Tag: Runescape

RuneScape In Your Pants: Mobile Early Access Is Live


RuneScape mobile has entered early access on Android phones, allowing gamers their dream of finally carrying the MMO around in their pants. Users who take advantage of the early access will be gifted a mobile founder’s pack which contains a steel panther combat pet, a unique rest animation, and radiant dawn armor. Product director Jason Millena stated;

“Given RuneScape’s 18-year long heritage, in addition to being recognised by Guinness World Records for ‘The Most Prolifically Updated MMORPG Videogame’, to have the whole of RuneScape running on mobile is a massive achievement. We couldn’t be more excited to launch in Early Access and welcome those who know RuneScape the best – our members.”

You can get mobile early access here.

RuneScape and Old School Announce Updates At Runefest


This past weekend was Runefest and that means big updates coming for both RuneScape and Old School RuneScape.

First up the big news is that RuneScape is getting a new skill. Archaeology will see players digging up fossils and all sorts of relics and powerful objects that have been lost to time. Archaeology is set to hit in January 2020. Second up on the list is an update to player owned farms, bringing animal husbandry to the land out of time where players will be able to raise, trade, and breed dinosaurs. The ranch will be available by the end of the year. Third up is a series of questlines and lore set to hit RuneScape sometime in 2020.

RuneScape Mobile will go live for all members in early access for all members this year along with an overhauled interface to really put that phone to use.

Over on the Old School side, the Morytania expansion will see more of the vampire world being opened up to players including new quests and the ultimate showdown against the big baddie Lord Drakan himself. The Morytania expansion hits in early 2020. Before then, players will be able to take part in seasonal leagues starting in November 14. These temporary leagues will see players tackling ironman content on the continent of Zeah in return for rewards in the main game.

Phil Mansell, Jagex CEO, was quoted:

“Revealing and sharing our plans for future content is always exciting and this year’s keynotes brought blockbuster news, including our headline new Archaeology skill in RuneScape, Early Access coming to RuneScape Mobile, and Old School’s new Morytania Expansion. The announcements showcase our ongoing commitment to creating significant and meaningful content for RuneScape and Old School, and it was truly rewarding to see the reaction from our players in person and on the live stream.”

Source: Jagex press release

Runefest 2019: Jagex To Discuss New Skill (Archaeology) Today (10/5)


This weekend kicked off Runefest, Jagex’s festival to all things RuneScape. If you want to see some cosplay, buy some merch, and play RuneScape with other people who also enjoy RuneScape enough to fly to England and buy a ticket to a weekend convention, you’ve come to the right place.

Among the upcoming content to be discussed, Jagex threw down the gauntlet in the wee hours of the morning by announcing RuneScape’s next skill: Archaeology. The skill will be discussed more at 17:00 BST (16:00 game time, noon EST) at the RuneScape Twitch account. Tune in 10/5, that’s October 5 for those of you living in the states and May 10 for those living in Europe.

Check it out.

RuneScape: One Third Of Revenue Comes From Microtransactions


There is a lot to unpack from this week’s DCMS report, but gamers might be interested in a tidbit of information that came out about RuneScape’s revenue model. The DCMS inquiry had a major focus on immersion, addiction, and particularly people spending a lot of money on microtransactions. With Jagex being a UK-based developer, it was only a matter of time before RuneScape entered into the picture. And RuneScape gets its own section of the DCMS inquiry to show “even companies with good policies to support some aspects of player wellbeing can fall short in other areas.”

The notice was in response to concerned reports from the public about how easily large amounts of money can not only be spent, but are encouraged to be spent through in-game events and how RuneScape allows players to spend vast amounts of real world cash to skip over parts of the game’s content. In its response, Jagex’s Kevin Plomer stated that the game does technically have a cap on spending, and where exactly microtransactions line up in terms of overall revenue:

“Jagex told us that it generates about one-third of its revenue from microtransactions, with two-thirds coming from an alternative subscription model. The company’s director of player experience Kelvin Plomer told us that players “can potentially spend up to £1,000 a week or £5,000 a month” in RuneScape, but that only one player had hit that limit in the previous 12 months. The company’s reasoning for setting this limit seemed to stem from fraud prevention, rather than out of a duty of care to prevent people spending more than they are able.”

By contrast the inquiry notes that Epic has no cap at all on Fortnite however purchases are limited to store stock meaning a player can effectively spend $200 per day. Candy Crush maker King noted to the inquiry that they used to email players about their spending but halted the practice due to the negative response.

“we would send an e-mail out when a player’s spend was $250 in a week for the first time. It was an e-mail that said, “We notice you are enjoying the game a lot at the moment. Are you sure you are happy with this?” […] We got back, “I wouldn’t spend the money if I didn’t have it” and things like, “I’m fine, please leave me alone”. We felt it was too intrusive so we stopped doing that.”

The whole long read can be found at the UK Parliament website here.

