Zepheras

To be honest, with items like handcannon, ancient spells, arcane stream, it's balanced damage-wise imo. Mage is extremely deadly if used right. The catch is cost - atm, dunge items in PVP don't work well because it's so hard to replace. Once Jagex makes it cheaper to replace items you've purchased before, and adds the second patch of dungeoneering in like the fall or w/e so we have higher floors to gain more exp on, I think we'll be good. The other thing is runes cost too much. The reason people don't train RC that much, or get high levels, is because it's very slow. Still profitable. One idea I have to fix this is to implement more multiple runes per ess. Have multiple runes for ALL runes based on the level for air runes. SO at 99, you could make 10 of every rune. Dunno how well that would go down, but it'd make mage a lot cheaper ;) And actually, in case you haven't noticed, Jagex IS slowly making mage better. The Surge spells are actually pretty decent, Staff of Light, Arcane Stream.....slowly, slowly.... Hmm, to reiterate other ideas, unlimited bolts at the very least is a bad idea. Arrows wouldn't be as bad tbh. As for spells, no unlimited ancients, but perhaps unlimited elemental spells, a tier lower then the best spell you can cast. I.E., I can cast fire surge, so I'd be able to cast unlimited fire WAVE somehow. If this idea is implemented - personally, I don't like it much. The problem with Magic is that for normal PVM like Slayer, damage rate for an average mage is lower than that compared to an average meleer or ranger. Sure, if you get the best of every gear and both would be equally deadly in terms of max damage, but who's going to overload for Slayer? Melee is practically free since weapons can be resold, and rangers use broad bolts with accumulator for normal training. The normal spellbook should be tweaked such that medium cost would allow mages to hit more or less the same as a ranger using broad bolts. Add more magic weakness to several monsters, such as with ice strykewyrms. Depending on the rune demand, Runecraft formula can be tweaked to meet that as well. Even potions too, I drink a dose of super set and get a +18 stats boost, and drink back up with I'm down to +5, that's 14 minutes per dose. For magic, I use the wolpertinger special which is +7 magic (which I believe is the equivalent of an extreme magic dose), for a total of 21% damage boost, but it can only last at most 7 mins?

When I think of balancing the combat triangle, I like to think in such a way. Pit a 10 ranged/defence player, a level 10 def 10 mage/defence playerand a level 10 strength/attack/defence playeragainst each other in their best equipment for that level and without hybriding. Record the amount of victory and loss including time taken for each round, adjust the maximum damage and the defensive capabilities of gear , and repeat the whole process for level 20, 30, 40, 60, 70 and such. Once the damage and armour stats have been fixed, THEN go into the cost fixing. Personally I think that magic being expensive is a result of people unwilling to train Runecrafting as opposed to say, Fletching. Rune saving abilites and such, while nice, are more like brute force solutions that don't solve the fundamental problems. Your suggestion for binding a non-refundable amount of ammo/runes to the weapon isn't the most elegant way to solve the problem either. I have grand ideas for Magic, and I'm sure everyone has some ideas and suggestions as to how to improve the combat system. But the fact is Jagex is too inefficient and unwilling to make the changes for fear of a heavy backlash from the players themselves.

They should release it, in the patch notes or something.

The question isn't how much lore there is left unanswered, but how fast Jagex can answer them, either in the form of text, or quests with epic cutscenes. With approximately 16 quests per year (2010 is slightly below average this year), and the elves, myreque, dwarf, desert quests etc still ongoing, Armadyl and Jas can take a queue number and come back 3-5 years later. And then there's the quality of existing quests. Needless to say the content team doesn't always think ahead of the plot and plan the quest accordingly, leading to several loopholes and contradicting points here and there. The constant changing of graphics standard also meant that some quests look outdated compared to current ones. Lastly, many quests just aren't that realistic when you try to squeeze so many races into one small continent.

