Jonanananas

Yeah I can't say that the barrows armour looks better...more detailed yes, but the green colour really doesn't fit, and the design isn't really all that great. Surprising really, since the graphics department usually does a great job. I find ahrim's especially ridiculous. Have you loocked at that hood? Looks like someone put a sack over your head >.> You can't even see anything!

Well, I've been following the presidential race somewhat closely, considering I don't live in the US. I've got a few impressions about most of the candidates, and can say I'm quite happy about Bachmann being out of the race :P I've feared the Tea party would be gaining more influence and might be putting up the presidential candidate. Ron Paul and Mitt Romney both seem decent to me. Not exactly what I would want as a president, but okay I guess. Don't know much about Rick Santorum though.

Well...one of them is a pet >.> Then there's the access to the the skilling activity, but besides that...so far, I've seen nothing that would be worth getting 91 fm for. I'm kinda disappointed that they dropped it as well...while it was a long way to train for me, it would have been kinda motivating. Oh well, maybe I'll get 91 anyway, at least magic logs will be cheaper now ;)

They said the quest would unlock new 90+ firemaking methods and some cosmetic reasons to train. Also, they've tried to make the skill handy in the past with shade burning, pyre logs, and cave lighting. Not much, but they have had a go. The problem is that with firemaking, it was pretty useless from the start. A lot of the skills now considered useless to train now(e.g smithing) had tons of use in that past. Firemaking had only one single use that you didn't need a particular high level for, and even that was relatively quickly removed with stoves. They practically would have to rewrite the whole skill to make it useful.

It's not meant to be true at all, alg only used some references to real updates here and there.

I dunno, there are a lot of graphical updates this month... :shock: That's why I found it more weird than entertaining I think. It wasn't true, but then it wasn't completely NOT true either.

Quest replays? Did I miss something in the bts? Yes you did. thanks :P I've read through the bts again before asking but I somehow missed it again :P

Quest replays? Did I miss something in the bts?

It was interesting to see the survey. I too, would've thought that tip.iters would be older on average :P Not quite sure how I feel about the second article...I guess it's for fun, and you got me grinning a few times...but I don't know, the way it is setup, as if it was the truth is kinda weird for me. But that's probably just some personal issues, idk. The article on efficiency was very interesting and well writte. I can totally relate to the feeling of fun you get out of figuring out how the game works. I'm not an efficienado myself, but for me it's penguins :P I've learned a lot about how NPCs move and stuff like that in my years of playing the game and it really is quite fascinating :P

I'm not intending to take you out of context--but I'm not sure who you were accusing of censorship if not Jagex. Did you mean some other word, because it's hard to think of another word that would typo to 'censorship'? Cover-up maybe? Your explanation above is all well and good, but you did actually use the word censorship and your explanation above has nothing to do with it, which seems odd. About taking you in context--I was going to reply to something else, from your last paragraph about whether Jagex would succeed against bots longterm or not, which came from whether Jmods are downplaying, which came from Jiblix...you guys are jumping around topics very quickly. Part of the responsibility for being taken in context is with the author staying in the original context, and also using words precisely. I decided the only way I could stay in context was to not reply at all to that paragraph. I end up agreeing with most of your paragraphs, but sometimes it seems like they don't get along with each other, which does indeed come back to context. Like if I take your last paragraph literally, where you say Jagex maybe can't deal with the bots, it kinda destroys all your previous arguments about how they should fully disclose :shock: If they can't succeed long term, they should hide that and keep stalling, tbh. But if you don't like a line by line analysis then I"ll leave it general like that for you. Sorry about the jumping around on the topics - It can indeed get quite confusing. So, what I wanted to say is that *I personally* do not accusee Jagex of censorship, or at least not more than it's fully their right and mostly needed. There are however, a lot of people feeling like that and the Jiblix incident enraged them a lot. I believe that Jagex could have handled the situation better in order to avoid having so many people being angry at you. Regarding your second paragraph: Well, you're kinda right. Complete honesty and not hiding anything isn't necessarily always the way to go, it depends on the situation. You should try to be honest and not to hide anything, but sometimes I guess it's necessary. Oh and I do believe that Jagex is theoretically able to deal with bots in the long term too. They just need to streamline their reporting and detection system. What I was getting at is, that from a technical perspective, it's impossible for Jagex to stop colour bots completely from working, like they did with injection bots with the bot nuke. Colour bots interact with the game in the same way as a player and operate on an OS level, which means that unless Jagex installed spyware on your computer, they wouldn't be able to stop them from working indefinitely. That doesn't mean they can't be worked against. There is still a lot of stuff you can do to hinder them, e.g. colour changing, and if they get reported and banned quickly enough, then that works just as good as stopping them completely. The thing is, both of these measures get harder relatively to the number of bots in-game. Having a bot system checking only a few k reports is still manageable. Once the bot numbers go into tenthousands at any given time, the report system will be horribly cluttered and not able to keep up. That's why I'm very worried about Jagex not taking the issue seriously. Of course, all of this could simply be just the CM mods talking and trying to calm people, while the Mods behind the scenes still take it very seriously. I hope that's the case. It's possible, I'm not denying it - I'm just worrying.