Jagex Cancels Weapon Diversity Update, At Least For Now


Jagex today announced that they are cancelling the weapon diversity update, a project that had been in beta for the last month. The weapon diversity program was meant to differentiate weapons from one another on a more solid grounding, but the major impression was that the update just wasn’t transformative enough. Most changes were being made to weapon DPS which left players simply choosing the weapon with the most optimized damage.

In the end, we were unanimous as a team. The QA resource could be used on projects that we are currently working on (and planning to announce at Runefest), tightening them up and increasing our confidence in them. That came with a caveat: we still believed in the aims of Weapon Diversity, so we agreed that we would get our design team to design completely new utility benefits for weapons, which could be introduced over time rather than in one big clutch. For example, a quest might have a reward of a javelin; we would then take the opportunity to release a javelin effect to be rolled out for all javelins at the same time.

With their options being plough ahead, restart the project from scratch, or cancel it and focus on other major projects, Jagex chose to cancel. The good news is that while this project is dead, the spirit remains alive and is still being planned for the future.

Regardless of all of this, the aims of Weapon Diversity have not gone away: we still want to bring strategy back into weapon choice, and we believe that will make the gaining of weapon rewards so much more joyful.

Incidentally the weapon diversity beta ran alongside the bank rework update which was also temporarily cancelled only to be brought back, so those who had been looking forward to this update may not be completely disappointed.

Source: RuneScape

IPE Update: Amro Elansari Files Appeal In RuneScape Lawsuit


Posted with no comment. PDF version available here.

Jagex Hides AFK Magic Trainers From New Players


Jagex is very concerned with how new players take in their first few minutes in RuneScape, and they are kind of concerned regarding the impression players are getting from logging in and seeing the starting area full of players in high level armor fighting rats. Magic splashing is a widespread method of training the skill, as players figured out years ago that you could wear melee equipment with low enough magical accuracy that your attacks never actually hit. Since RuneScape gives a small amount of magic experience even when a spell fails to do damage, this has become a slow and expensive, but for many valid method of training their magic skill while doing something else.

Thankfully Jagex is not removing magic splashing, but the company announced with this today’s update that magic splashing will no longer reward experience within the area that players immediately spawn in following the tutorial, that being Lumbridge and the surrounding forest. The map area is very small, so there are plenty of other locations that players can set up in and AFK to their heart’s content.

Source: RuneScape

PSA: [RuneScape] For People Stuck In the Desperate Times Quest


I wanted to post this PSA for those of you who, like me, waited until this week’s update to finish the RuneScape quest Desperate Times. At one point in the quest you’ll get to the area from the quest Missing, Presumed Death, and get stuck. Why? Well you’ll get to the area above and not know where to go. The door is closed and won’t even respond to your interactions, there aren’t any other paths forward, and you’re basically screwed.

Or are you?

Long story short, the door shouldn’t be there. The door isn’t there, but for some reason the latest update has brought back entities that should be invisible to the player. The good news is that Jagex is aware of the bug and working on a fix. The better news is that you don’t have to wait until they are removed. Grit your teeth folks, because the method to get around this bug until Jagex actually fixes it is to…click past the door.

Yep, just click past it as if it wasn’t there, because it isn’t really. Your player character will just walk right through. There are a few doors on the way and a couple elements to just ignore. This only seems to be affecting people on the NXT client, so alternately you can boot up the Java client and they shouldn’t even be present.

Old School RuneScape Cans Partnership Poll After Overwhelming Disapproval


Jagex has thrown out a poll after only two days after Old School RuneScape players overwhelmingly rejected the company’s proposal for partnership-integrated items.

The poll went up on July 3 and contained over 20 questions asking players if they would approve of various items from emotes to skin colors and teleport animations being added in as partnership perks (such as RuneScape’s Twitch Prime items) with the items being released afterward to the general public, and the community answered with an overwhelming no. Old School RuneScape polls the vast majority of its content updates to the community. Each poll runs for one week and requires at least 75% approval in order to be added into the game.

For this poll, Jagex decided to cancel it after two days as virtually all of the questions had at least 70% disapproval.

Source: RuneScape

Jagex Launches Dedicated Website For Land Out Of Time


The next big update to RuneScape is on its way, in fact it is being released this coming Monday! In preparation for the update, Jagex has launched a dedicated website for Land Out Of Time where players can find more information on the coming update. Land Out Of Time is the latest expansion of RuneScape’s ongoing storyline. Players will sail to Anachronia, an island out of time. Build a base camp, hunt dangerous creatures including dinosaurs, and take part in an island-wide agility course.

Embark on a voyage of discovery to a long-forgotten land. Hunt down hulking beasts, traverse a treacherous landscape, slay dangerous new creatures and unearth ancient secrets previously lost to time.

Players are currently hard at work in-game building the ship that will take them to the island when the update goes live next week. Formerly referred to in-game as Kudos Island, Anachronia was first teased in RuneScape way back in 2007 with NPCs at the Varrok digsite beginning construction on a ship to take them to the island. It only took twelve years.