Lord Zophar

Oh, so for completing it you get "energy" which you turn into the armor? Does it require any particular skill? Sounds like it degrades to dust, too. At least they're consistent with that mechanic.

What do you mean? They're using the old barrows sets as base items to upgrade? Please tell me they're not, or else it'll just be something the manipulator shitbags monopolize for months. Well, actually. That's going to happen regardless if it upgrades the old or are new items :\

Can I just point out that Runescape's "best gear in the entire game" is still tier 90? I wouldn't have any issue with it if it was higher tier (Other than the whole "getting ahead of themselves" thing), but when they've balanced level 90 armor to be earned by a team of maxed players, you have to ask yourself if they're leaving themselves with any room to grow, especially when a big part of MMOs is that when the "best" gear is dethroned it becomes good gear for people that can't afford the best (either the price or the time investment). It's basically power creep on steroids. It's the same issue as rune being at 99 smithing, where you get into the silly situation of stronger armor being easier to make from scratch. Have we reached the point where it takes longer to get chaotics from scratch than it does drygores? Of course, one of the other issues is that it's basically a matter of where you put your time. Take two players; one who's spent 500 hours (random numbers yaay) making money, the other who's spent 500 hours working on skills. Guess who's going to come out ahead in pretty much every possible area? You're playing the game your own way and it works, then one day you look up and suddenly realize that all of your effort was wasted and you can't really catch up. And this is why I firmly believe the best items should be obtained through a solo-only skills-based minigame (like Ports) that uses 99 skills requirements. Reward all the players who worked for their skills and actually PLAYED THE GAME, instead of the ones who simply got lucky or spent months flipping items. Can't say I'd be opposed to that, as long as it takes considerable effort to obtain these items. Ports was a great start, though outside of time, it didn't require an awful lot of effort in the grand scheme of things. He'll, I'd even be okay if they made the "skiller" armor just marginally inferior to the "boss hunter" armor. Like if they decide to make t99 boss drop armor, they should make t98 skiller armor. So that the skillers can compete just as well as the uber rich elite, and the uber rich elite still maintain the ability to flaunt their wealth with what is "technically" the best gear (even though the difference between it and the non-tradeable skiller version is so small it is nearly unnoticeable).

That's just an unnecessary, irritating mechanic. I've seen it repeatedly in other games, and I loathe it just as much there. From the way they made this sound, also, is the team split into teams of two, so each fight is 3 v2? All around, I am not liking what I've heard about this. If they want to make an SNK boss and give him Fake Difficulty so that you will die 90% of the time, it ought to be a "safe" minigame so that your items don't degrade when you die.

Can I just point out that Runescape's "best gear in the entire game" is still tier 90? I wouldn't have any issue with it if it was higher tier (Other than the whole "getting ahead of themselves" thing), but when they've balanced level 90 armor to be earned by a team of maxed players, you have to ask yourself if they're leaving themselves with any room to grow, especially when a big part of MMOs is that when the "best" gear is dethroned it becomes good gear for people that can't afford the best (either the price or the time investment). It's basically power creep on steroids. It's the same issue as rune being at 99 smithing, where you get into the silly situation of stronger armor being easier to make from scratch. Have we reached the point where it takes longer to get chaotics from scratch than it does drygores? Of course, one of the other issues is that it's basically a matter of where you put your time. Take two players; one who's spent 500 hours (random numbers yaay) making money, the other who's spent 500 hours working on skills. Guess who's going to come out ahead in pretty much every possible area? You're playing the game your own way and it works, then one day you look up and suddenly realize that all of your effort was wasted and you can't really catch up. And this is why I firmly believe the best items should be obtained through a solo-only skills-based minigame (like Ports) that uses 99 skills requirements. Reward all the players who worked for their skills and actually PLAYED THE GAME, instead of the ones who simply got lucky or spent months flipping items.

So let me get this straight--- once you kill one brother, the others stop attacking?

Vorago is actually a lot of fun, and if you have nex gear it's not all that hard once you figure out how to handle each phase.