You want honesty? There, they're being honest that they censor their forums. Really, I have no idea why you bring up honesty and censorship. They mention that they censor the forums like 500 times, the list of rules is longer than this thread. I wasn't supposed to post in this thread again :shame: But accusing Jagex of censorship just is so funny :oops: That was taken out of context. I am not accusing Jagex of censorship, I'm just saying what Jagex could have done better to avoid all the rage when Jiblix's demodding happened. Rather then it begs to question if they're even a regular player? Surely anyone who logs in on a weekly basis and spends time in-game (For the problems to matter), will be aware of bots and people complaining. Even frequenting the Tip.It forums can give one that information. I doubt that. I'm sure there are a lot of players who don't read the RSOF of some of the fansite forums, but for example watch youtube videos. You're saying it's obvious, because it was obvious for *you*. It was obvious for me as well, but I'm sure by far not for everyone else. And there's a big difference between reading "OMG there are hundreds of bots in the LRC" and actually *seeing* it in action. I really have to disagree with you on this one, Jonanananans. Jagex as a company shouldn't have to justify removing a players volunteer position and then make a News post/Forum post regarding it. That's just crazy. The voluntteer knew what they were doing an what the effect would be. It's not Jagex's concern if players choose to get angry. They shouldn't have to tip-toe around and make sure everything is justified. There's a place for Moderators to voice their opinions. It's in the forum rules, also, that players can't create threads that highlight another player (Or something along those lines...) - so there is reason for them posts being removed. I'm not necessairly saying that they *have* to justify themselves. I'm okay with Jiblix's demodding. I'm just saying that addressing the issue would have been *smarter*, and would have avoided a lot of rage. And yes, they should have removed threads about the topic, but simply with a bit more of an explanation. It sure would have been better for them. Wasn't quite sure what that quote was about, but after visiting the thread and reading it, it does make sense. I don't see it as them being in denial, but rather them saying they will deal with it. There's no doubting that bots aren't as rampant as they were pre-whenever-the-nuke-was, and I think we can all agree on that. I don't see that post by Timbo being anything more than that or trying to downplay it. I'm not going to argue and say that bots are completely gone, that will never happen. But they have done a good job at stopping most of it. That was just an example. I've seen some more stuff like this. The problem is that while *currently* the bot problem might not be as bad as it was pre-nuke, the bot numbers are already rising again. Posts like this make it look like Jagex is resting on their laurels while colour bots slowly get better and better and creep back into the game. Sorceress garden already doesn't look much different from how it was before the nuke. There are already a few k bots in the game at any given time. They should be acted on *now* before the report system gets horribly clogged again. I know of some bots reported on Nov 8, which still haven't received any kind of punishment. That doesn't exactly make it look like Jagex is capable of dealing with them, especially if you consider that there won't be an update that stops colour bots completely.

If you haven't done Romeo and Juliet yet, Gunnar's ground. Sheep Herder, Legends quest and Watchtower all give a nice amount of points. Other recommendations would be Shades of Mort'ton, Catapult Construction, Making History, Fur'n Seek, Dream Mentor, Eagle's peak, Horror from the deep, In search of the myreque, Observatory, one piercing note, tower of life. I haven't checked your levels though, and none of the prerequites for the quest either. Coould be that there are some you'd have to train for alot to be able to do them. Just set your quest list to filter to see which you are able to do.

Imagine one morning you wake up, and you "just know" that the Qu'ran is correct and not the Bible, or anything else but the Qu'ran. That really is the answer to "how do you know", you just wake up one morning and you do. Or you have a similar experience at some non-morning time. :P The "what empowers one religion over the others" is a powerful logical argument. But, since the above paragraph is not really logical, it doesn't necessarily apply. It is "pre-logical", in a sense which I will develop now. If you have 20 eyewitnesses to a crime, there's a good chance they'll all give slightly different accounts. But that doesn't mean that one of them can't have the facts perfectly correct, or at least most correct. To this argument, the "which eyewitness do you believe" is a powerful logical argument that you can't trust eyewitnesses accounts. But if you're one of the eyewitnesses, and you're sure you're that one of the 20 who really saw what happened, aren't you going to believe it, despite that argument? It's difficult for logic to overpower our sense of "really seeing what I saw". Which came first--your sense of logic, or your perceptions of the universe? Were you born with a logical intuition, or did you develop a logical sense from watching the world around you behave according to physical laws which are describable with a logical system of postulates? I would argue that it is the latter. Thus, we see that perception is "pre-logical". More precisely, learning to perceive is identical with formulating a logical system for extracting narrative sequences from the configuration space also extracted from the various sensory apparatuses, but that would take too long to put into normal english. Realizing that human perception is imperfect and therefore logic should be used to recursively limit prelogic perception seems inductively true to me, but not deductively true. The fact that sensory perception and processing can be improved through systematic training has been experimentally verified, albeit more in a task-area based way than in general way. If you haven't ever had the experience of "just knowing that this religion is true, and not all the others" then it's much easier to apply the powerful logical argument "what privileges one religion to be true over all the others" to dismiss them all, in the same way in which it is easier to doubt eyewitness accounts than it is to doubt one's own sensory inputs. Investigation of the various sensory illusions is useful in the latter area, there are various lines of inquiry performing a similar function for the former. Not a bad answer, but not sufficient for me :P The simple difference for me is that one is an observable fact. Religion isn't. And because of that, I cannot see how you can rationally argue that your religion is the correct one, or that any of them is correct. Of course, you can still believe in that religion. I know some people like that. They say "I don't know why I believe in my religion. I don't know if it's true and I can't really argue that it is. But it doesn't really matter to me, I simply believe it and I'm happy how it shapes my life" That position, I can understand. Faith isn't something dictated by rationalism. But there are people claiming their own religion to be true, not only for themselves, but for other people too, and they try to argue from a rational point of view, and that's something I'm not able to understand.

