Tag: Old School

Old School RuneScape Polling Grand Exchange


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Does the Old School RuneScape community want a Grand Exchange? We’re about to find out, as Jagex is gearing up to poll the feature in the next week. If it is voted in, the grand exchange will replace the current trading post where players can place offers on items but need to meet up in person in order to complete the trade. Should the grand exchange be implemented, it will also make way for the introduction of coinshare (expensive loot is turned into coins and split between party members) and lootshare (shared loot between party members).

Should the update not be passed, Jagex will poll updates to the trading post, including the ability to initiate a trade through the post, provided players are on the same world. Also set to be polled is the dragon defender, increase in bank slots, as well as numerous other updates.

Updates require 75% approval in order to be implemented.

(Source: RuneScape)

Old School RuneScape Available To All


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As an early Christmas present to their players, Jagex has reopened the Old School RuneScape servers to all, regardless of their membership status. Free players can access the nonmember worlds until the event ends on December 31st.

Obviously, this will raise the question of the long term plans for F2P – the next few weeks of open access will help us see what happens when everyone can access the game in a free mode, and allow us to decide whether a permanent and full F2P option is viable for the future. We are still very much dedicated to ensuring that any F2P options can work for both Jagex, the game and the community. We’ll let you know how it went in the new year.

To fight against bots, free players will be unable to fish lobsters.

(Source: Old School)

Old School RuneScape Details December Updates


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Jagex has announced the December updates for Old School RuneScape, as voted on by a majority of the players. First up is the introduction of the trading post, coming December 11th, which will allow players an easier method of listing their items for sale. The trading post is not Old School’s answer to the Grand Exchange as items are not actually bought or sold on it. Rather it acts like a Craigslist, affording players an in-game method of listing their sales and making the process more convenient. Buyers will see who is selling the item, what their asking price is, and a way to contact said player to meet up and make the exchange.

Later on this month sees the return of 2005’s Christmas event, where players head on to Diango’s toy shop to help make marionettes. There are also various livestreaming events and the chance to aid in the fight between Santa and Anti-Santa, with the loser exploding in a shower of party hats and other rares.

(Source: RuneScape)

Old School RuneScape Polls Integrity Issues


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How do you tackle issues of player integrity in a game where everything is voted on? You poll it, of course! The latest poll to hit Old School RuneScape deals with the issue of player activity and whether or not Jagex should deal with some less scrupulous, even if not exactly evil, behavior.

Players are asked to vote on dealing with AFK-training, players trading wealth between games, trust staking, and untradeable items being retrieved for free when lost to PvP. Options available are to do nothing, to implement a fix based on further polling, or to fix without a poll. Currently the majority opinion (based on 21,000 votes) is that none of the issues need to be dealt with at all.

As for the previous poll, the new continent was approved with a whopping 90% yes. 86% of players approved ten new achievement diaries, with 80% voting for elite diaries. The rest of the polls did not pass the 75% threshold, including repeatable tasks, another attempt to lower the voting threshold from 75% to 70%, an abstain option from voting, the option to change your vote, and changing the minimum requirements to vote (but just barely).

(Source: Old School RuneScape)

Old School RuneScape Polls New Continent, Achievements


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It’s hard not to see Old School RuneScape as something of a gamer’s pipe dream. Every single update, barring bug fixes, has to be vetted through the player base and cannot be added unless 75% of the voters say yes. Over the past year, the polls have managed to shift Old School on a content path that is wholly independent of the main RuneScape game, to a level where quite a bit of content now exists in Old School that RuneScape 3 players do not have access to.

In the latest poll, Jagex has placed a hefty bit of content up for vote. Today through November 12th, players will be able to vote on a brand new continent full of activities, each activity which will be individually polled should the continent itself pass muster. Players are also able to vote on the introduction of new achievement diaries, elite achievements, repeatable tasks, and more.

Also up for vote is a change in the voting mechanic. Players can vote on lowering the approval level to 70% from 75%, the option to abstain, the option to change your vote, and changing the minimum requirement to vote.

With twelve thousand votes so far, the new continent has 90% approval, and the achievement diaries and elite tasks have 88% and 81% respectively. The minimum requirement to vote is just toeing the line. Everything else is falling quite short of reaching the 75% requirement.

(Source: RuneScape)

Old School: One Last Shot At Artisan


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Old School RuneScape launched as a snapshot of the MMO as it was back in 2007, and since then has updated with a ton of new content all sourced from the forums and approved by a majority of players via content polls. With the variety of content added, Old School RuneScape has pretty much established itself as a separate product, and not just a classic RuneScape experience. One of the largest content additions put up to player approval has been Artisan, a new skill that does not exist in RuneScape 3. The idea of Artisan is that the skill gathers from other skills to create new items.

Unfortunately the players have not voted to approve the skill over several re-imaginings. The latest dev blog details the most recent version of Artisan being presented for approval, noting that this is the final dev blog on the matter. The Artisan skill will have players receiving gathering and crafting tasks from artisan masters and will allow them to craft items and tools that will aid in everyday life. For one example, it will be possible to craft wieldable tools (saving inventory space) or creating slow-burn logs which burn longer and decreases odds for burning food.

