Yoko Kurama

Kind of sad they aren't reworking Solomon's Pets/Familiar Overrides to include all pets. Finally there's a Solomon's service that just about everyone wants and has wanted for a while, and they're all like "Nah, we can't do it!". Just do it and take our money, ok?

I don't think the numbers themselves are bad, but keep in mind that shareholders are notoriously interested in short-term profit. Now Jagex isn't publically traded (I think), so I guess they'll have to answer to IVP, and they probably won't be happy with this.

I was thinking this as well. It was like the year parts of the web made a massive show and dance that jagex was in the red and made a lose not a profit, but when you looked the the actual figures they made one of the biggest profits for years, they just decided to re-invest it all with extra credit from investors into expansion. Which far from suggesting a failing that the scaremongers aimed for actually suggested quite a successful year with big profits and enough investor confidence to make such a big re-investment. At the end of the day good revenue with a small profit is the most desirable figures we as players could see. Good revenue means they are doing well and making the money they need to succeed. Small profit means they aren't making an excess of money that investors/management are then skimming off for their own pockets, it means they are re-investing in the company - which is again desirable for players as it means new games, more devs and hopefully better content. Not to be nitpicking, but what great content have we gotten in 2013 that might drain a lot of the revenue? :s 2013 was known as the lackluster update year, so I don't think the revenue went to RuneScape significantly. 2013 was pretty eventful. A horde of new bosses, weaponry/gear, a new (albeit poorly designed) skill, two world events, a fairly signifcant and well recieved quest (TWW). Not saying it was their best year ever, but they did do quite a bit.

Still never ceases to amaze me how many people are stupid enough to risk that sort of stuff for Warbands of all things or whatever.

I'd suggest Sara Sword over Goliaths. Goliaths require substantial effort and only lasts what, 4-5 hours? Don't get me wrong, Goliaths are good, but could get annoying to constantly get new pairs. I guess you could always camp it out at one time and get a large stack of them at once. Get to 80 Attack with Sara Sword, then hash it out at DG to get those Rapiers/Longswords. Also, I think ZGS/BGS are like around 1M (the hilts are below 400K, and the shards are about 450KIsh for 3). So you could also get those.

At the end of the day, they're both silly titles, but just for the sake of argument, let's carry on. Why would it be worse than Defeater? You can leech Defeater once, and that's that. You actually have to put in time and effort for Final Boss (or leech a buttload - which is also effort). It also sounds better and has a better colour. So nope. :D because an unleeched defeater title means you're good at hardmode which requires actual skill rather than doing dumb stuff like mole and afk kilns. That's a pretty distorted and parochial way to look at it to say the least. Final Boss may require Mole kills (which wasn't even that big a part of it, or annoying, as I quite sensibly organized a mass with friends/clannies and we got it done in a few hours), but it also requires 100 kills in Vorago, ROTS, Araxxor, and a few other high tier bosses. Which require arguably far more effort, time, and skill than 1 Hardmode Rago kill. I could have certainly gotten the Defeater title in 1/500th the time and effort that it took me to get Final boss. Final boss indicates engagement with all the PVM content in RS, rather than one lucky leech. Vorago isn't even all that difficult. After a certain amount of experience, it's simply a time drain, and you can coast along. Hardmode is not that much 'harder' than regular mode. Bosses such as Araxxor require arguably as much skill (you can't depend on others, you must rely entirely on your efforts, unless you duo that is, even then it's quite skilled). ROTS is a lot more dangerous, fast-paced, and precarious than Rago. Even the best of teams have terrible days because of how precarious it is. You constantly need to be alert and on your A-game lest you get KO'ed. Even doing Nex (which I duo'ed with a good friend for about 80 of the 100 kills, out of fun) was more effortful and skilful than Rago, as we both had to learn our roles and cosntantly improve for longer trips. In fact, the 'hardest' thing about Hardmode Rago is the artificial difficulty added to it. The part where even though it takes a whole large team to get the kill, only one person gets the title per kill. Which means to get everyone on the team the title, it takes several kills (and several hours) - which is ridiculous though entirely the sort of thing Jagex prefers (no reward for effort). It leads to scenarios where people have to draw up 'mauling lists' (the order in which people on the team will get their title), and it's assumed on good faith that you will stick around and help the others get their title once you get your title if you're earlier on the list. Of course, usually, if it's a forum team, people end up ditching/scamming. Not much effort, just annoying and phony difficulity. Hell even the Warmonger title required more effort when I got it back in May or whatever. The Kiln, silly though it is, is at least a test of patience and persistence. And last but not least, you can leech Defeater (there's even a level four person somewhere with it), but you can hardly leech 100 Vorago kills, 100 Rots Kills, 100 Araxxi kills, and so on. You could if you had a mega bank and some masochistic person selling you that many leeches. There's a reason why there's far fewer Final Bosses than Defeaters. TL;DR: my silly title looks better than your silly title, sounds better than your silly title, requires more effort and skill than your silly title, and is more prestigous, rarer and way k00ler than your silly title. My silly title > your silly title. Oh, and only W48 E-daters get the Defeater title ;)

