Lord Zophar

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.

Yep. Why should they? Jagex is charging close to double their prices for "legit gold" so there is really no competition. Sure, there are people will buy the bonds because they are afraid of dealing with a third party (either risk of ban/CC fraud/malware, etc) but the people who were buying gold from farmers before Bonds won't stop after bonds. Again, why should they? Buying from farmers is a much better deal, as long as you have the confidence they aren't going to scam you IRL.

Meh. I guess the ability spamming doesn't bother me because I am used to playing games like that. Just about any MMO you find will have a system that boils down to that-- spamming the right abilities in the right order ad infinitum. And the armor system really did not change that much. Previously, you still had clear "best" in-slot items. Bandos/Torva was the best offensive melee gear, Whip/Crapier was the best weapon, etc. It's not really changed much. And the fact that abilities do not consume resources made using magic/range in PvM viable.

I don't understand the vitriol regarding EoC. I will agree the new interface kind of sucks, but overall EoC is very much superior to the old combat system. Yes, it has its flaws such as failing to maintain a balanced triangle but that is more a result of a lack of forward thinking with regards to how new items are obtained and less because of how EoC is designed. EoC made combat much more fast paced and involving. Before, it was "sit there and watch your character attack while occasionally using a special attack or eating." If they would just balance out the drop rates so that the t90 magic/ranged weapons were not 100x as difficult to obtain as the t90 melee gear then the triangle would balance itself.

Terms and conditions are a 'way' of relinquishing that sort of responsibility. However, nobody reads them. There's a first time for everything. Just because nobody has been sued as yet, you can really guarantee that someone isn't going to look at the gaming companies in the future? Of course you can't. The WOW kid case is a little more complex than that. Quyneax could also be correct but I've not seen anything that points towards that. It does not matter if you read them or not. Did you not see the South Park episode spoofing that? If you click "Accept" then you agree to their terms, regardless if you read them or not.

Spot the bug. BTW, that's not me.

How much does T4 Vampirism cost? It used to be over 100k cumulative. I am not sure about now. But that aura is immensely useful for PVM combat. Combine that with a scrimshaw of vampirism and you really shouldn't need much food at Nex. Supposing you can get it in 5 months-- that's still a very, very long time in MMO terms. People game in terms of minutes and hours. Five months from now, Jagex could have released an update so horrendous it has driven people away by the thousands and the game is now a ghost town. You don't know. How about this--- I'll compromise. If you sub for a more than a month-to-month charge, you should receive all your LP up front. So if you sub for a three month block or a year block, you should get all those points up front. I mean, you already paid for a year's worth of membership so you will be loyal for a year at least-- can you think of any reason not to do this? Other than "it makes it easier for fr00bs, in my day we had to walk uphill both ways across hot coals in the middle of the Arctic winter?"

This. This is the problem-- sure, it's nice for the people who were loyal, but for anybody who comes late to the party you have to wait a GODDAMN YEAR or longer to get auras that are EXTREMELY useful in gameplay. I have played since 2001 and been a member for many of those years. But what do I have to show for it? 1K points. That's it. Because I timed a break from the game poorly. And thus, I am heavily penalized by that.

Well, magic is definitely the most powerful combat style, especially since the changes to the TWW special. Magic is the most powerful style, therefore magic weaponry is the most expensive. The t80 wand + book costs roughly DOUBLE what a t90 drygore set costs. The t90 wand costs more than some party hats. And the reason the t80 wand is so expensive is because for the vast majority of players, it is the best wand they can ever hope to achieve. I know quite a few players who CAN afford a Seismic Wand but are afraid to commit because something at 2.6B logically only has one direction to go-- DOWN. But, because Jagex is TEH STOOPIDZ the price actually seems to be still rising. Vorago definitely needs to be rebalanced. Give him a 1/20 drop rate and manually adjust the GE price to be max cash. BAM! Problem solved. T90 mage becomes significantly more accessible AND it would give all the people who can slay Nex in their sleep the incentive they need to actually run Vorago. Right now, Vorago is so unbalanced between the stagnant GE price and the fact that you can generally never trust anybody in this game with any sizable amount of wealth that it's simply not worth the time investment. From what people have told me, Vorago kills take on average about 2-3 times as long as Nex kills (around 15 minutes per kill?) and the chances of someone [bleep]ing you over are extremely high. People who you could ordinarily trust suddenly turn on you when presented with the fact that "OMFG I JUST GOT 2.6B" Thus, the only people who normally DO Vorago are the ones who already have billions because to them, that amount of money isn't so outrageous that they would sell their reputations. All true, however one combat style should NEVER be superior to the others. Before EOC, melee reigned supreme. One style should never be better than the others. Maybe before the metagame, but the metagame shouldn't be unbalanced like that. For example.. T80 and 90 range and melee, 1h and 2h degrade T80 and 90 mage do NOT degrade.. That is another problem entirely. The Vwand shot up even higher when they released the asinine "your crap degrades when you die" update. They need to make wands and books degrade like weapons, with each spell you autocast. My Cstaff degrades, so should your wands/books/sigularities.

