Armadyllo

It's nice to see that big battles are still being planned in RuneScape, RWT changes or no RWT changes.

Looks like we can sometimes loot a bit of food or ammo from people we kill now. I like that. Why do they stop there, though? Why not transfer more items up to the trade limit? But meh, it's a start. My only complaint about this change is that they didn't make the removal of the gravestones more obvious in the newspost. There's a lot of people whinging now that they lost their stuff when they'd expected to be able to get it back. (I suppose they've all got interesting reasons for not going in the safe FFA where they'd have kept it anyway.) Sure, I think Jagex does hold our hands too much sometimes, but this is a little too far in the other direction!

Excellent article. Don't be so quick to blame the QA staff for bugs getting through. Of course they're meant to catch every bug before release, but look at what chance they've got... There are 25 QA testers listed on Jagex's credits page. (I don't count team leaders.) Some of the testers must work for FunOrb, so there'll actually be fewer than 25 testing RuneScape. Jagex releases a big update to RuneScape most weeks. We know from their developer diaries that an update can be in development for months. How many QA testers can they possibly be assigning to each project, and how long can they spend on it? From the math, Jagex's QA team must be up against some seriously short deadlines, and I'd be inclined to sympathise with them rather than blame them! 100k players checking out an update for 60 minutes is, in a way, equivalent to 1 QA tester checking it out for over 11 years. Jagex doesn't invite players to check out future updates. Now, that's more work than it sounds; to do proper beta testing of that nature you need to gather a group, schedule them to play through the update (preferably in a room where you can watch 'em to see where they get stuck), analyse the feedback, re-program the code according to the feedback, do more basic testing, gather a different beta group, schedule them to play through the update again... As a minimum, we're looking at an extra couple of weeks on each update. For a company that releases around 4 updates per month, that's a vast amount of extra time. I'd still like them to do it. But I don't believe it's going to be a quick-and-simple matter for them to switch over to that kind of thing. For a start, they'll likely have to ditch the thing about updating most weeks. Which would be a complete change to the service they offer, so we'd better hope every player is happy getting fewer updates. Or they could "just" hire and train another few dozen testers who know about RuneScape. I wonder how much that'd cost, and whether they'd end up cutting back on other useful things to pay for it? Are they really banning people for messing around with bugs that do no harm but merely look funny? I approve of people being banned for spending hours clicking on a buggy tree patch that's giving 10k Farming XP with every click (which did happen), but it'd be plain moronic to ban a subscribing player for sitting on a chair in a way that looks funny.

Sure they recommend it; if they gave bad training advice they'd look really silly. (It happens.) It's still a weird game feature that you can shoot at a terrifying monster from around a small rock and the monster doesn't have the sense to run away or step around the rock. If my first sighting of RuneScape was watching someone "having fun online" by spending the afternoon shooting at respawning monsters in complete safety by standing behind a fence, I'd come away with a rather bad impression of the gameplay. As a long-established feature of a long-established game, it's fine. We don't mind that it hinges on limited route-finding; it's just the way the game works.

Granted, it's hard for a ranger/mage to train EXCEPT at safe spots, and even Jagex recommends it. There are relatively few places where they've set up tables or fences to help rangers, such as the dwarf beer hall under White Wolf or the Lathas training camp. I still hate doing it, though. It's bizarre to have a major feature of combat training depend solely on the inability of a monster to navigate around a rock. It's a short article. That doesn't mean it needs to be longer unless the author's got more stuff to say on the topic. Frankly, it's fine as it is. Maybe I'd have been more interested in reading a lengthy article about game design or current player concerns instead, but we can hardly blame the author for being interested in combat training! (Before anyone tells me to go write my own article, y'all had plenty enough of mine already, and this author's far less verbose.)

Whenever a safe-spot gets removed, people complain that they liked using it. But other people complain that they don't like seeing safe-spotters getting "easy" kills without taking any damage. The same applies to tactics like surrounding the Saradomin boss in the GWD with rangers so that she'd wander round and round without hitting anyone (until Aug 5th when she got updated, amidst many complaints from people who could no longer handle her). It's blatantly a flaw in the game if a monster can't route-find properly or doesn't know how to handle multiple attackers in a multiway area. RuneScape's always had pretty limited route-finding on its monsters, so they get stuck on corners and other obstacles. That's not to say that safe-spotting = bug abuse. It's a fair way to train. But safe-spotting is ultimately one of the game's dumber features - a big demon should be able to walk round a little rock! - so it's understandable that Jagex doesn't bother preserving safe spots when it doesn't suit them to do so.