Quote chain: [hide] I must ask, Helm_Lardar, but what did we learn from that video? That's the thing I've always been wondering. What exactly did people find out from watching it? Was it that people actually realised there was bots and Real World-Trading websites being advertised en masse all across RuneScape? That Jagex were finding it very hard to tackle all of these problems? I honestly don't think the average RuneScape player (Pretty much everyone who has logged in within the past year) find out something they didn't already know. This was just an excuse for people to [bleep] and moan even more, because it was said by a "Volunteer". If that video was a "wake-up call", some people need to get their heads checked...Because I don't know what RuneScape they've been playing, but it hasn't been the same one that I have been playing. I doubt their votes took a hit, the other games exceeded in votes due to offering their players real rewards in-game (Which would be on the same level as a Double-XP weekend for RuneScape). We were offered nothing but a "Thank you", which is fine in itself. Certainly more interesting things happened throughout the year than an attention-seeking episode on YouTube/RSOF. :thumbup: You might not like it, but the video certainly *did* have an enormous influence on this year considering it was just filmed by a player. As you say, it was kind of an excuse to moan about Jagex and bots, but that doesn't mean it's any less significant. With the way Jagex handled this, they took a not too light blow on their reputation, at least within the forums. And tbh, I'm sure very many people were NOT aware of how serious the problem had become. They didn't check F2P worlds, and unless you frequented several of the bot hotspots regularly, you wouldn't really be aware how they're everwhere. Sorry but I just can't find any signficance of footage of RuneScape several months ago. And you mention how they handled it...Well, how else should they have handled it? It was the best way. They knew the concequences of what they were doing and what would happen, yet act surprise when it does actually happen. Or pretend to act, so people can go "OH WHOA THAT'S SO MEAN!". Manipulation at its best. I never really frequented the botting "Hot spots", nor did I often check F2P worlds unless I was specifically asked to go and deal with something. But from playing in a members world and having a friends list comprising of both F2P & P2P players, I knew what was going on. Not only that, but if they were never affected by it (Not even knowing it was a problem...) does that mean they were just jumping on the bandwagon to [bleep] some more? You would have to be living under some pretty big rock to not know what's going on around you. I've not actually seen the bots that are currently in this game, apart from screenshots and people talking about it. But I haven't seen where Jagex have tried to defend that and pretend there's still no bots. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you say they seem to be in denial or downplaying the situation...Got a link for me, perhaps? Lets all... [/hide] Just the post above, you have someone telling you he didn't know the problem was so severe. There were loads of people like this. Now, you can argue that if it didn't affect them it shouldn't matter to them....but tbh, that's a different point. What is important is that this footage and the demodding *back then* was of significance because it brought up people against Jagex - whether that is justified or not doesn't really matter here. As for what Jagex could have done better - they either could just have not demodded him (Not because it wasn't justified, but simply - what gain did they get out of demodding him? The video just got more popular, the players more enraged. Streisand effect at its best). If they insisted on demodding, they could have been more open about and just post "We just have demodded an fmod, he breached the terms that were agreed on when he signed up. As a reminder, fmods are absolutely allowed to voice their opinion, they should just do so in a way that is not related to their forum mod account because that account does to an extent represent Jagex. Please do not create any threads about it and refrain from posting the fmods name as that would conflict with his right of privacy" - something along these lines, of course polished a bit. Lock all threads talking about Jiblix, but REDIRECT them to that statement instead of just locking them which makes it look even more like censorship. Honesty can be worth a lot. As for Jmods downplaying the issue...I'll see if I can find a quote as an example edit: This thread(14-15-466-63465734) for example, page 21, post by mod Timo: ""Jagex will handle the bots" is not a commitment. We don't want the success of the Bot Nuke washed away in another flood of bots. Well, if Mod MMG's statement from the bot nuke day is not enough, I don't quite know what would be. Monthly updates and reassurances can often have the opposite effect: if we keep talking about bots, people will keep thinking that it is a huge issue, when it has actually gone down significantly. The same applies to new threads being made about bots - it's wallowing in a problem, making a mountain out of a molehill. We would rather people go enjoy the game as it was intended rather than keep looking over their shoulders imagining 'what if' doomsday scenarios. I know that there have been major problems with bots in the past, but I would genuinely recommend not to worry about it currently unless it becomes an actual problem. Not every drop of rain means you need to build an ark. :) "

For me....I could believe that there is some deity. It might also be possible there is none. But I simply can't believe that one single religion could be right. Simply put, how do you know that your holy book(or whatever) is right and the others are wrong? With what arguments can you justify that? For me there are basically three options: There is no god at all, and all religions are wrong(Though of course they may still be important on moral levels, and them being wrong doesn't mean they're bad) There is some kind of deity, but no humans have been able to grasp it and all religions are still wrong(This is what I personally more or less believe, though I do keep swaying a bit :P) And the third option would be that all religions are true, and that god for some reason has put those different religions into people's minds. At the same time, this would mean that the religion isn't strictly true, but rather that it is indeed derived from god, though maybe not in the sense that the religious person itself believes. But being follower of exactly one religion is something I can't exactly understand. Simply put, how do you know the Bible is correct and not the Quran?