Why would it be worse than Defeater? You can leech Defeater once, and that's that. You actually have to put in time and effort for Final Boss (or leech a buttload - which is also effort). It also sounds better and has a better colour. So nope. :D

I am the Final Boss:

It basically means they have hit a ceiling on their micro transaction strategy. Where do you go from here?

Source: Insidermedia Interesting to say the least. The last time profits went down, Jagex came up with micro transactions. I wonder what they'll do this time.

I actually agree... Why can't she accept that the world just needs to rely on nuclear and fossil fuel to get things done in the [fantasy] world now. Well I more upset with the fact that she would doom the entire world/universe for the sake of keeping magic for herself. Seems very selfish to me.

I did the quest and all I have to say is Ariane is a completely mindless idiot.

Because they don't have attack animations, simple as that. Well it can't be that hard to give them attack animations. But really though, they don't need attack animations. I only, and I think most people were in the same boat, wanted it for our Pak Yaks (which sees limited combat). They could have made it so that Legendary Pets could be overriden on aggressive familiars/combat familiars, while the other pets could have overriden BoBs/Ponies.

That was the most disappointing thing about today's update. I had been eagerly anticipating this for a long time, and then when it was leaked a few weeks ago, I was excited. But I was always wary that this might happen. I want to override my Yak with my Barrows Bobblehead. :(

Although that's true, most people still prefer the standard turmoil/anguish/torment + Soul Split.

Ah. Well, that's sort of my point. A lot of players aren't paying Jagex any money at all (since they use bonds). But the fact they bought bonds (even with in-game monies) means that someone somewhere did originally buy the bonds with IRL gpies. So profit is still being generated there. But it seems, an ever shrinking group of hardcore players are the ones that Jagex is generating their money from, because it's these players who buy bonds from Jagex and sell to other players. That's the essence of the freemium model. I have bought plenty of stuff from SGS, but always with bonds with in game monies. Small anecdote, but it's relevant. I have other friends who are single, have decent jobs, don't have many responsibilities, and have heavy workloads, and spare money. So they will buy 10, 20, 30 bonds at a time with IRL gp and buy useful spin promotions or ditch the bonds for in game monies, indirectly paying for the memberships of dozens of other people. Jagex has compensated for their declining membership with switching to a freemium model. There's nothing wrong with this (it's quite profitable), but it is more risky than having a large group of people all paying you a little, than having a smaller group of people, out of which a handful pay you lots. That was my only point.

I am not sure what you mean, could you clarify, please?

That's not even remotely true. Runescape was the largest free to player game in the world for years. It did not have a problem attracting new players to the game for most of its existence; in fact for most years, free-to-players outnumbered pay-to-players by 8-9 to 1. Now we have under 500,000 subscribers* (I think), and free players that number far less than that. At its peak, Runescape had 10 million free-to-players, and 1 million subscribers (in late 2007). Even controlling for bots, that's very significant. I don't even see how one could possibly see the same arguments 5 years ago, when Jagex only made the most important change to their business/player base model like 3 years ago (in 2012). *The last known figure was actually 440Kish, but I have decided to round it up.

