Tag: Jagex

Another Jagex Title?


Jagex is one of the companies I don’t get to talk about much on MMO Fallout, mainly because their main MMO Runescape doesn’t break much ground, and the upcoming Mechscape/Stellar Dawn title has been under heavy wraps, barring a few breaking news pieces.

Enter Jagex’s Twitter: @OfficialJagex, which revealed today a new title: War of Legends. The game is touted as a free multiplayer strategy game, although it is yet to be known if this will be an MMO or not. It is completely possible that this is a title for Jagex’s partially free game service, FunOrb, although not much else is known on the matter at this time.

More on Jagex as it appears. War of Legends releases early 2010.

Mechscape Cancelled, Stellar Dawn Coming 2010


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It always pains me to see an MMO fail before it is even launched. As is the case with Mechscape, Jagex’s upcoming Science Fiction MMO, a spiritual successor to Runescape, as CEO Mark Gerhard confirmed to Eurogamer today that the title is indeed canned.

In an interview with Mechscapeworld.com, Mark Gerhard had this to say:

“Sadly the game was not as complete as we wanted and we spent the first few months trying to “fix” the game where we could. About a month or so ago we took the decision to stop trying to “fix it” as we still wouldn’t have the game we wanted and the game certainly did not meet all the objectives and specifications established in the original game design document and therefore it would be better to go back to the founding principles and build the game we always wanted –Andrew [Gower] is now overseeing the project and working very closely with the team to build Stellar Dawn, not all was lost as we naturally have developed the game engine substantially over the last few years and the new designs benefits massively from this as well as a ton of experience within the team as to what works and what doesn’t. So whilst the content and a lot of the game play will change from what was previously built almost everything else will go straight back into Stellar Dawn.” – Mark Gerhard

With the death of one comes the rise of another. Innovations brought about by the production of Mechscape have gone towards the production of Stellar Dawn, a different yet somehow similar MMO to the little guy who never had a chance.

Hopefully Jagex has learned the same truth that Richard Garriot learned with Tabula Rasa: Just because you are an established name, does not guarantee all of your products will succeed.

On that note, it is good to see Jagex catching up to the rest of the mmo world in terms of features. The company just launched a name changing service, and is currently beta testing a feature to see a log of your character’s activity, including amount of time played (see WoW Armory)

With Scammers At Bay, The Players Will Play


This article has nothing to do with T-Mobile's Sidekick
This article has nothing to do with T-Mobile's Sidekick

All two of you who visited my message boards will see that I am not a big fan of being explicit with rules. In fact, there are three rules on the Orb Boards; Don’t incite a flame war, keep your account secure, and don’t be a spambot. Apart from those basic rules, I don’t think the rest needs to be explained. What it comes down to is: Anything you wouldn’t do in real life, don’t do here. Unless you make a living out of stealing people’s identities, in which case…still don’t do that here.

I often like to see Game Masters getting intuitive when it comes to removing problems that may not warrant a complete rule, or that may be such a special case that putting a rule would be far too generalizing. Say, for example, the issues Aion had when it launched last month. Players were clogging the servers by going away from keyboard so they could sleep, go to school, etc, without being logged off. Rather than pull out the ban-stick and taking things far over the edge, NCsoft quickly released a patch making such an exploit impossible.

The idea is that you don’t have to issue permabans to get a point across.

More on Aion, World of Warcraft, and more after the break.

Continue reading “With Scammers At Bay, The Players Will Play”

Play Runescape Now, My Lord


SUMMONING

Jagex, makers of the browser based MMO Runescape, recently struck a marketing deal with Zapak to bring Runescape’s marketing and distribution to India. For those not familiar with Zapak, the website is a portal of web based games. The Indian version of Miniclip if you will.

But one bit of advertising caught my eye: On Zapak’s front page, the following image can be seen advertising Runescape:

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...my lord

I’m hoping this is Zapak’s artwork because, if it is, we can play it up to ignorance. Evony, formerly Civony, was widely panned for its continuing advertising campaign, featuring nothing but women with large breasts, a marketing campaign that spiraled down into just breasts. In fact Evony was voted the most despised game on the internet for just that same reason.

Then again, it could be worse. Jagex could be owned by a goldfarming-I said nothing. Maybe I’m just a little tender to anything that reminds me of Evony, considering I would estimate 60% of the spam comments I get are advertisements for this scam game.

Some Evony banners, and breasts, after the break.

Continue reading “Play Runescape Now, My Lord”

Bringing Back The Classics: Runescape


banner_runescapeMany of you might not be aware of this gem, but the current incarnation of Runescape is technically Runescape 2, the original now dubbed Runescape Classic. Runescape Classic has not been updated since 2004, when its prettier, more functional little brother stepped off the cart, took its name, and shoved it into the closet.  Going further along the timeline, in January 2006 Runescape Classic was shut off from the public due to the game’s ancient engine, lack of real anti-cheat methods, and such. Jagex decided that it would be better to stop new accounts from being created for the game, and anyone who was not a paying member, and active on the classic servers, was given a permanent ban from the two remaining classic servers. No new accounts.

Continue reading “Bringing Back The Classics: Runescape”