Alphanos

Firstly, the Ancient Curses aren't Zaros's own Prayers, also, Jagex have said Zaros is not evil, only the empty lord. There's a huge difference between saying he's not the god of evil, and saying he's not evil. I could say that Armadyl is not the god "of" good. While that's a true statement, if he represents justice I'd say he's probably still decently good. Similarly, Zaros being the "empty lord" doesn't in any way prevent him from being evil. It could easily mean that he supports "emptying" the world of all peace, love and happiness.

I'm pretty confused by people who claim Zaros isn't evil. We know that Zaros: -Disdains modern "prayers" in favour of "curses". -Was an enemy of not only Saradomin, who is somehow popular to dislike recently, but also Armadyl, whose primary tenet is justice. -Employed demons, vampires, etc in his army. -Stole the allegiance of the Mahjarrat, all of whom seem to view humans like bugs, by promising them war. -Appointed the likes of Zamorak and Azzanadra as his most trusted lieutenants. Now sure, there are lots of things we don't yet know about Zaros. But I think that even with indirect evidence, his track record is pretty clear. When people say things like "He wasn't evil, just strong and cruel" -- er, what definition of evil are you using exactly?

Ah, sorry, my mistake. I misunderstood you.

I... I don't even know how to respond to that #-o . I know this is the internet, but if you're reading and replying on a forum, isn't some basic standard of reading comprehension required?

As stated, my theory is with the expectation that whatever was sealed behind the door happened long before the battle over the godsword started; it's coincidental that the forces of Armadyl had to retreat back to that location. Sure, other Mahjarrat likely use shadows as well. However, we know that the Ancient spellbook is specifically tied to Zaros and his followers. Just like the Ancient staff, Ancient cloak, etc. The term Ancient used in Runescape in this way refers to Zaros, not Mahjarrat. Presumably non-Mahjarrat Zarosians used the Ancient spellbook too; Zenevivia at least uses Ancient magic. Now, I think we can all agree that merely the mention of the word shadow is insufficient to make a link to Zaros. However, it's more a matter of what shadow-wielding being would Saradomin, Zamorak, Armadyl, and Bandos all agree to seal together? To the best of our knowledge the dragonkin were in hiding and not involved with the god wars, plus we've never heard a direct link between them and shadows. It could be someone totally new we haven't heard of, sure. But the only previous example we have of a shadow-wielding being Saradomin and Zamorak (at least) agreed to seal together was Azzanadra. I find it hard to believe they would team up against any random Mahjarrat going about their own business; in the grand scheme of things, Mahjarrat do not rate that level of attention. Azzanadra was both unusually strong, and more importantly, seeking to restore Zaros to power: something all agreed they did not want to see happen. A Zarosian GWD general would not be there because of the godsword; we can all see that would make no historical sense. It's entirely plausible, however, that another powerful Zarosian lieutenant was sealed besides Azzanadra, long before the battle for the godsword, and that location happened to be the only fortification nearby for the aviantese to retreat to when Kril attacked. Mostly-correct theory FTW. :thumbsup:

Good job skipping the thread :rolleyes:.

[/hide] Those are good points. However, this thread is just as much about your points as much as it is about the developments time this will take to implement. Time that will be taken away from creating new content. Unfortunately, despite Jagex's own numbers stating that only around 10% of runescape players show interest in PKing, it looks like they'll be spending a great deal of their development time on this. I wish they'd had two polls - free trade and old wilderness. Free trade will probably take a few hours of coding to re-implement, whereas people don't seem to realize that restoring old wilderness will take a whole lot longer to get even close to right...

You sure that's not a misquote? I mean Corrupt/PvP drops I'd understand but Chaotic Weapons exist exclusive to the Wilderness and PKing.. ? Or am I mistaken?! :shock: Check the pic on page 2. That's what he said. He later said he mistyped, and meant the corrupt/PK armour/weapons, i.e. Vesta. Some people were worried about the changes making these items rares due to degradation and no new supply.