Wait, what? I feel like I missed something, somewhere.

This is in stark contrast to what I heard from somebody else who was apparently there at RF. :o Either way, I see a surge in demand for Ascension bows...

So in essence, this is completely ****ing retarded. What they presented should be the "hard mode," with the regular version having about 1/2 to 2/3 the stats. Requiring a 2b weapon just to complete it is the most asinine thing they have done yet. Way to make a boss that panders to the 1% of the population. As far as most players are going to be concerned, this update may as well not even exist.

Quyneax has responded with pretty much what are my sentiments. I will add though that, expecting people to camp at Frost Dragons, for hundreds of hours, is not a reasonable expectation. Runescape is supposed to be a game, albeit with some grinding, but it shouldn't be a factory where you have to work for months so you can get one item. I am willing to make an exception for cosmetic items, but it should never be the case with useful gear. Also it depends what one means by 'earning it'. I have absolutely no respect for your degenerate concept of 'earning' it where people have to work for 500-1000 hours to get one item in an online game. It's not healthy for the game, or for the players, or the community, nor is it fun for most players. The game wasn't always this way, and I would prefer it return to better times. Ridiculous amounts of time spent to achieve a single goal is the direction Runescape has been going for years now. It may not be what players have signed up for, or what is considered fun for most, but that's the reality of the situation, and it would take more than some ge restrictions to fix it. It's a complete mess all around. Jagex should acknowledge that they have turned it into a billionaire's playground and that it needs to stop. And balancing (which EoC was supposed to do), is worse now than perhaps ever before. I agree with this-- they strive to release a boss that is "harder than ever before" without realizing that it is a VERY tiny percentage of players who are actually capable of doing even the last boss they released. It's just NOW getting to the point, two years after it was released, that regular teams are doing Nex. Vorago is elitist because you have to have AT LEAST t80 armor and weapons, but preferably t90 weapons, to even complete a kill. And now they are touting the Super Barrows as "insanely difficult?" What they NEED to do is rebalance the difficulty when they release new bosses. Instead of making something "insanely difficult" from the start, make THAT the "hard mode" with drastically increased drop rates for the elitists, and make a normal mode for the majority of the players who have the stats but don't have 2.5b banks to afford BIS gear that "hard mode" requires. That way far more people have a chance at participating in new content and getting the new loot. Even if the drop rates for normal mode are a fraction of hard mode, as long as they are reasonable (i.e. better than 1/100) then it will mean new boss updates are more fun for everybody and new items won't be able to be completely controlled by merchant scumbags because there will be a larger supply. I'm beginning to understand why one of my long-time RS friends hasn't done combat since EoC. Why bother, when they constantly move the goal-post on you by releasing bosses that are increasingly elitist. If you have a way to obtain money without bossing, it'd be simpler to just say to hell with combat since Jagex seems determined to exclude everyone from bossing except people with max cash stacks and party hats.

This. I heard earlier that nobody at RuneFest was able to actually beat it. I'm sure some of those people there weren't noobs. I think Chris L was quoted as saying that it is harder than Vorago because at Vorago you can have a few bad players and still win, but at Super Barrows every player has to be a great PVMer. A tad ridiculous. Just further increases the divide between Haves and Have-Nots.

The problem with that is what happens when you get drops? That's what I actually spent quite a bit of time thinking about when writing that post. If someone has a virtus wand and a placeholder, and they get two drops in a trip (which has happened), now they have four and are no longer able to pick one of them up?

