dargonhuman

Possibly; Jagex hasn't announced things like that for a while now.

Isn't runescape laggy enough? Wouldn't adding this make it 10x - 100x more laggy?

That made me lol. To be fair, the EW3 puzzle wasn't exactly hard, it just had a fail of control placement; if the switches had all been located on some kind of control board, similar to the Cosmic machine controls, it would have been a lot simpler. Putting the control levers around the periphery of the room is where the puzzle failed. That being said, I'm glad these machines were much easier to use. It took me a bit of experimenting and trial and error, but once I figured out the controls, it was a cinch. Like someone before said, the worst part was moving the Chaos belts around to get the right box in the CPU. btw, anyone else get the "CPU" and "RAM" jokes?

Mazes have always been the most generous random due to the increased difficulty and time investment in solving them. Given that, 71% is damn good.

That's the part that made me lol. "Trademarks used in other countries of the world" are more simply called "international trademarks" and "Jagex Ltd in the United Kingdom" just sounds hinky as I've never seen that kind of specificity of national location in any official Jagex correspondence. Mostly I've seen something like, "registered international trademarks of Jagex Ltd" or something similar.

I voted no from the start, and I still stand by it. The "freedom" of free trade has made buying or selling anything at a reasonable price nearly impossible, and the GE prices are so slow to catch up that determining the current price without wasting time checking other sites IS impossible. I miss the days when selling something quickly meant clicking "lowest price" and buying quickly meant clicking "highest price". Now it's click "-5%" or "+5%" half a dozen times only to find that's still not enough, cancel, then do it all over again from scratch. Haven't been to the Wild yet, and don't plan on going anytime soon. Then again, I never really went out there much before PVP was removed, and even less when it was. There's nothing in the Wild for me that I can't find in more abundance and in more convenient places. So I guess for the Wild, I'm pretty neutral (except for the part where Jagex has been shoving Wildy updates down our throats for weeks) but I never wanted free trade back. The greedy 13-year-olds who play this game can't be trusted with something as massive as free trade...

From my experience, most unions need some major overhauling. I have a friend who is in a labor union, and they keep screwing him over on jobs; he worked at a lumber mill for over 12 years, got laid off and now keeps getting sent to crap jobs that he's not qualified to do. But he's a "journeyman" within the union, so the pencil-pushers assume that means he can do anything, I guess. Oh, did I mention that he has to wait 3-4 months between jobs? He pays his dues on time every month and meets his other union obligations, but they keep failing him. From what I understand, that's a common story in that area too. Back in the day, unions were a great idea in that they protected workers' rights from evil corporations and a corrupt government, but these days it seems the unions have taken on the mantle of "evil corporation" and the workers (not to mention the public) need government protection from them!

I think the motivation for most botters is real world trading, and that's likely (just my opinion, of course!) where most botters come from. That said, my play style could be misconstrued as botting; I keep my chat filters to Off at all times, and I often move in the same pattern when training certain skills like Mining, Smithing or Crafting. I'm certain that my profile has been reported and flagged many, many times because of this, but seeing as my ADD keeps me from training any one skill for longer than an hour or two straight, I don't ever hear anything from Jagex about it. That said, it's not always as clear who's botting and who's not from a player's standpoint, as it takes more than someone not talking and doing the same thing over and over to be a bot.

I think it's more idiotic to not DIY most RS skills. If you DIY and spread your efforts across multiple related skills, you're not as much of a slave to the fickle economy as a Pure [insert player caste]. I've been a DIY player on my main since I started it, and as a result I'm extremely self-sufficient. My levels are such that I can make nearly everything I use on a regular basis or buy it through the GE. Granted, I usually choose to buy things like coal or cosmic runes when I need them, but that's due more to my limited online time than anything, but it's nice to have the option to make/gather my own should I choose to. Efficiency and DIY are actually not as mutually exclusive as most people think. In order to DIY effectively, you have to be very efficient with your time and maximize any advantage you can get. This includes quest rewards, Bonus XP weekends, interlinking skills (i.e. using Smithing and Fletching to train Range, Runecrafting and Agility to train Magic, Mining and Smithing to train Melee, using Fishing, Woodcutting and Firemaking to train combat skills like Slayer, using Farming to train Herblore and Summoning, etc.) My main source of income is buying Battlestaves from Naff and Baba Yaga and turning them into Fire Battlestaves by using my Crafting, Magic, Combat and Agility skills to make my own Fire Orbs in addition to several quest rewards to gather supplies, such as the 84 free sand buckets from Hand in the Sand among others. To get my 2000+ gp profit per staff (and I've finished enough Tasks that I can make 52 a day), I also earn quite a bit of exp in all those skills. Yes, it takes a while since I can't use the lvl 70 or 80 shortcuts through the Taverly dungeon, but the payoff is worth it to me because it's fun and I'm training several skills simultaneously instead of grinding out one skill at a time. In my mind, that's more efficient than getting a few thousand exp per hour in a single skill.

