Old School RuneScape is reeling from a massive bug that resulted in the servers being taken offline for a few hours and, in an unprecedented move, Jagex rolling characters back to pre-update. An unfortunate oversight in this week’s update allowed players to turn various items into fat stacks of cash upon death. As you can imagine, Jagex didn’t want players generating coins in the billions out of thin air and out of concern for the integrity of the game, they delivered a quick Vulcan nerve pinch and brought the servers offline so the bug could be fixed.
When converting a stack of items into a stack of coins, it’s appropriate to check that the calculation doesn’t overflow the max integer limit of the game’s language (2.1 billion). Unfortunately, the logic used for this calculation was incorrect, and when executed on stacks of other items (not the pouch itself) the result was to convert the stack to 2.1b coins. Regrettably, although the pouches were found to be acting correctly during testing, the flaw affecting other items was not spotted as it was not expected to have changed.
Unfortunately MMO Fallout investigations have discovered evidence that Jagex didn’t so much reverse the update as much as it did transport all of us to a timeline where the bug never happened, and all of us happened to conveniently disappear around the same time. Keep an eye out for doppelgangers.
Old School RuneScape has officially hit open beta on Android devices and every member will get their chance to play. Following a successful first day, Jagex today has allowed an additional 250,000 members in with increasing access over the next couple of weeks. With the full launch later this year, including release on iOS devices, players will be able to get their grind on no matter their location (so long as they have cell service).
Also important to note is that the beta is not a segregated part of the game, and players will be on the live servers with their live characters.
This week’s RuneScape update is Runepass, a limited time event running from July 2 to July 15. Ocean’s Bounty gives players a set of daily tasks that can be completed to level up the pass and gain more rewards. The pass has two tiers, one for free and one that is purchased for 400 Runecoins (approximately $10 USD or three bonds at 195 coins each). Those who have not purchased Runepass will have access to two tasks, one daily repeatable task and a weekly task with longer requirements for completion, while those who do buy the pass will have access to two additional daily tasks as well as the bulk of the rewards.
The Runepass appears to be Jagex’s answer to the Battle Passes that have become popular in games like Fortnite over the past few months.
After seventeen years of existence, Jagex today made the surprising announcement that its flagship title RuneScape Classic will shut down over the next few months.
Posted on the official website, Jagex’s explanation for the sunset is related to advancing technology making it more difficult to properly police the game of macros and for community safety. Over time the game has gradually broken down and Jagex is unable to fix them or promise any sort of reliable long term support.
RuneScape Classic has not been officially supported for about 14 years now and hasn’t been open to the general public for most of that time. There have been several periods where Jagex opened up account creation to the public, however the game has been mostly closed off to those who weren’t already playing for most of the last decade.
It’s been eight years since Jagex ceased development of FunOrb, and the developer this week announced that the service will be coming to an end later this year. The decision, according to the announcement, comes down to changes in hardware and software leading to FunOrb’s library of games becoming increasingly difficult to access.
Over the next 3 months we’ll be slowly winding down FunOrb. After 8th of May 2018 it will no longer be possible to purchase new FunOrb membership, and after 14th of May 2018 it will not be possible to create new FunOrb accounts. However, we’re not turning the lights out just yet. To make sure that everyone has a chance to enjoy these games one last time, we’ll be keeping the servers online until 7th of August 2018.
Membership will cease to renew after May 8, and players with combined memberships with RuneScape will need to choose a new membership option. FunOrb was launched in 2008 as a mini-game portal and remained active for nearly two years until Jagex ceased development of new titles in early 2010. The website has remained in maintenance mode since then.
If you follow RuneScape like I do, then you know that things take a lot of time to progress in the world of Gielinor, with Jagex just recently finishing up quest lines that have been in progress for over a decade with others that still haven’t seen a conclusion. In the case of Edgeville, parts of the town were blown up at the conclusion of the quest Ritual of the Mahjarrat, where the Dragonkin go on a rampage, burn a couple buildings down, and kill a few people.
Ritual of the Mahjarrat released over six and a half years ago, back in September 2011, and the town has remained smoldering ever since. Now you finally have a chance to get in and scrub up, repair the buildings burnt down, and clean up the skeleton of the poor guy who got roasted seven years ago and nobody bothered cleaning up. As a reward, you can look forward to a heaping helping of experience in various skills.
