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Tip.It Times - 15th April 2012


tripsis

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Time for a new release of the: >>>Tip.It Times!<<<

 

 

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WRITE FOR THE TIMES - SUBMIT A GUEST ARTICLE:

Remember, YOU can write an article for the Tip.It Times! You can apply to write full time, or just submit a "one-off" guest article any time you want! Our editors will work with you to ensure that your article is ready for publication. All guest articles can be submitted to @tripsis or any other Editorial Panel member. For more information, including details on how to apply full time, read this forum thread: http://forum.tip.it/topic/209138-how-to-write-for-the-tipit-times/

 

I'd like to remind people of the rules pertaining to Times threads:

 

[hide=Read these rules before posting in this thread]

Rampant flame wars have taken control of virtually every week's times discussion topics. The following guidelines must be followed when posting on this topic. Posts that ignore these guidelines will be removed.

 

1. You are invited and welcome to express like or dislike on articles and a particular author's writing style. It is not acceptable, however, to flame or personally insult an author. Posts that aren't anything but an attack will be removed from the topic.

 

2. Spelling and grammar errors can be reported to tripsis by PMing her and they will be fixed promptly. It is not necessary to post them on the discussion topic.

 

3. Off topic posts that do not discuss the content of that week's articles will be removed. This is not the place to discuss the direction of the times, how much you love or hate the times, etc. Off topic posts will be removed.

 

By keeping within these guidelines, Times discussion topics will mean more for the Panel and Administration than just a place for flame wars. Flame wars do not provide any useful feedback to the Times, which is mainly what we're aiming for with these topics: feedback.

 

This policy is effective as of now, November 17, 2010. Any posts prior to the creation of this policy may or may not be removed according to the new guidelines.

[/hide]

 

When replying please make sure to clarify the article you are replying to! Thanks!

 

If you spot any typos or mistakes in the article then please PM them to @tripsis :)

 

Enjoy the articles!

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- 99 fletching | 99 thieving | 99 construction | 99 herblore | 99 smithing | 99 woodcutting -

- 99 runecrafting - 99 prayer - 125 combat - 95 farming -

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Congratulations to this week's guest author. That was a thoroughly enjoyable article: the prose was evocative, the content a well-balanced mix of universal and specific, abstract and yet pertaining to an age old 'issue' within RS (namely, that of futility and boredom).

 

=D> Once more, congratulations, whomsoever you are.


"Imagine yourself surrounded by the most horrible cripples and maniacs it is possible to conceive, and you may understand a little of my feelings with these grotesque caricatures of humanity about me."

- H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau

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After reading the first article, I am even gladder about my decision to retire. Thanks, now I can refer to that article whenever I feel the need to log on. As for personal opinions, the statistics on who is investing and how much, along with the other history seems to explain why I haven't enjoyed the game in the last few months because it seemed to have been losing its air of unique identity.

 

I just loved the third article the most. The writing style pulled me in and mentioned an issue (a personal one for me) about the game in terms of enjoyment.

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Report those to tripsis please... There shouldn't be any, tbh...

Former Leader of The Tal Shiar Alliance - An Original Tip.it Clan
Member of the Wilderness Guardians and Founder of the Silent Guardians
Founder of The Conclave - A Tip.it Clan institution
Tip.it Times author (click for all my articles) - When I use the wrong reasons to make the right statement, argue the reason, not the statement.
MSSW4 General - Did we kick your ass too?




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The first article was fairly interesting, but it jumps to some conclusions that may not be true. Obviously, sitting on a board for Jagex is not a full-time job -- the places on a board of a company that one of the venture capital groups buys a share in are held by various VPs the venture group. Because the groups tend to have large portfolios and a small number of VPs, each one of them will sit on a bunch of different boards of directors, perhaps drawing a salary from them. But none of them have any interaction with the actual company, so the decisions they make are far removed from anything us players see in terms of content.

 

My personal belief is that Jagex was bought not so much for RuneScape, but for future development (and patents it holds). These investors are banking heavily on the success of Transformers, 8Realms and any other games Jagex produces. What this means is that the long-term strategic goals for RuneScape are not about growth, but about slowly increasing revenue per customer to the maximal point. This isn't quite the same as liquidation, but it looks to me like they are not interested in the long-term growth of RuneScape as a game or as a product. I'm no expert on venture capital firms, but the direction of RuneScape, as written by the board of directors, might be to increase overall revenue from RuneScape by 20% this year. They've responded to that by increasing subscription prices, creating gimmicks for membership, and most recently by creating another revenue stream within the game (Squeal of Fortune spins). I seriously doubt that the board sat down and demanded that the developers add a roulette wheel that you pay to spin, but it happened as a result of their demands for higher profit. This is alienating plenty of players, but from a revenue standpoint, it works well. (Note that this is only the plan for RuneScape: for other games, they'll be focused on long-term growth.)