I've seen quite a few people commenting that they LIKE having the demonic ruins and lava lake back for PVP use. I wouldn't have liked the update any better with different graphics. If Jagex feels like being cheap on the graphics for a PVP minigame, I can live with that. It's not like they've skimped on graphical updates for 2008. It was some months ago that they posted on the RSOF to say that the Clan Wars coding was about finished, and they were just waiting on the graphics; maybe they got bored waiting? I know quite a lot of people did.

Just gone midnight.

Well, for players who expect to profit from their RS activities, it's useless. Many players do think like that; it's a perfectly valid way of playing. The item loss option can be useful if, and only if, you see winning the battle as a reward in itself. That cuts out the players who only want XP or only want items, and they seem to be pretty vocal people. What annoys me is that the update's been roundly condemned as a failure in many threads around the internet solely because it has an option for losing items without a reward. Never mind the run-ins, or the flexibility of the FFA arenas, or the free arrow recovery, Clan Wars is described as a failure because you can choose to lose items without a reward. How stupid. I don't intend to go into a dangerous battle myself, but I'd rather have Jagex offer any option they can code! In a minigame where emergent tactics and community spirit are everything, it's critical that the designers make the rules as flexible as possible.

Looking at the sea of complaints about Clan Wars being rubbish or a complete fail... We got run-ins. We got combat style restrictions, including a bind-spells-only one that they hadn't mentioned before. We got a place where you can actually FIT a multi-site war. They even give back most of our used arrows. The internet has just filled up with people pointing out the bleedin' obvious, that it's strange to have the chance of item loss without anyone getting the loot. But besides that, the Clan Wars update is 100% gain. Jagex made it pretty clear before that there'd be no loot. Also, considering how many people keep posting that they like the occasional dangerous battle, even without loot, it's nice that Jagex decided to provide it.

Tricky. Suppose Jagex designs an update where low-lvls get 1-hit. That's fun for high-level players, but it's not going to appeal to newbies who merely happen to have great reflexes, etc. It'd be a minigame where having an amazing combat level is the only way to succeed. That isn't much fun for lower levels, and Jagex really does have to worry about those, otherwise they'd alienate all new members. c.f. all those people who complain that BH only works for people at the upper end of their arena's level range. A game should be fun at all levels, not just at 136. Otherwise we'd be resticted to PVP against players who intend to hit level 136 soonish. Which isn't the demographic to which we are accustomed.

I think we're over-anaylsing, They've posted a picture of a red pickaxe, not the adze, a long time ago. That was on the highscores. It still ain't arrived, and nothing in the BTS has mentioned it. Jagex isn't exactly shy about cool future updates like that. Maybe the banners don't give us detailed hints about future updates but just show pretty pictures of what they'd like the game to look like?

They've been turning up in a LOT more gaming magazines recently. They also went and demonstrated RuneScape at the E3 convention and some show in Germany. Plus there've been online articles too. I dunno how effective that is for reaching new players. Probably not very effective at all, to be honest. But they're becoming better known in their industry, which should help them with staff recruitment and commercial alliances.

Unlike the old Wilderness?!

The BTS doesn't say anything about removing random events at all!

Well, Jagex keeps saying that the item-loss thing is an optional rule. Which means that it'll still be safe for you, so long as you don't decide to walk into a dangerous battlefield. It'd be nice to see some rewards. But look at how other minigames guard against abuse... Castlewars - Anyone on the world may join in. Fist of Guthix - You get a random opponent. Bounty Hunter - You get a random opponent. Trouble Brewing - Anyone on the world may join in. Duel Arena - Tournaments are against random opponents. Arcanists - A ranked match is against random opponents. In all these cases, it's relatively hard to play badly with the aim of making your friends' team gain better rewards. If anyone on the world may join in, it becomes harder to control the outcome of the game. If you're against random opponents, you won't necessarily be playing against your friends' team anyway. (For the Great Orb Project / RC Guild, it was originally easy for one team to quit and thus let their friends on the other team reap the rewards very quickly. That's plain silly, and it devalues the rewards terribly.) Clan Wars could certainly try to do release rewards with similar guards against abuse. But it'd end up losing the "clan" bit from its name/purpose; it'd be a multiplayer battle game where you fight on a random side in a large arena full of people you don't know. Jagex could certainly write a minigame like that, if they liked. It'd effectively be Castlewars without the flags. I'd be glad if they did it, but it's not what we need for a clan war now. What we need is a flexible place for players to hold battles more like they did before the Wilderness went bye-byes. It sounds like this Clan Wars update should really help there, mostly by its free-for-all arenas. So that makes it a good update that's well worth having, even though it doesn't fulfil every PKing desire of every player. Maybe the PVP worlds will do that, whenever they turn up.

