Get it? It’s a yak.
Continue reading “RuneScape Unleashes Zodi-Yak Track Ahead of Archaeology”
Tag: Jagex
Save The Date: Archaeology Hits RuneScape On March 30
RuneScape Updates For Diversity Sake
RuneScape Esports Initiative Gets Indefinite Delay
RuneScape is getting an esports/competitive update. Eventually. Maybe. Someday. Let’s just play it by ear.
Jagex’s head of esports took to Twitter today to confirm that news of esports and competitive initiatives in the company have been delayed again to an unspecified point in the future. News has been slow especially since the seasonal Deadman Mode has been dead since the Summer 2019 tournament, and Jagex has been promising news for several months now on the future of the game’s competitive…future.
“Due to some extra work needed on our side, we’ll be delaying the esports and competitive gaming update until further notice. We thank you for your continued patience and look to share information with you as soon as possible.”
Due to some extra work needed on our side, we’ll be delaying the esports and competitive gaming update until further notice. We thank you for your continued patience and look to share information with you as soon as possible.
— Mod Rogue (@JagexRogue) February 7, 2020
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Daily Esports ran a piece last year which can give more insight into RuneScape’s problems with esports and competitive play. Primarily the company’s attempts at introducing esports elements have been met with problems from domination by clans, game-breaking issues that were further complicated by mismanagement, allegations of misconduct by Jagex staff, and all kinds of problems that won’t be fixed overnight.
Where will RuneScape esports end up? Your guess is as good as ours.
Video: The RuneScape Tactical Nuke
Today’s video was created by Youtuber Gudi and provides quite the interesting experiment in Old School RuneScape. Gudi stacks low level accounts to create what he refers to as the tactical nuke capable of doing a lot of damage in an instant. The set up involves quite a lot of legwork and the use of multiple accounts, but the payoff is very entertaining to watch.
Gudi is an ex Jagex employee.
Old School RuneScape Releases 80-Player Boss
Old School RuneScape’s latest update drops today introducing The Nightmare of Ashihama, a new boss that can be taken down with groups of up to 80 players. The boss’s difficulty scales with each player added to the group, with only the best able to take it down solo. Jagex promises that every player in the group will get their hands on a reward for taking it down.
Executive producer of Old School RuneScape Rob Hendry commented on the update;
“As with all new content introductions in Old School, nothing gets released unless we have the backing of the community. Late last year we put the Nightmare to a player poll, and it passed with flying colours attracting more than 45,000 votes with 90% approving its addition. Empowering our community to have a say in the game’s content, through polls such as this, is hugely important to us as a development team and we can’t wait for players to team up and tackle the Nightmare today.”
Adventurers who take down The Nightmare have a chance at some unique gear. For more information, check out the official website below.
Source: Old School RuneScape
3rd Party Old School RuneScape Client Coming To Steam
Is Old School RuneScape coming to Steam? Maybe, but not officially.
MMO Fallout’s busy bees discovered a SteamDB listing an unreleased listing for OpenOSRS, a third party client for Old School RuneScape. OpenOSRS advertises itself as an open source client for RuneScape that provides plugins to improve the quality of life of the game, including timers, trackers, popups, and more. The app is understandably listed as free on demand and first appeared on SteamDB’s tracker way back in November 2019.
There is no word on when the client will hit Steam, as of right now it does not have a public store page or community hub. MMO Fallout will update as more details come out.
After Nine Years, Jagex Abandons Annual End of Things Event
There are two things guaranteed in January; Everyone will renege on their New Year’s pledges roughly half an hour after the ball drops and after 2011 Jagex will release the End of Things event in RuneScape. Except now they won’t.
Every January since 2011 Jagex has released the End of Things event in the Freminik region. The event has changed over the last nine years, but the crux of the event has stayed the same. Players battle it out with three big wolves; Hati, Sköll, and Fenrir. To the victor goes the spoils, specifically some cosmetic items and a burst of bonus experience in several skills. The event didn’t launch this week, nor are there plans to launch it at all, possibly forever.
In a Q&A stream, Jagex confirmed that the event just isn’t as popular as it was and they wanted to pursue other ideas than simply lazily rolling out unpopular content because it’s been on the same release list year over year. After the shallow release schedule that has been January, maybe players would have enjoyed something familiar with whet their whistle outside of weeks upon weeks of patch notes. The end of The End of Things event comes alongside Jagex ending the Winter Weekend events for similar reasons. Jagex’s big update for January, the Archaeology skill, has been delayed to an unknown date.
Jagex Continues Hiring Spree In 2020, Brings On Big Names
2020 is continuing the trend of gaming industry names being absorbed into the Jagex collective. Will MMO Fallout be absorbed next? Only time will tell.
Jagex’s latest hiring spree has brought on board a number of notable names to notch their…I’m out of words for this alliteration. The role of head of product marketing for RuneScape has been filled by David Bamberger who was part of the product launches for Final Fantasy VII, Twisted Metal, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and more. David is joined by Ouni Kwon as head of marketing for Old School RuneScape coming off of his nine year stint at Wargaming working on World of Tanks.
Creative services director is now Joeyray Hall who had spent more than two decades at Blizzard Entertainment working as 3D artist and taking on senior management roles including cinematics senior project manager. Mike Donatelli is joining on as product director of Old School RuneScape, having worked on the late Mythic Entertainment’s MMO library of Dark Age of Camelot, Warhammer Online, and Wildstar.
Stewart Stanbury has joined as director of business development and brings his experience of working with clients including Adobe, Ubisoft, Rockstar, and more to provide insight, research, marketing, and player retention support. Stewart will be Jagex’s outreach to external studios for investment, retail and licensing opportunities for Jagex’s corporate portfolio. Official Planet Funorb merch? We can only dream.
And last but not least we have Anna Mostyn-Williams as director of publishing partners. After a career of helming brands from Xbox, Quantic Dreams, and Discovery Communications, Anna will be working on Jagex’s outreach and relationship with distribution and marketing partners.
Jagex CEO Phil Mansell weighed in:
“With the significant talent we’re able to continuously attract to Jagex, it’s very clear that big things lie ahead for the studio as we approach our 20th Anniversary of RuneScape. We recognise the importance of investing in exceptional talent, with 100 new hires welcomed to Jagex in 2019 alone, we have witnessed a record-breaking year whilst hitting exciting milestones, and we plan to continue to build our talent pool through 2020 and beyond.”
Source: Press Release
Jagex Hiring For Unreal Engine Title
Jagex is hiring for a new IP, one that appears to be built on the Unreal Engine.
A job listing on Jagex’s corporate website lists New IP hiring a number of positions including game director, product director, senior roles, as well as a lead environment artist. The job listings don’t give a whole lot of hints on what this game might be, however the job listings do make several mentions to knowledge of the Unreal engine including a position for a gameplay programmer that requires Unreal Engine experience as well as experience in networked and MMO games.
Jagex’s next game is up in the air as the company has started and halted development on new titles numerous times in the past (see MechScape, Stellar Dawn, and other vaguely referenced games), but it appears that they are at least in the planning stages of an MMO built on Unreal Engine 4. We’ll see if this one happens to get close enough to release that Jagex gives it a name.
MMO Fallout 