Yoko Kurama

I have to say that a barbarian/fremmy is not how I imagined Guthix to be. I missed the days when Guthix assumed the forms of a skull with tentacles or what not.

I'd reiterate Sylpheed's sentiments. Jagex doesn't have the advertisement power that other MMORPG's have (you aren't going to find B-class celebrities on television advertisements for it like WoW, for instance). So the fact that RS has a major f2p component and the game is easily accessible on the Internet has been what made RS so successful. Should F2p get regular updates? No. But it should be well taken care of. They are a vital part of the P2p machine, potentially. I think the new Jagex ownership has forgotten that. The old philosophy was that F2p was relatively fun but not as fun or as expansive as P2p, thus it encouraged people to subscribe. The new philosophy seems to be that "We'll just make F2p so miserable and neglected that they will have no choice buy to subscribe." That strategy works on older players and people who know about the intricacies of P2p but it does nothing for new players to RS in general: if they see that F2p is a wasteland, then why would they want to try out P2p? One of the strengths of the old days when F2p was thriving and I think (someone correct me on this if I am wrong) F2p outnumbered P2p by 9-1 or something. The advantage of that is that you don't need the same people hooked onto the game subscribing for long periods of time, you can just reshuffle new players into the P2p base and so forth. Now, though, that F2p is dying, you see things like Gold P2p, which is an attempt to compensate for that. There are so few players in F2p that now Jagex tries to sign members for yearly deals. So yes, F2p needs to be rejuvenated, it's vital to the sustainability of RS. I say this as someone who hasn't played F2p for years, has no intention of going back, and only plays RS when he has P2p.

I'd be okay with it, if it is set up the same way as RFD. That very well might be the case, though the way they wrote it came off to me as miniquests at the end, rather several sub-quest likes RFD. I am more concerned about the lack of explicit quest requirements to be quite honest. Though, given that it is a GM quest, it should incorporate skills into it as well. Skills are one of the most fundamental aspects of the game and that should be reflected in areas such as quests. I can appreciate the odd quest here and there with no skill requirements, hell, they can even make a majority of the normal quests like that if they wish, but I hold GM quests (particularly the "most important quest yet") to a higher standard. To reiterate, I'd be okay with a RFD style structure.

Yes, if this quest doesn't have something interesting to do about the Mahjarrat, then it'd be somewhat disappointing.

It's not merely about rewards. Like I said it's probably better for the long-term survival of the game if such things aren't immediately accessible to everyone, RS is after all nothing more than grinding for goals. That's important, but not the main gripe for me. So it's not the rewards, it's the storyline structure. It's bad narrative. It's as if Shakespeare had had one proper Hamlet for everyone, and an abridged Hamlet which consisted of nothing more than a paraphrase of Act V. One should not be able to make sense of the finale (and this *is* a finale of sorts) without having done even the most minimal of effort in trying to understanding the introduction and the following Chapters. I also worry that they might dumb down certain aspects in order to make it accessible to people who haven't done the other quests (thus lacking previous lore), but I reserve my judgment on that until after the quest. Most GMs have pitiful skill requirements. It'd hardly require much, if any effort. Alternatively, if you still didn't want to spent some time getting level 75 (which is usually what most GM quests stop at), you can always read the lore elsewhere after others have completed the quest.

I find the lack of requirements (and their intention to do the same more and more in the future) to be troubling. A GM quest by definition should not be accessible to everyone. Why should those people who haven't been here for Chapters 1-5 get to be here for the finale. It's just odd storytelling to me. Also, it's just another instances of Jagex easing the game for no reason (which will be detrimental long term). Instead of people having to sort of work for this, people can just instantly go and get started? Seems odd to me. 'The most important quest ever', is supposedly the antitheisis of all quests in this one respect, barely no requirements? Like I said, they're shooting themselves into the foot.

What things are we assuming?

