Today’s RuneScape update marks the introduction of Dimensions of the Damned, a 10 day competitive mode where players race to survive in a world overrun by zombies. As a purely player vs monster mode, Dimensions kits players out with capped stats and throws them into a post apocalyptic Gielinor, complete with the walking dead.
The goal here is to complete sessions which gave an hour to rack up points by killing zombies. Cosmetic rewards can be won by completing tasks (killing more zombies) but the ultimate goal is placement on the leaderboards. At the end of the event, the top 1,000 players will gain access to the finale, a last man standing mode with real world prizes (lifetime membership, collectibles, etc)
“We’ve played with the idea of survival modes in RuneScape in the past, most notably with our DarkScape experiment a couple of years ago, and they’ve proved popular. However, as a purely PvE survival game mode, Dimension of the Damned is quite unlike anything we’ve released before,” said Matt Casey, Senior Product Manager, RuneScape. “We’re really looking forward to seeing how tactics develop over the coming days as players try to reach the finale and compete to win an incredible set of prizes, but with only 1,000 places available in the endgame expect the competition to be stiff and full of rigor (mortis).”
Check out more on Dimensions of the Damned at the link below.
The Autumn Deadman tournament survivor has been disqualified after it was discovered that they were cheating. In a post on the official website, Jagex discussed criticism surrounding the latest Deadman final regarding certain disqualifications. What isn’t in question, however, is that the latest winner was cheating by using a bot farm to boost their account.
The last survivor of the final has been disqualified. A standard subsequent investigation into the winner of the tournament took place and the winner was responsible for the creation of a bot farm. Naturally all accounts linked to this botting activity have now been banned. This then raises the question of what to do with the prize money. At the moment we’re discussing what to do with it. A few ideas we have at the moment are another charitable donation, dispersing the money among the finalists, or carrying it over to the next season (or a combination of all of these).
In the same post, Jagex has promised to provide guides for players to avoid DDoS attacks which have become more common in Deadman mode, as well as tackling issues of cheating that naturally crop up in an event where $10,000+ of real money is on the line.
Deadman is a hardcore mode for Old School RuneScape that trades higher experience rates for open pvp and higher loot risk on death. Deadman Seasonal is a time-limited event where players race to level their accounts, with the 2,000 highest level players going on to a last man standing tournament, with the winner taking home $10,000 in prizes. The latest Deadman Seasonal tournament ended at Runefest 2017 this month.
RuneFest 2017 at Battersea Evolution – David Portass/iEventMedia
Runefest has come and gone, and Jagex has laid out the plans for the next year of content in both variations of their popular MMORPG.
Attendees were able to get their hands on RuneScape mobile to test the game out this weekend. While compatibility information will be rolling out within the next couple of months, Old School RuneScape is expected to hit mobile devices this winter with RuneScape 3 coming in 2018. On a more current front, RuneScape 3 will be seeing a PvE update in October called Dimension of the Damned. Adventurers will travel to another dimension where all of RuneScape has died, and battle a zombie hoard in return for unique cosmetics, achievements, and other rewards.
The entire list of RuneScape updates coming is massive, and since the game updates weekly this just covers some of the major stuff.
“Every year it gets more and more difficult to top the previous RuneFest, but I think with 2017’s convention we’ve managed to do it. We were thrilled to see so many of our hardcore players try out both RuneScape and Old School RuneScape on mobile devices for the very first time, as well as experience the tension of a Deadman Invitational live at RuneFest,” said Mark Ogilvie, Design Director, RuneScape. “Exciting new content, together with new ways to play, will delight and entice players to the world of Gielinor like never before, and in addition to our millions of active players we’ll be here ready to welcome our old friends back from being ‘AFK’.”
Over on the Old School side, players can expect to see a new 5-man raid called Theatre of Blood coming in June 2018. For questers, January 2018 will see the launch of Dragon Slayer II, a brand new Grandmaster quest. The fall Deadman tournament came to a close with one player (5PLUS50K12) walking away with the grand total of twenty thousand dollars. An additional ten grand was donated to Make a Wish by the winners of the team Deadman tournament, #TeamLUL.
The livestream of upcoming Old School updates can be found below.
Old School RuneScape this week saw the launch of Fossil Island, a new batch of content for the retro RuneScape. Fossil Island opens up a ton of new content, including the much awaited launch of skeletal wyverns. You can collect fossils, take part in one of several new skilling locations, and uncover new artifacts to fill the expanded Varrok museum.
“Fossil Island has been something of a myth in RuneScape and the community for a long time,” said Mathew Kemp, senior product manager, Old School RuneScape. “The first design documents were drafted more than a decade ago, so we were really pleased the Old School RuneScape community voted so overwhelmingly and backed its development and release into the game.”
More on the update can be found at the link below.
Jagex has officially announced the death of productivity today, as the company revealed plans to bring its two editions of RuneScape to mobile platforms, allowing millions of players to mine coal from the comfort of wherever they feel like. In a press release sent out today, the RuneScape developer revealed that both Old School and standard RuneScape will hit iOS and Android platforms, with Old School coming first during the winter months and RuneScape to follow later on.
Both versions will be cross platform, allowing you to continue where you left off on the PC. COO Phil Mansell commented that Jagex is quite excited to bring a much requested feature to the community.
“We believe in taking our games to wherever our players want them; recent player surveys showed an overwhelming 90% of active players and 64% of former players telling us of their very high intent-to-play on mobile. Our innovative approach to mobile is also evidence of our ambitions in the mobile sector, and a further indication of our investment in extending the RuneScape franchise to additional devices and territories.”
Players can head over to the official website and sign up to beta test the release.
