jettrider

The latest update pretty much proves my point. The chunk of work allocated to the developer team lied in the realms of the orb thing (work for a different department) and on a quest that took me 6 minutes to complete. The vast majority of those 6 minutes was spent reading through the dialogues, teleporting around to get the runes I needed, and trying to figure out a way to get emeralds (uncut emeralds still buy, folks). That just plain out sucks.

I went over all that in my last post: -Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf took 10 minutes as a quest, that is simply unacceptable for something that lets you fight for a dragon pickaxe -Living Rock Caverns was pretty much the only legitimate update as it released a new game element: resources that collapsed based on a timer, not on the number of items they held -High-level potions and Ardougne diaries are very minimal updates in terms of effort. Yes, their effects were awesome, but the burden of creating those lied mainly on balancing and not developing. -Temple at Senntisten was your average 30-45 minute quest, nothing new...quests need to become harder... -Nomad's Requiem did not even come close to qualifying as a grandmaster quest. It took me less than an hour: the biggest puzzle, the 3x3 shifting block puzzle, took me maybe 5-8 minutes. I did not die once the entire quest. This is what I meant by 10-minute quests in the first place...Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf and an herblore update that had to be fixed after release and that screwed up the economy bad for months. The ideas are in place, but it just seems to be so rushed and overlooked. Plenty of people DID struggle with the Nomad. Besides your not the one who decides what a grandmaster quest is or isnt Jagex is. But your other points i do agree with. I understand that Nomad was hard for some players. Nevertheless, a grandmaster quest is meant to be extremely challenging, and Nomad can be taken down by anyone once they get comfortable with his patterns and find a good strategy. Even the quest developer thought he was too easy - that is true proof that the final boss fight does not override the extremely short puzzles/plotline enough to qualify it as a grandmaster quest. I personally believe that such quest bosses should have strength relative to each player's levels, perhaps with a slight curve, although that's another story. Bottom line: the questcape is a privelege, not a right, and even if Nomad took you several tries the quest was quite straightforward, short, safe, and easy.

I went over all that in my last post: -Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf took 10 minutes as a quest, that is simply unacceptable for something that lets you fight for a dragon pickaxe -Living Rock Caverns was pretty much the only legitimate update as it released a new game element: resources that collapsed based on a timer, not on the number of items they held -High-level potions and Ardougne diaries are very minimal updates in terms of effort. Yes, their effects were awesome, but the burden of creating those lied mainly on balancing and not developing. -Temple at Senntisten was your average 30-45 minute quest, nothing new...quests need to become harder... -Nomad's Requiem did not even come close to qualifying as a grandmaster quest. It took me less than an hour: the biggest puzzle, the 3x3 shifting block puzzle, took me maybe 5-8 minutes. I did not die once the entire quest. This is what I meant by 10-minute quests in the first place...Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf and an herblore update that had to be fixed after release and that screwed up the economy bad for months. The ideas are in place, but it just seems to be so rushed and overlooked.

I would prefer if Jagex invested more money in the content team (receive more of that separate funding) than in the CM team if the CM team doesn't actually have an open customer support connection to the general public. If there were more developers to go around, there would be more projects in the work at any one time, meaning each project could be carefully manicured to perfection when it is nearing release (instead of being released with bugs or pushed back). as for hiring more content developers, look at this graph (from mechscapeworld): And keep in mind that MMG said they already have a full decade's worth of content in the works on schedule to be released at regular intervals. So, I mean, it's not like it would be bad for them to hire more content people, but it's not like things are going so badly as it is. At least not in any visible way. Recent updates have been suffering from a big lack of quality, of the "oomph" that makes you want to replay the update. All of the quests have been short and the dungeons have followed the set formulas. Let me quote from a different diary: I'm pretty sure that Jagex doesn't consider a quest that takes 10 minutes to complete to be "the best result we think we can get." With RS getting bigger every year, each unique idea that comes up needs to be milked so that it leaves a substantial piece of itself in 'Scape. Forgive me if I don't jump out of my boots at a 2 percent increase in the number of developers. The removal of customer support suddenly liberated ALL those customer relations people, whose numbers only fell 2.5%. If Jagex kept them on, then they need to increase the size of the content team a great amount to keep the working ratio going. It's a testament to how complicated RS has become that only 94 people in content and QA combined managed to churn out all the great stuff from 2006-2007, the golden year of RuneScape. Updates have dropped vastly in number, and while that is to be expected as a game grows, the lack of an increase in playability means things are still getting rushed. Just adding another 20 developers, 4 graphic artists, 1 music track mixer, and 5 QA testers would allow another 15 or so projects to be designed simultaneously, meaning each project can be given the time it deserves to make sure it fits in the game. Even if these projects take 8 months each, we are still getting 24 more high-quality updates per year - another 2 for every month. Obviously it won't always shake out this way, but it should be pretty clear that even minor increases should vastly increase quality without sacrificing quantity.

