Binary Mage

I think its likely to work like the Auction House in other MMOs--able to see pending offers and the status of your offers from anywhere, but only able to actually pick up and deposit items at certain locations. (Banks, towns, or something else like that) Will definitely be interesting. I wonder if you will be able to send out PoP missions from the portable port interface?

i hope the guy who mentioned that isn't using his runescape name I'm not sure what you're saying. It's a common issue that has effected an ingame trick used by pretty much everyone who decided to powertrain fishing/mining/etc. It was a new feature of the Ability Bar, which was accidentally removed in the NIS update because of some code tweaks.

The AMA is now finished. Lots of interesting details, I added the nice ones to the above list. (Not just interface-related ones either!) Basically, they are working on improving every single interface in the game to fit into the NIS. There will be a big batch of upgrades and improvements released at the same time as Divination, with more details on that coming soon. I wonder how the Portable GE is going to work. I imagine you will probably be able to put in Buy Offers from anywhere, but any item transfers would have to happen when you are standing in a bank or something like that. Portable PoP makes me an incredibly happy sailor. Overall a very nice AMA, lots of nice questions interspersed with humor and juicy teasers.

Mod ThatJim is doing an AMA on Reddit over here. Feel free to ask your questions about Jagex and the NIS, which he designed. I am doing a live transcript on Pastebin here if you want to follow in real time. I'll be posting any interesting tidbits of information here: ThatJim is currently working on a "tablet project" which involves the right-click context menu, presumably the Tablet Client. The Grand Exchange button on the NIS interface is "coming soon", was cut from the initial release. Has a "very cool feature only possible with NIS". They are currently working on making some changes to the tutorial and tidying up early quests. (Presumably this has to do with the Paths System, which was described to be more guidance for players right after they finish the tutorial) The next batch of NIS updates and fixes will be announced "in the next week or so". "You can expect new features during the week of the August 19th." (Editor's Note: This is the Jmod-estimated release week for Divination) Jagex is working on a solution to allow for split Private Chat for those that liked the old system. When asked about PvP worlds, he said that it isn't going to happen in the near future, but that Jagex is currently playing around with similar ideas. "I don't want to spoil anything though ;)" He is looking into the possibility of Dual Ability Bars. They have discussed allowing for more than 5 Ability Sets and an extended Action Bar but makes no promises. "Cinema Mode", the ability to hide the interface in order to take better screenshots or videos, was planned but was set aside. They will come back to it once they finish making sure the current interface is working well. The Activity Timeline interface (in-game integration of the Adventurers Log) is on their hitlist but has no firm timeline yet. He loves the idea of having a public database of player-made interface presets. When asked about what the NIS makes possible, he listed "a portable GE, on the go ports access and friends streams" as potential features. Alternate themes for the interface are coming. "We know people enjoy brown ;)" They are looking into further ability bar customization, especially regarding the size of the Adrenaline bar. "No promises on a timeframe for this". There are no other massive core gameplay changes such as the NIS or EoC coming this year, those two were the primary focus. The changes to dropping items via keybinds (Preventing you from holding down the key to drop tons of the item) were unintended and he is looking into it. Numpad support was intentionally removed because of conflicts with the new keyboard customization system. It will be added back in in a "larger keyboard update" that is being worked on. You will be able to walk and use the World Map at the same time in a coming update. More combat abilities are coming "very soon". They are currently prototyping a new menu bar that would allow for multiple rows of tabs in a tab collection, but work has only just started. Click-through interfaces will be coming in the update the week of August 19th. The NIS team works in "bi-weekly sprints". We can expect NIS updates and improvements roughly "every 2 and a half weeks, depending on upload day". Just gave direct confirmation of the Portable GE. Was cut from RS3 release but will be coming soon, after they have focused on getting bugs fixed and community feedback implemented. The Skilling and Combat presets were removed from launch because they made players assume that you needed many windows open at once to get full use of the new interface. They decided to let players using the presets add windows as they needed them. BoB and Summoning interfaces are on their list for total NIS upgrades. Will not come for a few months because of the time it will take and they want to get some other things done first. "We have a separate and highly important project prepared for the bank that will bring much more than just transparency." When shown this gif of an idea for new interfaces he said he was stealing the idea because of how awesome it looked. A rework of the World Map interface is being started on soon, will feature better load times, new graphics, and lots of new features. We will hear more about this in the future. "More gods are coming, that's all I can say. I probably shouldn't have even said that :)" Ominous. Apparently the new interface themes will be coming "later in the year". Has no idea if player-designed ones will be added. A redesigned Lobby in the style of the new Login Screen is being worked on. Apparently he has seen it and it "looks awesome".