I had some trouble deciding how to vote; I'm uninterested in PKing and would find it a nuisance more than anything else, but I think free trade on the GE will potentially have some very nice market benefits, such as the elimination of junk trading. I eventually voted yes. However, the point you make was definitely the biggest unknown. I would really prefer Jagex not spend their time on such things, but they can't exactly leave things unchanged either (if the updates go ahead). I'll give my opinion on each item you mentioned. Spirit of Summer/Summers End - Corporeal Beast: This should be moved somehow. Apart from the irritation of getting PKed during the quests themselves, I don't think corpers need to deal with PKers on top of everything else. Lorewise probably the best place to move this to would be somewhere in Morytania, though I think Drakan would take notice of something like Corp showing up on his doorstep :razz:. All Fired Up - Beacon Network - Inferno Adze: For sure something should be done about this. For just the purposes of getting the reward items it would be manageable, though thoroughly frustrating, but this is also one of the only semi-interesting new ways to train firemaking (even if it's slow). Maybe some of the high wildy beacons can be pushed farther west and accessed via paths from Trollheim/Trollweiss. The Temple at Senntisten - Ancient Curses: This is a toss-up. I think the quest would be manageable left where it is, since you really only need to get to the temple once or maybe twice, and it's considered non-wilderness. However, putting Ghorrock firmly in PKer territory would eliminate its additional use as a nice place to fight iron and steel dragons. Clan Wars: Since this is currently a safe area with a direct teleport to it, I assume the problem would be for the PKers, not the people using clan wars. In terms of lore this could be easily moved, maybe becoming part of the duel arena, but I don't know how much work that would be. Fist of Guthix: Similar to the above. Although this doesn't have a direct teleport, there's a bank which equivalently solves the issue for non-PKers. Lorewise it might be better to move this one to the Lumbridge caves near Juna, but I don't think Jagex would like to do that since it would make the minigame quest-restricted. Movement options are limited since this is also one of the F2P minigames I believe. Wilderness Volcano: These creatures could be moved into a dungeon without too much trouble. Defender of Varrock - Armoured Zombies: I don't see how it would be possible to move this without massive effort. To prevent the training spot from becoming near-useless, perhaps a tunnel could be found linking Zemouregal's tunnels to the Chaos Tunnels and/or the tunnel leading to the Chaos altar. Stealing Creation: Similar to Clan Wars and Fist of Guthix, this isn't much of a problem for the minigame players, since you can't bring in any equipment anyway. The lore tie-ins for Stealing Creation are fairly tenuous, so this could be moved without too much trouble - the play areas are already somewhere off the main map. Lorewise this could make a lot of sense to put on Lunar Isle, but Jagex won't want this to be quest-restricted. Chaos Tunnels - Bork: It would make sense to connect the Chaos Tunnels with Edgeville dungeon and/or Varrock Sewers. Although it would be irritating to have a longer route to Bork, it would be manageable. I think the bigger issue would be for PKers, who wouldn't want these 5 major exit points in the middle of the lower wilderness. I think with some hand-waving Jagex could leave the Chaos Tunnels themselves as-is, but move the entry/exit rifts outside the wilderness; they'd be linked via mysterious chaos magic or some such. This could arguably let the rifts go just about anywhere on the map, even scattered everywhere. Penguins: While getting PKed during penguin hunting would be irritating, I think this would be manageable due to the size of groups like World60Pengs. If anything this could produce some fascinating results if a PKing clan decided to try attacking World60Pengs... would greater numbers or greater PKing focus win out? Treasure Trails: This is a biggy that you didn't mention. I know, trails existed in the old wilderness too, and I remember doing some. The difference is that most of the clue scroll rewards are near-worthless these days, so the risk/reward balance is shifted. If wildy clues stay as-is, I might seriously consider just dropping a clue that needed me to head next to the mage bank - you rarely get anything good from clues anyway, so why bother? It would be fairly trivial to just remove wilderness clue locations from the rotation.

