obidiah

I would pay a small amount to watch a live stream of it, honestly, and they could make it available to those who only live outside of the UK. And I'm actually quite shocked they haven't come up with this idea before since they can't feasibly host RuneFests in other countries while forking back the cost of the ticket. Well last year they allowed videoing of Runefest - so there are playermade videos of most of the sessions on Youtube. Not live streams admittedly - but it does mean you at least get to hear what was said.

I think even when it's got to the point where the level grinding is no longer interesting, it's always worth coming back to play the new quests and stuff when they've built up a little. (and it's fun to give some of the new minigames and distractions and diversions a quick go too) Quests were always my favourite bit of the game anyway. Say what you like about other parts of the game, quests haven't really been affected by other changes. - plenty of quality still coming out. Right now i've got to get 4 extra skill total to play Ritual of the Mahjarrat which has got me levelling again.

Sounds a super dangerous strategy you're suggesting Jagex follows. I can imagine if it got out, peoples reactions. If Jagex had found out that they'd accidentally been sending children in the direction of a potentially dangerous person and then been seen to try to cover it up. People get annoyed if Jagex covers up minor things like game balance adjustments, and this is something with potentially more serious implications that affects real life. And people would ask questions and start digging if a fansite went from gold rated to not supported at all. People would want to know why. People didn't just let it lie when tip.it started off as silver instead of gold. People didn't even let it lie, when tip.it took minor measures with their advertising banners to achieve gold. People care about this stuff. The information is there on the Runevillage owner and I think it would have got out anyway. (There's a good chance that it was a concerned player that found out about the situation and informed Jagex, rather than Jagex finding it out for themselves)

Your missing the point the writer meant. He or she asked for obsolete methods in P2P. For example "Bury-X" for F2Pers. Did not ask for a minigame. The thing is though that significantly increased xp rates is one of the biggest draws for getting members of the lot. I've seen several thread over the years asking is "members worth it" and one of the main arguments for getting members is always yes the xp rates are a lot better. Now even if you're talking about giving methods that members don't use much, it's still narrowing the gap, so you need to be careful. If the difference is too small, you'll get more people taking the mentality they will complete their free skills before they shell out for members. (which will tend to mean they never get members at all) I don't believe Xp rates are something which really make much a difference to if someone is drawn in, in the first place. Early players don't have much of a sense of different skilling methods and the very early levels are fairly quick regardless. - such features are only really of interest to the long term F2P users. Some F2P users can be quite crafty in making out what they're asking for is something quite small when in fact they're asking for something very specific to make them stop wishing they had members. As others have said, what the f2P game needs to not deter new users is someway to reduce the botting epidemic. (especially the advertiser bots which are the most immediately visible) Not sure the best answer to that mind you, I believe that ironically one of the reasons that Runescape is more susceptible too bots than most is precisely because it has such an accessible free game. (such that any bot you ban can easily be replaced by 5 more)

depends what would happen to Jagex's intellectual assets and codebase in such a situation. Depends how dramatically things went wrong. They might be kept my the shareholders, they might be sold off by liquidators to whoever was prepared to pay the most. Then the question would be what would the owners do. They could a)Keep the assets, but not run the game and not let anybody else do either. (Which did happen in the case of Andrew's early product- castle games domain - now owned by yahoo) B)Run the game but don't maintain it (Which is possibly the scenario you're actually hypothesising about) C)Run the game and provide support services D)Run the game and provide support services and updates. E)Let someone else administer the game for them in either style C or D F)Release the game as Open source.

Doesn't make much difference to my actual gameplay that I can see. Still is playable. The number of players per world isn't that different than it has ever been, just less of them are inclined to have a conversation. - not that the average conversation in skilling areas was ever that stimulating.