In addition to voting on the addition of the skill, players will also have the ability to vote on individual items and see them added to existing skills if the Artisan skill as a whole does not pass.

(Source: RuneScape)

The Eventual Removal of Evolution of Combat?


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Evolution of Combat was introduced to RuneScape on November 20th, 2012. A massive undertaking and equally dramatic shift in gameplay for the eleven year old MMO, Evolution of Combat introduced abilities, a hotbar, dual wielding, new equipment, and altered how creatures in the world needed to be fought. New items were introduced and many spells and other items were removed entirely or rendered useless by changes to how the game balanced combat. As one might expect when a game implements such a radical change, an indeterminate number of players up and quit.

Nearly two years have passed and Jagex has slowly working to bring those players back. Old School RuneScape was introduced at the end of February, a snapshot version of RuneScape culled from 2007, long before the introduction of features such as the Evolution of Combat, Grand Exchange auction house, or microtransactions. To move even further, Jagex announced that further content on Old School would be sourced directly from the community and put up to a vote before it would be implemented.

On the RuneScape 3 front, Jagex implemented a combat mode called “momentum” which was meant to replace abilities in regular encounters with monsters, by boosting offensive and defensive stats. Revolution was later added that is similar to momentum, however this mode automatically activates abilities, allowing the player to play somewhat like they did prior to Evolution of Combat.

The latest update to bring back players from pre-Evolution of Combat is Legacy Mode, but Legacy does more than simply automate a player’s combat. Legacy Mode was voted in with an 81% (200 thousand votes) majority. The mode reintroduces the old user interface and completely removes the abilities for people who choose it (unlike Revolution/Momentum which automates or ignores abilities). For all players, the maximum combat level has been reconfigured to its old cap of 138 (as opposed to 200), and weapon-specific special attacks are being reintroduced. Damage output and experience rates are supposed to be lower on Legacy Mode, but “near optimum” in comparison according to Jagex.

A few people have emailed me asking if I think that Jagex will remove Evolution of Combat altogether, and my prediction is to wait and see on legacy mode. 81% of the community wanted legacy mode introduced, and that doesn’t count those who quit due to Evolution of Combat and didn’t vote. I think what Jagex will do is iterate on legacy mode to become just as viable as using abilities and, should  the time ever come where not enough people are using Evolution of Combat to justify the resources spent on updating both systems, it might be removed entirely.

For right now, however, Jagex wants to appeal to both crowds.

Jagex Details Possible Free To Play For OldSchool RuneScape


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Old School RuneScape launched last year and continues its own track of development with a specialized team of developers. In the latest developer blog, Jagex discusses bot busting and free to play.Currently, Old School RuneScape is limited to players who have an active subscription to the main RuneScape game. Last year saw a limited free trial which Jagex acknowledges did not meet its mark as it did not see a significant increase in membership.

As part of an ongoing experiment in implementing free to play, new accounts starting May 27th will have trial access to Old School RuneScape for two weeks with a reminder that it may result in nothing changed.

The F2P journey that we are now all embarking upon will end two ways. If we find the right way to introduce F2P we will poll that method to you as a permanent addition to the game. However, you must also be prepared to accept that if we cannot find the right method, we can’t offer F2P as a permanent addition to Old School.

You can check out the entire dev blog at the link below.

(Source: RuneScape)

Lessons From 2013 #2: Triumph of Old School


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You can only hope that other developers are paying attention to Jagex. This year marked the announcement and launch of RuneScape’s Old School server, a separate service that originally launched as a snapshot of the MMO way back from August 2007, but has since evolved into its own game entirely. Updates are based entirely off of polls, with each addition being voted on separately and requiring 75% approval in order to be implemented. Rather than vote on ideas from the standard RuneScape ruleset, Old School has gone in a completely different direction with the implementation of features such as pvp worlds, where players are able to fight it out all over the world instead of being relegated to the wilderness.

We can only hope that more developers will see the value of classic servers.

Old School RuneScape: Nightmare Zone


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The strangest part of talking about Old School RuneScape is the understanding that while this is technically RuneScape as it was back in September 2007, that the game is slowly moving in a direction away from both its original design and the actual progression of the main game. Features like the Nightmare Zone are particularly interested because the idea of fighting boss monsters from quests is something that has been requested in RuneScape for years, at least as long as I’ve been playing, so this will be one of the first additional pieces of content that will go into Old School RuneScape while still being completely ignored on the live game.

So Nightmare Zone is closer to completion and Jagex have been working out details on how to deal with creatures that require special items to creatures that almost require special items, NPCs that really only function properly in their own environments, etc. As a compromise, the game provides various items that are required but would not otherwise even be obtainable by the player, while other items are simply removed from the equation. Rewards are still being worked on, since the community shot down every single pitch in the related content poll.

(Source: Dev Blog)