Mahjarrat and Dragonkin are more awesome tbh. Honesttly, I don't know how epic the quest would be. Gielinor is so squeezy and disporportional in land mass that many supposed epic quest scenes and textual description of major events seems to be scaled down when you saw the actual thing. If Jagex releases a book written based on the Dorgeshuun series and flesh up the dialogue and lore about the twelve goblins tribes, Yu'biusk and Bandos, it'll probably be nice to read. But the quests themselves just weren't epic enough for me. The most memorable scene I can remember would be the door that you unlocked to get to the location of the tormented demons and Stone of Jas during WGS, because that's the first time I see a gate/door that isn't te height of our avatar. :rolleyes:

One thing's for sure, we won't get any more information on Jas and Freneskae unless the Ritual quest's going to turn into one long history lesson. I'm trying to compare what we've seen and learned about Bandos and the history of goblins in the Dorgeshuun series, to set my level of expectation for the Majharrat and dragonkin's.

Not sure if you've seen this before: But nowadays, I'm rarely impressed with cutscenes made by Jagex. Walking NPCs in a fight? Arrows and magic spells that fly at and amazingly slow speed an trajectory path even for 1-2 squares apart? Now the only nice cutscenes I remember are the ones showing the overall scenery, such as when you enter Keldagrim for the first time, and the opening section of the Dungeoneering video....oh well, yet another fundamental problem with the game. :rolleyes: Sometimes I wonder what's the core issue with the game, lack of staff? Instability of the language used to write the game? Never have I seen a game where the same bug keeps appear over and over and over. Till today capes are still giving us problems, and just not too long ago skill capes on males become shorter than usual for no reason at all. :wall: Gah, writing all these kills my mood to log in and grind my prayer up. :wall:

I wasn't actually impressed with the History quests when I did them. To me they seem to have been rushed out to fill an update week instead of being well thought out to fit the lore. I don't really remember what the two quests were about, so I checked out RS wikia just 5 minutes ago, and was reminded of how quests in RS work; once you've done them the first time round it's hard to read the full plot anywhere else. But anyway, there's tons of contradicting and/or missing information (or that I can't remember what happened in the quest) in Making History and the outpost itself that I'll probably need clarification from someone. And re-reading the information on all the NPCs involved in the quest just makes me more confused than ever. <_< Meeting History was well, the way those people just popped out of a portal looks ridiculous, we don't even farm the fruit trees that the people in the past were farming, the introduction to herblore seems weak when the player that is us becomes the guy who did it, whole time travelling to fix the past isn't my cup of tea to know about the history and lore, and if we're the central character who travelled in time and made impacts in history, we should be like Hiro from the Heroes, someone who is in control of time. The fact that we're given the crystal from an unknown source just seems....weird. What I hope for is the expansion of Varrock Library to be an actual library, much like how the museum functions. Have more old books/diaries/scrolls discovered in quests about real time events, and eventually having a set in the library to read about. Flesh up the events instead of leaving things hanging here and there, so that RS wikia and its group of earnest users can piece the lore together to form a more reader friendly version. I mean, we're playing RuneScape in the land of Gielinor during the 5th Age right? Search RS wikia for information on the history of runes, ages, and runecrafting, all you get is a few lines on the first 1-4 ages, the picture of how Guthix created runes in Meeting history (one of the worst cutscenes in my opinion), barely any history on runecrafting altars (because they weren't all released at the same time, because Jagex somehow decided that runecrafting skill can be released with several altars unreleased until months/years later, and thus can't start writing history when you don't have everything to begin with). The percentage of WoW players who know the term 'azeroth' is easily many times that of RS players who know about the term 'Gielinor'. I don't even play any warcraft games and I see this name often enough. :blink:

If the Dark Lord of the elves is Zamorak as it's commonly suspected, the elven series is already a branch of the Mahjarrat series. Also, the Dark Bow can shoot dragon arrows, so it was likely created by the Dragonkin and it hints that the world that Arianwyn calls "Zamorak's world" and where Iorwerth is trying to open a portal to is Freneskae, the home world of the Mahjarrat, Dragon items and also likely the Dragonkin. Freneskae is a "deathly" place according to a Postbag from the Hedge post. Was the death altar built over a portal to Freneskae? In Blood Runs Deep (a Fremennik/Lunar/Miscellania quest) it was told that there will be "The End of Things". Seems to be an obvious reference to Ragnarök. Second war of gods? Frostenhorn = Gjallarhorn? Lucien = Loki (the god who starts Ragnarök)? Freneskae = Helheim, the Underworld? Koschei the Deathless is suspected to be Kharshai the Mahjarrat. Koschei the Deathless is a lich character in Russian mythology. Isn't the Sophanem/Menaphos series same as the series with Amascut and Icthlarin? Icthlarin brought the Mahjarrat to Gielinor. And with so many reference to the same storyline from multiple quests, don't you think that we'll be left with a void of emptiness should so many quest series conclude in a single quest at the end of this year? And if not all series would end with this Ritual of the Majharrat, how impressive would they be? And do we have to wait for ten years for the Eastern Lands to develop to the stage of Gielinor today? The point is, Jagex isn't releasing updates at a pace suitable for a company that has operated for so many years. Not that I like to compare with WoW, but that game has over 81,000 articles on their wikia, be it lore or game mechanics, against RuneScape's 15,000 articles, and both are comparable in terms of development time. RuneScape is pretty simplified in its gameplay, which may appeal to many players as well, but lore-wise they are taking their own sweet time. The length of the whole story arc that we have right now in RS seems comparable to what I'll get if I play a single offline RPG such as newer games of the Final Fantasy franchise.

Supposedly some asian looking land. There's a NPC in Port Phasmatys that came from there by the name of Ak-Haranu, you can see his design to get an idea. RS wikia has an article on it as well. http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/Eastern_Lands And nice 5th generation pokemon avatar. =D>

So I was doing my usual Slayer training and occasional Castle Wars today, and at the same time looking through my stats and quest list. I could still remember the first time I joined member and how the list of quests undone was overwhelmingly long, but right now I have only nine quests to go. It's not like I'm having difficulty completing them either. Quests are one of my favourite activities in the game, so I only choose to do them whenever I feel like it, and every quest I did I read through every possible dialogue options. Referring to runescape wikia, the quest series that have ended nice and neat are the Fairy Tale series (4 quests), Dorgeshuun series (5 quests), and the Spirit of Summer series (2 quests). Unfinished storyline that probably won't cross over with the Majharrat series directly and can end nicely on their own would be the Elemental Workshop, Fremmenik/Moonclans, Gnome, Myreque, Pirate, Dwarf/Red Axe, Sophanem/Menaphos, Penguin/Slug and the Elven series. Some other quests may have a storyline of their own in the future, others are just out of place. Of course, the Majharrat/Dragonkin series is one of the most important quests in the game, featuring a lore about the central theme of Gielinor, linking the gods and the god wars, majharrats, dragons and dragon weapons, as well as involving many other quest series in one way or another. I'm sure some of you know that the final quest related to the ritual itself would be coming out near the end of 2010, but browsing through my quest list got me thinking, "What's left of the lore of Gielinor after this?" The story of how Guthix modfiied the plane known as Gielinor with the Stone of Jas, how Zaros fell and Zamorak came to power, how he gathered the Majharrat, how the God Wars came about, and how Lucien is attempting godhood with a bunch of other Majharrat in other series gaining power would conclude THIS YEAR. Then? After the remaining not-so-breathtaking storylines end, is Jagex still going to limit all the lore and history within this one continent alongside a few islands? Start another quest with a NPC in Dorgeshuun who a favour to ask, and end the series in Varrock? Have the elves clash with the penguins one fine day? Here's the thing; If we're talking about completing every realistic achievement in the game, then perhaps I myself am quite far from the end. However, it seems to me that I'm seeing the endgame of the lore of Gielinor, with the current rate of expansion and depth, along with bugs that Jagex have to repeatedly spend time fixing every single week and release patch notes about them. The core storyline is ending soon, Gielinor itself is pretty squeezy, a bunch of areas have yet to receive their due graphical update to keep in line with the rest of the areas, I'm not sure when would I get to enter Prifddinas, Jagex is giving us updates at the same rate as years ago, and Eastern Lands would probably take another 10 years to reach the state of Gielinor at the pace we're going. Anyone else feels the same?

Very, one game correctly set up and rigged? Or just some rich idiot witth a divine and barrages? And for the range xp, maybe got bored and went to arma? It's the latter. I saw him in several CW games.

Congrats to Tripsis for getting her artwork in the gallery, though I prefer the other artist's dragon armour work. Tripsis'dragon warrior looks a little more like a ninja in red than a dragon knight. :unsure: Probably the result of trying to emulate the in-game dragon armour design, which isn't to my liking as well.

