Yoko Kurama

It wasn't always that way. WGS and ROTM certainly were deserving of that title in every respect. It was only the Void Knight Quest (and I am not sure about this, I barely remember it) that gives you Korasi's sword, and the quests since then under the GM title, Brink of Extinction, and TWW (lovely quest, but too short) that haven't been up to standard. I would like for the title to be treated seriously again. Also, they said that, to them, the GM label means 70+ in a members skill, and 70-75 in a free skill. Now I don't care about requirements too much, but it's funny that with several thousand maxed players, and people focused on maximizing experience more than ever, that this is the highest standard they have conceived.

I have 130M Dungeoneering experience (the only skill I have wholeheartedly loved, and still love, and have found extremely engaging and fun throughout the years), and even I, with my spare 4 million tokens, don't have a fully-upgraded ring track. Why? Because they're useless, the last 2 levels or whatnot. You can bet that most people under 99 don't have a fully-upgraded ring.

I have listened to a lot of podcasts to catch up on what I have missed, and I just listened to today's, and my god are they dull. All of those people who ask the questions need to be shot. It's always the most mundane and insipid questions -- nothing that I find interesting. And the few good ones always get flippant answers: "Question: How come GM quests aren't as long as they used to be? Mod Mark: I don't think they should be 4 hours or long for it to be a GM quest. I could make you kill monkeys for 4 hours but that wouldn't be that fun, would it?" Meh. Maybe someone should tell him that quantity changes quality. We don't want lengthy quests just cuz, we want them to be meaningfully lengthy. It's like University and essays/papers. They always have a word/paper limit. And a minimum limit too. Because there's a certain standard set: certain experiences must have certain lengths. Also, despite all these podcasts, no one seems to have asked them when the next Mahjarrat sequel is going to be. That's really annoying. I want to know, damnit! Everyone is obsessed with Elves/Seren or Bassica Prime. The former is interesting but not as interesting as the Mahjarrat storyline (not even close), and the latter is a joke people need to get over. I am all for memes and jokes, but are people still asking for content and lore to revolve around a giant cabbage? Oh, they did mention that there will be at least 3 more World Events, but not more than 10. They did also try to say "I know some people think that the Battle of Lumbridge was a glorified and hollow event, but that's totally not true!" (they actually said something to that effect, it's an accurate paraphrase). I sort of lol'ed. They then went on to say that they want the World Events to be something "special and something that people remember they were there for". More lol. Events are fun and memorable when they aren't just generic grinding. The World Wakes was fun (though too short). The Ritual of the Mahjarrat was fun. While Guthix Sleeps was fun. Branches of Darkmeyer was incredibly fun. Those are things that I think about, cherish, and reminisce fondly about. I don't think the same way about Bol because all I can remember is agonizing grinding. Here's hoping the next World Events are nothing like this one.

The second guy is only like 1M points away from Drumgun. All it would take is for Drumgun to slack off for one day, maybe go on a vacation, or have some pressing urgent matter, and he'd be number 2. I don't think anyone is a safe bet, yet.

Runescape won't ever really be a word-of-mouth game again, not at this stage of its development. Those of us who are here are here because we are creatures of habbit and we were sucked in while we young. In my life, I have been part of many word-of-mouth incidents. But I doubt I will ever be part of that again. How could I be? I am a Maxed player. If any friend of mine joined, it wouldn't be at least several years of dedicated effort on their part before they catched up to me. I can't just do noob stuff with them, that's boring, and you can only do that a few times before it becomes a burden. I could start a new account (as many players do), but that's completely unappealing to me. So what am I supposed to say to them? If you really grind it for several years, then we can do some cool stuff together? Furthermore, in this market it just can't appeal to newer players. This particular MMORPG model is too outdated. It's grinding all the way through, and it's like work. Even the distractions and the minigames which are supposed to be fun are like work, sometimes even more like work than the skills which they are allegedly supposed to distract us from. You just can't advertise it like other games or it has been advertised in the past. How can they? "Come grind with us for years for no apparent purpose! It will be so much fun. You see these monsters, or these balls, well if you click at them for 300 hours, you can be 99, and then do nothing!" That's just not exciting and it can't be covered up. All the other games on consoles, and even fun diversionary games on tablets would give it a tough challenge. Runescape has no instant gratification, and increasingly no delayed gratification either. It's not like a console game where even if you have never played it, you can go to a friend's house with a few other buddies, and they can teach you the mechanics and it's immediately fun, and within an hour or so, you are decent at it. And eventually you get quite good at it, it's instant fun even for newbies, and it's something you can all do. If it's such great fun you might even buy your own. How can do you that with Runescape? One of you plays on the computer woodcutting, while 5 others watch you disinterestedly? In fact, that would be boorish and rude to do: playing a game like Runescape while your friends watch (unless they were immediately interested in it). Because you probably only have 1-2 computers. So what are they supposed to do? Watch you grind for an hour? Even if you try to incite them with some of the few fun things left to do (boss hunting), well that would be dishonest, as it's not something they can do that night or instantly, they'd have to train for a few years before they had the levels and the gear to do it. The only viable target is if they get lots of young players or new players. Runescape, in 2007, had 1M members and 9M free players. Even if you assume that the overwhelming majority of people on f2p were bots, that still leaves a few million real f2p players. What that meant was Jagex could always cycle them to grow p2p or maintain rates, by simply encouraging someone to subscribe, even for a month. But we can't even return to a big influx of new players, because Runescape will never compete in the markets as successfully as it has ever done so in the past, because there are plenty of games that are actually games: they offer relaxing instant gratification. Runecape can't do that for new players in the same way. It's just such a huge game that it would like an insurmountable challenge to new players. I had the good fortune to join this game when it was small, and I grew with the game back in the days before the experience or achievement cape craze, when people really did just play it for fun, so it was not too large or unwieldy for me then.

