Whenever I look at Jagex’s screenshots and video for RuneScape, it always feels like I’m looking at a clay diorama. Today’s MMOrning Shot is a snapshot from RuneScape’s latest Behind The Scenes video, showing off one of the game’s distractions and diversions, the fishing contest.
The Battle for Lumbridge was the first world event in RuneScape, taking place from July to the end of September, and pitting Saradomin Vs Zamorak in a massive battle of heavy resource grinding. In addition to helping out their chosen god, players aided the Duke of Lumbridge in deciding how to rebuild the village. The battle is over now and the combatants have left the field, leaving Lumbridge to build itself up from the ground.
Considering that the Lumbridge Rebuildathon is a daily event that you can finish in less than ten minutes, I didn’t think I would find it as engaging as I have. Not for the game itself, which involves picking up inventories of debris and putting them in a stack, but watching the area slowly transform as players complete tasks. Buildings are slowly being rebuilt and the battlefield cleaned of barricades, tents, and buildings. There is a feeling that your work is actually contributing, an improvement over the Battle of Lumbridge’s divine tear gathering.
And there are experience rewards.
Here at MMO Fallout, we love charities so much that we’ve tried to turn it into a competition. In the case of RuneScape, what better way could there be to encourage donations than to not require any real money at all? With today’s update to RuneScape, Jagex has introduced the Well of Goodwill, where players can take their surplus gold and items and donate them to charity. What would a sick kid do with an iron sword? I have no idea, but that isn’t how the charity works. For every ten million in gold and valued items donated, one real dollar will be donated to charity.
Over the years we’ve privately supported a number of good causes and we thought this time round not only should we try include the community but also focus our efforts towards supporting a number of charities who efficiently and directly support disadvantaged, terminally ill or at-risk young people. While no doubt our list of charities will grow over time, we would like start with a few close to our own heart:
The list of charities include Willow, SpecialEffect, Action For Kids, GamesAid, and Internet Watch Foundation, with more to be added in the future.
(Source: RuneScape)
In September, Jagex introduced bonds, an item that players could buy with real money and either trade to other players for gold or redeem for membership, spins, and runecoins. In a press release sent out today, Jagex has revealed that since bonds have been introduced, the amount of illegal gold being injected into the economy has dropped 81% by their own metrics.
“While we anticipated that the launch of Bonds would impact the flow of illegal wealth into the game, we are thrilled the initiative has resulted in such a strong and immediate impact. This action lays the foundations for RuneScape to continue going from strength to strength in its second successful decade!”
RuneScape has historically had a large problem with gold farming and bots, due to the ease of access to the client and grind-focused nature of the game. Bonds are just another step in an ongoing process to rid the game of gold farmers.
(Source: Jagex press release)
Jagex has introduced the idea of PLEX to RuneScape in the form of bonds. Bonds, like PLEX, are tradeable items that are purchased from Jagex and can be traded to other players through the in-game auction house or face to face, to then be exchanged for in-game goodies. As a measure to stop gold farming, which Jagex believes involves 40-50% of the active player base each month, the bonds can then be redeemed by the buyer for membership (14 days), spins (8), or RuneCoins (160) for the cash shop. Not a great deal at face value, but the goal is that the buyer does not pay real money, and the person who did initially buy the bond is receiving gold from the buyer.
Bonds cost $5 USD.
Divination is the latest skill to be released in RuneScape, and it is certainly interesting. The premise of the skill is that after the god Guthix is assassinated, the resulting fallout caused immense damage to the world in which the game takes place. Guthix’s life energy dispersed in the form of wisps, a combination of divine energy and memories. The divine energy is the force that once protected the world of Gielinor, but was shattered and sent raining down from the heavens upon Guthix’s death. By harvesting wisps for their divine energy and memories and return them to various craters located around the world, in the hope that this will heal the damaged planet.
It’s important to remember that Divination is a gathering skill, not unlike Fishing, Woodcutting, Mining, etc. With that knowledge, training Divination is a slow trudge through a seemingly endless bog of grind. You start out at level one with the basic wisps, and every ten levels you leave your current spot and make your way to the next tier of wisps. An oversimplification? Yes, but if you play RuneScape then you already know that this is generally how gathering skills work, except Divination doesn’t give you the piles of items to sell off at the end of the day.
