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RS News : International PvP War Posted By Alixzander on 29/07/10 06:48PM
To end the month of July, we are proud to announce our massive international PvP War. Battle the opposition in a team-vs-team massacre within your own language battalion. Only one team will have the strength to win this epic war!
The war will consist of six separate battles, taking place in the centre of Barbarian Village on PvP World 21 at these times:
Saturday, 31st of July:
00:00
11:00
18:00
Sunday, 1st of August:
00:00
11:00
18:00
The free-for-all battle will take place with four different teams of two language communities each, fighting for the honour and recognition of an international victory for their team. Each team will need to wear their own team cape, so check out the forums for more details.
Be warned: this isn’t an event for the faint of heart. The PvP International War takes place on a PVP world, which means that you risk losing your items, weapons and armour on death.
If you and your clan are ready to support your language community, join us in this massive war and prove you are the strongest!
Mod Achilles
RuneScape Community Management
HS Community : Our Next Clan Event - Dance Till You Drop! Posted By Jay on 27/07/10 10:58PM
I feel like dancing, dancing, dance the night away! The latest event from the HintScape team is "Dance Till You Drop" the event will be held in the Falador party room.
We will be bringing along tons of items and a few big prizes for lucky poppers to place in the party room chest ourselves but the more you bring and add the better the party will be.
Whilst the clock is ticking away waiting for the balloons to fall you must dance your heart away, whether this be using emotes or follow dancing it doesn't matter XD. When the balloons fall get popping and put what you don't want back in the chest so we can carry on dancing the night away!
Event Details
Event Name
Dance Till You Drop
Date
07/08/10
F2P/P2P
F2P
Forum Thread
Location
The Party Room
World
19
Clothing
Dress To Impress
Bring Along
All items you are willing to put in the party room drop chest.
HS Community : 343 New Forum Avatars! Posted By Jay on 27/07/10 02:19PM
Today i have been working on some new Avatars for the forums, i have created 343 new ones for you to choose from if you can find one you like yourself!
The new category's are:
Rs Chat Heads 229 Avatars
Rs Foes 114 Avatars
I hope you enjoy these new avatars and have some fun with them!
Regards
Head Administrator Jay
Website Updates : New Music! Posted By Alixzander on 25/07/10 02:06PM
Today we have added a some more tracks to Hintscape Radio!
Here are some of the newest tracks to hit our radio streamer!
Katy Perry feat. Snoop Dogg : "California Gurls"
Enrique Iglesias feat. Pitbull : "I Like It"
JLS : "The Club Is Alive"
Usher feat. will.i.am : "OMG"
David Guetta & Chris Willis feat. Fergie & LMFAO : "Gettin' Over You"
Kylie Minogue : "All the Lovers"
Professor Green feat. Lily Allen : "Just Be Good to Green"
Lady Gaga : "Alejandro"
Timbaland feat. Justin Timberlake : "Carry Out"
Plus over 40 more!
Head Admin Alix
Server Manager
RS News : Triumvirate Gathering and Soul Wars Challenge Posted By Alixzander on 23/07/10 05:04PM
We’ve got two epic RuneScape Triumvirate events lined up for you this weekend...
First up, on Saturday 24th July, the three Triumvirate factions will be putting aside their differences for one massive celebration. The Triumvirate Gathering is an entirely player run party, which really shows what the Triumvirate is all about. Hosted by Sun Sioux, Jonesdawiz and Pro Reaver this epic party offers a great opportunity to meet the members of the Triumvirate and learn more about them.
We’ll be joining them to get up to all manner of mischief, from costume competitions to some mild Varrock-based arson, in what promises to be an entertaining day of events. Everyone is welcome; you don’t need to have signed up to the Triumvirate to come along. The party will start at 6pm BST/forum time in Varrock’s market square on world 50. You can find out more information and meet the rest of the factions in the Triumvirate Gathering forum thread.
Having a party with your Triumvirate fellows is all well and good, but pleasantries can only last so long...as will be proven by this weekend’s second event – the Soul Wars Triumvirate Challenge! Yes, the Triumvirate will come together in the spirit of having a big messy fight and compete in a series of Soul Wars matches. The challenge will be running all weekend and is the perfect opportunity to hurl abuse at other factions and gain some well deserved influence in the process. You can find more details on the Triumvirate Challenge – Soul Wars forum thread.