Yep, brews are now "useless" for soloing, I guess they're good for boss monsters that hit slowly over a longer fight as you're getting more space for them. However if you're in danger of getting killed and need to heal quicker, you're better with sharks. And now I just realised that Nomad still exists for me... That'll be fun without Brews in their old state... Glad I did it like three days ago :thumbup:

And taking away usefull content. What is the definition of usefull content? Content that gets used lol. In a few weeks, if all the rewards are like that, I'm sure this update won't be used. And what's the definition of useless content? Stuff that gives XP in skills that you've already gotten 99? :rolleyes: Gah, no judge's robes or something? :wall:

I don't know what's with Jagex's obsession when it comes to graphical rework of items in the INVENTORY. Does it matter if the runes look a little different? Put the effort into rework for equipable items and areas like Ape Atoll, Gnome Stronghold please! <_<

Let's hope that this system update will improve my luck for boss hunting. <_<

You're not actually solving a problem at its root but providing an alternative way to bypass it. :rolleyes: In my exaggerated scenario you should be finding out why items have an extra zero added, not telling me to buy shrimps. I still want to use the Grand Exchange and GP to buy anything whenever I need to, not buy shrimps so that I don't lose any buying power and go around searching for people to trade my shrimps for iron ore one week later when I need it. Not everyone would be willing to, even if the value is the same. Good thing we aren't suffering from a hyperinflation, and you're not the guy coming up with a solution. :thumbsup: Even if we aren't suffering from inflation, optional money sinks aren't a bad idea. NPC shops selling expensive items to drain GP off for those who have the GP can be a nice new content for the rich and powerful players.

Technically, no. Inflation means an increase in the supply of money. Often, prices rise because of an inflated supply of money but it isn't necessarily so. (emphasis added)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation Inflation does not have to be an increase in the supply of money. In the equation I posted (that's pretty well accepted by economists), MV = PQ That is to say, P = MV / Q. IF (and this is a big if) the velocity of money and the transactions that occurred were held constant, inflation would exactly equal the change in the supply of money. In the current economic crisis, its known that the supply of money has greatly expanded (and by some estimates tripled). Why haven't we seen inflation? The velocity with which the money is moving is practically zero. Can you please explain to me why it matters if a shrimp costs 5 gp or 6 gp? Let's have an exaggerated scenario. If the inflation rate, or the rate of net GP flowing into the game is such that everyday, the price of every item gets a zero added to it. Shrimp's 5 gp and iron ore's 200 gp today, 50 gp and 2000 gp tomorrow, 500 gp and 20000 gp the day after. One iron ore is still equivalent to 40 shrimps, but anyone with 5 gp on his hand today won't be able to get anything tomorrow. The purpose of GP is to act as a universal currency, and with inflation no one wants GP on his hand. Unless you think that barter-trading is the way to go, inflation should be curbed.

Just be happy that courtroom cases weren't remade into a 'Law' skill. \:D/ RuneScape not really a fantasy MMO to me. It has tons of real life references, non-so-creative item names, NPCs acting really modernistic.... It's just a game without a strong lore, and pretty much anything goes. Edit: testing out this emote.... \:D/

Uh....Which quest concluded the Mahjarrat series? Keyword being concluded. :unsure:

Someone's being extremely delusional. I suggest you go through the older threads here a few hundred pages back and read them yourself. We already knew about this upcoming update a good few weeks back, and you still have to act all surprised and irritated?

We can finally get rid of the obscure twitter hints that almost no one guess correctly every week, along with injecting our personal hopes and dreams before they are dashed the next day. Unless it's blatantly obvious. :thumbsup:

I highly doubt the image's anything RS-related. When's the last time a twitter hint for RS comes in the form of an image, and earlier than Sunday? Then again, I won't need the hint to guess which update's coming next.

I don't get why people even 'like' the old armour, or anything old in general. I can understand the nostalgic feelings people may have for certain things like old dance emote and stuff, but something as plain and generic-looking as the CW armour? Shaped like your standard metal armour, with colour schemes that makes no sense? I'll take the new design over the old anytime soon.