Binary Mage

Don't worry, it seems like it's going to be a recurring yearly Christmas thing now, considering how well the last one seems to have gone. It's definitely worth it if you are planning on playing for the entire year :D

I imagine they are probably feeding us money-handling tips, considering that we got a year's worth of membership for cheaper than non-premium people do ($75 vs $96), and then on top of that for no additional charge got a hundred or so dollars worth of Runecoins and spins, not even counting the cosmetics :P

Patience, young Paddawan! You can say that once we're in August. Yeah but to get a bts only 2 days earlier is a bit lame. Last time it was three days earlier. The newsletters in general have been relatively lame as a whole--they generally only have one little tidbit of interesting non-BTS information if any.

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.

The official wiki has updated with content related to this week's BoL changes. Here's some pictures of the Champion Units for each side [spoiler=Champions] And here's the siege units, the Saradominist Colossus and the Zamorakian Siege Beast. [spoiler=Siege Units] Remember to vote on which you want your side to be bolstered with!

It has definitely changed, likely to reflect the Second Week of the event. The original image is shown if you click on the article for the RS3 release. One shows the explosion causing the crater, the other shows the crater itself, crystals and all. I'd expect the system update for the first week of Lumbridge renovation vote changes + bugfixes within a few hours.

A rundown of the Monday World Event Update's events that have happened: 1) Lumbridge Reconstruction vote has ended, and switched to a new one about guarding the town. No noticeable changes to the town because of the previous vote--I imagine it will happen in a system update tomorrow (as its a map change which cant be hotfixed) 2) The buff vote had ended--and a Reinforcement Unit vote has started. This one will last for 24 hours, after which another Buff Vote will start and last until next week. The two possible choices are Hero Units (50% chance to spawn instead of normal units, 50% more HP and heals allies around it) or Siege Units (10% chance to spawn, deals 100% more damage, bombards sections of the battlefield to harm units + players) 3) The Random Event Units have started occurring--Gatherers, Minelayers, Rogues, Medics, and Sharpshooters are all possible random events now.

What? Just change from the Classic camera to the RS3 one. I'm not sure if that is what he's talking about or not. The camera doesn't really do much with walking--but neither does RS3. Unless he's using the HTML5 client or something, there's nothing in the RS3 update that has changed the pathfinding AI or walk animations. Perhaps there's lag or something else going on that is causing this?

As far as the walking thing--are you talking about the camera? If so, you can change the camera to the new smoother RS3 mode by pressing ESC, clicking Controls, then switching "Camera Mode" to RS3. It's switched to the weird choppy classic mode by default for old players. If not I'm not sure what you mean--walking seems just as smooth as it always has been for me--unless you're using the HTML5 client which does have some issues with walking.

Divination reveal/details BTS next week! :o Exciting stuff!!!

It's not related to what kind of bonus xp we are going to get--it's simply what buildings and stuff will be built in Lumbridge, and stay there for the rest of Runescape. It's a pretty big deal :P I imagine some sort of shops or something like that will be added as options in future weeks, but at the moment noone is really sure what the Herbalist and Summoner are going to do. I think spending the 40k on the Refugee Shelter is a worthy investment. I doubt there's much that matters more to the poor homeless residents of Lumbridge than having somewhere to take shelter from the God Wars for a little bit :3 But who knows what will happen in the future. We have to be pretty stingy after this one for a little bit.

Has anyone here found any of the Rare Divine Shards from the Battlefield (the ones that give the four new titles)? I've been harvesting pretty much to cap for three days now and I haven't found a single one, nor has anyone in my clan. I'm starting to wonder what circumstances they appear in--anyone got any details about what they were doing when they obtained them?

