach to advertise Members. The main thing I see is that it doesn't change anything, or fix any "problems" with the F2P content.

When I was playing, I wouldn't have had any qualms with leveling Runecrafting if it had better rewards for the time I would put into it. Something like crafting talismans, gathering different, high-yield essence (which would give more experience per rune), something, anything that would spice the skill up - and I would want to train it. Take away that and you take away any reason to level the skill except for maxing out. That makes a game a chore, which isn't the point at all. I like how the opinions of the people who play the game have no weight in what happens to the game. Famous last words resurrected from their [self-admitted] rock climbing boots blunder?

Given Jagex's track record (Artisan's Workshop), I don't have that much confidence in their next update for a skill that needs to be reworked.

I don't see it...any link or reference or picture or anything?

I agree and disagree at the same time. I don't (or didn't) see anyone demanding that every grindy skill - Agility and Runecrafting to name a few - be made easier. The main contention is to make the skill more rewarding for the amount of time invested into leveling. If one can't get a sense of fair reward in exchange for their time, they will perform another activity that gives them that fair reward for their time. I don't mind if a skill is slow, but please, make it worth the time. I'd say that "work" is subjective. Is it less or more work for someone to buy all of the goods for 99 in <insert buyable here> than it would be had they gathered everything for themselves? Take Cooking for example - I have that as another 99 of mine. It was looked down upon because it's considered "easy" (read: buyable). The truth is, I spent about 3 months gathering the rocktail needed to get that level (and I also got 99 Fishing too). I don't feel that the skill was cheapened any because its rate of experience was higher than the amount of Fishing I had put in (I had about...92 Cooking; it took me 2 days to get to 99 with the Rocktail). I wouldn't feel that my efforts to get 99 in Fishing was cheapened by effigies either; the person that wanted to use their effigies on that felt that it was a better time investment to gather them up however, and use them on that one skill. Admittedly, Jagex's move may have been one to strike a balance in their game, but since there's a huge divide between amount of time required to level certain skills and quantity of reward, they've only addressed a symptom of a larger problem. I suppose if we wanted this issue to go away, a proper revamp of skills would be far better. [Yeah, I'm talkin' to the guy that thought that Dwarven workshop in Fally was a Smithing "revamp".] Heck, I'd be willing to accept effigy drops only on slayer tasks to avoid mass farming.