Runescape – Page 29 – MMO Fallout

RuneMetrics: What You Need To Know

Last month marked the announcement of RuneMetrics, an upcoming stat-tracking tool for RuneScape developed by Jagex. At the time, all we knew is that the tracker would allow players to see certain statistics like experience per hour and logged drops, and that there would be a free and a paid version.

There’s advanced XP tracking including an ETA to your next level up. There is also an amazing drop log that tracks everything you’ve gained through combat, as well as damage calculators giving you your total damage EVER and your average damage per minute, and plenty more on top!

In a developer Q&A posted today, the team answered a number of questions regarding how RuneMetrics will work and why it costs money. You can find the entire 20 minute video below but for brevity we have posted the highlights below.

Check out below for the full Q&A as well as some screenshots from the livestream.

There is an in-game tracker and a website tracker.
The in-game tracker follows xp per hour, time to next level, exp gained.
Real time graphs follow the past few minutes.
The web application goes further back in time and will replace the Adventurer’s Log.
Everything that is available in the Adventurer’s log will be free in RuneMetrics.
Everything is tracked and can be viewed (kills, drops, worlds changed, deaths, etc).
The feature will not “cheat” for you (ie: clue scroll answers, farming patch status, etc).
The free version covers counting based functions while RuneMetrics Pro (paid) will be required for calculation-based functions.
RuneMetrics requires a subscription due to the immense storage and maintenance costs.
There are no plans for a permanent buy.
If your subscription lapses, after a while the data will be deleted.
Premiere Club members get two weeks free plus half off on the cost.

The web portion will look similar to how it is below. The top portion is available for free with the bottom half requiring a monthly subscription.

Jagex Unveils RuneMetrics, Paid Stat Tracking

In the Behind the Scenes for February, Jagex officially unveiled a new stat tracking service coming to RuneScape this month. Named RuneMetrics, the service is advertised to log a wide variety of player actions, giving in-depth details on how efficiently the player is training, what they are collection, and how much damage they are dealing out. While many of the tracking features will be free, some parts of RuneMetrics will be held behind a paywall, at the cost of a bond per month. Premiere Club members receive a 50% discount.

There’s advanced XP tracking including an ETA to your next level up. There is also an amazing drop log that tracks everything you’ve gained through combat, as well as damage calculators giving you your total damage EVER and your average damage per minute, and plenty more on top!

Also set to release this month is a new quest, a mini-game involving Sliske, a double experience weekend, further additions to Invention, and a seasonal event for the Chinese new year.

(Source: RuneScape)

Jagex Devotes February To Old School QoL Updates

Old School RuneScape operates on player majority for content, requiring that 75% of the voting community agree to an update before the team is allowed to put it in. In a recent blog post, the Old School team has announced that February is being devoted to quality of life updates, with a new poll running each week to determine player interest in small tweaks that have been popularly suggested through the forums and various other avenues.

The current poll runs until February 1st and covers issues like skipping questions, increasing click areas to make certain objects easier to select, and boosting experience rates on two agility mini-games. Jagex evidently hit the mark on how popular these questions are, as every single option is currently beating the 75% margin by a mile except for the poll to add a spell allowing players to convert wine to wine of Zamorak.

(Source: Old School)

Column: Jagex and the RuneScapes

I’ve written quite a bit about Jagex and the issue of “not-RuneScape” in the past, and while I penned an editorial about its history over at MMORPG.com earlier last year, I’ve been meaning to give the topic another look for quite some time. If you aren’t acquainted with Jagex’s history of developing games that are not RuneScape, I highly recommend reading that article before you continue here otherwise it’ll probably look like I’m just trashing a successful company for no reason. It’s a long history of failed “hobby projects,” mismanaged and abandoned long before anyone would bother to inform the public.

So since my last full editorial in 2012, there has been a lot of stuff going on at Jagex. Transformers Universe went into beta and, as I suspected, it fumbled the ball at the two yard line and Hasbro pulled the IP. Block N Load launched and has subsequently plummeted in traffic, relaunched as a free to play game and has been on the decline ever since. The winter league was a mess and ended in a cancellation due to the number of teams dropping out. Carnage Racing, released on Steam in 2013, can no longer be purchased and its online was shut off with no announcement if you read the forums. It looks like Jagex pulled out of publishing Entropy since they are no longer credited and the game has a monthly average of six users.

But something else happened in that time frame, Jagex successfully launched Old School RuneScape. So successfully, in fact, that Old School has surpassed the population of RuneScape 3. It launched as a snapshot of what the game was like back in 2007 with Jagex talking about how they might make a few small changes here and there, and it has grown into a separate title entirely, one that continues to receive substantial content on par and possibly even better than its bigger budget big brother considering the team size.

If I had to comment on Old School, however, I’d say that the original point I made years back still stands: That RuneScape is Jagex’s sacred cow, and that any venture outside of that property is doomed to failure. Old School RuneScape was an experiment that went right, but at the end of the day it is RuneScape. It’s like the model train you pull out of a box in the attic. While you dust it off, give it a fresh coat of paint, and make some additions to it, its core remains the same. The guys and gals working on Old School made the right choice by allowing the community to dictate what updates the game is allowed to receive.

RuneScape Chronicle is in beta right now and we’ll have to see how it does considering that while it is based on the RuneScape lore, it isn’t RuneScape. There is still the MMO that Jagex announced earlier last year that may or may not be Stellar Dawn. Ace of Spades and Block N Load are still online with their small communities.

