Runescape – Page 39 – MMO Fallout

The Average RuneScaper

Jagex CEO Mark Gerhard posted an article on the RuneScape main website to discuss demographics and dispel a few myths about RuneScape this past weekend. According to the metrics, 84% of RuneScape’s population are male, and 90% of the overall population plays the game in English. The average RuneScape account was created in 2009 and has a total level of 1614, with only 1% of the population with an account worth at least one billion gold coins. Over half of the population plays out of North America.

The bot nuke in 2011 saw 95% of gold farming bots disappear overnight, although they managed to make their way back over the next couple of years. 2013’s round of anti-bot technology and the release of bonds (PLEX) have diminished to “almost rock bottom,” in the main game. Jagex is moving its sights over to Old School RuneScape to target bots. And speaking of old school, while the Evolution of Combat update saw an unreleased number of players part ways with the game, Jagex notes that a lot of those players returned to play on the Old School servers.

You can find the full article along with some handy charts at the list below.

(Source: RuneScape)

MMOrning Shots: Sleepy Time

Today’s MMOrning Shot comes to us from RuneScape where our beloved adventurer is in danger of being eaten by a gigantic dragon. You know, you guys go ahead. I think I left the TV on at home, and I’m not wearing my shoes with the proper insoles for this adventure.

Check out a new MMOrning Shot every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Submit your own at contact@mmofallout.com.

Jagex Raises Money Through SpecialEffect Charity

Jagex has revealed the results of their 24 hour gaming marathon for SpecialEffect’s Gameblast weekend. The event, which saw staff and members of the community playing RuneScape and Ace of Spades for a full day, resulted in a total of nearly eighty thousand dollars raised for charity. In addition, RuneScape once again opened its Well of Goodwill, where players can donate in-game bonds and goods that are converted into real money to be donated. To top off the event, Jagex also donated 50% of the profits from Ace of Spades sales to SpecialEffect.

Jane Ryan, Head of RuneScape Community Management, expressed the company’s delight in the good will of its community.

“It’s been a crazy 24 hours; we’ve seen staff rise to the occasion and take on all kinds of challenges in the name of charity. The generosity of our players is both touching and gratifying and we can’t wait to do it all again next year!”

SpecialEffect is a charity dedicated to helping people with disabilities. Find out more about the charity at http://www.specialeffect.org.uk/

(Source: Jagex Press Release)

Rolling Back Evolution of Combat: One Patch at a Time

Fundamentally changing an MMO’s combat system post-launch is a daunting and risky task. As much as there is the opportunity to bring in new customers and reinvigorate the old, a game also stands to alienate its existing user base. Like it or not, people are generally averse to change, especially when it comes in one lump sum and after the previous system had been in place for so long. RuneScape’s Evolution of Combat radically changed the way players engage in combat, and not everyone was happy about the increased demand for attention.

Since its launch, Jagex has been rolling back certain features and making accommodations to appease fans of the older system. The Momentum ability was introduced and automates much of the new combat system without requiring a whole lot more input from the player than the old system asked for. Old School servers brought back RuneScape as it was in 2007 and then subsequently updated in a different direction to the main game. Momentum is useful for most aspects aside from the powerful bosses, but continues to be tweaked over time.

In a recent news post, Jagex revealed that the weapon-specific specials would be reintroduced as abilities to bring back value to weapons that had lost value since the update. This week Jagex added a new poll asking players if they would like to see a legacy mode, bringing back the old combat system and interface. The legacy mode would not replace Evolution of Combat, the two would exist side by side.

Turning on Legacy Mode will change your gameplay to be like the old combat system, circa 2012. This includes things like special attacks, no action bar, no abilities and type-to-chat. It will have the old interface layout, with combat info and buttons around the mini map, with the old side-panels in the lower right, plus an option for the old fixed-window interface layout.

At the time that this article is published, the legacy poll leans heavily toward implementation. The goal is to have both versions working on the same servers with players able to fight each other between modes, but not everything is set in stone. Should legacy mode be voted in, which is all but confirmed based on the poll results so far, players will have the opportunity to beta test the feature and tweak it to their enjoyment.

Jagex, for their part, has said that legacy mode is a way for them to open up their game to a wider base, including those who quit due to Evolution of Combat. The company stands by its previous statement that Evolution of Combat is not up for vote and players will not be given the option to remove it entirely.