On bots - well I'd personally prefer as strict an enforcement as possible, as it feels nice to be playing a "fair" game, though it doesn't really make that much difference to me. I'd given up long ago any hope of keeping up with all the genuine players who play 3+ hours a day and tend to play for my own solo-goals which don't involve competition with others. So a bunch of other players I can't keep up with doesn't really stress me like it stresses some people. On Crocefisso's article he suggests that Runescape gameplay is too inane and that this is the biggest threat to it's future. I can see where he's coming from - but I have to wonder is the style of gameplay what is actually keeping many players around. i'm somebody who quite enjoys dungeoneering and I quite enjoy some of the minigame based skilling content too. - there is a bit more gameplay to these things than repetitive clicking content. but I do often find myself more often priortising the simpler gameplay options anyway. A lot of the time i don't entirely know how long I'm going to get at the computer, so it's nice to have something I can dip into for a short while and then leave when I want as a pose to something which requires a certain time commitment. Simple gameplay is also good if I feel like multitasking - it's hard to socialise in a game when you're playing something which requires much concentration. there are several Old MMOs which have done radical overhauls of their gameplay and more often than not it seems rather than stop stagnation it accelerates the slide. My point is while a game may have it's apparent flaws, many of the people actually playing the game are used to the flaws and in fact see them as positive features which they've built their characters and gameplay patterns around. MMO players are notoriously opposed to big changes, you can tell when a game has had a big overhaul as a large portion of their players flood every corner of the internet saying how their game is ruined and they're looking for something new. Even if only 10% of the players leave, the negative publicity is huge. This happened a bit with Runescape with the wilderness removal/trade restrictions. - and even though it's been reversed (and even though a fair few of us had got used to the changes before the reverse and now understand the reasons for the original change) i think that Runescape's reputation has never really recovered from it, making it harder for the game to attract new players. Runescapes update from Runescape Classic is about the most fundamental overhaul to an established MMO I have seen that actually worked in creating growth rather than decline, so maybe Jagex can achieve it twice. RS2 got a lot of hate when it first came out. I remember it got absolutely torn to shreds on the forums, if you went purely by forums, you'd think Jagex were destroying their own game. The haters were only calmed down when Jagex announced that they'd keep Runescape Classic up and running. - but I'm not sure if that'll work again or not, now that people will suspect that the old fork of the game will be left neglected to slowly die.

It probably favours dummy accounts. I'm not sure how it favours bots particularly (sure it's botable - but no more than if they'd been allowed to do it the other way) Though I think my main point was still that TS stormrage says "so how in the world will they detect this when the content isn't even available yet, let alone a bot developped for it?" When I can't see any Edam making any claims of being able to detect anything.

I may be misssing something on your second point, but I don't think Mod Edam is saying what you think he is saying. You seem to think he is saying they can detect bots building citadels? Or that by requiring lots of people it will somehow stop it being botable? He doesn't seem to be saying this at all. He seems to be saying is he doesn't want to create excessive grind content within citadels as an alternative to having a big clan, because people will just bot it. (which surely if he was saying they could detect it wouldn't be a problem) While if you just require a few mins from each clan member there's not much incentive to bot in the first place. - people write bots for the things which are time consuming and boring. - theoretically you could bot it, but when you're talking something short, it's probably as much hastle to set up the bot as to play it properly.

i liked the more frequent random events that we used to get, they broke up some of the more boring training nicely. However at the time I appeared to be in the minority. Saying you enjoyed encountering random events tended to get yourself considered a loony. I don't think bringing back dangerous random events would particularly help against the botting problem. They had been programmed around. Sure they slow down bots slightly, but they slow down everyone else just as much - so they don't in anyway make the none-botting option more appealing than the botting option. and dangerous randoms might mean that people learn not to wear their expensive items, but then plenty of items main function is to wear them to show off you've got something hard to obtain. - so it's debatable if people learning not to wear them is a good thing. Though to be honest you weren't in much danger of dying if you knew what you were doing - don't think I ever died to a random. Also contrary to what the article states, the removal of dangerous random events didn't make the other ones more common. - because they simultaneously made random events in general much rarer. They did remove about half of the events, and then make events appear at about a quarter of the rate, (maybe even less than that - you could sometimes get stupid numbers on some skills like magic) meaning you are now getting any individual random event less often than before. It actually took me a while to unlock the new sandwich lady music because I was not getting that event - when I used to meet the sandwich lady all the time.