Jagex has dropped the banhammer hard on six accounts found to be exploiting a bug in this past week’s clue scroll overhaul. Jagex posted on the RuneScape Subreddit to note that while six accounts were banned for utilizing the exploit, more than 50 other accounts were banned for attempting to trade said exploited goods for real money. The exploit involved a very specific set of circumstances and led to rewards being duplicated and then distributed around the economy.
In the post, Mod Infinity noted that Jagex is confident that most of the items have been swept up, that the impact on the economy would be negligible, and that items that were sold to other players will be removed with the gold reimbursed to the buyer.
It was indeed much harder to reproduce than just having a full inventory, that just sends excess loot to the bank. This required you to have a specific inventory set-up, a specific final clue step, and a specific final clue challenge. Those exact circumstances sadly did not manifest in testing.
As part of its ongoing quality of life updates, this week RuneScape players see the launch of an overhauled treasure trails mini-game. Treasure Trails are RuneScape’s answer to scavenger hunts, players are given a series of clues and are tasked with following coordinates, performing emotes, wearing specific items, and solving puzzles with the possibility of obtaining rare, much sought after rewards.
The update introduces a new master tier level along with 60 new rewards while also improving the experience for users on all levels. While the system previously restricted players to having one scroll of each tier at any given time, players can now collect unopened scrolls and complete them at their leisure with the knowledge that they are not missing potential opportunities. In addition, hidey-holes have popped up around the land offering players the opportunity to stash away items required for clue solutions in those areas.
Senior product manager Matt Casey had the following to say on the update:
“When we spoke to our players at RuneFest 2017, we wanted to make it clear that we would be delivering some of their most desired updates to RuneScape throughout 2018. With the full launch of the Clue Scroll rework we’re beginning to do just that, whether it’s the hardcore challenge of the Master Tier, or the incredibly desirable rewards at the end of the trails.”
Eager collectors will also find that an in-game book that tracks their entire collection, along with new highscores to compete toward and a reward point system for completing clue scrolls.
As MMO Fallout’s official only staffer and the internet’s number one games journalist, I’ve seen a lot. Betas, alphas, pre-alphas, day one patches, you name it. Last year I reviewed to rather poor reception the pre-release build of Shadow of War, and while the preview was condemned as “tone deaf” and “stupid,” I came out of that experience pretty sure that I would never encounter an odder product. And then this week I was sent what I can only assume is a beta build of Old School RuneScape Mobile.
Now I’ve been in some strange betas before, including one for [redacted] where the developer asked us to download a Torrent and then had the nerve to ask us to seed it for each other, but this takes the cake. My beta instructions came in a fancy little box which, upon opening, revealed its contents to be mostly powders and some strange doohickeys: stars and little bits of paper that say “RuneScape Old School” on them. The beta version I was sent is code named “Vanilla Cupcakes,” suggesting that someone at Jagex is taking cues from the Android style of naming updates.
A little bit odd, but I had a job to do.
Now I don’t know much about technology, being a tech journalist, but I do know that one of the basic tenets of mobile is that apps are supposed to be simple to start. Take the photo app I’m using to capture these pictures, I click once to start the app, then click once for every photo I want to take. The setup for this beta has eight steps, the first of which includes preheating the oven and creaming some butter.
Clearly this must be some kind of trial, after all RuneScape is about overcoming bigger foes and if I can’t 1v1 some butter, then what kind of scrub would I be to take on the full beta? This is like one of those Man Crates, that novelty item where the contents are delivered in an actual crate that you have to open with a crowbar. The first half of the tutorial asks you to solo pk some butter, followed by cupcake mix and two eggs at the same time. I’ve been playing RuneScape long enough to remember the Recipe for Disaster quest so none of this really blew my mind. I had to provide my own eggs though, I hope this is going to be fixed for the full release.
All this butter drops on death is more butter.
The OldSchool RuneScape beta comes in the form of six consumables, not unlike how Nintendo handles demos on its systems, and they appear to expire after a couple of days once loaded and you pretty much have to prepare them all at the same time, so I’ll have to make good use of each one. I went onto the RuneScape Reddit to see if anyone else was complaining about this style of beta build but couldn’t find a single person talking about it. I guess this business model is just accepted now.