Menaphos was meant to be the first RuneScape expansion, big content packages dropped on players every three months introducing new mechanics, new areas, and new quest lines. By estimations, the second expansion should be on its way for a September release, however recent news has revealed that Jagex is scrapping the development style after one go. While there will be larger content packs released in the future, there won’t be a release structure similar to the planned 3 month release window.
In a post on the official RuneScape website, Jagex revealed that while the idea was sound, the development of expansions had taken an unexpectedly high amount of focus away from other aspects of the game, which suffered as a result.
For the foreseeable future, content plans include bringing back polling to gauge player feedback for updates. Additionally, the content teams will be working on updates that have been in the works for quite some time, such as the bank rework, mining and smithing updates, and invention batch 2. The team is also taking a look at other community issues such as reducing the “dailyscape” daily task grind.
Finally, the big RuneScape 2018 poll is available for players. Jagex polls the community every year and uses that information to plan the next year’s content. Check it out at the link below.
The next RuneScape expansion is right around the bend, and Jagex is talking about a major update to Invention coming along with the update. For now Jagex is taking community feedback regarding changes to Invention as well as new device ideas.
Mods Ollie, Deg and Erator take you through what they have planned for the second batch of invention, due to be released with the next RuneScape expansion. Check out the video and give us your thoughts and feedback on what you would like to see added to invention, as well as how to complete the skill.
Interested players are encouraged to head over to the official forums and Reddit to voice their suggestion.
Benefits for reaching higher levels
New devices, focusing on 99+
Machines, which will slowly automate simple processes for you
This Thursday sees the launch of a mini-event in RuneScape, something that given its scope and scale probably shouldn’t elicit much more than an “oh okay,” or a “that’s neat” at the peak of emotion. Jagex is adding in a rainbow scarf, obtained through finding a small number of rainbow fragments hidden all over the game world, in support of Pride Day. This is why players are rioting in RuneScape.
And because a small section of the base wants to show that they are not, in fact, bigots and simply don’t want politics “shoved” in their game, people are showing up in Old School RuneScape dressed in a manner to resemble KKK uniforms, shouting racist obscenities about Jewish people, lobbing homophobic comments at Jagex, and advertising for Alex Jones’s Infowars. Because it’s all about keeping politics out of gaming and nothing to do with bigotry.
RuneScape has previously held events for political subjects, including the YMCA, the World Wildlife Fund, and the Prince’s Trust. In case you were wondering if these players reacted similarly to “politics being shoved down their throat” when the subject wasn’t gay pride, they didn’t. Regardless, Jagex isn’t backing down from their plan to release the scarf. While there are no plans to ban players for simply protesting the event, bans have already been handed out for players using offensive slurs or bigoted speech in chat, as well as for those walking around dressed up as Klan members.
Despite the bigoted backlash, there have been level-headed players offering fair criticism of this event, including the fact that it was not polled. While players have disagreed on whether or not such an event needed to be polled, those of you who read MMO Fallout are likely aware that the game is pretty well built on polling for content, with updates not being delivered unless voted on by at least 75% of respondents.
Menaphos is the first expansion to RuneScape, a series of massive updates that are set to release every three months. While the content drops on the live servers today, MMO Fallout was invited to preview some of the changes last week, and the new content looks pretty exciting. As I have mentioned in previous update teasers, it’s been a while since Menaphos was first revealed to the public: Twelve years in fact, it’s like Boyhood but with a lot less growing up and a lot more angry desert deities. The city of Menaphos was first added to the map on April 26, 2005.
But players couldn’t get in. While its sister city Sophanem became available, Menaphos immediately closed its doors to outsiders amid rumors of corrupt leadership and stayed that way, for twelve years. In that time, players have come in contact with numerous desert deities, learned new magics, and assisted in god-tier sibling rivalries. Now, the cruel Pharaoh has reopened the doors and adventurers are flooding in to see what secrets the city holds.
You may be asking at this point: How is RuneScape sixteen years old and is only releasing its first expansion now? For the better part of that time, Jagex has been releasing content updates on a weekly basis with various major updates every year to add in new skills, update the game engine, and more. Last year Jagex polled players on whether they would like to continue the current system of trickling updates out on a weekly basis or release major content packs every three months. Players chose the latter, and here we are.
Content in Menaphos is targeted towards mid to high level players, although most players will find something to do after completing the three pre-requisite quests. The city itself is divided into four areas, with access to everything from a Grand Exchange, new skilling areas, a merchant area to steal from, and more. Each of the four areas has its own reputation system, and while it is possible for the more dedicated gamer to maximize his rank in all four areas, Jagex told me during the preview that it will take some time and most players will just focus on one or two factions.
The centerpiece to Menaphos is the giant pyramid around which the city goes about its daily life. Inside that tomb you can find the Grand Library which will be comprised of stories submitted to Jagex by the player base. As massive as the library is, we were told that so many players had submitted quality stories that Jagex is having a hard time fitting them into the game!
Shifting Tombs is a randomized dungeon crawler with procedurally generated tombs and monsters. Players have a set amount of time to plunder the dungeon, gathering as much loot as possible while still making it to the end and escaping within the time limit. Personally, I’m looking forward to meeting Krondis, the alligator goddess of life and pleasure. Krondis, as with much of the rest of the city, has been corrupted and is currently hoarding the treasures for herself, but we’ll see if that can be changed.
The city is full of lush trees and vibrant colors, a rather stark contrast to the other desert areas. Every area has its own stylistic theme, from the extravagance of the imperial sector to the downtrodden workers district. A big piece of the Menaphos update is that the Slayer skill is having its level cap increased to 120 along with new content to fill in that level gap. You can check out the update details on the launch page here.
Players can also get in on a free weekend beginning on June 9th, allowing free players to enjoy all member content throughout the weekend until the 12th.
MMO Fallout 