RU_Insane

My upgrade was long overdue. Purchased a DFS couple days ago, fully charged it today. Bought a zerker ring, fury and Torag's platelegs. I love my setup <3: :D

Easily one of the best months in a long, long time.

They replaced Tenzing with some dwarf named Freda, and I can't buy climbing boots from her. I don't know why, because I finished the Death Plateau quest. The only chat options I see are "Aren't you afraid of the trolls up here?", "Who are you?" and "I'm fine, thanks" (quit conversation). I right-clicked, only option is "Talk to Freda". I'm trying to fight Kamil, and I can't buy any climbing boots. Why?

http://www.reddit.co..._to_dicing_and/ Mod Daezhuin (sp?) is pretty active on that subreddit and didn't post there confirming/denying it so IDK. It's possible that few staff outside of those responsible for designing/monetizing it know for sure, so he may not be able to confirm. On the other hand, it would arguably be a large update in terms of impact, so there might be general knowledge among them that hasn't been confirmed with us yet, for whatever reason. The process sounds like it's in the preliminary stages, so that may be why they're hesitant to publicly confirm. They're *attempting* to design suitable dicing alternatives, but it's not a guarantee that they'll be successful with the impact they'd want it to have (curbing inflation etc.). That would explain the vagueness in the details released thus far.

I retrieved it from the RuneScape sub-reddit: reddit.com/r/runescape. I didn't want to specify at first, because I'm not sure if that sort of advertising's allowed. If it's relevant, then sure.

Aren't you the one who posted the screenshot confirming Wildy return, and people called it fake?

It's not my screenshot; I reposted from another forum for additional exposure (though I added commentary). I doubt it's fake. Considering Jagex's stance toward micro-transactions, I can see them introducing a profitable (for Jagex) form of gambling while also reducing GP inflation, which they apparently stated they were looking to do. I can't see why they wouldn't accept gambling, especially as recent updates seem to be trending down this route (e.g. SOF), and Jagex's public stance doesn't count for much anyway. And if they can monetize it, all the more incentive for them. :P

Interesting hypothesis. I wonder how one progresses from a normal person to an addict when they should have been discouraged from gambling long ago, considering the odds were always against them. Can they just not weigh risks as well? Perhaps certain psychological/neurological types have a higher propensity to risk-taking than others.

Even more, remember "Squeal isn't gambling because you always win something?" So if I set up a nickel-operated slot machine and guaranteed that the lowest you could receive was one penny, I wouldn't be regulated by gambling laws? I'm amazed that Jagex figured this out but casinos are still in the dark! What's even funnier is that Jagex flat out contradicted themselves anyway by monetizing SOF. If they say it's not gambling, they certainly treat it as much by selling chances to win coveted prizes, knowing full well that users spin the wheel in the imaginary pursuit of future wealth, and that any result short of this is emphatically regarded as a loss. Actions speak louder than words. The wheel serves the same function as a casino would, keeping in mind the incentives to spin in the first place.