That is a bullshit reason because no other game does this and you never read about anyone successfully suing any other game company for developing health problems due to no-lifing. All they have to do is include a clause in their Terms of Agreement where, by agreeing to their terms and conditions, you as the customer accept that while it is recommend that you take breaks from playing at regular intervals you accept full responsibility for any harmful health effects resulting from prolonged sessions of gameplay.

I also wish I could buy Loyalty Points outright. I unsubbed and quit the game right after they came out, so now I am way behind the curve and will never catch up. I'd gladly pay 5 bucks per like 10k loyalty points. Hell, I'd probably pay 5 bucks per 5k, or a dollar per 1K points.

How do you get the Gold Membership?

Well, magic is definitely the most powerful combat style, especially since the changes to the TWW special. Magic is the most powerful style, therefore magic weaponry is the most expensive. The t80 wand + book costs roughly DOUBLE what a t90 drygore set costs. The t90 wand costs more than some party hats. And the reason the t80 wand is so expensive is because for the vast majority of players, it is the best wand they can ever hope to achieve. I know quite a few players who CAN afford a Seismic Wand but are afraid to commit because something at 2.6B logically only has one direction to go-- DOWN. But, because Jagex is TEH STOOPIDZ the price actually seems to be still rising. Vorago definitely needs to be rebalanced. Give him a 1/20 drop rate and manually adjust the GE price to be max cash. BAM! Problem solved. T90 mage becomes significantly more accessible AND it would give all the people who can slay Nex in their sleep the incentive they need to actually run Vorago. Right now, Vorago is so unbalanced between the stagnant GE price and the fact that you can generally never trust anybody in this game with any sizable amount of wealth that it's simply not worth the time investment. From what people have told me, Vorago kills take on average about 2-3 times as long as Nex kills (around 15 minutes per kill?) and the chances of someone [bleep]ing you over are extremely high. People who you could ordinarily trust suddenly turn on you when presented with the fact that "OMFG I JUST GOT 2.6B" Thus, the only people who normally DO Vorago are the ones who already have billions because to them, that amount of money isn't so outrageous that they would sell their reputations.

WOOT Also, if they were to simply release lvl99 stuff it would wreak havoc on the game. I mean, Nex gear, Vorago gear, everything would crash harder than a train wreck.

I earned my B-ears the hard way :( I has a sad that unworthy people have some now.

It's been happening for longer than just today. They have had like a whole day to inform us (the technical team is already working on it, various J-Mods are in game), would it be so hard to have an official announcement on RSOF or main page? I think not. I haven't lost anything, thankfully, but various people I know, and on RSOF have. It got a team mate and me both killed at Nex last night. Luckily, we were able to get our stuff back though.

I think that all the 200m people start even when they reset, actually. AFAIK, the way they described it nobody got extra prestiges for having more than 13m xp. I also suppose it's possible that it might help use up some of the obscene gold piles many of those players have. Since they'll all be spending +40% ge price on resources to get them quick, so they can be the first to power through another 200M <buyable skill> xp.

Wat.

Yes, strange isn't it? These days you're some horrible noob if you only play for 6 hours, and it's considered perfectly normal and commonplace for people to play 6 hours a day (many play far more than that). Something like this would have been unimaginable just a few decades ago. The 6 hour log doesn't actually address it in any way. It only inconveniences you momentarily. If it, for example, made it so you could only play 6 hours maximum per day, that'd be a concrete step (though obviously that won't happen), but a mere trip to the lobby is nothing. It doesn't boot you to the lobby. It boots you to the LOGIN screen, and it won't let you log back in until you completely reload the page. It gives a "Your game session has now ended. Please refresh the page" error. It goes beyond a minor inconvenience. If someone wants to neglect their health by playing 18 hours straight, fine, let them. As a developer, it is NOT YOUR BLOODY PLACE TO GIVE A SHIT. Also, the problem is not that it is six-hours straight either-- it COUNTS TIME SPENT IN THE LOBBY. That is the worst part. You can play for three hours and then take a two hour break, leaving yourself AFK in the lobby. You come back and then you'll get booted after an hour. It's ****ing stupid. If you log to the lobby, it really needs to reset the timer.