(Source: Legacy FAQ)

MMOrning Shots: Battle of Keldagrim

Today’s MMOrning Shot comes to us from RuneScape. I took this screenshot during the quest Blood Runs Deep, where you uncover a plot by the race of sea creatures pictured above to take over the world (or at least a sizable portion of it). Upon returning to the port village of Keldagrim, you find its militia locked in battle. What follows is a very long and drawn out fight.

MMOrning Shots shows off interesting games and locales, and can be seen here at MMO Fallout every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. To submit your own MMOrning Shot, send an email to contact@mmofallout.com.

RuneScape Beta Introduces Combat Tweaks

A news post has appeared on the RuneScape website detailing large updates coming to the game’s Evolution of Combat system. Currently in beta testing, the updates include adding weapon-specific special attacks back into the game as abilities. Also on the table is a function to queue abilities, action bar setups, quickly change loadouts, as well as multiple smaller changes.

These are some of the larger features we’re working on, but there are plenty of smaller improvements coming up too. With these changes, we hope Evolution of Combat will be more appealing to all types of players, adding more depth for experts, while making it more accessible to those just starting out. But that’ll be for you to decide.

Players interested in testing out the upcoming changes and giving their feedback can log in to the RuneScape beta servers, which you can find on the main website. The combat beta does not affect your progress in the live game.

(Source: RuneScape)

RuneScape: 2014 Power To The Players

Jagex has declared 2014 to be the year of player-developer collaboration, not unlike every other year that the developer has promised to listen to its community better. How do you accomplish this? Through things. Foremost, Jagex plans on implementing an in-game poll system to allow better opportunity for players to vote on upcoming content.

In mid-January, we’re going to launch a new in-game poll system, which will give members at least one new content poll to vote on each week. In total, there will be up to seven guaranteed content polls each month, covering a range of topics including quests, minigames, combat updates, skills, bosses, reworks, core gameplay changes and much more besides.

How else? More polls! The announcement does detail plans to add in more quests, high level content, and a continued effort to remove RuneScape’s niggling problems. The first poll launches January 13th.

(Source: RuneScape)

Jagex Reveals Premiere Club 2014

Last year, Jagex rolled out the Premiere Club. Players were able to buy limited packages of 3, 6, and 12 months of membership for a reduced price and receive added bonuses for doing so. In a post on the official website, Jagex has laid down the plans for 2013 Premiere Club. The packages are only available until “early 2014,” and the deal last year expired on February 4th. At the highest, gold tier full year package, players receive bonus loyalty points, exclusive pets, extra daily spins, access to VIP exclusive worlds, exclusive Q&A’s, chat and forum badges, and cosmetic promotional items that generally can only be obtained through special game cards.

This year’s deal is more expensive than last year, by a margin of about $12. It will be possible to redeem bonds for premiere membership, so dedicated players can get it all for free. You apparently need six, twelve, and twenty four bonds for each package respectively.

(Source: Jagex)

Lessons From 2013 #2: Triumph of Old School

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.

RuneScape's Services Disrupted By Denial of Service Attacks

Distributed Denial of Service Attacks are an ever-increasing problem over all sectors of the internet. What was once a rare occurrence has become nearly commonplace with many medium to large services. Most recently, the Extra Life charity event was brought down temporarily due to a denial of service attack. Google has launched Project Shield, a service to offer their own DDoS mitigation software to other websites.

In a news post released today, Jagex has revealed that RuneScape has come under heavy DDoS attacks over the past year, causing disruptions in service as well as heavy latency and disconnections for players. Jagex CEO Mark Gerhard posted an apology to players for the inconvenience caused by the attacks, laying the blame at the feet of gold farmers and bot makers. Gerhard stated that Jagex is boosting their infrastructure and is working with authorities to track down the source of the attacks.

I wanted to take this opportunity to assure you that we have, are and will continue to work tirelessly, preventing as many of these attacks from affecting your gameplay as we can. We have recently made a multi-million pound investment in our global IT infrastructure to deal with the continued attacks and are working with a number of service and security providers to eradicate the issue completely. We are also working closely with worldwide law enforcement agencies to bring the people responsible for these attacks to justice.

You can read the entire announcement at the link below.

(Source: RuneScape)

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