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Mod MMG on RuneScape Micro-Payments


Veiva

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Sounds hopeful (or doublespeak, take your pick):

 

Hi everyone,

 

We've had lot of feedback on two recent RuneScape updates in particular: Squeal of Fortune and Solomon's General Store. I’d like to update you on how we plan to help fund the future development of the game you all know and love; how we’re making sure that we do not undermine what makes it the adventure game that millions of us, worldwide, enjoy on a daily basis; and what we’re doing to improve on what we’ve launched so far.

Since RuneScape has been around for over 11 years, we naturally take extreme care when introducing significant changes to its gameplay. This caution is a result of both the direct involvement that many of us at Jagex have had with the game throughout its history, and player feedback highlighting the concerns often associated with such change.

 

In the case of the Squeal and Solomon’s Store, this has been no different. We have thought out and carefully quantified the impact of these updates on the overall game, and have been looking anxiously at feedback from all of our community. One specific difference that does exist with these updates, however, is that micro-payments are often associated with their potential to undermine the integrity of games so that companies can profit in the short-term. As a result, many players have questioned whether RuneScape is heading down this tragic route.

 

I want to say, categorically, that we will not go down this road. In reality - and quite in contrast to this speculation - the introduction of micro-payments to RuneScape has a significant role in ensuring that we can continue to support, develop and grow the game for many more years to come.

We place immense value in our - and your - game's integrity, feedback from our community, and continually improving the game experience for all, and we have a strong track record of making decisions in this area that we know may be sub-optimal, commercially speaking, but represent our values. For example, we know that directly selling gold, XP or even accounts would generate between 10 to 15 times more revenue than Squeal or Solomon’s Store generates combined. However, we simply won’t do it, because we don’t believe it’s the right thing for the long-term health of the game.

 

Equally, many of you will know our past initiatives against botting and gold farming cost us millions of players, and certainly tens of millions of dollars. I believe we are one of the few games studios in the world that prizes the integrity of the game and health of our community over commercial returns, but that’s also why we are the only game that has had multiple record-breaking awards for both longevity and global reach. Over the past 18 months, we have ploughed the majority of our revenue back into the game to guarantee its future over the decade to come. We have literally doubled the size of the RuneScape team, and we are making massive investments in technology and improved support.

 

This week, you should notice a significant reduction in gold farmer spam. Over the course of the next few weeks, we will not only be launching our most comprehensive and formidable anti-bot update - which will permanently deal with all types of bots - but players will also see a significant upgrade to their accounts' security to protect against phishing and hijacking. This is called Jagex Account Guardian, and we're introducing it within the next two weeks.

 

Our passion and dedication to the game and community has never changed; nor will it. Our determination to make RuneScape the world's #1 free browser game has not changed either, as some have claimed.The management team and I have the heavy responsibility of ensuring the future of this incredible and unique game. We really appreciate the support and trust you have put in us over the last 5 years. Please know that - although some of our decisions are not necessarily popular - they are 100% driven by the aim of building the strongest possible future for RuneScape. The management team defining the strategy and roadmap today are the exact same passionate gamers that have been at the helm for over half the product's existence, and we only want what is best for RuneScape in the long term.

 

As I touched on before, the team - all of whom are committed gamers, like you - are constantly working on new ways to improve game play, and to strengthen the studio so that more content can be created for enjoyment of the community.

 

Thank you for being RuneScape players, and we hope that you will continue to enjoy playing RuneScape over the years to come. We have some tremendous content - as well as technical innovations - lined up over the course of the next few months that we believe you will love. We already have RuneScape running in a new and improved client architecture built on HTML5 (a side by side screenshot of the early improvements over the current engine can be seen below - click for full size), and now I’m happy to report that we also have a dedicated Future Tech team working on bringing the game to your favourite tablets, platforms and even smart TVs in due course.

 

Over the coming weeks we will be holding a number of live Q&A sessions for you to air your views. We'll let you have more details on these later this week.

 

Source (has a concept art and "future RS" screeny).