If you have yet to choose your faction and sign up to the Triumvirate, there’s still time to do so by heading to the Triumvirate Guide & FAQ forum thread.
Mod Crow (Reaver)
Community Management
HS Community : Our Next Clan Event - Dance Till You Drop! Posted By Jay on 27/07/10 10:58PM
I feel like dancing, dancing, dance the night away! The latest event from the HintScape team is "Dance Till You Drop" the event will be held in the Falador party room.
We will be bringing along tons of items and a few big prizes for lucky poppers to place in the party room chest ourselves but the more you bring and add the better the party will be.
Whilst the clock is ticking away waiting for the balloons to fall you must dance your heart away, whether this be using emotes or follow dancing it doesn't matter XD. When the balloons fall get popping and put what you don't want back in the chest so we can carry on dancing the night away!
Event Details
Event Name
Dance Till You Drop
Date
07/08/10
F2P/P2P
F2P
Forum Thread
Location
The Party Room
World
19
Clothing
Dress To Impress
Bring Along
All items you are willing to put in the party room drop chest.
HS Community : 343 New Forum Avatars! Posted By Jay on 27/07/10 02:19PM
Today i have been working on some new Avatars for the forums, i have created 343 new ones for you to choose from if you can find one you like yourself!
The new category's are:
Rs Chat Heads 229 Avatars
Rs Foes 114 Avatars
I hope you enjoy these new avatars and have some fun with them!
Regards
Head Administrator Jay
Website Updates : New Music! Posted By Alixzander on 25/07/10 02:06PM
Today we have added a some more tracks to Hintscape Radio!
Here are some of the newest tracks to hit our radio streamer!
Katy Perry feat. Snoop Dogg : "California Gurls"
Enrique Iglesias feat. Pitbull : "I Like It"
JLS : "The Club Is Alive"
Usher feat. will.i.am : "OMG"
David Guetta & Chris Willis feat. Fergie & LMFAO : "Gettin' Over You"
Kylie Minogue : "All the Lovers"
Professor Green feat. Lily Allen : "Just Be Good to Green"
Lady Gaga : "Alejandro"
Timbaland feat. Justin Timberlake : "Carry Out"
Plus over 40 more!
Head Admin Alix
Server Manager
HS Community : Forum Ranks And Titles Update Posted By Jay on 22/07/10 12:58AM
Today we have restructured and improved upon the forum Ranks and User Titles, we spent some time deliberating on how we could best go about this and make it as fun as possible for everyone, here's what we came up with:
Forum Ranks And Titles
Rank Name
Posts Needed
Rank Image
Chocolate Bar Poster
0
Bronze Bar Poster
10
Iron bar Poster
30
Silver Bar Poster
60
Steel Bar Poster
100
Gold Bar Poster
150
Mithril Bar Poster
250
Adamant Bar Poster
350
Runite Bar Poster
550
Dragon Bar Poster
1000
We have also changed how staff are represented around the forums, the new staff ranks are as follows:
Staff Ranks
Staff Position
Rank Image
Head Administrator
Forum Administrator
Moderator
Ex-Staff Member
And a small update for our gold subscribers. from now on they will have a gold coin () after their names everywhere it appears, just to show that they are gold subscribers!
I hope you find these new ranks easier to understand and i can't wait to see who gets Dragon first!
Regards
Head Administrator Jay
Website Updates : Dungeoneering Skill Guide Update Posted By Jay on 19/07/10 09:14PM
With the relese of the new Dungeoneering content from Jagex today we have added the new information in to our Dungeoneering Skill Guide.
When all Bonuses you can gain from each tier of each role in each class of the ring of Kinship are discovered we will update that information and let you know its availible.
I hope the additions to this guide are helpfull to all!
Regards Admin Jonathan
Lead Admin / Content Manager
RS News : International PvP War Posted By Alixzander on 29/07/10 06:48PM
To end the month of July, we are proud to announce our massive international PvP War. Battle the opposition in a team-vs-team massacre within your own language battalion. Only one team will have the strength to win this epic war!