True--that was my intention. Forgot the more technical meaning of the word. I think this is diverging a bit from my original intention--Guthix was a popular god, and even those that did not follow him respected him. Killing him was not something that caused Sliske to be celebrated more than it caused him to be hated by a significant portion of the playerbase. It is definitely a negative thing overall for anyone deciding what God they want to follow--as reflected in his relative position at the bottom of the table. It's not like Jagex decided that he should be the one to kill Guthix because they thought it would make everyone love him. Sliske has definitely not been painted in a positive light whatsoever--and I think that is the intention. He has been described as Runescape's equivalent of The Joker--and he is meant to appeal to the kind of people who adore the sort of things that would make other people despise Sliske. We haven't really had any evidence or lore that shows us why he is a positive influence on Gielinor yet. I'd put him in the same boat as Saradomin, Bandos, and Zamorak in that we really haven't been given much (if any) content that paints them in a positive light since the start of the Sixth Age. Jagex has certainly been talking about him a lot, but mostly in that he will be a major wild card in the upcoming wars.

I don't think the player base was Guthixian at all - a lot of people picked Guthix (when offered the S-Z-G choice) only because he's everyone's #2 choice, being neutral and such. Up until the lore about the artefacts, we didn't really know anything about Saradomin and Zamorak (or any gods) either, with all the lore up to then being part inconsistent and part retconned with TWW. Definitely I think it is ridiculous to say most were Guthixian, pure circumstantial evidence (since we lack any major study) would most likely of put Zaros, Zamorak or perhaps Bandos as top dog (of those who really considered themselves to be of a set god). Recent lore changes + the force to pick one drawing more in has certainly changed the landscape though. I'd be interested to see straight up numbers of how many members each faction has from circumstantial evidence once more Seren and Zaros (maybe sliske and arma too) seem to of faired the best which is interesting as they have the least douche moves attached of all the gods (other than perhaps Armadyl) I'm still wondering when/if we will get proper names for the artefacts. The Elder Kiln seems to be a legit name since the Tokhaar use it, Stone of Jas seems fairly since it seems to be the name the Stone has told people who touched it (if I recall the lunar lore correctly) and Osbourne let the Crown Archival slip in chats. Staff of Arma and Skargaroth's Sword don't have 'proper' names and neither do the Horn and 6 as yet entirely unknowns of course. I was looking for the poll from 2010 that proved my statistic and I finally found it: Here are the results (And for those of you who don't want to log in, here's an image of it) The playerbase is likely to have changed a bit in two or three years, but it still stands to show that Guthixians made up a majority for a good bit of time up until his death. Anyone that wanted Guthix dead would primarily have wanted such because of their position as a follower of a God that his edicts prevented the return of--meaning that Sliske certainly didn't win over anyone who would have wanted to join him in the first place. Not to say that he doesn't have any followers, but killing Guthix turned more people off of him than it brought to his side. I'd prefer using this poll http://www.tip.it/ru...with-in-the-god More of a biased selection, but a lot more recent Very interesting :P Considering that the truth about Saradomin's intentions came out and Guthix died, I'm not surprised that Zaros is in the lead. My original intention with the poll was to show that, before his death, Guthixians represented the majority of the playerbase--so I guess the 2010 one would be more representative of that. Does, however, prove my point that Sliske is far from the most appealing to a majority of people