I would prefer if Jagex invested more money in the content team (receive more of that separate funding) than in the CM team if the CM team doesn't actually have an open customer support connection to the general public. If there were more developers to go around, there would be more projects in the work at any one time, meaning each project could be carefully manicured to perfection when it is nearing release (instead of being released with bugs or pushed back). On the topic of developer diaries, I've always thought that the content ones were too large, not too small. The best diary is a short little blog entry, not a carefully written and timetabled production. All the developers would need to do is take 5 minutes at the end of each day to write about what they did that day, if it was meaningful.

Maybe it didn't strike you all as such, but the second article seemed to me to be a reflection on the fact that 22 of Jagex's last 60 updates have been game-related, and that's including all the small fixes. The last 5 developer diaries have been about topics other than game content. You can justify any individual update coming out, but the main point is that Jagex seems to have quite a lot of personnel taking more active roles in the support and special interests subdivisions. There's nothing wrong with that, except the fact that all the support staff is catering to clans and machinima makers instead of answering queries for everyone. How exactly is that taking a more balanced approach to the community? RS content has slowed - and while that's ok if each update is offering lots of playability, the quality of each is going in the opposite direction. I have yet to meet someone who thinks that RS is currently in the most perfect state it will ever be in and that Jagex should sit back and focus on support. It's not the orb in particular - it's the whole shift away from content and towards community involvement. It was the result of people complaining that Jagex never tells us anything and that they never log into the game and that they never support people making videos or writing about RuneScape. Well now they log into the game and everything, but it's leaving gaping holes in terms of content. Jagex seems to be operating in waves: On September 9&17, they gave us a new dwarf quest (albeit a very short one) and the Living Rock Caverns. On October 13&20, we got a short/medium quest and the Ardougne Achievement diary. On December 3&8 we got another short/medium quest and Kuradal's Dungeon On January 11 we got yet another short/medium quest (Nomad's Requiem) Notice the waves? They're getting smaller and less frequent. All the other weeks were filled with little tweaks that were more cumbersome to balance than they were to make. It shouldn't come as a surprise that the "tweak" weeks have been the ones in which the new developer diaries, machinima contests, and Q&As were on. Now I know most of you are dying to pin this as "crying about updates." I'd be perfectly fine with 7 updates in 5 months if they all offered me lots of playability. The four quests took me less than 3.5 hours to complete. The shortest quest - dwarves - took me 10 minutes, while the longest - Nomad's Requiem, a supposed Grandmaster quest - took me no longer than an hour. Achievement Diaries take a little bit longer, on the magnitude of 1.5 hours, but compared to quests they are much simpler to write. The Living Rock Caverns and Kuradal's Dungeon were much appreciated, but of the two, only one - Living Rock Caverns - introduced a new game element (resource collection spots based on timers instead of amount of resources). This week should start off a new wave. It'll have to blow my mind to change my conviction that the content team has not kept up with growth as much as the support teams.