The war will consist of six separate battles, taking place in the centre of Barbarian Village on PvP World 21 at these times:
Saturday, 31st of July:
00:00
11:00
18:00
Sunday, 1st of August:
00:00
11:00
18:00
The free-for-all battle will take place with four different teams of two language communities each, fighting for the honour and recognition of an international victory for their team. Each team will need to wear their own team cape, so check out the forums for more details.
Be warned: this isn’t an event for the faint of heart. The PvP International War takes place on a PVP world, which means that you risk losing your items, weapons and armour on death.
If you and your clan are ready to support your language community, join us in this massive war and prove you are the strongest!
Mod Achilles
RuneScape Community Management
RS News : Triumvirate Gathering and Soul Wars Challenge Posted By Alixzander on 23/07/10 05:04PM
We’ve got two epic RuneScape Triumvirate events lined up for you this weekend...
First up, on Saturday 24th July, the three Triumvirate factions will be putting aside their differences for one massive celebration. The Triumvirate Gathering is an entirely player run party, which really shows what the Triumvirate is all about. Hosted by Sun Sioux, Jonesdawiz and Pro Reaver this epic party offers a great opportunity to meet the members of the Triumvirate and learn more about them.
We’ll be joining them to get up to all manner of mischief, from costume competitions to some mild Varrock-based arson, in what promises to be an entertaining day of events. Everyone is welcome; you don’t need to have signed up to the Triumvirate to come along. The party will start at 6pm BST/forum time in Varrock’s market square on world 50. You can find out more information and meet the rest of the factions in the Triumvirate Gathering forum thread.
Having a party with your Triumvirate fellows is all well and good, but pleasantries can only last so long...as will be proven by this weekend’s second event – the Soul Wars Triumvirate Challenge! Yes, the Triumvirate will come together in the spirit of having a big messy fight and compete in a series of Soul Wars matches. The challenge will be running all weekend and is the perfect opportunity to hurl abuse at other factions and gain some well deserved influence in the process. You can find more details on the Triumvirate Challenge – Soul Wars forum thread.
If you have yet to choose your faction and sign up to the Triumvirate, there’s still time to do so by heading to the Triumvirate Guide & FAQ forum thread.
Mod Crow (Reaver)
Community Management
RS News : RuneFest Gallery Competition Posted By Alixzander on 22/07/10 04:32PM
If there’s one thing we like, it’s RuneScape artwork and, as you’ll have seen from previous Players’ Galleries, there’s no shortage of artistic talent among the RuneScape community. At RuneFest 2010, we’ll be showing off a selection of our favourite pieces from previous Players’ Galleries in our RuneFest Gallery, along with a selection of other great artwork from the development of RuneScape.
All that awesome artwork isn’t quite enough to quench our thirst for RuneScape inspired creativity, though, so we’re also excited to announce the launch of the RuneFest Gallery Competition! The idea is simple: draw a picture, send it to us, and we’ll take a selection of our favourites along with us to show off at RuneFest. Not only that, but the best entries will also be given pride of place in the Players’ Gallery for that month.
But wait, there’s more... To keep things interesting and in-touch with RuneFest, entries to the RuneFest Gallery Competition must include all three of the following:
A Runefest flagstaff
A Golden Gnome
Bob the Cat (or Evil Bob)
How you incorporate these is entirely up to you; you could make them a main feature of your artwork or just a small part of a larger picture. You’ll find some examples on the RuneFest Gallery Competition forum thread.
Alongside being displayed at RuneFest, the players behind our favourite entries will also be sent a signed canvas of their work, along with a RuneFest goody bag and a lifetime RuneScape membership!
The competition is open from now until Monday 16th August. The winners will be announced and shown in a Players’ Gallery towards the end of that week. To find out more about the competition including how to enter, rules and a discussion, head on over to this forum thread.
Good luck, everyone!
Mod Hohbein
RuneScape Community Management
In other news...
Following player feedback, we’ve decided to include the Animation category in the Golden Gnome Video Awards after all, as originally planned! So, you can now submit animated short stories/RSMVs to your heart’s content!