I don't think the player base was Guthixian at all - a lot of people picked Guthix (when offered the S-Z-G choice) only because he's everyone's #2 choice, being neutral and such. Up until the lore about the artefacts, we didn't really know anything about Saradomin and Zamorak (or any gods) either, with all the lore up to then being part inconsistent and part retconned with TWW. Definitely I think it is ridiculous to say most were Guthixian, pure circumstantial evidence (since we lack any major study) would most likely of put Zaros, Zamorak or perhaps Bandos as top dog (of those who really considered themselves to be of a set god). Recent lore changes + the force to pick one drawing more in has certainly changed the landscape though. I'd be interested to see straight up numbers of how many members each faction has from circumstantial evidence once more Seren and Zaros (maybe sliske and arma too) seem to of faired the best which is interesting as they have the least douche moves attached of all the gods (other than perhaps Armadyl) I'm still wondering when/if we will get proper names for the artefacts. The Elder Kiln seems to be a legit name since the Tokhaar use it, Stone of Jas seems fairly since it seems to be the name the Stone has told people who touched it (if I recall the lunar lore correctly) and Osbourne let the Crown Archival slip in chats. Staff of Arma and Skargaroth's Sword don't have 'proper' names and neither do the Horn and 6 as yet entirely unknowns of course. I was looking for the poll from 2010 that proved my statistic and I finally found it: Here are the results (And for those of you who don't want to log in, here's an image of it) The playerbase is likely to have changed a bit in two or three years, but it still stands to show that Guthixians made up a majority for a good bit of time up until his death. Anyone that wanted Guthix dead would primarily have wanted such because of their position as a follower of a God that his edicts prevented the return of--meaning that Sliske certainly didn't win over anyone who would have wanted to join him in the first place. Not to say that he doesn't have any followers, but killing Guthix turned more people off of him than it brought to his side.

Decided to make a separate version of the Divination logo since the skillcape's version is a little obscured. [spoiler=Divination Icon (Large-ish)] I love it so much. Can't wait for the skill release :D

Jagex has released the Divination Skillcape Poll! Our first glimpse of the Divination logo, too! It's an atom-ish shape! This is very exciting. I personally like the fourth one in, but that's just me :P

Not necessarily evil in the sense of the game world--but evil in the sense of the players. The playerbase as a whole was pretty much devoutly Guthixian until TWW, with even most of those that didn't directly follow him respecting him. I don't think Sliske gained any followers in the process of murdering him--but I honestly don't think that Sliske even cares if people follow him or not. If anything, he is the mysterious and shady candidate in the whole thing, with a tinge of a lack of morality. There are certainly people that are into that, but I don't think it will be a major portion of the playerbase that prefers him over the other gods/godless.

Part of why I'm saying they botched the entire storyline. It's hard to have eight equal factions when the writing is unsubtly pushing you toward Zaros/Sliske/Godless. They've made the good gods bad and the bad gods worse, but those three can do no wrong. I think it's not exactly that certain. We have barely seen anything from Zaros/Sliske/Godless/Seren yet--and that which we have seen points to just as many bad points as the current block of gods. Zaros seems to be an uncaring, controlling being that will allow the Gods to continue to ravage Gielinor as long as he can subtly control it behind the scenes for his own benefit. Sliske seems to be one of the only undoubtedly evil candidates in the whole thing--killing Guthix is not something a major part of the community will forgive him for. I believe he will be one of the least favored gods out of the whole thing, considering how little folks know of him besides him being extremely shady and murdering everyone's favorite world-shaper. The Godless so far seem to be tribal, warlike, and incredibly angry towards anyone and everyone who even slightly believes that any of the gods could be anything but a creeping disease that will do nothing but harm to the world. And Seren, as much as it pains me to admit it, would be perfectly fine with Bandos, Saradomin, Armadyl, and Zamorak parading across the multiverse slaughtering and raping everyone in their path as long as her little group of followers was allowed to be safe and sound, walled-in and segregated in their own part of the universe. So basically we haven't seen the most favorable outlook on what the rest of the gods will look like either. Ontop of this, we've had some rather favorable views of Zamorak and Saradomin from the lore that has come out of the Battle of Lumbridge so far--ontop of a Saradomin-oriented quest coming out next month that is all but confirmed to give people a reason to follow him considering its subject matter. (Black Knights Fortress remake, setting up Sir Owen's devout convictions about Saradomin so that he can betray his god in a later quest) I think considering how little we've seen of the factions so far, there is a good mix of good and bad for all of them. None of the gods are explicitly painted as good--and, instead, all surprisingly mortal in their mix of morality. The Sixth Age has just begun--we still have much more to learn about all of them.

MFW. I think we will be seeing some changes sooner than you'd expect--the main thing is that it will be a constant improvement. Maybe I should've used "over the coming months" in that context. Hmm..