In regards to the Big City article: It seems updates intended to have users "socialize" just end up antagonizing them or trivializing the social experience altogether. I enjoyed it when we could form community-based settings without the help of cookie-cutter templates supplied by Jagex to direct our focus. The raw feeling of closeness and community you got from spontaneous ordering to fill in gaps like a player-made Fletching Guild, the face-to-face interaction in banks before the GE. The role-playing. The general fun spirit of the community seems to have seriously deteriorated by this point, in this respect. Subsidizing the social experience with preformulated templates dictating how players should organize really misses the point of community. In some ways, it has its benefits. The Grand Exchange isn't a bad thing. But it arguably made the act of trading largely impersonal. Note that I'm not saying it made users more anonymous to one another this way. You can socialize with people you know nothing about. That's how community is built: discovering interests and creating an outlet to act upon them. I think that's a fair if somewhat weak definition. I'm not saying it's the de facto process. I think it's certainly an essential element to building meaningful bonds. But Jagex seems to be doing the reverse with "social slayer" and the Clan Camp. It's not about getting to know one another. The focus is more on the task itself with other users' interests remaining firmly incidental. It's like Jagex is building places merely for people to gather, but not to interact in any meaningful way beyond the bare minimum required for the task. When Clan Camp was released, all I saw were strangers begging one another to join their clan for 100K or more so they could customize their clan cape. Users were seen as commodities to obtain a flashy cape. And you can still do a solo task with tens of people surrounding you. If you're going to have people interact in ways that build a community, at least don't prioritize individual tasks which require limiting user interactions to the bare minimum for the process to function. Friends Chat is successful because people can satisfy a need for social interaction by chatting with others meanwhile grinding away. It's a pretty one-dimensional feature, but it's successful at what it was meant to do. I think the question is, how do we avoid treating other players as mere cogs in the machine when obtaining our own goals? I don't think the issue is that people aren't worth talking to. I think we're just incentivized to play the game in a way which alienates ourselves from others and gives the impression that meaningful interaction is a worthless pursuit. Even worse, we might internalize this and act as if others don't matter. Then we act rude when we're distracted from a task with an innocent attempt at interaction. I dunno. Maybe I'm just babbling :P Socializing and playing the game aren't mutually exclusive concepts. The player-made guilds demonstrated that, at least.

Not to mention players could still RWT with the money they won. Not as much incentive, but it's not totally hampered. But if the "house" was Jagex, then the GP could just disappear. This means that you can't RWT the "wins" since they are set against you so the house always wins in the long run. This creates a very useful sink, and de-legitmizes regular dicing equivalents as we have now since you know that you won't be normal-scammed, but only math-scammed. I prefer this approach to keeping dicing/gambling as it is now As long as it performs the function of the host, (takes money in, spins a lucky number and sometimes spits money out) that would be fine. If it costs RL money, or wasn't a gp-sink that is a problem. Let's hope for the former. Good point. The pros (what's apparent, at least) outweigh the cons. Minus the moral/ethical issue of legitimizing gambling, of course. Then again, we also have SOF.

Not to mention players could still RWT with the money they won. Not as much incentive, but it's not totally hampered.

Yeah. I think Jagex will take the opportunity to excessively monetize this update, if it comes. -.- On the one hand, you create an effective money sink, and scamming is reduced. On the other, you legitimize gambling and commodify it beyond purpose.

I'm sorry... I don't have much else besides a screenshot from friends chat. Mod Mark in Chinch00ters FC discussing the gambling problem. Transcript in case the image doesn't load: Mod Mark: Sorry my list is for admin only Mod Mark: I'm trying to design some dicing alternatives right now Mod Mark: Obviously the desire to gamble in game is there Mod Mark: But certainly the dicing issue has gotten out of control It seems like fairly new information, so forgive me if this is a repost. There's been some hub-bub that these alternatives could be introduced as in-game money sinks in response to the recent money dupe glitch, and others that introduced huge amounts of cash into the economy. It seems reasonable to do so. Quite a compromise between inflation and reckless gambling of fortunes. You think Jagex will try to revive Burthorpe games room with a casino-type deal? Seems likely. Thoughts? :-k

My first 90 stat. <3: Good to know some JMods are against microtransactions.

I just downloaded the latest version of Java -.- Time to downgrade ... for now. :P

Just another useless load of dead content. :(

It's been six years since June 6, 2006, the first 99 in Construction, in World 111 by Cursed_You. Just seems like such a coincidence, those numbers :P 111. 666. 99. 321. Cursed_You. XD

This. :D

Oh! I think I get it. You're given experience for damage that isn't shown yet, but someone else's damage appears visually (say, a 140) in between the time your damage is calculated and the time the monster dies from the person's attack. But because you're given greater experience, you're rewarded the loot. :P ?

Say you are attacking a green dragon. 10 bots attack at the same time as you. Your hit only pops up as a 53 yet you gain xp for hitting 750 damage. You would get the drop, not the bot that hit the most damage of (say) 277. How do you gain 750xp by hitting 53? o.o

I wonder if a supercomputer could run RS without problems. O:

And I half-expected Jagex to come out with a half-decent update ... -_-