 

I glazed over on the bits about micro-payments, but the part about bringing RuneScape to future platforms is really interesting... RuneScape on the Xbox 720 (unlikely)? PlayStation 4? Wii U? iPad? THE POSSIBILITIES!

 

Also of note is that the bot breaker is coming to a RuneScape near you soon...

 

I posted this as a new topic because of the future update information instead of putting it in the Squeal thread. Hope it's acceptable.

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Jagex Account Guardian - probably the security dongle from 3 years ago?

 

Anyway I'll reserve judgement first and see if they deliver on their promises.

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This actually holds some promise, restoring some of my faith in Jagex

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I would still like to see WSAD movement in-game before it is moved to other platforms. If it is ever released on console, it will have to have the free-move mechanics as point and click with a PS3 controller won't be too fun.

 

The first image looks pretty sweet. We are finally able to see the RS sky!

 

I hope the bot breaking update will actually stop bots this time. Maybe they are moving more of the game logic to the native code side?

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Whether or not people look at this post with cynical eyes at least Jagex knows how strongly the players are against full blown RWT, i.e. selling gold, weapons & armour etc.

 

As long as they strictly sell cosmetics I don't have a problem with all the SoF/SGS junk they put out.

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"So, instead of killing off the game right away for the money, we've decided to string you along for as long as possible, until you realize that the hands around your neck have been your own the entire time."

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The Good:

- MMG is finally bringing the tech and security like he did when first announced as the head of runescape (remember the email changes) in the form of greater account security with the Jagex Account Guardian and other "tech innovations"

- New antibot update

- New filters in place to combat spambots

- New mobile play platforms to come

- Promised content to follow within the coming months

- Lack of content explained due to having to funnel resources elsewhere

 

The Bad:

- The SoF and Solomon's store won't change from the current direction it's going down

- Faith has fallen that it requires almost quarterly statements from the head of the game in an attempt to restore broken trust

 

The Ugly:

- They claim not to sell gold and exp but via the SoF gold is sold at almost 2mil for the highest spin package and xp rates of 800k/hr are feasible with a large amount of spins, which begs the question of how they'll get around "we will not sell <this>" if they go and do it in a different way

- They flat-out can't sell gold or they'd have to combat the RWT bots, but public reason they're giving is spun to be positive

 

--

 

Meh even after one of the worst days I've had since my mother passed away, I can't find it in me to direct my rage at them for this newspost. They've done everything we've demanded of them and there was some great news in there.

 

They're walking the line like lifetime pros on building up the community enough to endure the blows of decisions they're forced to make to ensure the longevity of the game and this just gave them a huge advantage. There will be buzz for months about the JAG (lawwwwwlllll) and ensuing content updates that will only play in their favor.

 

God help them if they don't deliver on their expectations. We need good things to talk about. Boards are too damn depressing now. Need a good teaser and things to anticipate...start the information trickle.

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... which will permanently deal with all types of bots ...

Ain't no such thing as permanent in the world of botting, at best there's a long inactivity period.

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I like that they've finally released a few words in regards to the negative direction the game has taken this year.

 

I suppose they couldn't have rightfully said during the beginning of the year that there will be minimumal updates for the next 12 months due to the movement of our resources, as they'd experience everyone cancelling membership for a year... However, I would have liked to have been thrown a bone a bit earlier than the 3rd quarter of 2012.

 

If these promises prove to be worthy, I may just have to dust off my keyboard, and play Runescape with some enthusiasm. However, if these words are merely dust in the wind, I imagine there will be a price to pay.

 

In the end I will either respect Jagex for what they're attempting to do (as mentioned in MMG's post), or know that the majority of RS was right in bashing them. Time will tell.

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Sounds promising, especially the anti bot measures and account guardian. And I've always been a fan of the Q&A's so it's good to hear there's a few to come.

 

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I like the way Engstrom talks about the feeling of realism and immersion. Can you imagine how he must feel when one of the Al-Kharid warriors drops a spin ticket?

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- which will permanently deal with all types of bots -

has been removed from the newspost.

Lol! I was gonna say... Permanently deal with bots like the nuke was supposed to? Oh, but this next... It'll be the one. :roll:

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- which will permanently deal with all types of bots -

has been removed from the newspost.

Lol! I was gonna say... Permanently deal with bots like the nuke was supposed to? Oh, but this next... It'll be the one. :roll:

 

I don't think they meant it to sound so be-all-end-all, and when someone else read it after being published they went, "uhhhhhhh..."

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Lol @ people thinking this is anything but damage control.

 

Lol @ people who can't get over the double-speak and miss the fact that this is basically the real BTS that we've been waiting for.

 

God that's almost as annoying as the extremists.

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This post brings me to believe in the future of RuneScape. I have never thought that RS would die in just a few years, but I was thinking it was starting to get rather dark on its horizon with all of these SoF and Solomon's updates. As mentioned earlier in this thread the forums have been giving a rather negative view of RS at the moment as well. Even though there have certainly been a few people who have been enthusiastic and so the majority have been like "Oh, another SoF update, great *Kills myself/quits/random raging*." or "Meh". And certainly there have been a little too much focus on Solomon's shop and the Squeal of Fortune recently. The "real" updates have many times quickly drown in the news feed because of messages like "Don't forget - Double cash just this weekend on the Squeal of Fortune!". Reminders of this kind can be nice, but please, keep it to a normal level. Let the real update information stay on the top of the news feed and then let these reminders come up below them. Or even better: Just have this information on the SoF/Solomon's store interface.

 

Because of all this it is now great to see that Jagex is actually planning to do quite a few improvements. The best one to me is without doubt the news about the upcoming botbanning. This is something I have been waiting for for a long time now. The first botnuke certainly did its job, but now it is really time for botnuke number 2. We need to get rid of all those cheaters. Jagex managed to nuke them last time, even though many players (especially on these forums actually) doubted it. So I think that even though they will have a harder time now to nuke them, they will manage to do so. Then perhaps we can finally get the prices of resources up at least little more towards normal levels. That way we will finally be able to make money through skilling/collecting again without cheating.

 

The news about the removal of goldfarming spam is great, just like the news about HTML5. JAG could prove to be useful. I have myself been hacked a few times. Probably these hacks have costed me somewhere around 0.5B in total. So yes, I could certainly have some use of this update. Even though I certainly wished that they would have implemented something like this before...But I won't be angry on Jagex for "Why didn't you do this earlier?!!" like some people on the forums sometimes do. I really believe exclaiming those kinds of things doesn't help.

 

I am really appreciating these news from MMG and I am hoping that Jagex now actually goes on with the work to implement these changes into the live game.

 

For a bright Runescape future!

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Seems a pretty desperate move of Jagex.

Also, other platforms were already discussed during the wilderness removal era. :/

 

Discussed but never promised. This newspost implies that we might see them by the end of the year.

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Intresting, and they removed the bit about perma-breaking bots, thought it looked out of place.

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Hackers gonna get whacked by the JAG.

 

HOLY SHIT THAT DRAW DISTANCE IS BEAUTIFUL!! I always wanted to see more of the game at once. I always felt Runescape's camera was too zoomed in. But that screenshot just blew away my expectations!!

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There are so many people on this forum that just want to hate Jagex regardless of what happens.

 

I swear even if they were to remove the SoF and SGS tomorrow people would still be throwing nonsensical and presumptuous bullshit all over the place.

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^^ Yeah, does seem a bit like that :/

 

I'm starting to believe the Jagex Mods themselves aren't happy with the way SoF and SGS are changing the game, I've seen a few posts by Jmods on the RSOF basically saying they don't want it :D

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Reading MMG's blurb felt a lot like the speeches at the RNC last night. Written by mindless speech writers with zero factchecking for the express purpose of PR and propaganda. Soooo little substance. Sooo many complete outright lies. MMG might as well be running for the republican nomination.

 

And out of everyone at Jagex who could have made that post, I felt like MMG had the least credibility.

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