First article wasn't really serious enough to be the headline one. Not that it was bad in any way, but humorous or creative writing belongs as an accompanying article in my opinion. Second article was very good. Some people would like to respond that Jagex supports clans through the CM, not Content, team. This is however easily countered by saying that Jagex needs to pump more resources (ie, hire more people) into the Content team and not the management teams. If they have no query system for customer support, they're better off stripping down community management entirely. You can talk about variety all you want, but in my opinion, until the updates are absolutely perfect (brilliantly and carefully refined to be perfect in terms of playability, rewards, and glitches), these projects should be given lowest priority. The current RS updates are nowhere close to this standard. I would say that they need to update more frequently, but in all honesty, RS needs to avoid getting too big too quickly. The solution is then to keep the same schedule of content updates but to hone each one to perfection and to make each offer lots of gameplay (that means no more 10-minute quests!).

MMG is the CEO making him top dog :P though yes Andrew holds the majority of the shares in Runescape giving him the chance to sway the direction any way he pleases it is MMG who makes the real decisions when it comes down to the crunch I think....... Well actually it's generally a collaborated effort by MMG, Andrew and Paul, but I think MMG has more power than people let on. And yes, he would be committing business suicide if he didn't answer questions with safe answers. It's not his place to reveal it, it's up to the employees to tell him what to say. The feeling I get from MMG is one of people orientated business which is brilliant. This is what they want you to think, but MMG really cannot change Andrew's core policies. In the end he is hired and fired by someone, and that person is Andrew. MMG can make whatever day to day decisions he wants but on important points you know where the protocol lies.

He doesn't actually set the policies you know...Andrew still holds all the cards, so to speak. It is good that they put such a hard working and mostly honest guy up front, but the standard bearer shouldn't form your opinion of the company. Hopefully by all his answers this time you'll notice the consistent answering of "safe," previously asked/answered questions, and his absolute refusal to talk about anything game related. On these instances note how he says that's not his policy...and I think you'll get what I'm trying to say.

Only 18% of people on Tipit are relatively high leveled? That's kinda sad...and 2 out of every 5 people haven't even reached 1500... When I first saw the poll I thought the categories should have been <1250, 1250-2000, 2000-2200, 2200+, something more staggered above 2000...but I guess not >_>

No hard feelings :) Well on FunOrb, achievements from all games are added up to form the Orb Points scoretables. Arcanists (the game with the most achievements) has about 17k orb points available; I, at the bottom of the front page, have over 220k orb points. The highest f2p player has about 180k orb points. It is definitely possible to compete up to a certain point in most games, but to reach the top you do have to pay. It's sort of analogous to having more skills to train in RuneScape; at 1400 total, a member has all level 58-59 stats, while a f2p player has all level 87 stats. It's much easier to raise a skill from 58 to 59 than from 87 to 88, and likewise, it's harder to get orb points at the upper levels as a f2p player because only harder ones are left. Within each game, the advantage given by membership varies hugely: In Arcanists, f2p players have only a spellbook and a half to work with and no access to rated games, while Zombie Dawn Multiplayer is completely free. I do agree that Jagex's policies vary over time. In 2003 they were nothing but a one-product company with a huge MMORPG. They have since entered the mini-game, mobile device, and now RTS markets. For them to say in 2003 that they would ever be individually selling a game that's about a hundredth of the size of RuneScape would have been absurd. Since then the price for RuneScape has gone up and they've just now entered a massive period of transition. Whether we like it or not, all of their products are changing: RuneScape's updates are generally geared for higher and higher levels, FunOrb has switched to developing larger and larger games that could stand alone, and even the free Bouncedown app is getting updates. Whatever Jagex has said in the past about RuneScape can no longer be fairly held to anything except RuneScape. You could argue that MMG is breaking a lot of the precedents Andrew set up first, like not talking to players about updates and not making promises ingame, and about not wasting employee time by even logging in, but no one does because they like those changes. Keeping the same system would definitely not work in a game that got rid of its customer support. Something said at a time when Jagex's only product was RuneScape (and where it would be their only product for another 5 years) really shouldn't limit what they do with other products. If Jagex is known as a MMORPG maker, why are they even trying to promote these games in the first place? Truth is they are branching off into different directions and they're willing to try something they've always considered doing now that they've been given the freedom to do so. I can't stress enough that as far as I could tell from looking through the shop, WoL offers nothing to help in battle other than the ability to increase your soldiers' proficiency at a faster rate. It's just the same as what RuneScape used to be like - those who could afford to keep returning in rune sets usually won the war. Now with safe battles it is much the same, but now pizzas and druidic robes and the like offer increasingly expensive options for use in f2p, options that p2p players can obtain much more rapidly than f2p players. I guess the key difference here is whether you see giving money to Jagex and giving money to a third party as the same thing. For me and others it will never be the same because everyone has an equal opportunity, if not the equal means, to take advantage of what's being offered with no fear of being banned. I won't personally be paying for WoL, but I simply can't see paying Jagex to be able to play in the upper divisions of the game as I see paying gold farmers for flat out currency. Luckily, dungeon assault now has enough dungeons so that you can easily make it up to about 20,000 renown (the highest you need to be for any renown-based achievements) with f2p units. Trying to go above that is brutal though - f2p have access to the best trap but not the best monster, and have access to only one really great raider. I think that it would be fair to say that f2p can compete with anyone evenly up to a certain point (you cannot use certain raiders/traps until you pass renown barriers) and then they either must make do with what they have or buy membership to compete better. In WoL a similar pattern should emerge. Hopefully there is some mechanic like the dungeon assault raiding timer so that paying players cannot pick on others very easily.