The worst that could happen is they change hands and sell my number anyway, or it gets leaked somehow (either through a hack or stupidity) and I pay a ton in unsolicited emails and phone calls. Or, have to change my number and then update everyone who has my number, just so that I could watch some YouTube vids. Not. Worth. It. No, I actually don't give out my personal info irl every day; more often than not I decline when asked, and pay cash whenever feasible. I'm not registered to vote, I don't sign up for rewards programs or store cards, I only have a bank debit card and a Greendot card for online shopping - I only ever give out personal info when I absolutely have to, and even then, grudgingly. And no, creating a hotmail account didn't work; all it did was give me the option of verifying with a voice call instead of just text, which defeats the purpose of not giving them my number. I won't say it's not likely someone tried to bruteforce access to my YouTube, but it's probably not RS related; I don't watch RS vids and have never made any so there's nothing linking my accounts. If anything, it was some butthurt troll that I flamed with logic that tried to get in and post his pr0n on my channel to get me in trouble. Or...YouTube is changing their service again. Regular 'Tubers know how often THAT'S happened the last few months. How many times have they changed the page layouts since August? 4? 5?

Sweet, as annoying as the skill is, it looks like I'll be getting some much-needed Slayer xp! Oh, I'd better go gather some charms now too, I got about two weeks... I don't understand the rage hate toward XP weekends; I'd think the efficiency [bleep] would love it as it makes getting levels more efficient? As in, more xp/hr? Okay, so the market effects are kinda bad, but we have two weeks to gather supplies the old fashioned way; it's not like we NEED to buy everything through the GE... Why not spend the next few weeks getting your own stuff, like the people selling it on the GE did?

That helps, thanks! And thanks also to Jaffy1 for the same suggestion. Gonna go do that now. Exactly. Look at YouTube itself and Jagex... How about Marvel? Add to that Google has had problems keeping personal info secure in the fairly recent past, and it's not much of a leap of logic why I don't trust them. Besides, in these days of mass corporate buyouts and corruption, I trust very few institutions, and the ones I do trust are only trusted provisionally (i.e. I have to trust them to conduct my personal business, like amazon.com). Call me paranoid, but just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean someone ISN'T out to get me...

I just tried to pop into my Youtube account real fast to see if any of my subscriptions had updated, only to get a screen informing me that I can no longer use YouTube without linking it to my Google account "for security reasons". Well, seems like a heavy-handed and desperate attempt to get new Google accounts, but fine, what's one more free account I need to keep track of? I figured I'd just use one of my stock throw-away username/password combos that I have for free accounts I don't plan to use and... Wait, why do I have to verify my password through my phone? The hell? Why can't I use my Yahoo account? Are you serious? 1) I'm not giving Google my phone number; they're the spam-ad Goliaths of the modern age and I honestly don't trust them to not ad-blast my phone, 2) I pay for my texts and I'm not wasting my money to verify my account when I can do it for FREE through email, 3) I don't post my phone number anywhere online unless I absolutely have to, such as for online job applications or trusted sites like Amazon. I think it's just dumb to force people to verify their account through their phone. I know a lot of people who have to either pay for their texts, don't know how to text or don't get texts at all on their phones. Where does this leave them if they want to watch YouTube? And why not give the option of verifying through email? I guess I'll just go to DailyMotion until I get a reply from Google about whether or not I can verify through my Yahoo. That is, unless DM got bought out by someone like Ask.com or AOL and I have to create accounts with them too...

I'll take some phrie stoofs plox! If 10m is what you're handing out to beggars, I'll happily lower myself to that level for that kind of handout.

They always play up the advantages of a new update to entice as many players as possible to try it. Then everyone spams the RSOF about how much it doesn't live up to the hype and sucks :lol: I don't know if Jagex really thinks these updates are as awesome as they claim, or if it's just hype (like how every book that gets printed is instantly a "best seller" or every new movie is "the year's best") but they've been overselling updates like this for years. It's to the point that I don't even try most new content for a few days until I can get more realistic feedback on it by reading what others are saying who have tried it - or at the very least wait to see what the Tip.It guide says about it. I can't really fault Jagex too much though; they're just trying to sell their product after all.

@Urn-est Attempt: I, for one, appreciate the Smelting Urns a lot. When I go on a Smithing run, I usually use the Edgeville furnace* (with my DG Coal Sack), but doing that usually leaves 5 unused Coal in my inventory for every 7 Addy bars I make. With the addition of Urns, and their passive automation, I can fill those 5 slots with Urns and get 1250 extra XP every few loads that I wasn't getting before. It's not a huge boost, but as was mentioned in the article, every little bit helps in Smithing. *Yes, I know I could superheat the ores to get some Magic xp alongside the Smithing xp, but 1) I can't afford that many Nature Runes and 2) I'm not really hurting for Magic xp, what with all the teleporting I do for other things, like farming, powering orbs, etc.

One word: Catheter. Google it if you don't understand. OMG! I have a friend who does that! He is literally so addicted to irc that he will take his laptop into the bathroom with him and spend over an hour on the can. I wish I was making that up, too.

