AMdbMA

Our community is intelligent, helpful, opinionated, and tactfully verbose. We value these traits highly in our members. We do not tolerate belligerence except theatrically. This is a place where you can feel secure; yet the agora can be tumultuous, since we have no qualms about discussing anything a member has to say. Debate is healthy, and no subject is off limits as long as we treat one another with respect. Members help one another any way they can, within the limits of their accounts' boundaries (some members are do-it-yourself pures and cannot interact economically with other players). We know the game well and freely share information. If you want to be part of a community where you matter, you belong here and you will be welcome. Remain loyal, and there will always be a place for you. We have retroactive membership and do not prune our lists. So long as you wish to be here, and if you wish to be here you'll follow our simple rules (respect one another and converse with our members), you will be a member indefinitely. Even if you only log in once every two years. :) Bear in mind that with the release of Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Battlefield 3, COD: Modern Warfare 3, the beginning of high school directly behind us, and a falling out of clan leadership, we are going through a transitional period. We are always recruiting and looking specifically for leadership-oriented people so that they too can recruit. The agora is run by my wife and I and we are developing an off-site forum for our clan to use. Kind regards, King of the Gielinor Agora, Adam Renzema P.S., to join add Shanartisan or Adam Renzema ingame, or email me at [email protected]

Have been an avid and semiloyal user of tip.it for years and years, but have never seen fit to join formally. But there was a Times article that I just couldn't be silent on... So here I am. Always wanted to be anyway >.< M'name's Adam. Heterosexual married conservative voting Christian pedant here, inb4 hatred/"heterosexual married conservative voting Christian" cannot precede the word pedant.

testing avatar & signature

Indeed! And I thank you for your welcome. I'd not like people to think of what I posted originally as my comprehensive view but rather an abridged version. I have always meant to become a member here but for some reason just never did. Been a Tip.it Times reader for years now.

I find the article "Grinding Doesn't have to Be" absolutely misguided. That is rather blunt, so there is an obligatory explanation coming... But I want to reiterate: absolutely misguided. The article is based upon the assumption that it is a well understood, documented and relevant that "grinding," as it were, is a "problem." I should be more methodical and break that into its constituent assumptions... That there is an understood problem, a documented problem and a relevant problem, and these problems are all grinding. I do not agree that the people to whom Jagex owes its fame find grinding to be a problem. I think the people that denounce the "grind" are the people with the most exposure to it, and that is by ratio almost certainly the people who possess reams of money, and those people are, by vast majority, people who acquired their fortune through illicit means: dice, horses, flowers, scamming, merching etc. I do not agree that there is any compelling statistical information that leads to a conclusion on whether or not RuneScape is full of grinding. I nitpick on this level because, and please bear with me, because I completely disagree that a RuneScape player is required to do one bit of grinding except in rare cases, such as acquiring a completionist cape or the Slayer skill. I never grind, because grinding is garbage (with the exclusion of Slayer). If you raise every skill with an understanding that your total level is a cohesive accumulation of one skill, you realize that your character is comprised of integral units, namely skills, that work together in order to support one another. For example, I mine rocks, then runecraft natures, then superheat ores, then make bolts, then kill chickens, then fletch bolts, then mine gems, then craft gems, then fletch gems, then fletch gem tipped bolts, then runecraft for cosmics, then use magic to make powerful bolts, which can then be sold for profit or used for slayer, which would be by vehicle of ranged, which would raise hp, which would raise combat in conjunction with ranged, and even defence. I have hundreds of correlations like what I just said, and they provide a vehicle by which one can level much, much faster than the "pick one skill and do it until you suffocate" method. I do not agree that the existence of grinding is relevant. I say this because, with the aforementioned disagreement over the "need" for grinding, I conclude that the existence of grinding is voluntary. Completely ignoring the fact that Dungeoneering is a terribly implemented concept that could have been the source of much glory and eventually RuneScape's fulcrum, completely ignoring the fact that attempting to raise it for its own sake makes my eyes bleed and my soul weep, completely ignoring my bitter lamentations over the existence of quests and items which have Dungeoneering as a requirement, that I raised it entirely with penguins and tears and lamps; completely ignoring my bias, I must declare that a call for RuneScape to have full dungeoneering-style integration can and will, upon institution, the real death of RuneScape. If anything like that happened I would most likely quit or withdraw into Classic. I am not being dramatic. In fact, I am in the camp Crocefisso described, the nostalgia wherein one holds on because he likes what hasn't changed but intends to dismiss the thing entirely when what he likes vanishes. That is, I would dismiss RS entirely if the fundamental elements that built RS ceased to exist: free-roaming, free-will, free-market, conversation, humans with which I can interact, etc. By changing RS into a dungeoneering-styled game you would socialize the core nature of it. Being a British game I must acknowledge that at substantial portion of its clientele will react favorably to socialism. I am not talking about the political structure of socialism but the fundamental ideology of socialism. The existence of a commune, or a ubiquitous mode of achievement by which all people garner accolade and material, is ugly, small, pathetic, and would infringe on the majesty of RS. tl;dr, I utterly detest Alg's article with all due respect. I do not agree that grinding is an inevitability, but rather it is a choice borne of laziness and the GE. I do not agree that grinding must go. -Adam Renzema, King of the Gielinor Agora P.S., I am having an off-kilter day. Don't take me too terribly seriously.