I think all GWD generals make references to "we"/"us"/etc. For sure I'd say your point rules out Zaros himself (as have others), but I think it could still be a sealed Zarosian lieutenant, Mahjarrat or no. I'd say the use of "us" doesn't give any evidence one way or the other. Graardor: - "Death to our enemies!". - "We feast on the bones of our enemies tonight!". Kril: - Attack them, you dogs! - Kill them, you cowards! Zilyana: - "Forward! Our allies are with us!" - "Saradomin is with us!" Couldn't find quotes for Kree'arra.

No. This thread shows data from 2008-2009, and [obviously, seeing the post dates] includes abo[bleep]ely nothing about 2009-2010, or anything about the past year (2010-2011). So you could say that the data you're drawing your conclusions from is nearly 2 out of date, meaning: this thread is completely irrelevant, and your conclusions drawn from old data cannot be believed. EDIT: time to let this die...again -.- According to Companies House, this thread is based upon Jagex's most recently filed financial statements. It's true they're not current, but they're the most recent information currently available. Their next set of financial statements is apparently due on December 31st, so hopefully Ren will update the graphs once that information is available. Until that time it's mostly speculation, but it's very interesting to note that the elimination of old wilderness and free trade did not cause the vast financial hardship that many players seem to imagine. Edit: I also noticed looking at the previously-posted Alexa traffic graphs that all of their data is only available in percentage form. In other words, from that data we don't know if the Runescape player base is eroding, or it's just a matter of more non-gamers getting online for Facebook, etc. Either could explain the results. I'd be curious to see a graph of absolute hits/day...

I don't normally like necro-bumping, but given certain recent events I thought this was highly relevant. My first concern upon hearing about the vote was that Jagex might be much worse off financially than I had thought, and was desperate to get more members. I was relieved to find this thread, showing that worry to be false.

You stated the reason why we need new equipment right in the first post, but missed it. There's something wrong if a whip and barrows are still some of the most desirable gear this long after their release. When Jagex spends a ton of time on new equipment which turns out to be worse than current gear, people just shrug and see another useless update. Now obviously a whip is no longer considered the best weapon, but barrows is still often used as the best gear for many situations (Ahrims, Karils for mage defense while meleeing, various melee pieces for bossing). If each week new items are better than the ones before, that'd be a problem too, but I think releasing a better tier of gear every 3-4 years isn't unreasonable. Frankly I had expected them to release chaotic armour with the final set of dungeoneering floors. New gear serves purposes other than soloing bosses - it keeps the game fresh.

As stated, my theory is with the expectation that whatever was sealed behind the door happened long before the battle over the godsword started; it's coincidental that the forces of Armadyl had to retreat back to that location. Sure, other Mahjarrat likely use shadows as well. However, we know that the Ancient spellbook is specifically tied to Zaros and his followers. Just like the Ancient staff, Ancient cloak, etc. The term Ancient used in Runescape in this way refers to Zaros, not Mahjarrat. Presumably non-Mahjarrat Zarosians used the Ancient spellbook too; Zenevivia at least uses Ancient magic. Now, I think we can all agree that merely the mention of the word shadow is insufficient to make a link to Zaros. However, it's more a matter of what shadow-wielding being would Saradomin, Zamorak, Armadyl, and Bandos all agree to seal together? To the best of our knowledge the dragonkin were in hiding and not involved with the god wars, plus we've never heard a direct link between them and shadows. It could be someone totally new we haven't heard of, sure. But the only previous example we have of a shadow-wielding being Saradomin and Zamorak (at least) agreed to seal together was Azzanadra. I find it hard to believe they would team up against any random Mahjarrat going about their own business; in the grand scheme of things, Mahjarrat do not rate that level of attention. Azzanadra was both unusually strong, and more importantly, seeking to restore Zaros to power: something all agreed they did not want to see happen. A Zarosian GWD general would not be there because of the godsword; we can all see that would make no historical sense. It's entirely plausible, however, that another powerful Zarosian lieutenant was sealed besides Azzanadra, long before the battle for the godsword, and that location happened to be the only fortification nearby for the aviantese to retreat to when Kril attacked.

Anyone ruling out Zaros' involvement so easily isn't thinking things all the way through. Sure it's unlikely that Zaros himself is behind the door, or that Zaros sent forces to fight over the sword. However consider this: 1) Azzanadra, Zaros' second in command, did fight in the god wars. He sought to preserve what remained of Zaros' empire while working towards Zaros' return. In fact, he did a pretty good job too. 2) Azzanadra was imprisoned by a temporary alliance of at least Saradominist and Zamorakian forces. It is unknown whether Armadyl or Bandos were involved since at the time of Desert Treasure's writing, they were not nearly so prominent. (Had they even been mentioned?) 3) Azzanadra seemed to mainly be involved with Zaros' desert territories, and was imprisoned there. Another primary territory of Zaros was the wilderness. The fortress of Ghorrock was a wilderness outpost which is also somewhat near to GWD... 4) The current site of the GWD is an "ancient temple" to which the Armadyl forces retreated when first attacked by Zamorakian forces. So whatever purpose the frozen door has, it likely pre-dates the actual battle over the godsword. 5) It is thus easy to imagine that besides Azzanadra, Zaros could have another loyal lieutenant seeking to preserve his empire in the area of the wilderness. If said lieutenant was even close to Azzandra in power, it's not at all a stretch to imagine Saradomin, Zamorak, Armadyl, and Bandos all agreeing to seal them. It seems the one thing they could all agree to was that they didn't like Zaros. 6) The Shadow spells are part of the ancient spellbook, used by Zarosian forces. Even if Sliske himself isn't the one sealed (a decent possibility), it could really be just about any major Zarosian commander. It wouldn't even necessarily need to be someone we've heard about before in lore - before GWD, we hadn't heard about the current generals who are apparently powerful enough to be tasked with such an important quest.

What unrealistic things in Runescape have you found the funniest? My favourite: I can't carry 29 pieces of paper (papyrus), because paper can't be stacked. Yet I can carry 10,000 cannonballs, because those stack easily. :blink: :lol:

Speaking as a comp sci major, for Jagex to implement the use of an independent RNG seed for each player would be a lot of trouble for no benefit. Various approaches might possibly be taken to deal with the massively-multithreaded environment, but persistent player-specific seeds stored in their databases along with other player-specific data seems like a poor option. More likely possibilities for how they handle things are a single RNG, or a pool of RNGs that threads can pull from to prevent locking delays, or perhaps a background thread that spits out tons of random numbers in a long list that get accessed sequentially by game threads. If in fact there were threads for each player which handled things like monster deaths and item drops for that player (unlikely) then their individual RNG would be seeded by a master or pool of masters upon login. There would be no benefit to persisting their RNG seed across play sessions. However, let's suppose for the sake of argument that your theory is correct and each player has a persistent RNG seed initialized at the time of character creation. It wouldn't matter. Due to the nature of any halfway-competent RNG, the distribution of numbers will be equal over any non-trivial run-time, regardless of the original seed. If your theory was the correct explanation for why we perceive drop differences, you would also find that those who are "born unlucky" would consistently hit lower, as well as consistently take less damage themselves in combat. This would surely be easily noticed in PvP, let alone the detailed statistical calculations that people like Grimy Bunyip and others perform. More seriously, an RNG which behaved so poorly upon specific initial seeds would never be approved for use in any Java library; the ramifications could easily cause real-world deaths if such a thing were widespread. It's always possible that Jagex wrote their own RNG for no apparent reason, and wrote it poorly due to lacking the necessary math background, but this would be another case of a lot of trouble for no real benefit (besides the obvious tells mentioned above). This is an interesting topic, and certainly more worthwhile than the typical "I have bad luck" topics ;) . So I don't mean to rain on your parade, but there's really no possibility of this being the reason for perceived drop differences.

Alphanos: P2P

So I'm playing Barbarian Assault for the first time, and I find that I'm spending at least half my time in waiting rooms because 1-2 people leave after each wave. Also many people who just can't play at all. I don't have high role levels or full penance to get into an exclusive clan chat; is there any other way I can find a decent team?