I'd love to hear how buying and selling items for profit is a scam. A very small minority of players control the vast majority of wealth in the game. Because of that and a lack of proper fail-safes in the GE, it enables those people to completely absorb the supply of any big-ticket item. This is a scam because it artifically raises the price of items, making it so that anyone who wants to actually buy one for its intended purpose cannot unless they grossly overpay for it, and then a few days or weeks later the merchants all dump their items at the same time flooding the market and causing the price to collapse. Thus, everyone who bought one loses a considerable amount of value. It screws EVERYBODY except for the greedy douchebag merchants, who make out like bandits. Here is how you (largely) fix this to keep it from happening: For any item worth between 10m-49.99m, the buy limit is 1 per 6 hours. For any item worth between 50m-99.99m, the buy limit is 1 per 12 hours. For any item worth over 100m, the buy limit is 1 per 24 hours. The sell limits for any items worth 10m or more would be 1 per hour and no more than 4 within a 24 hour period. Receiving more than 4 of the SAME DROP that are worth 10m+ in a 24 hour period is very unlikely. And if it does happen, well most teams FFA split now anyway so just trade one of them to somebody else to sell.

This is why I am completely in favor of them introducing lvl99 gear obtained in a similar method as POP gear-- you combine a minigame with an abundance of high-level skills to produce the top gear. You can make slightly inferior gear to those obtainable through boss drops, but the best stuff should always be skills-based. Making it a boss drop ensures that only the obscenely lucky or those who have more money than they can spend are able to obtain it, until it is no longer relevant. It SUCKS to ALWAYS have second-rate gear in the game no matter how long you've played or how much time you've invested in the game, simply because you don't take part in the legalized scamming that is merching price manipulation or weren't in the right place at the right time. Requiring 99 crafting and/or smithing to obtain the best combat gear still ensures that gear has an opportunity cost of several hundred million and dozens if not hundreds of hours of skilling, but the difference is that it is a REASONABLE goal. Many, in fact, MOST veteran players will probably NEVER obtain a max cash stack. Ever.

So if I worship Zaros, and people worship me, would that mean that they also worship Zaros?

Step 1: Make the right friends Step 2: Go vorago Step 3: Have insane luck, get multiple wand drops Step 4: ???? Step 5: Profit! Not that this is realistic for the vast majority of players. They lack the skills, the gear, and more importantly, the connections to do Vorago without getting ripped off.

If the melee power armor doesn't degrade to nothing, it'll wreak havoc on the economy. That and it would completely defeat the purpose of EOC EoC is already ruined. With bosses that most of the intended target audience can't do, billions of GP needed for things like T90 Mage, while T90 is super cheap, and very little for players to be able to do to obtain money for T90 stuff -- it's not much left to ruin. If they can fix this CS, then perhaps there will be some hope left as we will all be able to do things like Vorago then. I think everyone greatly overestimates the value of T90 mage. If you can make the armor itself, it costs about 80m for a set. And 60 hours of combat is a long while. Sure, it's not viable for slayer/training, but it's very likely you'll make more than 80m during that 60 hours if you use it for bossing. And Vorago really isn't nearly as hard as people make it out be. Meeting the gear requirements is difficult, as you need either full Virtus, Torva+Drygores, or Pernix/Ascension Bow to do it. But actually killing him is not all that difficult, once you get the strategy down. And with seismics entering GE price ranges (wand is right around max cash atm) and the future changes to CS, many more people are going to be doing Vorago in the near future.

If the melee power armor doesn't degrade to nothing, it'll wreak havoc on the economy.

And what about people who go Vorago together, and give away 200m+ splits of Wands?

That makes no sense. First of all, "young kids" won't have access to unlimited funds unless they steal Daddy's credit card, which opens up an entirely separate can of worms. Next, what does understanding what RWT is have to do with whether or not someone buys bonds? They don't know Gold Farmers exist, or otherwise they would use them? Is that what you're implying? I will give you MY rationale for buying Bonds: I've got a job that pays me very well, and soon I am not going to have much time to play. I want to enjoy the benefits of having t80 and t90 gear, and while I do MH every day it is just not fast enough. I could research which sites are legit and illegally buy gold for much cheaper, but you know what? Gold sellers obtain their gold by forcing people to "play" RS for very long hours in sweatshops while paying them next to nothing. That isn't someone I want to give my money to. And besides, I have been playing RS off-and-on since 2001. I don't want to risk being banned, and I also don't mind supporting the company that created a game which has brought me enjoyment for more than 10 years. Even if I disagree with many of the decisions Jagex has made and continues to make, I am still grateful to be able to enjoy RS.

2nd ever kill :o

buying gold from 3rd parties and buying gold from jagex is equally immoral. While I appreciate that you have a strong stance on this... This isn't really the way the game industry (or players!) are going. At least Jagex isn't directly generating gold, but requires that someone actually buys the bond, so this way it doesn't hyper inflate the economy worse than anything a gold (re)seller ever could. This. You are buying another player's gold-- it is not introducing new gold into the economy. And it's "legal" according to Jagex's rules. Sure, it undermines the "spirit" of the game, but eh. Every game does it, these days.

A reputation to uphold? What kind of reputation, criminal? There business is fraudulent at the core. The real world equivalent is me running around selling property rights to Yosemite national park. Are you really this dense? People worry about being scammed or having their CC information stolen, but the REAL rwt companies don't do this. Why? Reputation. Even though what they do is against the RS rules, they are still a legitimate real life business. If they scammed/committed fraud then word would get around not to use them and their business would go belly up. That's reputation. And "being fraudulent at the core" depends how you look at it. Yes, Jagex technically owns every piece of GP in the game. In that sense, yes what they do defrauds Jagex because they do not own the rights to the game to profit from the game. But as of right now, there are no real life e-commerce laws prohibiting such things. It's against the ToS, yes, as far as they are concerned they are a completely legitimate business. And before anyone accuses me of being an illegal gold buyer, I am not. I've actually bought several bonds, instead. Because I prefer to do things on the up-and-up.

Bonds seem to be hovering around 7m (so you are getting roughly 1.4m/dollar), so assuming my math is right that's .73 cents per mil. But, you're still correct in that it's less than half the cost :s Now, before you read my suggestions, I am aware that I am advocating RWT. My logic is that half-assed RWT accomplishes nothing-- if they are going to bother, they need to go all-in. For Bonds to truly be competitive, they need to increase the benefits that you get from them so that it increases the demand. For example, many micro-based games sell items in their "game stores" that provide temporary convenience-based effects. Create NPCs that will trade you items that give a large amount (at least a few hundred thousand) bonus exp in exchange for Bonds. Another thing that could be traded for Bonds is temporary buffs; some of these might include +20 mining or fishing for an hour, or a buff that protects all of your items upon death for an hour (if you have high div, the time on this buff would be greatly extended). Also, increase the amount of spins/runecoins you receive from bonds to 10 and 200, respectively, so that they are equivalent to the $4.99 package on the website. Obviously, these are just basic ideas-- you get the point though. Increasing the demand of the bonds is the best way to make them more competitive to farmers. I'd rather keep the gold farming then, tbh. I understand where you're coming from there, but right now what we've got is a legit way to do what was already being done, a bit more of an equalizer than anything else. Adding those bonuses would be going even further and selling stuff that was never really an issue with gold farming. I don't mind Jagex fighting gold farming as long as what they're doing benefits me a bit and isn't sticking out as much like those bonuses would be. Selling a few aspects...fine I'll cope....but don't sell everything and make everything nearly worthless. If Jagex thinks they've gotten rid of 81% of goldfarming, cool. I haven't seen too many spam bots recently, not getting too many pm's, bots are mostly eliminated or kept down in numbers at training areas. Whatever goldfarming is left doesn't affect me anymore, so I'd rather leave it be than burn down the game to eradicate it all. No Pyrrhic victories please =) The thing is, how would those bonuses affect you? All they would do is offer an optional convenience-- the ability to temporarily mine rocks more efficiently or receive extra bonus xp. And they could put all of it on the Wheel too, so that players would have a chance to win it. With you being able to do these things with Bonds, it would make the demand and thus the GP price of Bonds go way up. Thus, instead of being worth 7m each they might rise to 12-15m each. At 15m each, it would be 3m per dollar, or .33 cents per mil. That is very comparable to what gold farmers sell theirs for.