I believe he was talking about the NIS beta--which had been in closed beta testing with a few thousand players for months now, with an open beta in the past few weeks. Same idea, and same reason as to why the bugs slipped through, but it has definitely been tested by more people than just Jagex staff :P If it had, many many more severe bugs would probably had made their way to the live release. Lots of news today! There is a big front-page post about the RS3 Launch and future updates to it. Read it for the full details about upcoming tweaks to the Battle of Lumbridge and NIS. They also mention that next week's August BTS will feature the next Sixth Age Quest, Divination, and a reworked Loyalty Rewards Program. :D

Why even have beta tests if they don't actually use them for testing? This should have occured during the beta test, not once the update went live. They do--the issue is that many, many more bugs pop up when you have something being used by the general public. There was a lot of serious bugs that were found and solved during the NIS beta, the number that we are seeing now is tiny compared to that. A countless number of things can go wrong between a beta test and live release, alongside things that were missed by the beta testers. You see this in pretty much any game that has a beta testing environment in some shape or form--it's not a fault on Jagex's part. In other news, the Mod Pips AMAA is now over. Feel free to check my post on the previous page for the final listing.

Thought this might deserve its own special post: "Divination will be mid/late August." He later goes on to say "four weeks from now". [spoiler=Reaction gif]http://2.bp.blogspot...0/Hehehehee.gif [image display blocked; image is linked instead.]

Mod Pips is currently doing an AMAA (Ask Me Almost Anything) on Reddit about Runescape 3. I am currently doing a summary list over here. I'll be posting any interesting news in this post too. Jagex has no plans to increase or decrease the scope of the SoF or Solomon's Store. Next big Sixth Age quest is three weeks away--and there will be "lots more" quests before the end of the year. The have two to three years worth of World Event and Sixth Age lore content "penciled in", but so much of it depends on the outcome of World Events that they don't have it set in stone yet. There is ongoing debate between the Eastern Lands and Prifddinas right now. I imagine this means which one will be developed first, as they both have enormous graphics/programming budgets "Remember, we've got a Construction Rework coming later this year" Battle of Lumbridge was intended to be a more focused battle than the usual world event, so a 1v1 made sense. Other gods will have their time in the spotlight. God Emissary choice will play a part in a lot of future content, just not the Battle of Lumbridge for right now. Tablet version of Runescape is under development Summoning rework is not likely to be this year--more likely next year. They are considering increasing the scale of the game world, but it is very unlikely because it would require a massive amount of work that would be better put towards new content. There will be a RSOF post about NIS issues coming shortly today. There will be a system update every day or two this week, and every two or three days next week in order to get all of the bugs worked out. Mod Pips regrets that fact that the RS3 delay caused the early Summer to have so few updates--it was not intended. All of the World Events will be "very different in theme, scale and function." When asked if there would be a Runescape mobile game (not the mobile version of RS) or other external game set in the Runescape universe (a la Armies of Gielinor), Pips replied a quite interesting "Maybe ;)" "Yup, we already announced Divination was 4 weeks after RS3 release." "Mid/late August" The Battle of Lumbridge will evolve over the weeks to come, with new gameplay and rewards. They are planning more "Player submitted changes" updates this year--however "The risk is that some player don't see these as "proper" release weeks. We'll see how it goes." "Lumbridge and its surrounds will never be the same again!" The balance team are happy with where the EoC is right now. There will, of course, be tweaks and expansions in the future. There is no plan for an option to return to the old interface--instead they are focusing on improving the NIS to fit the needs of people that prefer the old system. They will be overhauling the Quest Log, Bank, and GE interfaces to fit the NIS in the coming months. Most gods will have some sort of presence in the Sixth Age content by the end of the year. Second Gold Membership email "should be coming really soon". Apparently before the start of August.

Ignore this post. Decided it would fit better in Update Teasers discussion.