I must ask, Helm_Lardar, but what did we learn from that video? That's the thing I've always been wondering. What exactly did people find out from watching it? Was it that people actually realised there was bots and Real World-Trading websites being advertised en masse all across RuneScape? That Jagex were finding it very hard to tackle all of these problems? I honestly don't think the average RuneScape player (Pretty much everyone who has logged in within the past year) find out something they didn't already know. This was just an excuse for people to [bleep] and moan even more, because it was said by a "Volunteer". If that video was a "wake-up call", some people need to get their heads checked...Because I don't know what RuneScape they've been playing, but it hasn't been the same one that I have been playing. I doubt their votes took a hit, the other games exceeded in votes due to offering their players real rewards in-game (Which would be on the same level as a Double-XP weekend for RuneScape). We were offered nothing but a "Thank you", which is fine in itself. Certainly more interesting things happened throughout the year than an attention-seeking episode on YouTube/RSOF. :thumbup: You might not like it, but the video certainly *did* have an enormous influence on this year considering it was just filmed by a player. As you say, it was kind of an excuse to moan about Jagex and bots, but that doesn't mean it's any less significant. With the way Jagex handled this, they took a not too light blow on their reputation, at least within the forums. And tbh, I'm sure very many people were NOT aware of how serious the problem had become. They didn't check F2P worlds, and unless you frequented several of the bot hotspots regularly, you wouldn't really be aware how they're everwhere. I'm sure that right at this moment, easily the majority of players again don't know how many bots have crept back into this game already. Heck, even Jagex themselves seem to be in denial(Or rather, they think it's still small enough so they can downplay it in order to save their reputation)

Indeed it is...it's probably one of the reasons why the PKing happens here. It would be cool if the hood was able to distinguish between real fights and killing people who probably don't even fight back because right know, I feel the hood is more or less worthless. Is there any particular achievement to running around and whacking on some people with no armour or weapons on? At the same time, those who might have gotten their hood "legitimately" don't gain anything out of it either, as no one is able to tell whether they are telling the truth...

If that were the case then wouldn't the review be more positive? After all, do you really hear anyone complaining that they finally removed bots, or brought back free trade? And yes while these were not the only updates this year, there have been a large number of content brought into the game (or reintroduced) that were met with extreme approval; ignoring the two biggies, there was the minigame reform that tons of people loved, a faster and more enjoyable (on some account) method of training agility, Nex which people love, clan support, RoTM, some big usability updates, and more. To say that their mistakes outweighed the benefits, and then claim that this is reflective of the player's experience, is completely contradictory and hard to take seriously. Yes, we can look also at the debacle of how the RuneVillage issue was handled, how Jiblix got his 5 minutes of fame and roused the furor of every half-attentive person just looking for another reason to dislike Jagex. Yes, there have been more sneaky micro-actions being put in, regardless of the spin they're given. But I certainly think that the necessary shots were given when they could. It's clear that they won't stop them. And so long as they keep having good content years like 2011 was, they don't really need to unfortunately. If you're going to stand on a mountain and be the concerned citizen for the greater good--and we've all done it from time to time--then maybe this year fits what you're describing in your article...But truth be told, the average player doesn't care. So that's why most people won't be shouting praises your way. It very much clashes with the overall acceptance of our (the player's) situation and enjoyment out of this year's content. Well, to call 2011 an annus horriblis might be a bit over the top, but generally I don't think he's wrong. Of course this is subjective but I think he has some fair points. If you are looking at the current situation and compare it to the situation at the end of 2010, it doesn't look all that bad, surely. There are some nice content additions, even if some really aren't as great as they could be. There have been marketing gimmicks and demods, but in retrospect those don't matter that much. There are less bots and free trade. Communication has somewhat improved. But if you look at the views of 2011 DURING the year, the way the community felt about Jagex etc., you get a whole lot of a different picture. From that perspective, most of the stuff done between the referendum and the bot nuke were probably some of the most disliked stuff Jagex has done since the removal of the wildy and free trade. There was a LOT of discontent going on about multiple issues, not just bots, even though those were the catalyst of course. I don't think the bot nuke rescues much of 2011 - rather, it gives a somewhat hopeful picture of how 2012 is going to be.

