Dev Blog: The return of the Wise Old Man

[Amundogus2]

It's been a long time since we did anything with the Wise Old Man of Draynor Village, so I'm delighted to be working on a new Wise Old Man quest that will feature combat, puzzles, magical hackery and an extremely twisted old woman. I thought I'd call it Love Story.

The Wise Old Man

 

WOM's notorious trip to the bank.

Let's start by reminding ourselves who the Wise Old Man is...

He turned up quietly enough as a minor character who'd chat about various topics and pay members to do little jobs for him. Suddenly he revealed a whole new side to himself with the violent robbery of Draynor Bank; clearly he isn't the Saradominist good guy that you might have expected him to be! If you look through his telescope, you'll learn that he might be planning another robbery involving the Wizards' Tower. My Swan Song quest calls for the player to accompany the Wise Old Man on one final adventure to conclude his heroic career (his swan song). Following the events of that quest, the Wise Old Man considers himself to be permanently retired from adventuring.

There are clearly some loose ends here. Is he really going to attack the Wizards' Tower? Will the bank guard ever come down from his hiding place in the tree? What does Traiborn mean when he talks about thingummywuts? Who will get the old man's hat off him?

A quest about questing

I'm very fond of the character of the Wise Old Man because he's so flawed while still being likeable. He's a Saradominist adventurer; people like that tend to be stereotypical good guys; however, the bank robbery shows that he's really not such a good guy after all. Yet he doesn't see himself as a bad guy. If you confronted him about the bank robbery, he'd have explained that he was furious to find that the world had never adequately rewarded him for his lifetime of doing adventures to help people, so he felt that he had the right to take what he wanted from that bank. Perhaps he was never such a good guy in the first place if he did it all in the hope of rewards; I'll leave you to ponder the ethical issues at your leisure.

The Wise Old Man is a sort of archetypal adventurer figure who's done lots of heroic deeds throughout his life. In a way, he's a lot like a player doing quests! What is a typical quest? Someone wants help. They can't solve the problem themselves, so they need a passing adventurer to do the job. At the end, the adventurer is rewarded and is sent away satisfied that they've helped. That's basically the Wise Old Man's history too; it's been established that he did adventures like these when he was younger, helping save villages from monsters and other similar deeds. We can, therefore, think of the Wise Old Man as being like a player who's primarily interested in questing. During Love Story, you'll even get to see him perform the Quest Cape emote.

What would be a fitting opponent for this archetypal quester? I came up with the idea of an enemy who'd hate the Wise Old Man (and you) because she doesn't like people doing quests. So, in this quest, you won't just be fighting for your own life, you'll be defending the reputation of all adventurers against a foe who thinks you're a stupid bunch of do-gooders.

Along with the combat and puzzles, this will be a chance to step outside the fantasy for a moment and take a tongue-in-cheek look at what the game's characters might think of their universe and the players wandering around it.

Development

 

WOM's "player-owned" house!

I've been keen to produce another Wise Old Man quest for a very long time. Despite having been in the RuneScape Content Team for over 5 years, I've only written two quests (Swan Song & My Arm's Big Adventure), which came out years ago. Most of my work since then has been rather less exciting, even if it affects more players (such as the right-click option for replying to private messages), so it's a nice change for me to be working on a quest again.

I first pitched the concept to Mod Mark over a year ago, but it's only recently that we've had the chance to get this quest into development. Mod Mark and Mod John A helped me adjust the proposed plot to make the romance less abusive, then Mod Alex R and Mod MikeW started work on the graphics while I churned out vast swathes of code. As soon as the final cutscene was complete, Mod Bond began creating sound effects and arranging the quest's music.

Mod Animal, Mod Frantic and Mod James H from the Quality Assurance team are now busily hunting for bugs and suggesting improvements. In the meantime, I'd recommend getting your Construction, Smithing and Crafting to the upper 60s, and your Magic to the upper 70s.

I hope you enjoy it when it comes out.

If you'd like to discuss this blog on the forums, please visit this forum thread.

[Toad]

Graphical update *whistles* that explains the updated troll graphics

[Den]

Has anyone else noticed that even though The Wise Old Man is a Saradominist, there are zamorakian marks in his Chapel windows? :o

 

Sounds exciting though, I dont hope this is this weeks update however. :P

[Mirror]

Fantasmic! I've enjoyed this Mod's previous work so I look eagerly to this one. :)

[cowmaster187]

@den. yes but that is not all.

 