I read that as the only difference Jagex sees today is that RWT was wrong was because they weren't the ones in charge of it. That was the whole purpose of the article, comparing what Jagex used to say vs what they are slowly telling us now. Didn't actually expect to get a response (especially of that caliber) - maybe I should have been a bit more polite. Oh well, damage has been done. Anyway, I apologize for sending any wrong messages across. I'm glad that being slightly inflammatory actually got me a response for once. I think I can get back to the topic now without anything more. I think it is important to consider Jagex as not your average company. They are basically a one-product company that is desperately trying to expand while keeping the company alive by pumping updates into that one product. I am a very avid funorb player (front page orb points) and I can say that FunOrb has definitely been some testing grounds. One of the perks of the smaller community is that Mod Korpz (the head of FunOrb, kind of like a mix between Mod MMG/Mod Mark for RuneScape but still under MMG) posts topics and asks for feedback. One of these was the concept of microtransactions and if players would want to do so. FunOrb has one poster game - Arcanists - as well as several others (most people don't know other FunOrb games so I won't name them) with fairly stable player bases, and a bunch of underplayed games. The interest was to see if people who had not subscribed to FunOrb (it is very easy for f2p to access forums on funorb) would subscribe if they paid a lower cost JUST for Arcanists, or if people would prefer a pay-per-game rate over a monthly rate. Point is, RuneScape, FunOrb, and now Jagex's other projects are all hugely separate ventures. RuneScape is almost too complicated for Jagex to handle case by case anymore (removal of customer support) and therefore any changes with have to be broad, sweeping ones: ie removal of trade. The problem with the form of RWT that was happening in RuneScape was that it was costing Jagex money. This is actually a complicated issue when you consider that they were just losing the membership fees from the gold farmers, but that's another discussion. Jagex was losing real money while having the rules they set in place (those rules that prevented them from making money) broken. Creating fair gameplay was just the reason given for the lack of a Jagex store for ingame items - as far as I can tell, it had nothing to do with the whole fraud issue, which was the whole reason for the removal of free trade. I do remember reading in a dev diary that "another solution would have been to sell the items ourselves," but in reality, someone will always undercut Jagex's price and make money, leading back to the RWT in terms of third parties, leading back to fraud, leading to still having the trade removal. Then all of a sudden we have microtransactions and free trade was removed anyway. I won't argue that players can't get an advantage in WoL through buying advantages. I still don't feel that this is analogous to RWT in RuneScape, however. The point I made about it not affecting battle, by the way, was aimed towards the battles once the troops were already decided. You can buy some better troops rather than earning them more slowly, but they won't actually be any better in a fight. To add on to that, a player using JCredits still has to theoretically log on more often, if not for longer, to take advantage of the JCredits. As a basic example, a free player and a player with unlimited JCredits both set a 2 hour building project going. The player with JCredits uses the item that reduces building time by one hour. They still have to log on before the other player to take advantage of that JCredit. I know that not all items will align with this perfectly, and that it will inevitably be possible to log on the same amount and yet get ahead (especially with buildings that take longer than a day). I just tried to say that I trust Jagex to get this right - paying gives you some advantage but doesn't destroy the game concepts. It's like buying membership on RuneScape. You can either spend a long time making low amounts of money on f2p - say, by mining coal - and then buy cowhides to get 99 crafting. By buying membership, you can make the same amount of money as you made by mining coal all day by just doing a couple farming runs and doing the daily things like Manage Thy Kingdom, then get even more money with something like runecrafting higher leveled runes than were available on f2p. Then you can buy 99 crafting with a more cost efficient AND faster method like battlestaves+dragonhides. All this still takes time though, and if you get p2p with no skills and level 1 crafting you can still be beaten by a f2p player with a head start. If WoL makes it far, the player base should be large enough so that there is someone at every level to fight with. At that point, it is little more than a RuneScape type game - and I must admit that in general, paying gives you better options. In essence Jagex is trying a different payment option for the same kind of system. They've talked about it on FunOrb and I believe they are legitimately testing to see which brings in more revenue and player satisfaction. After all, if no one is willing to pay for a feature, no one is enjoying that feature. I just reacted badly to the whole concept of Jagex accepting RWT now that they are getting the money. It's kind of like what xxshady said but in a different tone. I feel that microtransactions are more comparable to paying for membership than to flat out cheating with a third party. Consider: what other kind of system Jagex should have used? A flat membership rate would mean that you would get all these trinkets for free, which wouldn't work at all, or that now you would be able to pay for them in an in-game currency, which is rather pointless if you can't buy that currency outright. A one-time buy wouldn't make sense considering that they are trying to promote a new game which isn't theirs. It's hard to get the hang of a game like WoL in a limited time trial because the game really only starts once you level up enough for PvP combat. I would look at Jagex in terms of its whole host of different products. There's a game with a free version and a membership option. There's a site of a collection of games, some of which are completely free and some of which have p2p elements, which has a subscription fee for all but is looking at a pay-per-game strategy in addition to that monthly rate. Finally, there's this fairly large persistent-world game being published by a different company - what can you expect them to do except try out a new payment strategy that makes sense? The whole idea of paying to get an advantage in the game is quite common elsewhere, and Jagex is testing the waters as best they can without compromising the policy they set for RuneScape. F2P and P2P players go on the same highscore list in RuneScape, just as f2p and "p2p" players go in the same environment in WoL. Even if you are completely adamant about the paying for an advantage point (which is almost a matter of opinion if you think about it), it shouldn't affect your opinion of Jagex as a company. Each product is kept separate, and at the end of the day, how much you pay or don't pay on WoL doesn't affect your account on RuneScape. Whether you pay a monthly subscription or a pay-per-game fee on FunOrb, it doesn't affect your scores in the games you choose to play. Jagex has a unique policy in all of its products with a similar theme: paying means more variety and possibly faster training, but not outright levels. The whole RWT removal issue was (unless I've missed some overarching theme or counterargument) irrelevant to the payment options. TL/DR: -It's my opinion that WoL's system of paying for an advantage is more similar to membership fees than to buying gold from a third party. -Even if you believe differently, it should not affect your view of Jagex as a company; along with their fair gaming policy they have also instituted a pretty strong policy of keeping their products separate. Different branches of Jagex exploring different payment options does not affect the values that the people working with RuneScape are using, yet they still have the fair play idea.

