Runescape – Page 35 – MMO Fallout

Old School RuneScape Available To All

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

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)

RuneScape Well of Goodwill Closes

RuneScape’s Well of Goodwill has become a regular force in the fantasy MMO, opening every so often and allowing players to donate their coins, items, and bonds to notable charities. For every ten million gold donated to the well, Jagex donates $2 to the charity flavor of the month with $4.70 for each bond donated. Previous fundraising drives have offered aid to Hart, SpecialEffect, GamesAid, The Internet Watch Foundation, among other charities.

The latest charity run, which saw the Well of Goodwill open for the month of November, has ended and the results are in. More than 70,000 players donated in excess of 512 billion gold worth of coins, items, and bonds to raise a total of $160,158 for charity. The donations will be split to AbleGamers, Donategames, and Youngminds.

Over the course of December, players can donate bonds to Oxfam in return for presents.

(Source: RuneScape)

RuneScape Premiere Club Available Again

RuneScape’s Premiere Club has returned once again for the 2014 holiday season. Premiere Club membership is a subscription package that can be purchased in three, six, or twelve month increments with bonuses increasing based on the length of the subscription. This year, Jagex has partnered with Paypal and is offering an exclusive samurai outfit and a pet to players who either buy their membership through Paypal or buy a lower tier membership and then upgrade to gold through Paypal.

The bonus list for this year is pretty extensive. All tiers receive bonus loyalty points (scaling), a lava hood, and a tier-5 aura Dwarven Instinct that can be used to find hidden treasures. Silver and up receives an additional daily treasure hunter key as well as a grey skin cosmetic. Gold tier members will receive an onyx skin override, lava wings, a lava bird pet, access to VIP servers, a premiere-club forum, an in-game badge, a forum badge, and exclusive Q&A with developers. All tiers have access to the Paypal exclusive if purchased through Paypal.

Premiere Club will only be available through the end of January.

(Source: RuneScape)

December RuneScape Updates Detailed

December is upon us, and Jagex has marked the occasion by releasing a list of updates planned for the next few weeks.

First on the list is the Tirannwn Task Set, RuneScape’s answer to achievements, comprising of 54 tasks set in and around the elf lands. The task set rewards players with a farming patch, upgrades for crystal weapons, and various other goodies including an ammo slot item called the Tirannwn Quiver. Following that update, the Dominion Tower is set to receive an update. The boss-mode mini-game will be updated with new bosses, a rumble mode, and new rewards.

Also returning this month is the RuneScape Premiere Club. Only on sale for a limited time, the Premiere Club is a one-year subscription that includes a variety of rewards, from cosmetics to pets, access to VIP worlds, and extra bonuses. Also returning is the festive aura, an item which grants double experience daily for 30 minutes. Over the course of December, there will also be weekend bonuses that vary from week to week.

The Christmas event takes place over four weeks, with players engaging in a different event each week.

(Source: RuneScape)

Diaries From RuneScape: November In Review

RuneScape is going to be a regular game for the Diaries From column, published on the last Thursday of each month and covering the entire month’s worth of updates.

1. Prifddinas Part 2 – 9/10

The elven city of Prifddinas has quickly become one of my favorite updates of 2014, and not just because I’ve been waiting for this update ever since it was teased way back in 2004. I went through high school and ended up one semester away from my bachelor’s degree in the time Jagex took to put this update out. There are kids playing RuneScape today who were still in diapers when the city was first teased. It was a really long time ago.

Prifddinas is a giant skilling hub, a place where high level players can theoretically go and virtually never have a reason to leave. There is a ton of content, from pickpocketing elves to finding hidden titles, unlocking pets and other rewards, and I have only managed to scratch the surface.