in the room with the other person there are zarosian statues

 

~~~legoman187~~~

[Bobbington]

Mod ash has saved developers blogs!

 

 

It actually tells us allot, without giving stuff away, I hope the other developers read it and get ideas.

 

 

We know it will be a good update, I have yet to see updates that involved ash as a developer that I have not loved.

 

 

My arms adventure

swan song

bank pins + deposit boxes

leprechauns

 

and lots of patch notes

[Misterknowitall]

I liked both of his previous quests, so bring it on!

Expect more reccuring jokes in this one.

[brunokiller]

My Arms was legendary.

 

 

That quest will be amazing.

[tortilliachp]

again, hype starts, and people are bound to be disapointed. Why don't jagex want to learn that hype only leads to let-downs? surprises like "chairs you can sit on" are so much more well-recieved initially, then to be judged on its own merits, not as a guaranteed let-down on release...

[Mdeoxys]

Cool, looking forward to this one! :)

[sees_all1]

I'd pay 50 gp to watch this unfold :P

[Arch_Tyrant]

Mod Ash is answering some pretty good questions in the RSOF thread relating to this blog.

He mentions an early summer release, praises tip.it a little bit, and even says this...

 

"I can reveal, however, that when the WOM was young, he was ginger. "

 

:thumbsup:

 

Anyways, looking forward to this quest a lot. Mod Ash's quests always are very creative and have very interesting rewards.

[Adr1an]

Mod Ash also did Clan wars and helped to make it what it is now (compared to what it was right when it was released).

 

Guy is a good guy and really loves listening to players input.

[Myu]

Mod Ash is answering some pretty good questions in the RSOF thread relating to this blog.

He mentions an early summer release, praises tip.it a little bit, and even says this...

 

"I can reveal, however, that when the WOM was young, he was ginger. "

 

:thumbsup:

 

Anyways, looking forward to this quest a lot. Mod Ash's quests always are very creative and have very interesting rewards.

 

HAd no soul=zamorakian? kind of a long shot.

[Emmentail]

Dibs on his party hat.

[Demoli]

Mod Ash is answering some pretty good questions in the RSOF thread relating to this blog.

He mentions an early summer release, praises tip.it a little bit, and even says this...

 

"I can reveal, however, that when the WOM was young, he was ginger. "

 

:thumbsup:

 

Anyways, looking forward to this quest a lot. Mod Ash's quests always are very creative and have very interesting rewards.

 

HAd no soul=zamorakian? kind of a long shot.

 

You just won the interwebs :thumbup:

 

Looking forwad to this, WOM is one of my favourite carachters :smile:

[atestarossa]

Looks like we'll be seeing a few quests in the upcoming time. And since quests are the part of rs that is most fun for me - YAY.

[Will H]

New WOM quest by the same guy who gave us My Arm's Big Adventure. What's not to like?

[tortilliachp]

New WOM quest by the same guy who gave us My Arm's Big Adventure. What's not to like?

 

this unneccessary hype causing massive amounts of unneccessary discontent however good the actual content may or may not be. That's what not to like

[Mazhar]

He also raised pikachu! Can't possibly go bad

[ArtemisCatal]

Why is it that simply being excited about something runescape related it hype? We generally like quests, we've liked what this developer has done in the past, this dev blog made it sound interesting, and we inticapate that we will like it and hope it comes out soon. I think a reasonable responce if the above mentioned is true is to be excited. Do we have to be pessimistic about ever udate?

[tortilliachp]

Why is it that simply being excited about something runescape related it hype? We generally like quests, we've liked what this developer has done in the past, this dev blog made it sound interesting, and we inticapate that we will like it and hope it comes out soon. I think a reasonable responce if the above mentioned is true is to be excited. Do we have to be pessimistic about ever udate?

 

cautiously optimistic. it hasn't been released yet, so it's all speculation, really. Rumour has it the main architect behind slayer was the main architect behind dungeoneering, look at the response to dungeoneering, think what it would have been if it was fronted that the slayer-developer made it!

[Mecakoto]

Why is it that simply being excited about something runescape related it hype? We generally like quests, we've liked what this developer has done in the past, this dev blog made it sound interesting, and we inticapate that we will like it and hope it comes out soon. I think a reasonable responce if the above mentioned is true is to be excited. Do we have to be pessimistic about ever udate?

 

cautiously optimistic. it hasn't been released yet, so it's all speculation, really. Rumour has it the main architect behind slayer was the main architect behind dungeoneering, look at the response to dungeoneering, think what it would have been if it was fronted that the slayer-developer made it!

 

 

My thoughts about what you are saying in a lovely gif form.

[tortilliachp]

Why is it that simply being excited about something runescape related it hype? We generally like quests, we've liked what this developer has done in the past, this dev blog made it sound interesting, and we inticapate that we will like it and hope it comes out soon. I think a reasonable responce if the above mentioned is true is to be excited. Do we have to be pessimistic about ever udate?

 

cautiously optimistic. it hasn't been released yet, so it's all speculation, really. Rumour has it the main architect behind slayer was the main architect behind dungeoneering, look at the response to dungeoneering, think what it would have been if it was fronted that the slayer-developer made it!

 

 

My thoughts about what you are saying in a lovely gif form.

 

sorry, can't make it out cause his hand's covering his face. care to give a hint?

[Mecakoto]

Why is it that simply being excited about something runescape related it hype? We generally like quests, we've liked what this developer has done in the past, this dev blog made it sound interesting, and we inticapate that we will like it and hope it comes out soon. I think a reasonable responce if the above mentioned is true is to be excited. Do we have to be pessimistic about ever udate?

 

cautiously optimistic. it hasn't been released yet, so it's all speculation, really. Rumour has it the main architect behind slayer was the main architect behind dungeoneering, look at the response to dungeoneering, think what it would have been if it was fronted that the slayer-developer made it!

 

 

My thoughts about what you are saying in a lovely gif form.

 

 

sorry, can't make it out cause his hand's covering his face. care to give a hint?

 

 

Well, you see, it isn't the

 

Well ell oh ell! I see what you did thar! Perhaps you would like a lovely facepalm? Or perhaps a cat, in a humorous situation, telling you exactly what needs to be said IN LOLCAT! Or maybe a good Demotivator? I'm sure there is something that fits the situation.