Very well said indeed. It irritates me no end when people try to label the Times as a news outlet, usually to use it as a flimsy basis for expressing their discontent with an article that does not fit in to their view of the game. Ironically, I often see the very same people on this thread lauding these evil opinion articles if and when they agree with the opinions expressed by the authors. I think the fact that it's called the Times in the first place does give people the impression that it's meant to be a news source. - after all that's normally a name used for newspapers. Plus I do actually think in the past most of the articles did try and present both sides of the argument. In the last couple of years the articles seem to have shifted more to soapbox than informative. As a stand alone article, I think it's more useful to the reader to have the more balanced article, thus having the information to be able to form their own opinion. However the one sided opinion article does at least have the potential to entertain, but mostly because it provokes a starting point for a debate on the subject. Now that can be quite a tricky strategy to manage - the internet being the internet, means that some people will get pretty vicious and personal when presenting their opinion - so it can present a moderating issue. What's more I've seen some Times writers (not necessarily yourself) who get upset, even with the less personal disagreements too their articles. -which makes me wonder if the aim was to provoke debate after all.

While there may be a discussion to have over whether or not Jagex is starting to push commercial aims over gameplay, the first article does seem to be too extreme in it's views to feel very credible. I think It tries to imply that there aren't any updates which ad depth to the game anymore, implying that things that the loyalty update have replaced them - which I'd strongly disagree with, there's all sorts of fun and interesting updates coming into the game still. There are also seems to be a vibe that people are "forced" to get ongoing membership to get superficial rewards. Which doesn't make sense to me. If they're superficial no-one is forced to get them, they're just a bit of a bonus for those people who do want to pay the continual membership.

Thinking about things further, what really bothers me about the 2nd isn't so much the stating opinion as fact after all. - but the little implications throughout that the writer has assumed that I the reader have the same opinions on skills as he does (unless I'm some sort of shallow idiot) and that he's somehow speaking for the community as a whole. It reads to me like he hadn't even considered the possibility that lots of intelligent people, might actually enjoy the new skills. - I think that's partially why some people railing quite so viciously against his article - people don't like the feeling of being spoken for - when they don't actually share those views. Others have already mentioned the "It belongs to no category and is a characterless feature added only to satiate demanding, shallow customers." Also "To us consumers, it’s also patronising to assume that we will be awed and satisfied by superficiality; we do not ask for simply ‘more content’, but ‘better content’ and ‘fresh content’" seems to assume that everyone (including Jagex themselves) considers dungeoneering poor superficial content. (I think from reading blogs etc, even taking into account Jagex overhype - they genuinely considered dungeoneering to be depth content, so weren't making the patronising assumptions the author assumed they made)

1st Article Generally a well written article, However bear in mind that over the last 3 years F2P has got far far more updates than it got in the "good old days." In the "golden era" of 2005 and 2006 they barely got any updates at all except for holiday events. Some updates are going to be for all users and some are going to be P2P. Just because the free users don't get to pick and chose which are the free updates, doesn't mean that they're being shown no respect. I would suggest they're getting at least as much as their proportionate contribution to Jagex deserves. 2nd article Really can't relate to this article and it does far to much of stating his opinion as fact. I think that the summoning and dungeoneering skills are some of my favourite skills. For me they're probably 4th and 5th after Slayer, Herblore and farming. I think Dungeoneering has some of the best gameplay and summoning has reasonable gameplay, plus it has a diverse set of interesting rewards throughout the full level range. Construction is quite a lot further down my favourites list as gameplay seems to mostly consists of building larders - whatever level you are at - and while it has lots of rewards - the majoroty are just the reward of furniture to make your house look fancy. (so a showing off reward which it only achieves what it sets out to do if and when you persuade people into your house rather than wherever you go)

Then that would make Obby cape worthless and the price would plummet. ....Isn't it already worthless and the price astronomically low? Personally I think F2P'ers should be allowed access to the Classic Cape and Veteran Cape. I know if Lightning was still remaining as F2P I'd be furious since she was 7th player and remained F2P all the way up until 2009, If I was that situation I'd be angry that all these years playing I don't anything to symbolize the years of my account. Thats my two cents anyway That's a load of BS. I remember a few years ago (around 2007) finding out that Lightning has the most chompy kills in-game being around 10,000 or so. Unless I'm mistaking him for someone else, which I'm pretty sure I'm not. Either way Lightning is ranked in thieving, herblore, agility, fletching, summoning, faming,hunter and has 99 slayer so quite clearly she has spent time quite a bit of time as a member.