 

I know you guys at Tip.It are tired of the annoying "RuneScape is dying" traffic graphs et al., but the game is not as popular as it used to be: subscriptions are declining according to the high-scores (ignoring trial members), and the game is no longer in a growth phase. Fewer new users are signing up, which means it's a perfect time to increase prices and marketing. That's what we're seeing here, and it seems to be working.

 

That being said, it's quite a leap to claim that Goldman Sachs is "betting for Jagex to fail", or that Goldman even has a stake in Jagex. Robert Rubin probably sits on twenty other boards: a quick BusinessWeek search turns up a long list. Goldman and Citigroup themselves seem to be unaffiliated with Insight Venture -- I can't find any records that they own a stake in the group, and the only connection seems to be that its own board of directors includes some business titans from top finance companies like GS and Citigroup. The direct connection between Insight Venture and Jagex's updates -- tenuous at best -- looks downright silly when you try to claim that Wall Street behemoths and the federal government are involved in them.

 

If there's anyone to "blame" for this big mess, it's the Gower brothers. While Andrew, Paul and Ian aren't businessmen, they were surely aware of what would happen when they sold off their stake in Jagex to those various groups. When Jagex was self-owned, the main priority seemed to be the welfare of the game. But investors put money first and foremost, so it's no surprise that things are turning out this way. All of these petitions, people going to Insight's New York headquarters (a really stupid move, by the way), are useless. Even though the player base is firmly against this most recent update (and I'm sure a lot of the developers are too), it doesn't matter. The people making the decisions want to make money.

"It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man."

 

-- Jack Handey

 

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On the second article, the link in "We invite you to discuss them in this forum topic." links to the article you're already viewing, not this thread.

You make it sound like running through a few level 87 monsters is hard which it really shouldn't be at your level.

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On the second article, the link in "We invite you to discuss them in this forum topic." links to the article you're already viewing, not this thread.

Sorry - fixed :)

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- 99 fletching | 99 thieving | 99 construction | 99 herblore | 99 smithing | 99 woodcutting -

- 99 runecrafting - 99 prayer - 125 combat - 95 farming -

- Blog - DeviantART - Book Reviews & Blog

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@ 1st article:

I doubt we are talking about self-induced bankruptcy. It's more of making money through obviously (as the author pointed out) highly sought after methods. Now you do not need time to waste while botting or having someone else to level up your character (myriads of "players" did this openly), you can buy stuff directly. That's how you solve someone's problems and get money out of them.

 

@2nd article:

Long gone are the times I could train a skill that is extremely low xp and impossible to afk *cough*agility*cough*. I am impressed that in the past, I wasted so much time on that useless skill... I could have my combat stats @ 99 now, which would be ten (or more) times better to have.

Anyway. When I came back to RS recently, I felt exactly as the author. Most people are maxed either from the past or botted (not necessarily their main character; earned money through bots that are alts), so the options for a lowbie like me are all bad. So now I just take my time and do something that I feel like doing (new TT caught my attention).

Also, I hate the new quests, since the monster/boss NPCs are definitely not balanced properly. Just giving them high LP, high accuracy and max hit along with ability to ignore player's prayers (incl. stat boosters) does not make the quest tough. It makes it... annoying. That's why I don't see myself doing those new quests, even though I had met their requirements ages before they were released.

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R.I.P. oO000oO0oO00, RS2 range pure transformed to a maxed PvM char in EoC, ten years of time completely wasted.
Good to be gone :)

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@CookMePlox

 

You are correct...

 

I understand it was a bit of a leap, but knowing how Goldman and Citigroup (and other such insitutions) operate, I came up with this hypothetical scenario... No, GS and CG do not influence updates of RuneScape, at least not to the large extend... But things soch as those gimmicks you spoke of, and that SoF are indeed a direct result of them demanding a higher returns on their investments...

 

The hyopthetical comes in when Jagex fails to return as much money as they had hoped... You spoke of the other games; Insight will have high hopes for that, especially Transformers... But it could fizzle out, as it's been a trilogy already, and almost year since the last of those three movies came out... If Transformers is successful; I doubt it will be for very long, in which case the scenario I painted becomes significantly more likely...

 

Now for the bit where you're probably wrong:

Way up there at the top; everyone knows everyone... It's like a club that never meets, never talks, but everyone knows what everyone wants; and that is more money... They didn't hesitate to plunge half the world into a massive crisis to get well over $700 billion (700,000,000,000) in taxpayer money, and that is just the US alone... Do you really think they'll think even once about liquidating a company if it suits their needs?