RS News : Live Developer Q&A Posted By Jay on 21/07/10 06:48PM
Have you ever been jealous of the Wise Old Man’s lovely party hat? Ever wondered just why goutweed is so popular with trolls? Perhaps you’ve enjoyed battling alongside Zanik or helping Veldaban solve dwarven mysteries? Well, this week’s live Q&A session should be a treat for you.
On Friday 23nd July at 9pm (BST/forum time), we’ll be hosting a live forum questions and answer session with two of RuneScape’s developers: Mod Ash and Mod John A. They have both been behind major quests; Mod Ash's previous projects include My Arm’s Big Adventure, Swan Song and the Wise Old Man’s latest adventure, Love Story, while Mod John A is best known for his work on goblin quests like The Chosen Commander, and the continuation of the dwarf storyline with Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf.
So get your questions for Mod Ash and Mod John A ready, and make sure you’re on the forums when the question thread is unlocked at 9pm. Questions should be posted on this forum thread and the answers will be posted on this forum thread. Have you got your thinking cap on? Oh yes, you look lovely. Enjoy the session!
Mod Kat
Community Management
RS News : Golden Gnome Video Awards Launch Posted By Lucy on 19/07/10 04:27PM
Following our announcement of the Golden Gnome Video Awards earlier in the year, we’re very excited to announce the launch of our biggest video competition to date! For those of you that aren’t clued up on the Golden Gnomes, think the Oscars, just with less floppy-haired actors, more RuneScape players and far more entertaining acceptance speeches!
There are four awards up for grabs, so, whether you love machinima, real-life film, stories or music videos, there’s a category for you. The categories are:
Best RuneScape Machinima Short Story
Best RuneScape Machinima Music Video (RSMV)
Best RuneScape Live Action Short Story
Best RuneScape Live Action Music Video
The competition launches today and we will be gladly accepting entries until Monday 16th August. We’ll then sit our panel of judges down to find their favourite two videos from each category.
Then it’s on to RuneFest, where the Golden Gnome Video Awards will be held. Special guests will present each video live on stage to the RuneFest audience, who will then vote for the best video of each category.
Now, finally, on to the prizes! Along with having their videos played before everyone at RuneFest 2010, four winners will each receive:
Big Tickets for a trip to Jagex
A goody bag packed with RuneFest goodies (including some autographed memorabilia)
Lifetime RuneScape membership
And, of course, a coveted Golden Gnome Award (yes, a Golden Gnome that you can call your own!)
All in all, the Golden Gnomes is shaping up to be the biggest and best video competition we’ve ever held, and we can’t wait to start checking out your submissions!
For more detail on the Golden Gnomes, including rules, prizes, an FAQ and a discussion, head over to the dedicated forum thread.
Before we go, the eagle-eyed among you may notice the format of the competition has changed slightly since our first announcement (namely that we don’t have an animation category any more). Don’t get us wrong, we absolutely love animation, but after seeing the amazing shorts we’ve been sent in recent months, we want to allow more than four weeks of production time for animation shorts. Don’t panic, animators! We’ll instead be holding an animation competition in its own right towards the end of the year.
Good luck!
RuneScape Community Management
RS Dev Blogs : Back in Session Posted By Alixzander on 09/07/10 04:25PM
Very occasionally, you get something curious to do as a RuneScape editor: as an example, you might get asked to name the fishes in Daemonheim, or you'll be requested to make a Scottish squirrel less intimidating. With the court cases, we were approached by Mod Nancy in October 2009 with the question "who in RuneScape would end up in a court case and why?". This is the kind of creative question that we love answering, so we threw ourselves into the task with a hop and a skip. If you're like us, you're already thinking of ideas and suggestions yourself.
