dargonhuman

Why? That was a good one, and timely. The thing is, comparing WoW with RS is somewhat unfair; it's like comparing Marvel or DC Comics to a small garage-based indie company. WoW is from Blizzard, a well-known name in gaming and is based on a widely-recognized and well-loved franchise. RS is from Jagex, a relatively unknown company whose only work before RS were a handful of low-quality Java remakes of other games. In other words, of course people are going to flock to WoW in droves, while at the same time be skeptical and wary of RS; Blizzard has a proven track record of excellence while virtually nobody outside of a certain niche market has even heard of Jagex. You can't even read about RS in game magazines, except for the rare (usually derogatory) blurb or text box, whereas you can hardly open a magazine these days without seeing something about WoW, whether it be a review, ad or whatever. If RS didn't have a free edition, it wouldn't be nearly as large as it is; word-of-mouth and banner ads would be virtually the only means of advertising they'd have, and that wouldn't be good enough to sustain RS. When was the last time you payed to play a game based solely on a banner ad? I know I never have, and I never will; it's not worth risking my money on something that could be a piece of garbage. --Darg--

I don't know if it's relevant to the topic or not, but I've killed my share of Lessers looking for Rune Meds myself, and I did notice a vague pattern to the drops. It went something like: Gp (x10-20), Fire Runes, Gp (15-30), More Fire Runes, more gp, Gold Ore, more gp and sometimes Runes, mid-lvl armor or weapon (black shield or mith something), even more gp and runes, then the Rune Med (or at least something very similar...it was a while ago). It wasn't exactly the same every time - sometimes the mid-lvl armor would be skipped or the Ore would come sooner than expected - but it generally went that way every time I went down into Karamja Volcano. It got to the point that I knew just about exactly how much food to bring to get me to the Rune Med drop. Like I said, I don't know if it's relevant, but it's something I noticed and thought I'd point out.

I don't know about anyone else, but personally, I'm getting sick and tired of Jagex's "solutions" to autoers. So many times, they've needed to use surgical-like precision in their fixes, but so many times they've used the broadsword method that only ends up hurting the honest and innocent players, making us mad enough to quit, which then comes around to bite them in the proverbial buttocks. Not that they apparently care, since the number of players keeps going up, which keeps filling their coffers. Why should they care about a few hundred people who quit? They get thousands of new people a week, it seems. But they need to care; nothing lasts forever, and if they don't want their little MMO empire to come crashing down around them before it's time, then they should take better care of their customer base, the free ones as well as the paying ones. Despite the fact we f2pers don't pay a cent to play RS, every single one of us represents a potential paying member. If we feel like we're getting screwed (which we do feel with every one of these "fixes", not to mention the actual screwings we get with...well, everything else), then we're going to be less likely to get memberships, especially since more and more often, these "fixes" are screwing the members over almost as much as the f2pers! Why pay to get treated like a criminal when you can get that for free? Of course, this is all a moot point; Jagex staff might actually be reading these posts filled with great suggestions and legitimate complaints, but you and I all know that they don't care what we think. If they really wanted to give us what we wanted, we'd have POH's, real horses, holiday and rare items that are actually worth something and a host of better f2p/p2p balances. Instead, they waste their time and "our*" money on crappy quests with mediocre rewards and idiotic minigames that no one plays like the Blast Furnace and that game house thing. --Darg-- *"Our" in this case of course means Members' subscription money. I wouldn't presume to think the paltry amount of money generated by f2p ads amounts to much.

1. What made you remain f2p? Like so many others, no convenient payment method; I don't have a credit card or a reliable enough income flow to get one, and I don't want to pay $7-10 for the other methods. Besides the money issue, there are too many other reasons to keep me away, though one of the biggest reasons is the sheer size of p2p is a bit daunting. I mean, it's what, 4, 5 times the content of f2p now? Even if I did have a credit card, I'm too intimidated by members to want to get into it now...I wouldn't know where to start and then I'd hate myself for wasting all that time paying to do nothing. The other major reason is I don't play nearly as much as I used to, so even $5 would be a waste for me at this point. 2. Have you ever wanted to be member? I actually was for a month as a Christmas gift from a friend, but that was back when RS2 was still in Beta phase. Nowadays, there are some things I'd like to do in Members, but none of them are really worth spending the money, and I don't know enough about the rest of it to really get all that excited or interested. 3. Do you plan to be a member in the future? Maybe. It depends on a lot of factors beyond the ones I named here.