Do you own a few million Runescape gp? Are you aware that you could sell it anytime, for real-world money? I've heard it's about 0.5$ for a million gp. GPs *do* have a real world value. Regardless if it's against game rules or not. In the recent years, there were several court cases involving online stuff where people who "stole" online goods were actually sentenced for theft. The precedence is there. It's obvious that Jagex is aware of it. If they add in an "official" way to gamble, it will get very difficult for them. Even if they should be able to win the case, it would still suck away a lot of time, money and energy better spent elsewhere.

That's not a bad idea. Only downfall with that is you'd all have to be able to reach the same floor level to get the most experience as well. Why exactly? Those with lower levels can just stop a floor or two earlier - there's not much time lost if you have to check two doors instead of one on the the last floor.

GREAT article by Crocefisso - it captured a lot of my feelings about this year, one that could in theory have been great if not for the big amount of blunders on Jagex's side, a lot of them coming from a lack of understanding how the community feels about certain words and actions. Croce took a look at the most significant updates and why they failed, from the "could have been so good" Clan citadels to Marketing stunts that were executed in nearly the worst way possible and of course the infamous blunder with the bots. We can just hope that with the largest amount of bots gone (And hopefully this will stay that way, although it looks like Jagex again is on the path of ignoring rising bot numbers...) we will see an amount of good updates in 2012, hopefully more gripping and game changing than those in 2011 were (As Master_Smither fittingly pointed out - there really weren't many huge updates in terms of just game content) and maybe an improvement on other parts like communication as well(This actually worked better a few months ago than it does right now, considering the lower amount of JMods on the forums and some idiotic stunts like the FAQ on F2P Highscores that really couldn't have been more *facepalm*)

And loyalty rewards are just another in-game reward that you get for your membership. You get them by paying for membership, and you get them with all of the other member content. Well, it could be considered RWT for those months where you are not playing Runescape but staying subscribed for more loyalty points. Meh. I still think RAF is by far the clearest example of RWT, but I guess it doesn't matter that much.

I've read them a lot a few years ago...but by now, I wouldn't really recommend them anymore. Though if you want to start, I think Michael A. Stackpole's X-Wing Series(starts with "Attack on Coruscant" I think is one of the books that is quite early in the timeline.

This is a misleading argument, Jagex has multiple times pointed out that paying for membership is exchanging RL cash for ingame benefits, and so by your definition below going P2P is already RWT. Obviously then, we see that we must be careful to avoid equivocation with our definitions of RWT. I agree with most of what you say in regards to F2P "neglect", except for the crucial conclusive statement which is where you make the link that F2P neglect will be bad for P2P as well. Membership isn't RWT because it's a different game from F2P. You get a better game, yes, but you don't gain direct advantages over your fellow players like you would in one of those pay2win schemes. And yes it will be hurtful to P2P in the long run if F2P gets neglected. There will be a lack of new players, and when there are no new players they can't get membership either. Note that F2P getting attention does not necessarily mean updates for F2P - but it's something that simply should be kept in mind, and it doesn't feel like Jagex is really doing that atm.

Well, first of all, I wouldn't say there are that many countries where porn is legal but prostituion is not. At least, I couldn't think of any such country off the top of my head. However, even then it's not that weird. The problem with prostitution is that there's a lot of abuse going on, down to kidnapping and rape. This is not so much the case with pornography. Overall - I think it should be allowed, firstly simply because it's a personal decision and the state shouldn't restrict that freedom if possible, and secondly because the problems associated with it would probably just get bigger if it was outlawed. There need to be heavier regulations and more controls though I think.