First article seemed senseless to me; I didn't get the impression that the author really had all his facts in line. The first half of the article discussed measures used in RuneScape to prevent RWT, a completely irrelevant point. The middle bit seemed to be about Jagex's past policies, which were again related to RuneScape. The bank space for security key was a legitimate point made but it was unfortunately the only one. And the author just seems not to know how war of legends works. You can buy items that will increase the rate at which you can build things and level up your skills. In order to take advantage of this you must be at your computer all day switching to building new things. You cannot buy more resources directly - they still cost gold, which you cannot buy. Meanwhile the free-to-play person simply sets up his building orders and leaves their computer. The difference is that the person using Jagex's service is spending more time AND money, and the other person is spending neither time NOR money. Point is: to take advantage of the stuff you buy you have to spend more time anyway, which will give anyone an advantage. Why haven't you written articles about how RS is not fair since not everyone can play for the exact same amount of time per day? And when it finally comes to battle in WoL, you cannot buy anything to help you out. More stuff about RuneScape...then this: This is utter nonsense. Jagex is publishing this game FOR another company (it isn't even in Java), and if you had played the game you would have seen that it is filled with small glitches and spelling errors that are typical of a newly made game. I'm not sure if Jagex bought the rights to the game outright or simply took a cut, but unless people start seriously using JCredits, I'm betting it's not Jagex's pockets that are filling up. Jagex has been asking players for months what kind of payment option they would prefer, and this whole article was written using ONE legitimate pretense - that the game does in fact support microtransactions.