The things is for many voters it IS to much to ask that under FPTP. - Rather than voting for who they think best represents them. - they'll vote for who they think is the best choice out of the leading two candidates in the seat as no one else stands a chance. - because that's whats more likely to affect the outcome and make an actual difference to who represents them. It creates inertia in a lot of seats. If a seat is seen for example as being between LIB/CON - most people will continue to vote for one of those two parties. - even if in some cases the political attitudes of the people of constituency might have shifted and more people would vote for someone else if they weren't worrying about effecting the race between the front two.

That's because people actually cared about that yesterday. This is crap. Pointless waste of resources for how much it'll be used. I don't think any update is going to generate as much discussion as making the game inaccessible for a lengthy period of time. Main reason that people are on a thread a lot when the game is down is because the game is down so they can't be in the game so they look for discussion about the game going down, if they can be in game, many have things they'd rather do, like playing the game. Fair enough if you don't like the update, but less people discussing it than the game being inaccessible is not proof of it being a bad or good update. (Though if anything the updates which generates the most forum discussions are the controversial ones.)

I'm talking about the new testament here. I'm quite aware that nobody was alive at the beginning of the universe. So you're talking about reported accounts of a bearded man who allegedly performed miracles. Oh, and somehow, nobody managed to hear about him except for those who lived in one tiny part of the world. The only thing that the Bible has going for it over Henderson's religious documents is that the Bible was a collaborative work of fiction, as opposed to a singular author's work. Also, what is the argument you are making? That the Bible is more likely to be true because we have less documentation about whether it is true or false? So if you find a note on the street and it says "YOU WILL DIE TODAY" do you think that note is reputable because you don't know where it came from? We don't really know how far news of Jesus spread while he was alive, information from that era is pretty sparse. According to the bible he had become very well known in the local area and some people had heard of him from further away. Information didn't spread anywhere near as quickly in that era, the communication systems just weren't there (infact a lot of the world hadn't even discovered each other). Stories of a man in a distant land who could work magic would not have been entirely out of the ordinary that enough people would write it down. So further affield reports of Jesus made during his lifetime are unlikely. It's only after his death that the disciples learn more of the true nature of Jesus themselves at which point they have a more compelling and unusual story that will survive the passage of time to tell. Soon after a number of none biblical historical records of the spread of Christianity start to appear. Generally it's considered very likely by the majority of historians that a Jew called Jesus existed at around that time and was some kind of preacher. Whether you believe if he was the son of god is the key divide between being a Christian and none-Christian. (not whether you believe he existed or not)

I partially play DIY - to the extent that I have made quite a lot of my own cannonballs when I seem to have the correct ores in my bank. - seems the best DIYers use of iron ore to me and throne of misc gives me all the coal I need. It's not super efficient, but it feels like I'm experiencing more aspects the game than skipping stuff by buying it. I know this is going to make no sense to some people, but coming from the pre-GE generation, using the GE too much feels like I'm missing out on parts of the experience of Runescape. And while inefficient, in a lot of cases it's not quite THAT inefficient as it first seems, you're often getting xp in additional skills and saving the costs of buying the items. - Time does equal money after all. (even if the time to money exhcange rate in Runescape values time very highly) I'm not pure DIY. I will buy items which are dropped by the big boss monsters that I can't kill, and I've sometimes used the GE if a quest or achievement diary asks for for one off complicated to make items. I will sell items on the GE that I can't see much DIY use in keeping. A pure DIYer does sound tempting to try and make. And no you don't miss out on efficiency calculations by playing DIY - they're just different calculations, and you're more likely to have work them out for yourself rather than copy what everyone else is doing. Some of the comments I see here along the lines of "cutting all your magic logs to get 99 fletching and firemaking sounds insanely laborius" (paraphrasing a bit here) shows how much some people only think of the popular method. Cutting magic logs for DIY would be insanely laborius - but that's certaily not how I'd DIY any skill.