I think it was a decent enough quest. I was just happy that we finally were allowed to smelt Pickaxes :P It sort of occupied a weird space where they simultaneously wanted to release a low-level quest for pickaxe smelting, show off the new graphical upgrade of the Monastery and Ice Mountain, and do something Dwarf-related that wasn't Keldagrim. The fact that it caused some people to think about Global Warming was a small positive (Quite possibly offset by the fact that the quest caused the RSOF to erupt into flame wars for the following two months, in a manner that is still yet to be matched by even the EoC) but I do agree that it really could have done without the social commentary. I don't think there's really anyone that is really going to have their opinion on the matter changed by a Runescape quest. (And those that would are likely not going to turn to the side of the argument that Mod John A was hoping for :P ) Definitely a weird-arse quest nonetheless. In other news, meet your new Divination Skillcape design, lucky Bachelor #6!

They were? I always got the impression that they were indeed neutral, what with how the Myreque storyline played out and his guthixian advisor. Varrock is ruled by a Saradominist king, but I agree on the idea that they are mostly neutral. They seem to have a good amount of Saradominists, previously Guthixian folks, Zamorakians, and a few mixed in random folks like the Zaros Emissary. (Left over from when it was a Zarosian town likely) It is certainly a town with a history of changing sides, internal civil war, and grey moral decisions. They certainly aren't anywhere near as devoutly Saradominist as Falador--especially the Varrock Guard, which seems to be made up of a lot of different folks from the city itself with no apparent religious ties.

I think the idea is more that the Varrock Guard is more concerned about the people of Lumbridge than just one side or the other--and don't bring as much political (not necessarily religious) polarization as the White Knights or Kharidian Guard do. By asking for aid from Varrock, Lumbridge doesn't really gain any enemies or invite any ideology.

Are Zamorak voting the same way as well? From what I heard they had, although I'm not sure if that's changed or not. It seems like both sides prefer the idea of having smaller, more common units to farm for metal fragments from :P (And get healed by whilst farming fragments) Although I would love to see the Siege Units. It would definitely be the first time we see damage being done to people who want no part of it, disrupting the flow of contribution a bit :D

I think the reinforcements should help with the metal fragments a little bit. Apparently they drop separate loot for every person that attacks them--meaning that it won't be nearly the magic-dominated tagging spree that it currently is. I'm waiting until then to get the majority of my frags collected. Don't really want to bother with the crazy competition that'll continue until then :P

Apparently, there is a non-zero (and potentially sizable) number of people that believe that the numbers next to each voting option is the amount of Bonus XP you get for voting for that option. I fear for the future of Gielinor. :blink:

The Battle of Lumbridge has now entered its 3rd Week, and so another Lumbridge Reconstruction vote has begun. The previous vote resulted in new Guardsmen being hired to protect the city. The new vote is to decide which neighbor to ask for help from--the White Knights in Falador (15000), the neutral Varrockians (15000), Al Kharid (30000), or Do nothing (0). And the Reinforcement Vote continues for another week, so we sadly are yet to see neat Hero units wandering about the battlefield. Kind of sad that the consensus picked the expensive, boring option this week. :( I was sure they would pick the most interesting, expensive or not.

...Which, to be fair, would probably have been a genuinely useful and much-loved update had it happened at any other point in Runescape's history, or in any other MMO :twss: Definitely :P Although I do think it could have done with some more interesting rewards and a less clunky XP/points sharing system. I guess there's not way too much they could have done without making it more worthwhile than doing slayer yourself. The problem is that in doing so they made it pretty much punish you for playing with a friend. :(

If Ana left at this point we might as well just unsub lol. Hope it's not true! I feel bad for asking and in no way mean this negatively but what did she do on staff? Just found this list of current Content Developers and their work. (Note: Not every single developer, only ones that are specifically featured as parts of the community and have specific attribution) According to the list, Mod Ana has developed: Crafting Urns + Agility Shortcut Hidey Holes 2010 Christmas Event Branches of Darkmeyer Firemaker's Curse Bonfires Social Slayer Diamond Jubilee The World Wakes (And now apparently she's a main dev on Divination) She's currently the main developer for the Morytania quest series, along with apparently a good bit of Sixth Age quest content coming in the future. Definitely a respectable bunch of content she's supervised--sans Social Slayer of course :P

It's been stated many times by a lot of different Jagex mods that they really want to rework Camelot + the Knights of the Round Table quests to be less based off Arthurian legend--and made into something uniquely RuneScape. A while ago, the lore was fine with having connections to the real world (Camelot, King Arthur, Humans coming from Earth through the World Gate, etc) but since then they've decided to actively retcon those sort of references in favor of more unique in-universe alternatives. I'm interested to see how it works out. There's definitely a lot of ways they could work it into the Sixth Age--I agree with the idea that they could be Armadyl related somehow. There's definitely a lot of thematic similarities in the area, with the whole justice and idealism vibe coming from Armadyl right now.

Apparently Mod Osborne had a Lore Q&A sort of thing on the Official RS Twitch.tv stream last night. Saralentine from /r/runescape has done some amazing work cataloging all of the points of interest from it here. One specifically pertaining to updates instead of purely lore are: New Zaros quest is early in development. The creator of the Stolen Hearts quest is designing it The next Dwarf quest is apparently having an overwhelmingly positive responsive from the Q&A team, only surpassed by their response to TWW. Armadyl-related content will be out "soon". Mod Dylan is currently working on the next Elemental Workshop quest Prifddinas, the Vampyre homeworld (Vampyrium), Freneskae, and the Infernal Dimensions are all places they want to add as actual in-game locations. Prifddinas is taking priority right now. The beam between Saradomin and Zamorak at the Battle of Lumbridge will change in upcoming weeks. City reworks have slowed recent because of RS3--but will be kicked back into high gear shortly. Osborne particularly wants to rework Falador to be based off Dwarven architecture. You will be able to betray Sir Owen and Saradomin in this month's quest to some extent. People who don't participate in the Battle of Lumbridge will not be penalized in future content The sword that Guthix used to kill Skargaroth will be featured in upcoming quests Haemalchemy will be explored more in "Morytania Elder Gods content". The Icyene home world, Vampyrium, the Aviansie homeworld, or Freneskae will be featured in a quest in the near-ish future. There will be a specifically Dragonkin-oriented quest line in the Sixth Age. They will be adding a fairy ring to the Naragi Homeworld soon, for people who want to see it again Marimbo will be featured in some quests. He is the God of Hedonism, and the Pest Control island was formerly one of his holy sites. Mod Osborne has seen the concept art for Armadyl, Bandos, Zaros, and Marimbo--he says that Armadyl looks imposing, and that Bandos' design has changed drastically from that which was shown in the Origins of Gielinor. Jagex wants to rework minigames, but Osborne has no idea how far up the list Fist of Guthix would be. Skillcapes won't be seeing a graphical rework anytime soon. Random lore tidbit: "Absolutely not. I'm not confirming that. You can't say Zaros is evil. Even in his own eyes, he is for the good of mortals." Some neat stuff.

The scale was planned to be the Grand Exchange interface--presumably once we get the GE/Bank interface NIS upgrade later this year the button will be there again. Apparently there is going to be some major changes that make a GE button actually an important part of the interface, and not just a pop-up whenever you're at the GE itself. I do hope that some of the new interface upgrades later this year will include the chat text changes :D The smaller, clearer text and colored names is really something that I'd like to at least have as an option. There's a lot of the interfaces in the NIS currently that aren't at their final iteration for this year--I'm excited to see when we'll get our first set of upgrades.

