“Thank you to all those of you who took part in the historic RuneScape Referendum, which ended on Friday. We received an incredible 1.2 million votes, with a united 91% of you voting for the restoration of free trade and the Wilderness. We have heard your call and will be restoring these much loved features to RuneScape on Tuesday 1st February.”
Eventually someone will listen to me that the “vote” was nothing more than a publicity stunt, albeit a successful one, and that the return of free trade was guaranteed months ago when Jagex started coding it and working on the update. Far be it from me to say that the Jagex crew isn’t fast, but to think that they will be able to move features out of the wilderness, recode and script entire quests, redesign the entire area, code in free trade in regards to newer item functions, redesign the wilderness to work with items that are unusable in PvP scenarios, and more in two weeks is a little ridiculous.
But the official announcement is now dated. Mark your calendars for February 1st (note: allow for last minute delays) because that is when the Wilderness and free trade are returning after a good three year absence.
Of course, now is the greatest time to continue speculation. What will happen with overload potions, which dramatically raise combat stats and are unusable in dangerous player vs player combat? What about corrupt dragon and ancient warrior armor/weapons which are only capable of obtaining through current player vs player combat? Brawling gloves? Ancient artifacts? What about item lending? Where will the quests from the wilderness be placed? The activities from the wilderness? I think you get my point about this being in development far longer than December’s poll.
And more importantly: What is Jagex doing to keep the game from being swamped with bots and gold farmers like it was pre-trade? They seem to be very sure of themselves that their secret weapon can combat this.
More on Runescape as it appears.
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