I got my outfit and the 2 titles (High Priest), and still no bonus title. Oh well, back to Divination, if I have time later on I might try to get a title. It's been glitched for a long time. No fix yes. The outfit is fixed just like comp cape, you can't buy another if you Keepsake it. All they would have to do is use the exact same fix as they had for the comp cape. Also annoying is instance worlds. In node-finding friend's chats, you get instances a lot. Just some 10 people hopping over to a new world will cause it to instance, cause apparently the world can't handle the lag. This sort of stuff never used to happen with other minigames, or before... It makes it even more competitive.

That raises the question of who deserves to be rank 1. I have a short list of people I'd like to see at the top, but I'd like to hear what you (and I guess everyone else) thinks. The only relevant factor as to who deserves to be rank 1 is whether they can dedicate the time and effort (at the expense of many other things) to the game. By that factor, Suomi is as good as anyone else (better, in fact). Most of the top players put in a similar time input, some just more than others, but that's about it. This sort of discussion seems beside the point.

News flash: all of the top Hiscores contenders are obviously addicted to the game, and probably have misplaced priorities. Suomi is not unique in that regard at all. In fact, people like Drumgun and Jake are probably the closest to him in that regard more so than anyone else.

Same. Like I said, Jagex's idea of fun is to make people grind for hours, with lots of chance variables to prolong the grinding as long as possible.

I only wanted the 2 Priest titles and the Zammy set, and the 6 overides. I am almost done (I should be done today), and what hell it was! They have found a way to make every aspect of it lame and grindy. Worse of all, despite all this time spent there I didn't get a single one of the bonus titles. If I had wanted them I imagine I would have to toil there for several more days, this is all just ridiculously silly.

Hmm... I had not actually thought about that. As tedious, boring and slow Divination is, the next skill if it has similar experience rates will be much more painful.

I have maxed penguin points, some 20-25 pendants + over 100 recharge gems. Originally it was supposed to be this week (according to one Reddit post), and I would have been able to do it this week, use up all my stored stuff. But now it's another 2 weeks, and I will probably get it easily before then. And you're quite right about not using them up early -- that would be stupid. I was hoping to use mine in the late 80's.

Most jmods made murmurings about 4 weeks, so i wouldnt expect any change for another fortnight. It's a stupid decision whatever the case may be. It only inadvertently punishes maxed players who have pendants saved up. We don't have any other skills to train and we will get 99 way before then. Just silly.

Oh that. The armour is probably, arguably, worth getting.

The shadow assassin was a lot better and cheaper anyways. I forget, but what was in the assassin's pack? You get the outfit, and what else? All the other packs (Guthix/hero) had teleports and emotes, I don't recall the assassin's pack having a teleport.

My recommendation would be to pick up a few things and call it a day. It's just too tiresome to get everything. You have to employ some perspective: is one emote you will probably be tired of looking at in 2 months really worth spending several hours/days in order to obtain?

At the moment, I can say with some confidence 'no'.

Actually the rather high Loyalty prices were in the BTS video. So it wasn't really a letdown, for me at least.

As I had anticipated, the SGS items are far too pricey with Loyalty Points. Not really worth spending Loyalty on it unless you absolutely need to have something and have no other use for Loyalty.

I only have the 1 year crown, but it's actually not bad looking. I don't know why you hate it so much. It's a bit small, you have to zoom in to view it. It could be bigger, but that's about it.

Makes sense, then. I take it we will get an update in week 2, and then week 4.

The update isn't here yet for a lot of people, apparently. They either get whitescreen, or nothing changes, particularly if they access it from the site, as well. Odd.

No September update today? Only SGS/Loyalty?

The update was planned for 15-20 minutes. Mod Ryan came into my my cc (True Maxed), and some people complained that they would miss Warbands, and so they postponed it to 35 minutes. How silly. If a few maxed players miss out on Warbands, apparently it's the end of the world. Jagex was just giving into (quasi-)popular demand, so I can understand why they did it and I am not upset with them. I am rather astounded why players would be upset that they lost *one* Warband. Especially people who are already maxed and have plenty of money. It's a weird mentality for players. I have missed far more important events and lived through the ordeal: somehow my world didn't come crashing down.

Yes, I understand that. However, if they push too hard they might make smart players realize they will have to put RS on the back burner. Better to keep them playing moderately through the school period than having them realize RS is forcefully looking like work and interfering and then choosing not to play at all.