And then I saw this note and everything became clear.
Silly me, this isn’t the beta itself, it’s a quest that will inevitably lead me to the beta. Just to show there was no hard feelings, I took the six “mobile devices” I was sent and decided to toss them in the oven to think about what they’d done. A good seventeen to nineteen minutes at 325 degrees will teach a valuable lesson about coming into my kitchen and bamboozling me to get my eggs. Boy does it smell like vanilla bean in my house.
While I let those hotheads cool off, a statement which I’m pretty sure doesn’t qualify as a pun, I went back to the task list. Next step was to cream more butter and beat it with the icing mix. You know it’s hard to fully comprehend just how much butter is in 200g of butter until you see it sitting out on a measuring plate. Hint: It’s a lot of butter.
As I creamed the second batch of butter, I got to thinking about the possibility that I’ve been doing this whole thing wrong and that the list of instructions may have just been a metaphor not meant to be taken literally, like I’d come to find that it’s not the cupcakes on the plate that matter but the cupcakes in my heart. Perhaps this was a sort of strange live event and, upon my completion, my door would be kicked in by Mod Ash who would grab the cupcakes and make a run for it. Maybe, just maybe, I was the target of the world’s most genius, not to mention expensive, plot to trick someone into baking snacks for some hungry, tired developers. Ocean’s Eleven, but British and with only six people.
The last two steps are to cover the cupcakes with icing and then decorate with the stars and those bits of paper with the RuneScape logo on them. The instructions call them “wafers” which apparently mean edible paper, as if implying that the stuff you use to print documents isn’t edible, but I digress. I’ve decided to dub these “ScapeCakes,” because it flows off the tongue easier than “CupScapes.” It might still need some workshopping, I tried to float the idea past my roommate but she was wholly uninterested in the ordeal and seemed more content with napping in front of the heat of the oven.
In conclusion, I’m 35% certain that I was never actually playing any OldSchool RuneScape during this whole process, but I learned some important life lessons along the way like how there’s really never a bad time for cupcakes, I should probably take a class in cupcake decoration, and that this crew of Jagex staffers will get their mitts on my cupcakes when they pull them out of my cold, cupcakeless hands. I’m pretty sure this doesn’t qualify as a preview since I didn’t play anything, but I’m frankly too full of cupcake to remember what the original intention of this article was.
Verdict/Disclosure: 4.5/5 – Jagex has discovered an innovative and delicious new way to deliver beta content, albeit this version isn’t as mobile as a game played straight from the phone. Thank you to Jagex for sending the cupcakes, this is not a sponsored post but more of an example on why I’m not allowed nice things. I don’t actually have access to the Old School Mobile Beta.
Time flies when you’re grinding for that 99 skillcape, and nobody knows that more than the players of Old School RuneScape which this month reaches its five year anniversary. It’s hard to believe that five years ago we were talking about Old School RuneScape (which MMO Fallout for some reason consistently referred to as ‘OldScape’) as this small project that we had no idea if it would be popular enough to be sustainable, with the high end of the hopes being that Jagex could commit just enough personnel to make very small content updates and ban some bots. But just as luck would have it, the game exploded in popularity over the next year and drew in enough people that it receives regular content updates and rather massive, exclusive additions.
In 2015, MMO Fallout managed to snag an interview with Matthew Kemp, product manager for Old School RuneScape not long after Deadman Mode, the game’s hardcore spinoff, originally launched. Deadman mode, where players can kill each other virtually anywhere and can lose large amounts of their belongings on death, in turn spawned its own massively successful eSports spinoff in the form of seasonal Deadman tournaments, with winners taking home $10 grand in cold hard cash.
Senior Product Manager Matthew Kemp (the very same) had the following to say on Old School RuneScape’s coming year:
“2018 is a huge year for Old School, and not only because of these anniversary celebrations and the launch of the game’s own dedicated Twitch channel. We are currently in the middle of a pipeline of closed beta tests for Old School RuneScape on mobile, and already are getting some excellent feedback from those lucky enough to receive an invitation. In fact, the feedback so far has more than validated our decision to make the full game available on mobile platforms for new, returning and current players later in the year.”
Both Old School RuneScape and RuneScape 3 are in the process of being ported to mobile devices.
MMO Fallout 