I wanted desperately to report this scammer earlier, but didn't bother because his "name" was a complicated series of numbers that I knew I wouldn't be able to type in before the "time limit" was up for reporting. I get the feeling that most cheaters/scammers/etc. do this intentionally just for this purpose, like the 0o0o0o0 names. This made me realize what we need is a right-click report option. What I mean is, when you right click their name in the chat window it should give you, in addition to the Add Ignore/Add Friend options, a Report option. When you click it, it would bring up the Report Abuse window with the offender's name already inserted so that all you have to do is choose the offence and send it in. Obviously, this wouldn't work for autoers, since many of them don't talk, but that's what the current Report Abuse button would be for. --Darg--

Drop-X would be good for stackables, I agree, but not for unstackables; like almost everyone else said, it'd make training certain skills too easy, plus, JAgex doesn't like power-trainers, which is why they made a no-overflow inventory for RS2 to begin with. --Darg--

Whatever their motivations, Jagex's KB is too little too late, IMO; there are already dozens of better sites out there that already offer more than the KB will ever offer. If their intent is to replace fansites, it won't work. Many of the most popular fansites have been fielding off competition for years, and the KB is just another competitor for users, and if JAgex's previous efforts are any clue, it's going to be a pretty weak competitor at that. Just about the only two things going for the KB in terms of competitive strength is the fact that it's official, "from the horse's mouth" so to speak, so the info is always accurate, and it's not a third party reference, so there's no fear of reprisals for directing other players to using it. That all being said, it's still really too early to tell, since it's still Beta. For all we know, when it's done, the KB could be so useful that it puts all the fansites to shame. I doubt it will, but you never know. --Darg--

It's not jealousy, not on my part at least. It's more of a lack of understanding as to why they're so overpriced. It's not like they're worth anything to the game; they give no stat bonuses, they have no special features, they just sit on your head (or in your bank) and look ridiculous. I mean, heck, the latest batch of holiday/random event items look a thousand times better, are free and sometimes even have unique features like the chicken whacking. My current favorite costume is a Prince Suit with the blue hat from Christmas, the matching scarf and a pair of purple gloves. And, other than the gloves, it was all free; I didn't have to pay out my nose to get any of it - heck, the gloves themselves only put me back like 10gp or so. That's the reason I hate the rares. It doesn't make any sense to "invest" in some worthless, ugly trinket when you can invest the same millions in skills; skills will always make money for you, there's no such guarantee with rares. At any moment, a number of things could happen to the "rare market" that would reduce your multi-million gp investment into a folly: Jagex could finally get tired of hearing about it and make them untradeable, the rares market bubble could finally pop and the prices could plummet, some clever kid with a homemade program could do another dupe incident and crash the market, or something else I haven't even thought of yet. I'll be honest, though, if I ever found a rare in the Wildy, I'd rejoice. Why? Because, then I could go and sell it to some froob on World 1 and be able to level up several of my skills almost overnight. --Darg--

We are a hedge...please ignore us...

While I wouldn't complain about having a furnace in the Crafting Guild, I can see why there isn't one; there are already way too many conveniences in the Guild, between leather and pottery, not to mention the free moulds and tools just lying around, putting in a furnace would make it way too easy. That's not to say I don't agree that the Fally furnace isn't a pain to use with the Guild, because it is, but if you know how to train efficiently by hoarding ores then smelting en masse somewhere like Al Kharid, then it's not that much of a difficulty. If they ever did put a furnace in the Guild, they'd have to raise the entrance lvl requirement to something like 60 or 70 to compensate. If you're looking for a quick Crafting boost, go with Leather or Pottery; I've been Bowling the last two weeks or so (supplementing the bowls with occassional runs of gold and silver) and have gotten more exp in that time than in the previous months making just jewelry. --Darg--

Agreed, though the rest of the updates kinda make up for it. Besides which, 9/10 times I used that door, all three were closed, which meant I had to open them and that ate up whatever time I saved by going through the doors. That's what I'm playing on now. RS used to lag hard for me until I upgraded my graphic card (of all things). Now I only get lag when ads load (or I'm doing other things like forums). --Darg--

The Dupe Incident occurred when a player realized there was a way to duplicate the pink party hats somehow; I think he was using a third party program or something. However he did it, he created chaos in the p-hat market by flooding hundreds of duplicated pink hats into the game, which set off rumors like wildfire that he was duping all colors of p-hats, other rares, all kinds of things. It ended when Jagex patched the bug and banned the player (as well as all of his other accounts). Just prior to the banning, there was a rumor that Jagex was offering a free lifetime Membership to anyone who could name the player who was responsible. It was all anyone could talk about in-game and on the forums for a week.[/history lesson] Yeh, anyway, I've never understood the fascination with rares. Sure, they're an "investment", but if the market ever goes belly up, you're essentially screwed; stuck with a stat-less item that you paid too much for and can't get a return on. Personally, if I had 190 million in my bank I didn't know what to do with (shyeah, only if my skills are all maxed at 99), I'd go out and buy tons of mid- to high-level armor and weapons and hang out in Lumbridge playing Santa Claus to lvl-3's and victims of the Wilderness. No, I wouldn't get a Santa Hat to do that, either. --Darg--