I think it's great you guys are keeping the low levels out of godwars. As stonewall said, Bandos is dog eat dog and everyone crashes each other, it's just the way it works. If they can't be bothered to get their 200 people to click the boss on time, they don't deserve the kills in the first place.

It's a serious problem that Jagex has now released 2 quests they consider to be of "grandmaster" caliber, whereas in reality neither is harder than previous quests and RuneScape is still waiting for a hard quest. Complaining about the classification is probably the best feedback they can receive to make future quests of the proper difficulty. See, this was one of the only grandmaster quests to be released this year, and if most of the other quests are much easier, they have not followed through on the "hard quests" promise. Keeping in mind that they've only had two shots at what a grandmaster quest should be like, I think it's important to keep giving them the following feedback: -WGS was about half as long as a grandmaster quest should take, although it had plenty of good plot twists/elements. The fights were all very easy but just difficult enough so that you had to prepare for combat, not for general questing. -NR was far too short, with a 1-3 hour play time depending on how many times you failed at Nomad. It had a puzzle theme, which was good, but there was really only one puzzle, and 3x3 sliding puzzles are child's play. It had one interesting (but easy) boss in the degrading avatar, and then it had a moderately challenging boss at the end - something you needed to prepare for. -Both had requirements that were WAY too low. I'm really disappointed to see things like this. I do not have extreme sets; I used a regular super attack and super strength during the battle, and no range potion at all. Although I used a pack yak, the supplies I had left over at the end could have refilled the yak entirely - I used just 25 sharks, 1 brew, and 2 super restores, meaning a terrorbird would have sufficed for me (and if I had drunk more brews instead of sharks I could have done it without a familiar). I was wearing black dragonhide with a whip and defender (diamond bolts for when frozen). I beat Nomad on my first try without memorizing what the lines above his head were. The things I DID have going for me: maxed stats and curses. It's such a shame that you can't go back to kill him again because I would have loved to go back and killed him with various hindrances. I would have recorded a video of me killing Nomad in black dhides and climbing boots, with regular prayers, without any stat boosting potions (99 melees can be reached with pots by people with skills in the 80s), and with a war tortoise familiar. I also would have recorded a range-only method for those with 90+ range but bad melee stats. Either way it is not THAT hard because Nomad was pretty specifically designed to hit high but to have no KO power. I struggle to see how people are taking dozens of tries to kill Nomad when the pattern should have become obvious during the first fight.

I did it on my first try with whip and hides, using just an inventory of sharks. If I had brought brews Nomad would have also been a piece of cake. I don't understand why everyone is complaining - you can beat him with a tortoise of brews/sharks and a whip with almost any gear and decent combat levels...80-90 melee stats or a high range level. Hundreds of thousands of players meet those requirements. The entire quest took me under an hour...still waiting for a real "grandmaster" quest. Jagex's two attempts have both been quick and easy quests. I think ALL the puzzles should be expanded: -Movable blocks (sliding puzzles): move that 3x3 to the top floor and add another row+column each floor down...ending on the ground floor with a 5x5 sliding puzzle where the original piece orientation is random for every player -Luring the elemental creatures: make a MUCH larger maze -Stones across water: not a puzzle at all -Killing roots: make it a maze or something

Rank 6260 with 235.4m experience. This has been my goal since returning to rs after a fairly length break playing funorb (rank 20 orb points). I got all my skills to level 80+, then I just continued what I was doing. Here are my goals right now: -Keep getting "daily" experience with farming, crafting with battlestaffs from ge (100k exp/day), stockpiling herbs for herblore from farming and Kingdom. I'm just using penguin points to train runecraft, actually it's not bad with over 30k a week from penguins and 10k+ from tears/lamps/etc. -AFK woodcut while doing homework/etc. -Finish up some materials I have banked. I have 91 smithing banked except for the SC hammers (ardy diary elite) and 85 construction. -Raise all my skills to 85. From there I unlock powerful new methods for training fishing and agility, my two least favorite skills. -Level all skills to 90, get the skills currently in the 90s to 99, etc...

Then why would they write about it? A year is a long time, they might have been working on a quest for 2 months and it can easily be released in 2010.. :wall: Erm, how would they come out if they aren't under development... unless.. they are already done. The ones that come out in 2010 are under development now, or, if not, come out tomarrow. How quickly people forget...just look at Mobilizing Armies. Scheduled for November 08 comes out over half a year later and it still doesn't work. The minigame is still worthless and is less of a strategy game than flipping a coin. And the last skill that came out was less than halfway complete. It too was hyped like crazy, came out late and was completely glitched. One of the best strategies when dealing with Jagex releases: be pessimistic, you won't get nearly as angry.

Lol why get exited? None of those updates will actually come out in 2010, if they are in development now.

Manage Thy Kingdom and farming/skilling with a macaw are, in my opinion, the best methods involved in do-it-yourself herblore.

Second article: it's a really good point there. It's important that if you are bored or feel "finished" with RS or think everything is "pointless" that you take a break, perhaps leaving forever. Don't stick around while you aren't having fun.

I take a great interest in the economy, mainly because it's much quicker to make money by buying and selling than by using any skill, but also because I can increase my net worth by buying and selling the items I already own at the right times. I used to be the person who didn't care what his items were worth as long as he had them, but frankly the economy is so gigantic and open to manipulation that you should probably pay some attention to it.

The real 2 articles reminded me in a positive way of why I quit RuneScape.

I feel I was a bit bitter in my last post. I did dozens and dozen of solo TD trips, hoping to get D Claws, but I never got anything more than the slice I got duo when no one else knew all the solo strategies. I saw many of my high level friends get dozens and dozens of these things, making several billion, while I got nothing. Needless to say I quit after a few weeks. Later I picked it up again, I would do one solo trip every now and then. What really took the mick was when I went on a trip to teach some friends how to kill them, then they hopped worlds and got claws as their second or third drop ever. Part of the reason I quit RS even while at level 138 with a very high skill total was Jagex's lack of high-level content that's repeatable and that gives steady, not streaky profits.

Another lucky person raving about dry streaks The true rate of claws is about 1 in 200, always has been, you have just been extremely lucky. I have around 1200 TD kills with just 1 slice to show for it (and that was in the first 50 kills, on the day the quest was released).