I have been reading up some of the lore, and part of the Kharshai miniquest has been somewhat troubling, if not a hole in the storyline (unless resolved). So apparently the Mahjarrats have an innate ability to sense the presence of each other. But does that mean they can detect their exact location too? Some evidence suggests no, after all, in the past Mahjarrats such as Bilach have gone into hiding, and other Mahjarrats pursuing them (such as Lucien/Moia) were unable to immediately detect his presence. Other evidence suggests yes, after Kharshai regained his memory, Enahkra as well as her Zarosian counterpart were immediately able to teleport to Kharshai. Also, if the innate awareness of each other did not allow them to detect their exact presence, then why did Kharshai bother hiding his memories? For if they wouldn't be able to tell his exact location, he could have just retained his Mahjarrat form; sure the others would know he still lived but they wouldn't have been able to find him, right? Some might say he chose to hide as to also prevent the decay of his power, but I thought that was an unforeseen side-effect that he learned of after his memories were rediscovered? If the innate ability to detect each other does not render their precise locations to others, then that's all fine. But if it does, then wouldn't the Mahjarrats be constantly fighting each other? According to the lore, during some of the previous Rituals, the Zammy Mahjarrats vastly outnumbered Zarosian Mahjarrats, so if they could detect each other's locations, then wouldn't the Zammy Mahjarrats launch sneak attacks or something? Wouldn't the Zammy Mahjarrats launched an attack on Azzandra immediately upon his return? The details seem sketchy. Can this ability allow them to locate their fellow Mahjarrat? Is there a way to hide from the ability aside from Kharshai's mind-wipe? If there isn't, how else has Azzandra managed to stay hidden, avoid the wrath of the Zammy Mahjarrats for so long, after his return? Also, wouldn't that have also made Jhallan's plan to hide useless, if others could simply sense him out?

I'm glad that more and more people have raised the point that I brought up earlier elsewhere (for which I was instantly attacked) that the 1 month's trial period was basically a bribe. Translation: We had always intended for this to be the outcome' date=' and as such the poll was a blatantly obvious farce. Furthermore, as an act of our benevolence, we have decided to graciously make it free for the 6 months; assuming it lasts that long we will be able to get 5$ monthly from all those suckers, and after the 6th month, only the hardcore base will remain which will have by that point made too much of an investment into the game to leave over the increased fees and we will able to milk them for 10-15$! Err, we meant we just love to listen to the community whenever it serves to increase our profit margin...err, just trying to bring back the childhood nostalgia/fun! Aren't we just [bleep']ing wonderful?

What's this fuss about Castle Wars and Comp Caper's afking for their trimmed capes? Aside from potentially distorting team sizes (which really shouldn't mater on an official Castle Wars server because of the sheer number of players there), they're hardly a bother. Alternatively, someone could just organize a Castle Wars Server, purely for Afkers.

So only 888% voting rate increase needed then, even better! =P Depending on the success of 2007scape in the next few months it could be completely irrelevant how many votes to 750k, or 500k as Jagex could very well make it happen and then open it to F2P. That's very likely, as the additional fee will most certainly cut into their profit margin. Although I doubt it will be ever open to F2P.

The week's not over yet. I'm willing to at least wait until there's nothing on Friday to reserve judgement. Fair enough. Though, usually, updates are released by Wednesday (my timezone (MST), I live in Western Canada) at the latest. I am not expecting anything on Friday aside from BTS, which is not an update.

If you'd be so kind as to descend from your ivory tower for just a few seconds, perhaps you would see how big an impact gold farming has on the economy of RuneScape as a whole. It's not just about competing for spots at frost dragons. ;) In any case, this is good news. Let's hope it keeps up. This measure is nothing but a formality that Jagex undertakes once in a while, partly to appease players and partly to deal with their competition (which gold-farmers are). They'll be back. As for gold-farming, the economy is already hideously large and inflated (which explains some of the appeal that RS 2007 has: being part of an exciting and dynamic economy again), so it really doesn't matter for the most part. With free experience littered everywhere, and more and more training methods such as Ivy, LRC, Jadinkos which aren't bot friendly (in the sense that you won't find bots there because there aren't resources to be obtained in them), bots are the least of my concerns, and increasingly they are less of a nuisance for a great deal of players.