Yes you could have Jagex, you just wanted to drum up some artificially inflated PR around the update, excuse me, the rollback, before actually doing it. Like those of us with brains actually believe such a massive change to the game was done in only 2 weeks? Maybe those of us who hate it so much have legitimate reasons to? Like, maybe, being harassed by jerkwad pkers for no good reason except we happened to be near them? Yes, we know it's the Wild and that it's dangerous, blah blah blah, but when you immature and imbecelic morons decide to camp out with all your buddies with the sole purpose to prey on and victimize those players who are just going about their business, it's understandable that there will be feelings of frustration, animosity and hatred toward pkers and their realm, nee, the Wilderness. Plus, Jagex has been absolutely obsessed with the Wilderness since the middle of January. Okay, so it's back after 5 years and pkers can go back to their mindless slaughter, yay? What do they want, a cookie? Some orange juice? Whoopdie freaking-doo. Those of us who don't pk are just tired of the last month's worth of newsposts being centered wholly around something that a large portion of the playerbase doesn't care about. Only 5 of the 15 newsposts on their toolbar aren't about the Wild, and then only 2 of those are about actual game content (skill urns and the gnome update). Since all of RS seems to be waxing nostalgic for "Ye Olden Dayes", I miss the days when almost every newspost was about some new, interesting update to the game content, even if it was just a list of bugfixes. Just about every week saw a new quest, expansion of a favorite skill, or new map areas to explore. Nowadays, it's "community event this" or "clan event that". We're lucky to get one quest a month anymore, and the less said of the quality of those quests, the better. Except for the urns, we haven't seen a proper skill update since the last set of Dungeoneering floors was released back in, what, November? No, I don't count Herblore Habitat as a proper skill update - that'd be like saying Nex was a combat skill update. That's why we're hating on the Wilderness; bringing it back has brought all other development to a grinding halt for over a month. It's great that pkers have their domain back and are having fun again, I'm truly happy for all of you - I put myself in your shoes by thinking how I'd react if they took out my favorite part of RS for five years then put it back in - I'd be ecstatic! But it's been over 2 weeks since the update was made, and over 2 months since it was first announced. Let's move on already.

NOOOOOO!!!!11!!!1ONEONEELEVENONETYONEHUNDREDELEVENTYONE!! I dun wunt too b bannt frum lyfes!

You do realize how much trouble someone could get you into by stealing your paper SS card, right? Imagine how much MORE trouble someone could get you into if they managed to get your online version? As it stands, having everything separate and "compartmentalized", if someone were to steal one set of online information, the rest of your accounts would be *theoretically* safe. If all your accounts were accessible through one ID login, the thief gets everything. EVERYTHING! Let that sink in for a moment. It all comes down to damage control; if you put all your belongings in your garage, then a fire guts the garage because someone didn't turn off the propane grill, you lose everything. But if you put your things throughout the house, and the garage gets gutted without spreading to the rest of the house, you only lose what was in the garage and still have your other things. Lumping your entire online presence into one login is the digital equivalent of putting all your stuff in the garage. In these days of rampant ID theft, computer worms, viruses, government blunders and other dangers to your name, life and livelihood, it just makes more sense to protect yourself in any way possible, not make it easier for online predators to access your information.

I'm probably going to Hell for this, but the bolded part is seriously the first thing that I thought of when I read that part.

Well, not really, but I saw this at Raley's yesterday and thought it was too funny to not share! I have no idea how to tell what color the logs burn as, or if the colors are even very pronounced, but the basic concept seems to be the same; logs that burn with different colors other than standard orange.

Has anyone stopped to consider that there are most likely the same number of players logging on, it's just the massive amounts of botters that are largely gone that were inflating the numbers back then? If I'm right, that would easily explain why the numbers were higher 3 years ago as opposed to now...

If they do, and I for one hope they do, I'll probably be smart this time and focus on the skills I find most annoying, such as Slayer, Agility and such. The first weekend I was dumb and did the skills I liked, which put me behind in the skills I can't stand, and the second one I did the "hard" skills which was also dumb because I kind of enjoy the harder to train skills for some reason.

In terms of content, RS is doing fine. The recent quests may be a little bland compared to other quests, but if allowed to stand on their own, there's nothing wrong with them. As for the declining numbers of players, revenue, etc., that can easily be blamed on the degrading state of the world economy. RS, as with most games, is a luxury item, and when times get tough as they are now, in most cases luxuries are the first things to be sacrificed in favor of the essentials like food, utilities and rent. As much as I love my Internet and RS, I'd gladly give them up if it meant eating for another day, and that's a decision that many thousands (or maybe millions) of people are forced to make monthly and sometimes weekly or daily. The quality of the game's content is a purely internal matter and is easily quantifiable in terms of discussion. If you want to talk about the quality of the player base and revenue, you have to consider outside influences like the state of the economy and political decisions like those regarding China's stance on gold farming. which are no where near as easy to quantify without loads more time, research and expertise in such fields.