Armadyllo

Stormrage is right about the inflation! Okay, so Jagex starts selling RS currency. They'd need to undercut the RWTs if they wanted to do any business, so they'd need to sell it very cheap and in very large quantities. Cheap enough that a kid's allowance can make them a multimillionaire in RS. -> Most RuneScapers have lots of coins. Now all those players want to do something with their newfound wealth, they want to spend it on training their characters. Unfortunately there aren't enough people gathering the raw materials everyone wants to buy, so prices spiral up and up. That'd be the inflation Stormrage predicted, on a vast scale. I'm not seeing this as a big improvement, to be honest. We may be worried about trading in RS going splat, but I'm pretty sure it'd also go splat if Jagex started selling RS cash themselves. Jagex could put their prices up to limit the buying of RS cash, but then they'd be undercut by the old RWT merchants again. (Also, I don't want my hobby to turn into a constant process of handing money to Jagex.)

Very true. The existence of pures in combat means that Jagex messed up when they wrote the combat level formula. They inadvertently created a system where the combat skills had different weightings of importance while the overall combat level failed to take it into account. Now, while it's very admirable that players have taken the time and trouble to analyze the combat system and design their characters carefully to get the maximum benefit out of it, it still hinges on RuneScape having a dodgy combat level formula. Jagex has shown no signs of making any further changes to the formula since the release of Rs2 in 2004, so perhaps it's something they're happy to leave alone. However, if an update comes through that reduces the benefit of a pure account, that's... well, that's fair enough. It's horribly annoying for the people who created the pures, but they'd have known - hopefully - that they'd tailored their accounts to match the flaws in Jagex's design, and there was no reason to assume that Jagex would never try to improve the design. There will be new flaws in the game that can be used in a similar way, and clever players - who most deserve the benefits - will find them and hopefully reap the rewards.

I don't really get the point in trying to force Jagex to undo the update if we're being encouraged to quit for the sake of our social lives. Surely, if we left RuneScape behind as the poster advises us to do, we wouldn't mind how Jagex chooses to fight the people who ruin RuneScape! My work/life/game balance is just fine, thanks, so I'll be staying for the moment.

It's hardly surprising that there are lots of people on a RuneScape fansite who like training RuneScape's skills, or who respect the creators of RuneScape! :P

What if I want to bring some armour into the Wilderness? Or some sharks? It's not just about preventing people from selling gp. The RWT merchants could easily switch to selling large quantities of valuable items for real-world cash, and the players who'd bought the items would just have to sell them. Sorry, I don't think I'd really want the Wildy back if I couldn't take decent weapons or armour into it.

Bounty Hunter provides a nice empty arena with a handy bank and fairly wide level restrictions. It's also got risk, for those who want their wars to be expensive. Or are the item restrictions and entrance system too much of an impediment?

Well, whaddya know? Jagex wrote PKer-bots! It's just not the same. There's something to be said for having the ghosts equally dangerous on members and f2p, otherwise members would just hop to a f2p world to walk through the Wilderness. But they're still well harsh. At least the ghosts don't use poison on f2p. (Bind is f2p, right? Maybe that's what the ghosts think they're doing, even though it looks like a ranged attack rather than magic.)

Suppose a kid is upset that his mommy and daddy stopped him doing something he liked. Do they care that he's upset? Yes. Do they listen to him? Yes. Do they give in when he starts screaming abuse? No. Now, Jagex is not our mommy, and they have a financial interest in "caring" for their customers, but some of the principles are the same. They think it's important to get rid of RWT, so they do it. They'll have known full well that it'd be open season for ranting and rioting afterwards; every time anyone questions whether that kind of thing works, someone posts "they gave in over the SwiftSwitch riots" - which isn't even accurate - and the riots continue. But they think it's worth upsetting lots of people, even though it's prompting many people to quit. It doesn't mean they don't care, but it does mean they're unlikely to reverse their decision just because people got upset. Ironically, the riots probably add more community spirit to the game than anything else does.

It makes no sense - Jagex still doesn't let you create an account if you claim to be under 13! So what the heck are they playing at? I'm guessing this is a legal issue about child data privacy laws. I haven't tried writing to Jagex to tell them I'm 12 and see what they do (because I'm not 12, among other reasons) but I'd be interested to know if they're forced to disable the accounts of people who claim they're younger. That said, it'd not be the end of the world if they did let younger people in. They'd practically have a monopoly on the MMORPGs-for-kids market [*], and many kids online show more maturity than some of the players I've seen posting in the last couple of days. [*] There's a lot of people don't like what Jagex just did to the game, but I'm sure we'd get better updates out of a well-funded Jagex than out of a Jagex that's in financial troubles and needing to cut costs. So most things that benefit Jagex indirectly benefit us.

Yes, I did, but getting from those statistics to the number of players who'll permanently quit over these updates involves way too much guesswork. If only ~50% of the players stayed, Jagex might be in trouble. I can only guess at how many customers they can afford to lose before they're operating at a loss, but I'd be impressed if their current profits are high enough to let them lose 50% of their customers with impunity. They may be raking it in from the million lumps of $5 per month (although $5 isn't worth peanuts in the UK) but we can see them spending loads on server hosting, bandwidth, staff, office rental and stuff like that. On the other hand, 50% would be an extremely pessimistic estimate.

Sure it can, but that's not what "open source" means. What you've just described is a forum, hopefully leading to a public beta test server. I'd love to see Jagex do it, without the need to drag in the phrase "open source". Check Wikipedia!

I assure you, I read it. Frankly, I don't think it's meaningful to declare a game open-source in the way described. Ultimately you've just got a big open committee of people, all of whom have their own ideas of what Jagex should do, and it'd be chaotic. It'd be nothing more than a huge Suggestions forum - and we've seen the RSOF Suggestions forum - with the expectation that Jagex will do what it asks. Stick to asking Jagex to listen to your great ideas. You might get that. You won't get open-source RuneScape.

I'm all in favor of Jagex taking player suggestions (the sensible ones), discussing them with the players, making decisions based on that sort of thing, etc. That's fine, and they could start doing it pretty easily. I don't think it necessarily leads to Jagex needing to declare the entire game open-source. Ultimately, they'd still need to be the people doing the programming and graphics, even if they accepted storyline ideas and gameplay mechanic ideas.

No, that's fine by me, I liked his article better too! Mostly for the constructive suggestions.

Money makes the game happen. No money, no programmers, no server hosting, no game. Rental agencies and mortgage holders seldom accept free RuneScape membership as payment! That said, they do put in the effort. RuneScape's a giant cash-cow, and they could sit around milking it and releasing just one update per month if they liked. People have even voted that they'd like Jagex to update less often, but they keep trying to improve the game week after week, and I don't believe it's a cost-effective way of trying to get extra subscribers. They could certainly go with the player suggestions of selling RS gold themselves, undercutting the existing RWT merchants and raking in a huge profit. But they don't. It's been pointed out on these forums - I forget by whom - that the RS economy would fall over horribly if Jagex did that, and they seem to agree, even though they'd probably get a nice quick profit. If it is just about the money, they could be milking it with a lot less effort than they're currently showing.

Just for the moment, given that Clan Wars seems to be capped at 100 people per team and there's no option for returning to a battle after dying, I wouldn't be surprised if people started trying to hold wars inside Bounty Hunter. Although the entrance and item restrictions aren't great for it, it's got a bank and we can teleport to a spot nearby. For the moment, those big level divisions might be useful, even if it's not part of Jagex's design.

1. The theory is that we protect our dead friends' drops by clicking the Repair or Bless options on their gravestones. Their drops won't despawn while the gravestone's still there, so they'll be able to come back and grab their stuff. 2. The theory is that we can get into a clan with our team, turn on LootShare and go kill the KQ a few times. Over time - and I don't mean just over one drop - the rewards should be shared across the members of the clan who were helping to kill her. That's over several drops, with well-distributed luck. And thanks for the nice feedback, guys! I do look forward to seeing what happens over the next couple of months. Now, if only we could see Jagex's membership figures! Technically, my prediction is slightly doom-laden. There've been complaints that "all" the high-levels will quit and RuneScape will just be filled with newbies / noobs who don't know what they're missing (which it already is, yet life goes on). But that's a bad thing from the point of view of many players, and I'd sympathize with their feelings.

This is just a guess, but you know there are more and more warnings on dangerous places? Jagex released a nice generic Danger interface and stuck it on the Shantay Pass, the Ditch of Stupidity, the Mole cave, the Lumbridge cellar hole, etc. It's controlled by the Doomsayer in Lumbridge. Those revenants are pretty dangerous, and it's a reasonable guess that Jagex isn't going to remove the warning interface in case a newbie enters the Wilderness by accident, dies and whines about it. And to make warning interfaces work, they seem to need the ditch (given that the old warning interface didn't work very well before the ditch was installed).

With the SwiftSwitch thing, Jagex posted that the makers of SS had contacted them and agreed to remove the features that Jagex didn't like, such as the ones that were guzzling the website's bandwidth. It'd be nice if Jagex could form a truce with the RWT merchants, but there's a bit of a difference between the fans behind SS and the foreign businessmen who run gold-farming sweatshops. SwiftSwitch, as far as I'm aware, was written to help RuneScapers have fun by getting around some of the annoying (yet deliberate) restrictions of Jagex's website. The RWT merchants aren't trying to make the game better or help the community, they're trying to scrape a living, and it's not their concern if the game's economy or community is adversely affected. So I can't really see that working out in any practical way.

Thanks for reading. I'm aware that 'tis the season to bash Jagex, and they've certainly invited it with these changes. But there's plenty of that, and I have nothing new to offer in that field. However, I've often wished to criticize them for not addressing bigger game problems, and it's really interesting to see them turn around and do something about RWT. Coincidentally taking down most of the game's scamming problems at the same time, and revolutionizing the hunt for bots. So in a way I'd applaud Jagex for standing up to the problems, at all costs. I just wish the cost hadn't been the loss of features that many of my friends loved. Fortunately, I really do think the RWT problem might be solved - permanently - by these measures. Whether or not it's worth the change, the game does benefit in that respect.

It's pretty much agreed that Jagex can, and does, ban botters. What they couldn't do is ban botters faster than the botters could make new accounts and transfer the items across. Banning the bot didn't achieve anything. When botters aren't using disposable characters, Jagex should have a much better chance of detecting them as they play long-term to get their skills up. If a player bots to 99 in a skill but then gets the account banned, the player's lost everything. Banning suddenly means something again. It may be the most horrible update imaginable, but it's got a chance of working. (For anyone who still wants to play, that is.)

That'd be the last thing we'd want, surely? If Jagex were owned by shareholders - and they wouldn't be us because we'd be outbid by giant investment companies - they'd be forced to do whatever turns a big profit, regardless of our opinions. Sure, this update isn't something we wanted either, but public independent shareholders aren't likely to take our side in a debate!

Thinking practically for a moment, is there anything to stop us from having big clan wars unofficially in Bounty Hunter? It looks like a big multiway combat arena that isn't limited by the RS chat channel system, so long as the item restrictions don't make it unworkable. It's even got its own bank.

Did their last CEO (Constant Tedder) ever do anything to the game in the first place? He's never been mentioned as having done anything to RuneScape's design, he was just the guy Andrew and Paul joined up with when they wanted to turn their game into a business. Besides, when you're a company that's hiring a new CEO, you should get to choose one who agrees with your existing opinions, not one who's going to demand things you didn't want to do! We can speculate about the new CEO's influence, but I don't think there's enough for us to go on.

Clan Wars could be so much better. Losing items might be a bit harsh, given that no-one would be able to pick them up, but that was pretty much understood anyway. But where are the features? Where's the choice of arenas, some plain, some with loads of blocking scenery, some with ranger towers to snipe from? Where's the choice of rules, such as a "players who die may come back to fight again, and the winning clan will be the first to 1000 kills" option?! I can understand Jagex trying to replace the Wildy with something that doesn't lead to RWT, even if I don't like it, but I can't understand why they'd try to do it with THIS.