That's just not how modern corporations/companies work. They will try to exist as long as it is possible, with or without RS. It's more than likely that RS will die before Jagex does. As for the probability that Runescape will blossom more, I don't see how. Runescape is a very old game in its late phase. It hasn't blossomed for years. Its player base has stagnated and declined drastically for years. The game operates basically on a freemium model (unlike the past when it operated on a subscription model). Basically, it operates by micro transaction payments (SGS/ TH) - it extracts a lot of profit from a very small segment of players who are very hardcore and (relatively) wealthy in real life. In freemium models, a very very small minority of the player base generates most of the profits (often less than 1%). It no longer uses a subscription model as its primary means of profit (though obviously they still do sell subscriptions, but they're a smaller part of Jagex's profits), that means they don't depend on constantly having newer players sign up, and then convincing them to buy subscriptions. The numbers bear this out: free to play is practically deserted and Runescape no longer drawing newer players to the game like it used to. This leads to a contradiction where even though Runescape is perhaps more profitable than most of its years, it has less customers than in the past ( a pretty small part of the customer base that actually pays most of the bills - those who buy bonds/SGS). Well, these players will move on at some point in their life, and when they do, it will be over. That's the problem with trying to run a huge company on the backs of a small segment of the customer base: if they leave, it could all crumble. With a larger customer base, you aren't so dependent on so few people, and your risk is dispersed across a large number of customers. After all, in the past when Jagex had 1 million subscribers with more cycling in each month, it was very unlikely that they'd all simultaneously quit. But now that they depend on a few hundred or thousand people at most to buy bonds/spins/SGS hardcore, well it's not very unlikely at all that a few hundred/thousand people decide to quit the game.

I wish them well as developing more games is pretty much vital to their success and existence as a company (the RS golden goose will die some day...), but they don't exactly have any sort of good track record on these things. So yeah...

100 Fight Kilns and and some Araxxor loot:

The sad part is that most of those 'fixes' should have been done through testing and development, not 3-4 weeks after the fact, when the update was already released and people had to sit through their bullshit requirements. Seriously, they are now thinking of making titles trim only instead of Comp? Or making Dungeoneering Recipes purchasable through tokens for a high cost? Why? Did they not realize there were plenty of people with 120 DG or 200M Dungeoneering with lots of tokens who would have loved to spend tokens on recipes instead of wasting their time, or going without Comp? They are just now going to write up a piece on 'guidelines' about what to expect for 'Comp and Trim reqs'? If they can't properly assess the implications of their own updates, then they either need to open beta servers for this sort of stuff, OR give Comp Cape a grace period, so we aren't forced to either go without comp and wait weeks until they fix their ill-planned requirements, or actually suffer through them. This stuff is infuriating.

One person in my clan got all 9 recipes from 1 attempt at the MAW (he just kept on re clicking after each recipe), like a day or two ago. Ridiculous.

Mod Hunter implied that the moss is currently glitched. Even with all the boosts, it is still possible for you to get 1 moss from a pillar (I have had it happen, as have others, with Perfect Juju + Magic Secs + Greenfingers). Mod Hunter seemed to be implying this was not intended.

Don't worry, it always takes two or three nerfs/un-nerfs to get the balancing just right. Only because Jagex is always the last people to know stuff about their own game. Their rational for nerfing the Moss Requirement is that it took way longer than any other requirement for Comp for Elf City. Really? They just figured that out now? Myself, and every other player in the game, were able to a simple calculation to determine that in 2 minutes, but apparently it took Jagex a week to figure that out. I wonder how long it will take them to fix Edimmus. You can currently camp them indefinitely despite the fact that they are supposed to be task only. To what real benefit though? I thought they offered neither good xp nor drops... Well they also need to fix that. They currently have 32K hp, are aggressive, give 1 charm at a time (and give them fairly uncommonly), have bad loot, give 800 slayer xp, and the Big Edimmu has a worse chance for dropping shards than the normal one. You also get assigned several hundred at a time, so it's a long task. The Shadow Cores have 15K lifepoints, are not aggressive, are very easy to kill, and give 930 slayer experience. You usually get assigned around 100+ of these. Kalgerion Demons have 32K HP, are not aggressive, give 1800+ slayer experience, have good drops, give common and triple charms. And you get assigned maybe 100 or so of them at a time. Every person that I know was able to conjure up all these facts and was able to determine within 2 minutes that Edimmus were a block-worthy task, but apparently not Jagex.