Mod Mike had said that there'd be a "surprise" (on the delayed TWW delay announcement thread), which treacherously implied something for questers. Apparently that something was a bot nuke and more posts about 2007. Well, geez, that certainly makes up for what was essentially a 2 update month, most of which was dead content in a week. This is certainly shaping up to be "an year for the players".

The pets would run away from you... That's but one room. Hardly justifies the skill as a whole.

Actually the scroll thingy is just indicative of all sorts of outdated interface mechanisms in RS2007. For people who are accustomed to 2013 (which most of us are) that can be a big hurdle. From having to go to tools for 'run', not being able to press tab for replying to PM's, and a whole host of other things, it's certainly annoying. When the whole premise of the game is to spend countless hours grinding, that can make a big difference. I don't support a separate development team, but that's one thing Jagex should have done: streamline and modernize the interface.

Alright, thanks, I will give that a try.

I have had Missionary (1) + Occultist (2) for a while.

I have been in the Pincers for quite some time now and I have completely all 6 Pincers solo storylines. Still not a single trio voyage yet.

Are Dual-wielding fixes in this month's BTS? I don't remember. If they aren't, then I don't see why we'd get them now.

But it isn't. I can vividly recall them notifying us about previous delays and apologizing immediately (for instance, Dungeoneering Occult Batch, Desert Task Diary, Mobilizing Armies and other cases). Also, as Sy_Accursed noted, this was a forced and completely half-hearted 'apology'. It is plainly clear that Jagex's initial modus operandi was to ignore all queries about this and hide any posts that they did not like. It was only because of a sustained uproar over this fiasco (which is still active) on RSOF and in the game that they were basically forced to acknowledge this days later. It was no sincere admission or contrition.

None of my statements, implicitly or explicitly attempted to 'speak for everyone' in either EoC or 2007. As I stated before in this thread, a generalization is not, by definition, meant to represent everyone.

How is this an improvement of any sort? There were hundreds of complaints lodged by thousands of players, continuously, yet absolutely not a single word from Jagex (though Forum Mods were instructed to hide certain posts that did not break any rules but were highly critical of Jagex). Even Jagex, usually notifies us about such things. The reason that they made no such effort to do so this time was because they knew there was no way they could justify it. They made a completely reprehensible delay, delaying a project that was much anticipated, promised, in order to start some completely new project that wasn't supposed to be released for another month or two. It's called common sense and decency. For a company that touts itself as being dedicated to its player-base, you're telling they me they couldn't have posted a note after hundreds of queries? If my doctor knows before-hand that they can't make it to an appointment that I have scheduled with them, and I have some reason to suspect that this will be the case and I call them to confirm my appointment, my doctor doesn't ignore all my calls, and only lets me know on the day of the appointment when I have already arrived there, that there's going to be a delay. Why? Because my doctor isn't an [wagon]. If you can't make fulfill a forthcoming commitment to someone, you owe it to them to be honest about it and not play the "La-la-la-la, fingers in my ear, can't hear you" game. This isn't rocket science. This is basic social etiquette.

It's great that Jagex finally learned how to read and write over the weekend. You see, their illiteracy prevented them from reading the hundreds of complaints lodged by thousands of players on the forums over the past weekend, and it also prevented them from writing a proper response out until now! It wasn't malice, it was just the usual incompetence! [/sarcasm] Still not good enough. There's absolutely no reason why there wasn't an apology and an explanation last week, instead they completely ignored everyone and went through with whatever they wanted.

His evidence was conversations with people whom he encountered in the game, whereas I suggested taking an informal cross-section of various communities and fan-sites across the net.