The autolog is a good thing, mostly, but the time definitely needs to be extended; I can be playing and look out the window to see what my dog is barking at, and in that short time, I'm autologged. When the autolog was first introduced, they said it was five minutes, but even back then you could be logged out in as little as thirty seconds. I agree with the idea that as long as you're doing an action, i.e. fishing, mining, etc. you can't be autologged. With the way the inventory works to stop power-trainers, it won't take long for autoers to get full inventories and autolog even if JAgex changes the autolog feature. --Darg--

Yes and yes. Yes, the new rocks are very hard to see if they respawned and yes, it was part of the Rimmington graphics update a few months ago. Personally, I like the old rocks better. RS is a game; not everything has to be realistic. When realism detracts from the game experience or interferes with game mechanics, then it's time to scale back the realism in favor of the game. --Darg--

Before this week's TipIt Times, I thought lack of bank space was endemic only to us f2pers, but the article made me realize that it's a universal problem. You'd think that Jagex, after going through all the trouble and expense of making all these fun, interesting items (random events, Barrows, treasure trails, etc.) that they'd have the foresight to make sure everyone could keep all the stuff they find interesting or amusing or plain useful, especially the members. Apparently, Jagex lacks that kind of foresight, though, and many people have to sacrifice the new items they want in order to store the skill items they need. I like AshKaYu's suggestion of one p2p space for every three new items and one f2p space for every ten new items. It's fair to the member by giving them nearly 66% more than f2pers, it's fair to f2pers by giving them more than the shaft, and it allows everyone to keep more of the things they want or need to play RS effectively. --Darg--

Very nice article, Mage. Being a fellow f2p, I agree with a lot of what you said, especially the part that p2p has simply too much to do. The reason I liked Classic so much was that it was a simpler experience; you could do just about everything with minimal fuss. Now that that's basically closed down, the closest we've got to a similar experience is f2p. I mean, if I want to pay for a complex experience, I'll go get WoW or EQ or something worth paying for. I suppose I shouldn't complain too much about the complexities of p2p; without p2p, f2p would be getting all these confusing and complicated updates, which would ruin the experience for me and people like me who prefer the simpler aspects of RS. --Darg--

I don't; there's a reason you get tunas with swordies and sharks. It's the same reason Addy and Rune rocks take so long to resqawn, that being, swordies and sharks are too valuable to just give out. Besides, think of how crowded those spots would be! --Darg--

I'm happy with my RS name; when I first created it, I wanted it to be just Dargon, without the -human, but now that I've gotten used to it, I like it, plus the -human fits into the backstory I came up with for my character better than just the Dargon (my character was orphaned as a baby and raised by the Dwarves. Being a human, he was given a Dwarven name, but they added the -human to remind him of his true heritage). Come to think of it, I probably wouldn't change the name on my first character, except to add the last "e" at the end, since it was cut off and I didn't realize it: his name is Third of Nin, when I meant it to be Third of Nine. And yes, that is a Borg designation. --Darg--

Okay, that was weird. Interesting, but weird. At first, I thought the last line was a typo of "Life is good at Tim's house", until I realized it was a talking mouse. Nice twist there. Good work, spelling, grammar and punctuation are all proper and it's readable! I can't count the number of people's work I've read that are incomprehensible because they don't know the first things about writing; it's so nice to actually be able to read something without feeling a small part of my brain seize up as a result. I look forward to reading more. --Darg--

I like that idea the best. It'd be better if it were a mini-quest reward, like a scavenger hunt of some sort, but I still like the concept. I'd love to dress up as a Hobgoblin and go out to the Hob Mine, just for the weirdness factor. --Darg--

There's a reason picks are unsmithable. It's the same reason black armor and dwarf cannons are unsmithable and abyssal whips are so expensive; it's a money drain. Jagex doesn't like how much gp is in circulation, and so has added various items that are purchase-only to remove some of it from the game. It's certainly not enough - just look at the billions of gp passed around daily for p-hats for proof - but that's why they're there. --Darg--

Thanks for the comments, and yeah, I probably could (and should) have done more, but since it was a quick 2 minute job (most of which was getting the sword to go through the button), then yeah. I will remember PNG for next time, possibly v2. --Darg--

Just a silly idea I had the other day and decided to put it to pixels. I'm thinking about making it into a series, with a different NPC telling the players to Report Report Abuse Abuse. --Darg--

I found the rock on the beach and thought it looked like a Rune Essence, so I just regular acryllic craft paint to make my favorite catalyst Rune. Apologies for the cruddy image; I used my webcam and it's not the greatest. --Darg--

I think what sj meant was the post was a bit hard to read. MAybe if you rephrased it for clarity, as I'm having a hard time comprehending what you're trying to say, too. --Darg--