I think I've discovered the Gathering logistics changes. [spoiler=Image] If you look at the crafting interface, it seems like normal mining/woodcutting/fishing resources are potential creations. On another interface it had an Uncut Emerald as one. Seems like one of my previous theories, that the logistics changes would be Divine Energy being transmutated into Logs/Fish/Ore is potentially correct. :D

I think the numbers aren't nearly as bad as you'd think. 1) Energy that you gather from Wisps, Runespan-style. Constant flow of a large amount of the stackale items over time. No single-click-single-item like Mining and such. 500 energy is likely a relatively small amount 2) Several hundred of that energy used to create either consumable items or permanent bonuses--500 energy for a permanent bonus seems very fair 3) The main source of XP seems to be depositing Energy into the vortex rather than using it. You have a choice between crafting items with it--which is a very, very tiny amount of XP--or depositing it for lore and a much larger amount of XP. The thing I like about this is that you have a very clearly defined choice between producing XP for yourself and producing profit. Someone power-training Divination is not going to cause an ridiculous excess of Energy to flow into the economy. It's a neat mechanism that might actually cause some balance in the GE on the long-term. It's basically a skill with a Runespan/Choking Ivy/etc equivalent built into it by default :P I am also terribly excited and surprised that they will be implementing it into Dungeoneering. I am very pleased :D

Construction's leaks were found a few weeks before the skill came out--people edited the links for the Game Guide to find the Construction Guide and a handful of images showing the inside of a very basic POH. We pretty much knew the skill was going to happen, but it seemed like forever until it actually released. Since then Jagex learned to never hide anything on their servers that they don't want unceremoniously leaked to the public :P Summoning also had leaks--and tons of them. We pretty much actually had 3/4 of the original set of Summoning Pouches (Although we had no idea what they were) leaked like three months before the skill even happened, alongside models for most of the base set Summoning creatures + Titans from the second set. Here's one such picture. Ones like these were found inside the Runescape cache, with weird against-the-TOS tactics used to break it apart and find the stuff that had been accidentally left inside. It was a really fun time--we would get new leaks every single day, and we would debate as to what the names of each of the creatures were. Then there was also the Karamthulu Glitch which wasn't really related to Summoning but it hyped us up the whole time. There was a lot of teasers--from the Pet Shop in Yanille being added a few weeks before the skill came out, as well as random Summoning monster seemingly appearing in weird locations around the world at very very rare intervals. (This was never confirmed with pictures as far as I can tell--the only way we know it wasn't a hoax is because someone saw something weird in Brimhaven, then proceeded to describe the Moss Titan perfectly like a week before we got any pictures of its model) But yeah. That stuff was fun :P Too bad Jagex is too smart to let any of those sort of massive content dumps and internal resource stuff get leaked anymore. (Although apparently there was some sort of Dungeoneering model leak that I didn't apparently know about now that I look at it, but it didn't seem too expansive) It seems like Divination is getting the regular-content-update treatment, as opposed to one of these weird secretive ones.

It is canon for the most part. The entire plotline of the rediscovering of the Rune Altars is still a part of the lore--the Duke of Lumbridge is still the one who found the Air Talisman first and helped usher in the new age of plenty for the runes. The difference is that we who completed the quest before the rework are now a part of history--we can say that we helped rediscover Runecrafting. :P Now all of the new players who are so enthralled with runes can be amazed at our previous efforts to learn the ancient art all over again. It really wouldn't make sense to have kept it around considering that no part of the RC skill required having done the quest previously anymore. Instead they put that effort into telling a new story that goes even further back than that. In this sense, the Old-School servers are a step back into the Fifth Age--to learn about the discovery of Runecrafting and all of the other events that are no longer relevant--a time back when the only mark of the power of the Gods was the Forinthry, not constant conflict and scarred land. I guess OSRS has managed to find its place in the lore, to my surprise. :P

I agree. Black Knights Fortress embodies everything that was wrong with most of the original set of F2P quests, which have almost all been replaced or reworked in some way thus far; 1. Quests that are essentially glorified item fetches 2. Quests that have incredibly complicated structures/caves designed for them for the specific purpose of artificially drawing the quest out with ladders/doors/walking, without any sort of puzzle or challenge 3. Quests that have no real plot characters to them--and almost solely rely on nameless NPCs talking in the background Jagex got a bit better at space usage and player engagement midway through RSC. Quests like Underground Pass, Clock Tower, and Fremmenik Trials are prime examples of extremely old quests that have held up over time, without even the slight need of a rework besides visuals in the past ten years. I think Black Knight's Fortress is an especially big offender because of its position in the lore--the battle between the White Knights and Black Knights should be introduced to new players in a way that isn't a short joke quest with no real sense of meaning. Way back when, the two factions had no real importance to the game--but with the second God Wars going on they really deserve better.

And now for the month I've been waiting for since the beginning of time, it seems like. :P Too tired to put my thoughts into coherent paragraphs so I'll just list them Interesting that Divination is a members skill. We never really got any hints either way as far as I could tell. A members-only gathering skill is going to be neat--since I wouldn't really count Hunter as equivalent to, say, Woodcutting or Fishing in the way that Divination seems to be. Generally skills with such basic gathering methods are split between F2P and P2P--but I'm guessing that the crazy rewards that we will get evolves it into something a bit more than a basic skill. More Guthix Memories--wonder if we are going to be getting a deluge of information about the Naragi homeworld and the First Age from those. Seems like Divination item rewards will work like I expected them to--pocket-slot buff items that passively benefit things you're doing. Really excited for these, there's a huge amount of potential for a new market of items. I am genuinely intrigued about the soon-to-be-revealed gathering logistics changes brought by Divination. I'm guessing it's something along the lines of either craftable teleport items to take you to gathering locations or new areas that require certain amounts of energy to enter. That, or it's a completely out-there and interesting system, like perhaps something that lets you transmute Divine Energy into high-level resources from other gathering skills. I guess we'll see soon enough I hope that giving cosmetic overrides as quest rewards is a new trend. I can't count how many recent quests have given me some sort of cosmetic armor or weapon, only for me to never use it because they take up a million bank spaces with little to no benefit on my part. Oh what I would do for a Cosmetic version of the Tower Robes Very interesting to see our first quest with Sixth Age implications as far as factions and choices go. I imagine this will be the first quest that also makes use of our Emissaries choice as well. Black Knights' Fortress was always a kind of weird quest, and I'm excited to see something new with lots of Sixth Age story potential take its place. The Loyalty Shop rework is nowhere near what I expected--in a good way. It's great that they are deciding to combine the Loyalty Shop and SGS together in a way that lets us use the money we've already given them through Membership to buy a majority of the rewards. The extent as to how they do this will determine if it completely shuts up the micro-transaction-haters or just puts a muffler over them for a little bit. I just hope that there's a good enough amount of new rewards to keep me interested :P I imagine the Loyalty Shop will now let you buy Keepsake Keys with Loyalty Points, solely because I spent $5 on the SGS for some keepsake keys for the very first time yesterday and that would be just my luck. :( Overall a pretty exciting month. I wonder which of these updates will be out the week of my birthday--I sincerely hope Divination. :D Would definitely be my favorite birthday present.

I doubt it, considering they have them available in the SGS. Actually, in the original SGS post about bank boosters, they specifically mentioned that they were going to also allow you to buy the boosters with Loyalty Points. This was later delayed when they found a technical problem with linking bank space to the Loyalty Rewards, and then delayed further to be incorporated into the full Loyalty System Rework. Presumably, it will still be a part of August's loyalty rework. http://services.rune...ter-for-members Forgot about that post! Thanks for the sourcing. I knew they said it somewhere but I couldn't figure out exactly where. So yeah, bank space in the new Loyalty Shop is almost definitely going to happen, which is good. I'm wondering what other interesting things we're getting.

The Jagex AMA on Reddit last week mentioned that Divination was planned to be release four weeks from then--which would place it on August 19th. (Right before my birthday! :D The best birthday gift ever) I'd say around then as long as there isn't any last-minute glitches or anything. The second skill is an unknown production/utility skill. From what we know so far, the skill is supposed to be related to using the energy of the gods gained through Divination alongside resources from other skills in order to make inventions, similar to Cres, the Cresbots, and the Sixth Age Circuit in their use of technology powered by divine magic. If I had to put money on it, I'd say its likely to be called Artificing. Construction Rework is apparently supposed to be done by the end of the year according to the AMA, but in that specific instance it was said so nonchalantly that I think he meant the graphical upgrade and not the full skill rework. Who knows. Agility rework isn't likely to be out this year, but I wouldn't be surprised to if it is :P

I think the rework is intended to be more of an entirely new Sixth Age quest featuring the fight between the White Knights and Black Knights. Think more Prince Ali Rescue -> Stolen Hearts and the Rune Mysteries rework than, say, the Demon Slayer or Cook's Assistant reworks. A brand-new quest with brand-new rewards and storyline--presumably linked to the White Knights' place in the Sixth Age Godwars. Perhaps we'll have a reference to Lord Sulla somewhere?