Clan Amlodd (Divination and Summoning) – Shadow creatures are useless as a divination training, since they don’t drop cores enough to be a viable alternative. The only time I’ve found myself killing shadow creatures is when a daily task dictates it. Otherwise this area has the convenience of an NPC to trade your summoning pouches in for a small amount of shards to make summoning less of a money sink.
Clan Ithell (Construction and Crafting) – This is my new favorite area in the game. The harps provide semi-afk crafting training with the bonus reward of harmonic dust that can be used to upgrade your dragon pickaxe and hatchet. Next to the harp room is a big rock containing soft clay next to a potter’s wheel and furnace, making crafting dailies much more convenient. When the area first released, mining the maximum fifty crystal stone per day and turning it into flasks was a great money maker before the market flooded.
Clan Hefin (Agility and Prayer) – If there is one skill I hate training more than crafting, it’s agility, and this area is right up my alley. I haven’t touched the new agility course, but I should since it is the fastest course and offers various rewards for completing laps. Generally I only have enough patience for agility to grab the twenty thousand (forty if you have bonus exp) agility experience for participating in the daily mini-game. The prayer section is a money sink, for 130,000 gold you can buy and clean crystals for prayer experience. If you are really rich, you can clean thirty stones per hour, spending 3.9 million for 279,000 experience. A much better alternative to buying and grinding bones, if for convenience over price.
Clan Meilyr (Dungeoneering and Herblore) – I don’t have 95 dungeoneering so I can’t comment on just about anything in this section. Harmony moss is interesting, you buy seeds for 50 thousand, and then plant them on skill-specific posts. The moss grows by gaining experience in the related skill, and the final product can be used in potions or sold for a small profit. I love combination potions since I can finally ditch my super sets, and I like the idea of certain potions requiring you to find the recipe in dungeoneering. It offers an extra incentive to go dungeon diving.

2. Treasure Trail & Community Tools – 8/10

Treasure trails are RuneScape’s treasure hunting mini-game, scrolls found from monsters and through other activities that offer puzzles and clues that must be followed to find rewards. If you’re lucky, you can find insanely expensive equipment/cosmetics. Otherwise you are 99% of the community and find a few low level items for a half hour or so of hunting. I don’t have the logistics to figure out if the rewards are statistically dropping at a better rate, but I like the idea of introducing new and better stuff while removing less desirable rewards.

I’ve found that the majority of players fall into two categories for the player examine feature: those who haven’t touched it and are at the default settings or those who have set their account to private.

3. Heart of Stone Quest – 6/10

I didn’t enjoy this month’s quest. RuneScape’s quest system has been rough ever since Jagex brought the world into the sixth age and made it so each quest set before then is a flashback or a memory or something. Heart of Stone is supposed to be an introductory quest to the elder gods, a topic that if you’ve been keeping up with the quests will seem out of place since your character has marinated in the topic for years. Every once in a while Jagex will go back and bring in a quest to introduce players to a certain idea, throwing consistency into the wind when your character who has known about these topics for years suddenly has no idea what they are.

As an introductory quest, it feels like everyone else is doing the fun stuff. You show up in the quest after all of this interesting stuff happens, and the quest is over before the really interesting stuff will happen, and knowing Jagex the sequel is at least six months away, if not a full year or more.

The first and second batches for Prifddinas are going to keep myself, and many other players, busy for a long time to come. By giving a more tolerable way to train the most intolerable skills, hitting end-game content is looking a lot more realistic.

RuneScape Subscription Price Increase in 2015

Jagex has announced today that 2015 will see an increase in the price of RuneScape’s subscription. While the new price and date have not been finalized, current subscribers can rest easily knowing that your rate will be grandfathered in at the usual rule: As long as it doesn’t lapse for more than 14 days. Additionally, Premiere Club will reopen on December 1st, allowing players to lock in their rate by buying a full year in advance with extra rewards.

If you’re a member when the price rise happens, you’ll see no change. You’ll stay at your price as long as your active membership started before the date of the price rise. This applies for all previous grandfather rates, for those of you who’ve been subscribed for a long time.

We will update with more information when it becomes available. Check out Jagex’s Runefest presentation on 2015’s upcoming updates here.

(Source: RuneScape)

Old School RuneScape Polls Integrity Issues

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)

RuneScape Expands The City of Elves

This week sees the second half of RuneScape’s Lost City of the Elves expansion. The update introduces the latter half of the Elven city, bringing with it new high level skilling locations, new monsters to fight, and new rewards.

Prifddinas first opened its doors in September and has seen the high level community flock to make the city their home. With a population surpassing exclusive havens such as the Cayman Islands and Monaco, Prifddinas has become the home to the RuneScape elite who have draped the city with over 650 thousand flags in celebration of their maxed skills.

Also now open this month is the Well of Goodwill, where players can donate in-game items and gold to be converted to real money and donated to charity.

(Source: RuneScape Press Release)

Old School RuneScape Polls New Continent, Achievements

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)

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