But who knows where Jagex’s new CEO will take the company. Mark Gerhard apologized a few years ago for treating their non-RuneScape games like “hobby projects.” We’ll have to see what direction the company takes under Rod Cousens, and I’m holding on to faith that the company can break ground into games that are not RuneScape.

In the meantime, check out our interview with Jagex on Deadman Mode from last year.

Deadman Polling Death/Combat Changes

Jagex has announced that notable changes to Deadman mode will be coming in a future content poll. The latest developer diary details a number of content additions to be added in the upcoming player poll, including additions and tweaks to the recently released Zeah continent. Among the changes, however, are two key tweaks for Deadman Mode content. The first, whether the community will approve of new players receiving a six hour grace period during which they cannot be attacked. The second, whether or not killing a player more than forty levels below you will no longer generate a bank key.

Other Deadman updates include a timer on login similar to that found in pvp worlds, the ability to obtain dragon claws as a very rare drop from dragons, and adding pvp armor to wilderness boss drops. Voting opens soon.

(Source: Deadman)

RuneScape Classic Open To All Again

In celebration of RuneScape’s 15th birthday, Jagex has once again made the oldest iteration of the game available to the public. Starting today and running through mid-March, players can log in and secure themselves indefinite access to the classic servers with all of their old school glory. Your account from RuneScape won’t transfer over, so if you haven’t played before you’ll be starting over.

The availability of RuneScape Classic is limited to current RuneScape members. If you are a member and wish to take advantage of the open window, head over to the official page and log in with your current RuneScape account from 11 January at 12:00 UTC until 11 March at 12:00 UTC. Once you’ve made a character, you will have access to RuneScape Classic whenever you want to play it.

RuneScape Classic remains online for the remaining community that continue playing as well as players who would like to see how the game looked pre-2004. Due to the ease of cheating, the game is mostly closed off to the public with small windows of time where new players can obtain access. The last time that the servers were open to new players was 2011, at which time Jagex claimed that the game would not be opened to the public again. Whether the current event is a one-off exception is unknown.

(Source: RuneScape)

Old School RuneScape Launches New Continent

With RuneScape celebrating its fifteenth birthday this year, Old School players have a lot to look forward to in terms of new content. With today’s update, players will be able to explore the first region of Zeah, a whole new continent set to launch over the course of 2016. The first area available is the city of Great Kourend, with five families fighting for control. Players can help any of the five families in return for access to new weapons, armor, and other resources and skill training areas.

“Our dedicated development team has been beavering away on Zeah for quite some time, so it’s fantastic that we can finally unlock the doors to Great Kourend,” said Mathew Kemp, product manager, Old School RuneScape. “The launch of an entire landmass exclusive to Old School RuneScape over the course of 2016, and the new content it will bring to our excellent community, is really exciting. Zeah also underlines the success Old School has experienced since its launch in 2013.”

The rest of Zeah is set to release over the course of the year. You can read more about today’s update at the link below.

(Source: Old School)

RuneScape Is 15, Brings Back Andrew Gower For New Quest

It’s hard to believe that, as of next year, RuneScape will be older than some of its players. Launched in 2001 as a project by Andrew Gower, RuneScape exploded in popularity to become one of the most played games on the internet. In its fifteen years, the browser MMO has spawned two major upgrades as well as several spinoff versions including the upcoming card game Chronicles. To celebrate the anniversary, Jagex is planning on making 2016 a big year for content.

“To reach this incredible 15-year anniversary milestone is astonishing for everybody working on RuneScape, especially as it continues to experience a fantastic resurgence of players. It is testament to our loyal, passionate, and growing community, that the development teams at Jagex can continue to tell new stories within the world of Gielinor,” said Phil Mansell, vice president, RuneScape.

Founders Andrew and Paul Gower are set to return as guest designers on their own quest, Gower Quest, due to release in Spring 2016. January brings with it the invention skill, the first in a line of ‘elite skills’ introducing new ways to level up your character. Using invention, players will be able to dismantle equipment in order to use the components to upgrade their other gear. Further into the year marks the launch of RuneScape’s newest client, bringing better performance and higher graphical fidelity.

(Source: Jagex press release)

Jagex Announces Seasonal Deadman, $10,000 Tournaments

With Deadman now six weeks out of launch, Jagex has revealed their plans for the game in the upcoming year. As previously discussed in our interview with Mat K, part of the idea for next year is to have seasonal deadman, a separate set of servers that run on independent rules and are wiped once the season is over. Seasons could, for instance, have higher experience rates, or equipment unavailable in the standard game.

Prior to each season we will allow players to decide if they want additional rules for that season. For example, you may want a season with Dragon Claws, PvP armour or other things. Please do let us know what ideas you have for the Deadman Mode Seasonal servers.

The top five thousand players from each season will be able to participate in a special tournament, with the last man standing receiving $10,000 as a prize.

(Source: Deadman)

Deadman Updates To Curb Griefing

Deadman Mode, the hardcore pvp version of Old School RuneScape, has been updated with a small but substantial change to curb griefing. Following criticism from the community over ‘suiciding,’ the act of high level players attacking and killing low level players before guards can react, Jagex has altered how death works in guarded areas. Beginning today, players who die in a guarded area with a skull will lose 10% of the experience in protected skills. Those without a skull will not, however they will still lose 25% experience in unprotected skills.

The update has received mixed reactions, with some stating that the punishment isn’t severe enough and others pointing to the ease with which players can drop items before they die to retrieve them upon respawning. DarkScape had gone around this issue by making all items appear automatically when dropped.

(Source: Old School)

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It: