Fielmann

Saying is not the same as calling people retarded. As for your point, I do acknowledge that Jagex are doing something to fight the bots. The problem is that in addition to this they also spend huge amount of resources onto PRing this fight. From the sound of it the Botany Bay seems another one of these publicity stunts with woodoo-style vengeance as a bonus. To me it just isn't worthy content. I realise that publicity is important and I'm not questioning their decisions business-wise. But from the players' (or at least from my) POV the resources would be better spent on the actual bot-fight or game design. ...what? Those challenges are suggestions, not requirements. It's an attempt to alleviate boredom so players *can* use their freedom to play the game without it getting monotonous. Completing the challenges is required for receiving the rewards and for having the challenge ticked off the list. This is enough to make players feel compelled to do them. Daily.

Meh, I don't really share others' enthusiasm about this BTS. I'm not into combat so I don't really care for new monster drops either. Graphical reworks (of which there's going to be two) aren't content. Botany Bay = Jagex taking advantage of people's blood-thirsty urges to showcase fight against bots instead of fighting against bots? However, the whole idea sounds so retarded and perverse that I'm amazed rather than irritated. These are the things that leave me cold, mostly. What I actively dislike is the daily challenges thing. I feel strongly that all these daily/weekly/monthly activities take away from players' freedom and quietly enslave them to the game. Two quests is obviously nice, but the fact that they're both novice and that they will somehow feature a retelling of an old quest make me a bit skeptic. In the end this will probably still end up to be the enjoyable part of the month, though.

I don't see how the fact that the robbed money was just 'magic coins' makes any difference. The robber can exchange them for $3,300. This makes it every bit as real as €2,700 (in an electronic format if you wish) which can also be exchanged for $3,300. Print some play-money, go to a shop and try to buy a toy car with it. If the shop assistant refuses, say 'well, you're not selling real cars either.' You can't pull this off because the toy car has real-life value, even if it's not a real car. RS coins have real-life value just like that, even if they aren't real coins.

While he's a captain of the ship, yes. But any captain is allowed to change ships (or become a farmer or whatever).

I do hope these things won't be usable on quest bosses. I don't have a problem with quests gradually becoming easier as new equipment is released (this is a natural process), but in this case we'd be talking about effectively skipping up to four quests, which just seems wrong.

Phew. I guess this isn't as bad as many of us feared. An item than can only be used once actually sounds quite interestingly and originally (at least for RS) now that I think of it.

It would skew the game too much towards player's favour. They would need to balance this by some additional penalties (e.g. player is knocked out more easily than the opponents.) I think head-to-head and resource race are surprisingly fun. Cheese rolling is incomprehensible though.

An exp-giving item, for as long as it's not a lamp, but something like a Mad Necklace / Hati stuff, to replace the bxpw, is fine. It's basically the same thing as a bxpw except that it offers more flexibility and doesn't screw with the economy. (It would obviously be better if it was like Hati in that it had some story and a short activity come with it, but w/e.) The fact that it's tied to being a member is fine too, because bxpws were members only as well. Having said that, I really don't like the rest of the newspost and the general tone of it all. Exclamations, exaggerated commercial-like language, promises to pour players over with tons of cosmetic items and whatnot, just makes the whole thing feel cheap. And 'the most powerful item ever seen in Runescape just for being a member' is a frightening notion in itself, regardless of the playing around with the various connotations of 'item', 'chance', 'choose', etc.