 

There's quite a list of scandals on GS' wiki page... And that is just the stuff that they don't even bother denying anymore... You might think that there's little connection between GS, CG, and the US Govt (mostly Bush and Clinton administration, I'll admit). But knowing that these people are no strangers to bribing congressmen, as well as sitting in executive govt positions both before and after they've had a stint at GS and CG, just to change rules to their needs, tells you that "not-affiliated" doesn't mean anything...

 

I'll recommend again to watch "Capitalism: a love story" here.

Personally, I've had the DVD for a while now, but I must've lended it out over a dozen times already...

Former Leader of The Tal Shiar Alliance - An Original Tip.it Clan
Member of the Wilderness Guardians and Founder of the Silent Guardians
Founder of The Conclave - A Tip.it Clan institution
Tip.it Times author (click for all my articles) - When I use the wrong reasons to make the right statement, argue the reason, not the statement.
MSSW4 General - Did we kick your ass too?




Check us out!
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==> No seriously, if you like FREE GP, XP and Dung tokens, as well as Community, Opportunity and above all FUN... <==
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ATG: I never knew that IVP was run by a bunch of bankers / etc. I am not surprised though. Though totally unrecognizable, the actual game lies somewhere in there. You just have to dig around for it.

Also: The score one for capitalism point is true. -.-

 

Is that transformers game really going to be successful? It would have to be really off the charts to be successful after the Ooh-what's-this-new-thing phase I think.

 

TOU: I didn't even know about this. It's always good to learn something interesting.

 

Nostalgia: The last paragraph is the best part.

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There is actually a very recent incident where an exec at goldman sachs publicly resigned and wrote a letter denoucing the firm. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am-leaving-goldman-sachs.html?pagewanted=all

Tldr from that: while goldman is supposed be an investment firm that makes money for its investors, they're not even doing that - rather to sell crap to their investors and make money off them....Even the investors themselves are getting ripped off from goldman sachs.

 

And now, this evil company (that has ties to every single u.s. government institution and academic institutions as well) indirectly controls rs as well.

Capitalism sucks.

I would prefer even to fail with honor than to win by cheating - Sophocles

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Lol'd about getting a 99 in Demo mode. I remember that, but I didn't know you could go past level 20 like that. I agree with the article. If Rs had taken ten minutes to load for me to first play it, I probably would have gone to read a book or something, come back, thought "lol whats this" and closed Rs. If there was a demo again, it should include interesting content like One Piercing Note/make another great story, low-levelled quest. And free chat, I guess.

 

Now I'm imagining someone maxing (or 200m all skills-ing) the Rs demo :thumbsup:

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More precisely, as far as I know you couldn't go past level 20 except for the Assist system, which could grant a maximum 30k/day*7000days=210m experience. It would be a lifetime's work, literally.

"Fight for what you believe in, and believe in what you're fighting for." Can games be art?

---

 

 

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My blog here if you want to check out my Times articles and other writings! I always appreciate comments/feedback.

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@Ts_Stormrage:

 

I completely agree that Wall Street (Goldman in particular) is corrupt, and there's no question that there's a revolving door between the Treasury Department and executive positions at major investment banks. What I don't see, however, is how any of that is relevant to RuneScape or Jagex. It's a really flimsy ad hominem to make any kind of connection between Jagex and the corruption that occurs on Wall Street. Yes, Goldman Sachs is "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity", but it devalues your entire argument when you try to create some relation between Jagex and Goldman Sachs just because the former co-chairman sits on a non-binding advisory board for a company that owns a majority stake in Jagex. You had a good enough article as it was, but adding in information on the scandalous nature seemed like irrelevant fear-mongering.

"It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man."

 

-- Jack Handey

 

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Perhaps;

 

But the reason I added it, was to back up the little scenario I played out near the end of my article... Yes, the ties that bind might be secundairy or flimsy, and yes I understand how it might be percieved as irrelevant... That does not subtract anything from the possibility of the described scenario playing out the way I think it will, as these "not-closely-related companies" are exactly the kind of fodder commonly used by Goldman and such...

Former Leader of The Tal Shiar Alliance - An Original Tip.it Clan
Member of the Wilderness Guardians and Founder of the Silent Guardians
Founder of The Conclave - A Tip.it Clan institution
Tip.it Times author (click for all my articles) - When I use the wrong reasons to make the right statement, argue the reason, not the statement.
MSSW4 General - Did we kick your ass too?




Check us out!
wildsig3.gif
clanmotif.png
==> No seriously, if you like FREE GP, XP and Dung tokens, as well as Community, Opportunity and above all FUN... <==
CLICK IT!

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