I voted other. Which mostly means I don't really mind. I don't reallly have the herblore levels I don't really PK, I may go into the wilderness for other features but run away from the pkers when I do. - I probably woudln't bring extremes with me - even if I could make them - as I never bought in supers either.

If you define true free-trade as trade without people being told guide prices then basically true free-trade is impossible to achieve. (and probably not necessary or desirable to achieve) Before the grand exchange, most people did go off price guides. There was one stickied somewhere on the RS official forums (it was player run though) which was popular and I tended to use. - and some fan sites had them (I believe Rune HQ was the most used of these) Thing is there was a certain amount of guess work with these and could often be based on the small handful of trades that the price guide writers could find evidence for. - at the end of the day the prices were chosen by a very small number of individuals. Often guide prices for items could stick just because the guide writers hadn't personally seen evidence of enough trades of an item to update their guides. (rather than because there was no actual fluctuations in supply and demand) The grand exchange can take into acccount far more trades and therefore a guideprice derived from it should be more reflective of actual player trades than solutions that were in place before the grand exchange.

Nerd doesn't wind me up. Nerd and proud. Noob is fairly meaningless and doesn't really wind me up. Kid sometimes does wind me up a little. (I'm probably not as thick skinned as I should be) Chances are I'm older than them. It's mostly annoying when used in an attempt to try and add gravitas to their point of view by making out that they're somewhat older and wiser than people who have the opposite point of view - can backfire on them as the main thing it does is make me want to politely point out every stupidity in whatever point they're trying to make. (after which I feel much better)

Certainly in the past most people didn't give stuff back to strangers, but some people did. Most people gave stuff back to friends (at least in the adult circles I move in) I've certainly had one situation where I died and a friend got some of my stuff, but strangers got some of it - so in those situations I'd now get everything. The majority of the time if you died while solo you could expect to lose your stuff. I might bless a strangers grave. May depend on how nice/nasty they were before they died. The temptation would be greater not to if I saw they'd been wearing valuable stuff. A 30m drop I think you could probably pick it up - negotiate 1m finders fee for return and still be considered to have been nice.

Aren't those on the card though? Yup, so it's a pretty dumb thing to ask for security screening (as long as it's the only real security question), but I think the reason why they ask that is because more details like credit card numbers get stolen online rather than physically, so under such circumstances, the thief would have you card number, but (perhaps) not the security code. I still stand by my opinion that asking dumb questions like that is bad form (as far as validating ID anyways). EDIT: just had an idea. Why don't they ask one or two of your recovery questions as a security measure for credit card payments? That's a much stronger proof of ID, combined with the current questions. Does Jagex even have recovery questions anymore? I think they use e-mail for account recovery now. I think the lost password system is now recovery questions combined with e-mail (i.e just e-mail may not do the trick.) I hope so e-mail accounts can be as easy to steal as recovery questions. It was sold as adding another layer of security, not replacing one with another. The points a but moot though, as I don't think all that many of the stolen credit cards numbers used were connected with Runescape accounts, so wouldn't have associated recovery questions. (Could be wrong, but I didn't hear that many people crying on the forums that their credit card details had been stolen and used to pay for someone else's membership)

That poll was a little flawed as everyone who voted option C) would also have fallen into category A) or category B) depending on if they felt Jagex lied or told the truth. I actually voted C) but A) could equally apply to me. I don't think they lied - but the implementation and the communication surrounding that first interest gauging vote meant it was clearly flawed in more than one way. Maybe the poll told you what you needed to know, hence I didn't debate it in your actual poll thread, but once you start trying to use it to back up other points it's liable to come under more scrutiny.