As a gathering skill, Divination is meant to complement other skills. Fishing gives resources to cooking, mining to smithing, farming to herblore, etc. Divine energy can be weaved into portents and signs, powerful items that are carried in the inventory and activated automatically. These items offer benefits including automatic healing once your health drops below half, the ability to save more items upon death, increased gravestone timers, resurrection on the spot, automatic banking of items collected, and more.
Divine Locations are one of Divination’s odder creations. Locations are essentially skill hotspots that are weaved and placed down, allowing anyone around to harvest before it disappears (generally after 30 seconds). The lesson to take home is sharing is caring, and Divination rewards plopping down your divine location in a crowded area by just handing you resources as other players harvest them. The downside to divine locations is that only one can be put down per day, and you can only harvest a limited amount of those created by other players.
And finally, players have access as they level up to abilities that allow them to “upgrade” resources of lower level to those of higher level. While it sounds cool to convert three coal into a mithril ore, or two trout into a tuna, the RuneScape Wiki shows that you’d be better off just selling the resources and buying the higher material at a profit.
Ultimately, Divination is a means to an end. Divine energy can be traded to other players at the benefit/cost of experience gain. Many signs and portents can be traded, but odds are most of your divine energy is better spent boosting your experience gain towards the next tier of wisps.
With the launch of RuneScape 3, Jagex has thrown the world of Gielinor into turmoil. The Gods are returning and they all want a piece of the dead god Guthix’s power. Today’s update introduces the quest Death of Chivalry, the first quest to be fully set in the new evolving story. Players will team up with the White Knights under orders from the god Saradomin himself to infiltrate the Black Knight’s headquarters and uncover a mysterious artefact to aid in the ongoing battle between the multiple gods and their followers.
According to a press release sent out by Jagex, players will need to be careful in the decisions made during the quest as their impact will be felt “far and wide.” The quest will be available for everyone, including non-subscribers, and while it is designed for players of all levels, those with higher combat skills will be happy to know that the quest scales its difficulty to the player. Death of Chivalry goes live later today.
(Source: Jagex Press Release)
No system is perfect, which is why companies institute checks and balances to ensure that people are not unfairly punished. In the case of Jagex, the company is pretty confident that if you’ve been permanently banned, there’s nothing more to talk about. According to the company’s account FAQ, appeals for permanent bans are not being looked at.
If your account is currently permanently banned, we deem the offence serious enough to permanently remove the account from our game. At the moment, we are not reviewing these bans and if this changes, you will be notified.
If it is any consolation, the player who sent us this tip noted that it the rule isn’t exactly being enforced and there are some false positives being restored.
(Source: RuneScape Wiki)
The launch of RuneScape 3 has thrown RuneScape’s lore across the room and back again. Much like when Cataclysm launched with World of Warcraft, many of the existing quests had to be either rewritten or removed entirely because they dealt with a land or scenario that no longer existed. RuneScape 3 ushered in a literal new age, where the gods are free to return to the world, and several quest series no longer make sense in the current context of the game. Take Rune Mysteries, for instance: The original quest has a landmark role in the world lore as the player rediscovers the runecrafting altars and opens up a renewable source of runes for the entire world. When Jagex rewrote the quest, the events of the original Rune Mysteries became historical, accomplished by previous players and now part of the past.
So then I got to thinking about the convenient timing of the Old School RuneScape servers. Since the events of Old School RuneScape are mostly considered historical in RuneScape 3, perhaps this is a way to preserve that part of RuneScape’s history and allow players to participate and see the events for themselves, players who either joined after the release of RuneScape 3 or never managed to complete those quests. It is an interesting theory, even if it is probably wrong.
The launch of RuneScape 3 has thrown RuneScape’s lore across the room and back again. Much like when Cataclysm launched with World of Warcraft, many of the existing quests had to be either rewritten or removed entirely because they dealt with a land or scenario that no longer existed. RuneScape 3 ushered in a literal new age, where the gods are free to return to the world, and several quest series no longer make sense in the current context of the game. Take Rune Mysteries, for instance: The original quest has a landmark role in the world lore as the player rediscovers the runecrafting altars and opens up a renewable source of runes for the entire world. When Jagex rewrote the quest, the events of the original Rune Mysteries became historical, accomplished by previous players and now part of the past.
So then I got to thinking about the convenient timing of the Old School RuneScape servers. Since the events of Old School RuneScape are mostly considered historical in RuneScape 3, perhaps this is a way to preserve that part of RuneScape’s history and allow players to participate and see the events for themselves, players who either joined after the release of RuneScape 3 or never managed to complete those quests. It is an interesting theory, even if it is probably wrong.
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