It does absolutely nothing to discourage long hours of play and serves no purpose for the user. It should most certainly be removed. This. It is NOT Jagex's perogative to police how many hours people play. All this does is serve as an inconvenience to people.

Well I can't predict exactly how a tax would change Runescape. It's quite possible that a GE tax would not prevent merchanting. If it doesn't, some other measure would be needed (if you wanted to discourage merchanting). Well, I think limiting buying anything over 100m to 1 per 24H would probably help.

Well, yeah. But again, that's something limited to exclusively the richest of the rich because Jagex refuses to adjust the GE price to make it worthwhile for normal people to try to kill Vorago. :\

I don't think you have a very clear idea of what communism entails... the whole idea is that there is no individual property, money or state. As such there are no taxes as we understand them and nothing to take away. You may be confused with the USSR or the image of it that appears in typical Western propoganda, but don't forget that the USSR and China and all those others were never actually communist. All of the typical 'communist' countries were 'on the way' to communism - also known as socialism - which is also what the second 's' in USSR stands for (there's also Maoism and others of course). As a matter of interest, read this sentence: "the institution of organised violence which is used by the ruling class of a country to maintain the conditions of its rule." Why, that's almost a Tea Party statement, on the federal state perhaps, isn't it? As it happens it is the Marxism.org defintion of a state. Extremists of the world, unite! Anyway... 2m/2h is a very slow rate of making money. But even if you have a decent rate of making money, the 2.6b for a seismic wand is in the range of 500 hours of moneymaking. That's over twice the time it takes to get to level 99 Divination. In addition, the 2.6b is something that you have to risk if you want to use it in the wilderness, for example - it's not something you just get to keep forever, unlike your 99s. Now, there is a balance between level 90 magic and level 90 equipment, which should at least include that they are both significant in terms of effort. That is, you don't want 90 magic to be trivially easy compared to obtaining seismic weapons, and neither do you want the weapons to be much cheaper (easier to obtain) than the levels. Currently, this balance is pretty good for drygores, slightly too skewed towards equipment for ascensions, and far too skewed towards equipment for seismic. Now, you may prefer a different equipment/level balance, but this is the core argument and what we're really talking about: how much effort do we find acceptable for a given item or benefit, considering that we already had to get the level to use said item? In addition, I'd like to note that, personally, I don't think it's fun that the best gp/h in the game - by an order of magnitude - is GE merchanting. Certainly, it's currently the best way of making money and you should take the best way, but as designer I would devise a mechanic that makes merchanting less attractive, for example through a tax or by making every order take at least an hour - or more - to fill (which is of course a much more drastic change, but it would be interesting and it would definitely be playable). I played a game with a 30% tax on anything you sold on the "auction house." Do you know what it accomplished? Absolutely nothing. Players compensated by increases their prices by 30%-50%, and most of the truly valuable items were instead traded player-to-player instead. FWIW, the best GP per hour in the game for most players is simply to obtain a real life job making over 40 dollars/hour and then just buy your GP through bonds. That's sadly the only way normal players can keep up with the merchant scum. And since there's really far better things to spend your hard-earned money on IRL than virtual currency in game that may or may not be dying, there's no reason to bother. Just accept, like I have, that you will probably never obtain a Seismic Wand unless something superior comes out, causing the prices to tank because it is no longer the most prestigous item for the 1% to hoard.

Actually, bows crashed today because presumably all the hoarding piece of **** manipulators dumped them. So, yeah. I paid 265, cant even sell for 250. GF, I'm just gonna hold on to it. No reason to sell it, really, unless the new Barrows bow just blows it away... Which, it might. Yes. The next day, once they hoard the stuff and sell it at peak price, it always crashes. Just another cost that they pass onto other people. As for Barrows, it won't be releasing anything that will displace the Ascension Bow, you can be sure of that. Yep. Merchants have always been the biggest thing I've hated about RS-- even more than all the sadistic, immature teens who play solely to screw with other people. I mean, I've made about 250m the last three weeks camping Nex for between 3-6 hours a day, with obscene luck involved, and that's a drop in the bucket to what those people can make with zero effort or time investment. It's sickening.

Actually, bows crashed today because presumably all the hoarding piece of **** manipulators dumped them. So, yeah. I paid 265, cant even sell for 250. GF, I'm just gonna hold on to it. No reason to sell it, really, unless the new Barrows bow just blows it away... Which, it might. It would be astronomically retarded for them make the current t90 gear obsolete, but hey, it's Jagex so anything is possible. I've always advocated that anything with a pricetag of over 100m should have a buy limit of 1/24H. Or, at the very least 1/12H.