No. Heck no. But I might go into a steel war. Or a boxing match. When Jagex posted the plan for the Clan Wars update, lots of people raised the obvious point that it's strange to have an option for dropping items if no-one gets the loot. The reply was something about how clan-members had asked for it, and they didn't mind supplying it. If Jagex had refused to do dangerous clan wars - even without loot - and they'd given "People might go in it by accident and lose stuff" as their reason for refusing to have the option in the game, I think they'd be proving everyone right who claims that Jagex is dumbing down the game. If it's not clear enough whether or not a battle is dangerous when the update arrives, we can demand that they make it clearer. They seem happy enough about installing warnings all over the place these days; I find it quite patronising sometimes. People apparently asked for the item-loss option. Even if only 1% of players want it, that's still thousands and thousands of people who'd be happier for Jagex doing it. Okay, they might be statistically insignificant compared to everyone else who won't bother using it, but it still seems better to have the option available for those who do want it. Meanwhile, we're getting run-ins! Now THAT's the interesting bit for me.

Lol! TipIt ran an article once about how great RuneScape's penguin quest is. It's good that Jagex is doing more with that storyline.

Clan Wars update. A minigame calling itself "Clan Wars" that doesn't allow run-ins is seriously incomplete. (Pity about the lack of loot, but I suppose we'll get that from the PVP worlds eventually.) The rest of the stuff in the poll sounds interesting or funny, but I could have lived without it.

The BTS doesn't say anything about removing the old random events. They're just releasing some new things to make training a bit more interesting. I'd expect them to write a lot in the BTS about removing random events when that update finally happens; they know it's something people have been screaming for, and we know Jagex isn't shy about advertising updates when they think we'll like them! So much of the response to this BTS, at least on the RSOF, has been "this stinks, we wanted the PVP worlds". It's nice to see Jagex being open about what they're planning for the future, but it's sure generating a lot of bad feeling. Clan Wars sounds good, especially the free-for-all arena thing. Pity about the lack of loot, but we'll get the PVP worlds for that eventually.

Jagex had a big post about item lending and the clan wars thing on the RSOF Future Updates forum a couple of months back. They said something about how items would be lost on death... and no-one would get to pick them up. They didn't think they could make a reward or lootshare system that couldn't be abused by RWT. Doesn't sound like it's going to be a popular option, to be honest, but I've come across clan-fighters asking for that sort of thing before, so I guess the rest of us can just ignore the option and go play with the other settings. Sooooo many people say they've got the solution to RWT that'd let Jagex bring back PVP drops, or bring back the old Wildy, or bring back unrestricted trade. A lot of the more sensible ideas involve needing large numbers of players to be involved, in the hope that it'd swamp the RWT activity. Unfortunately, looking at the crowds of people in Bounty Hunter and the item transferring that happens there, I don't think it's working like that.

Nice article. Part of the problem is that many people criticise others for focusing on different parts of the game. Hence the label "skiller noob", someone who isn't so interested in combat and just likes levelling up their stats. It's almost like they think there's a "proper" way to play RuneScape, and anyone who's not doing it must be some kind of fool. I wonder if it's related to the way sporty kids will often pick on geeks for not being interested in sport?

I think I'd be more interested in the book if the writer were part of Jagex. That way they could reveal stuff in the book that's part of the game history they've planned themselves. It could even tie into future game plots. But the author seems to be some independent guy who just wrote the book for fun, from what I've seen on the RSOF. That makes it fan-fiction, like you get on forums under Creative Writing. Even if Jagex has declared it official (which is cool for the guy who wrote it - imagine if YOU could write a RuneScape story and get money for it) I'm not expecting it to be so well tied into the game's plots as if it were directed by Jagex's own creative team. As for Jagex failing, what have they got to lose? They're letting this T. S. Church guy publish a book with their logo on the front, helping sell it, and presumably taking a nice cut of the profits. If the book tanks, they don't lose much. Nor do we.

Mmm, could be. People are currently doing junk trades to pay the rent for the items. Either: 1. Jagex creates a system sufficiently flexible to let people do a junk trade in payment for an item rental. They'd implicitly be declaring that junk trades are a legitimate activity that they support. 2. Jagex creates a system that lets us pay for rentals in cash only, up to the trade limit. People wishing to supplement this with a junk trade have to do so at their own risk. The scamming continues, but only for people who do it via junk trades, and that kind of player is probably experienced enough to understand the risks properly. 3. Jagex does nothing, leaving us to sort ourselves out. I could live quite happily with this, since I'm only interested in lending my stuff to friends, and I wouldn't charge for that. Hopefully people will work out the risks and stop moaning about scamming soon enough.

Okay... 1. We've got people complaining that item lending devalues their hard-earned items. 2. We've got people complaining that item lending is making these hard-earned items too profitable. Great, just great.