We presented Mod Nancy with several dozen suggestions, and she quickly began to strip away the more...um...unusual ones. If it wasn't for Mod Nancy's uncanny ability to tell the difference between quality ideas and rubbish ones, then you might have been defending the following NPCs for crimes in RuneScape:
- Bob for J-walking
- Cowkiller7331 for Grievous Bovine Harm
- Prison Pete for Squatting
- Sir Vant vs The Squire's Family for Negligent Knightery
- Evil Chicken for Assault and Battery (or Fowling)
- Grim Reaper for Manslaughter
- Freaky Forrester for Poaching
Mod Nancy then spent the best part of three months putting together roughly 150,000 words of content for 16 court cases, to be split into two batches and released in 2010. To give you an idea, that's roughly the length of The Hobbit AND The Fellowship of the Ring sellotaped together, so you can imagine the amount of time and effort that was spent on writing, editing and localising it.
On the subject of writing and editing, we adopted a slightly different approach for this project. To split the gargantuan workload, it was decided that Mod Nancy would produce a basic structure for the text, and the editors would write over the top to produce the court cases. So, if there's some dialogue you loved or loathed, we're often the ones to blame!
The first batch of court cases were designed to be shorter and less complicated, so we could get everyone used to the mechanics of prosecuting or defending a case. With Court Case Batch 2 we can add more complexity, to truly test the skills that you built up while defending or prosecuting Mugger Level 6 and the other Batch 1 NPCs. While you were limited to fingerprint comparison and talking to witnesses before a case in Batch 1, Batch 2 will have true crime-scene investigation and on-the-scene interrogation. It goes without saying (but I'll say it anyway) that these 11 more difficult cases will come with greater XP and item rewards, plus an item for those who complete them all.
As writers, we gained more licence to be creative and humorous with Court Case Batch 2. Where the first batch was necessarily simple, Batch 2 will be twisty and over-the-top to make the case that much more difficult to crack. Players who like their dialogue to be rich and full of puzzles will find 11 diverse cases, focusing on more humorous issues (is Evil Dave truly EVIL?) and serious, intriguing cases (should the barbarians pay reparations to the wizards for past invasions?). I had particular fun working with Evil Dave and Party Pete again, who have always been a joy to write for in the Postbag from the Hedge.
There have been obstacles to overcome, of course; for example, in each court case, some dialogue questions are delivered four times: by the player, when gathering information from witnesses; from the player when in the courtroom; from the NPC Prosecution lawyer; and from the NPC Defence lawyer. This introduces an interesting problem: should the NPC witnesses reply in an identical fashion in each instance? If you said 'yes', then a player might hear the same dialogue three times in one case, which would test any player's patience. If you said 'no', then the NPC will be changing their story and delivering inconsistent evidence, which would be unfair on the player. Writing dialogue for the NPCs involved walking a fine line between character variety and consistency of evidence.
To give you an idea on the project's status, work has just finished on the writing and editing of Court Case Batch 2 (with translation in progress) and we are working towards a release date within the next few months. Personally, I plan to wear double eyepatches while investigating crime scenes, to make it feel like I'm in CSI: Miami. I might even have some well-timed puns and quips ready.
Visit this forum thread if you want to discuss the content of this blog.
RS Dev Blogs : Who are the Signature Heroes? Posted By Alixzander on 29/06/10 04:00PM
Who are the Signature Heroes?
by Mod John A 29-Jun-2010
By now you should all have seen the new website background that we released with the Dungeoneering skill, featuring adventurers wearing Dungeoneering mage, melee, and ranger gear. The characters are there in order to model the new equipment, but they’re not just random models: they’re some of the new RuneScape Signature Heroes. You’ll be seeing more of them in future, so we think it’s about time you were introduced.
What are the signature heroes?
There are several RuneScape quests where you have an NPC ally, for example Zanik in the goblin quest series. Having Zanik accompany you through the quests opened up a lot of story possibilities, and I think it made for a more emotionally engaging experience than if you’d gone through the quests alone. We’ve given you allies in a few other quests as well: Cyrisus in Dream Mentor, the Wise Old Man in Swan Song, and others.
The idea of the Signature Heroes is to give you a new set of ally characters who aren’t tied to a particular quest series. The feeling should be that they’re adventurers like you, and you cross paths with them at various times in your career. Hopefully they’ll not only make for good quests, but also enhance the whole game by putting specific faces on the idea of being a RuneScape hero. We’re not planning for the Signature Heroes to dominate the game - there’s still room for lots of solo quests, and other ally characters will continue to appear - but the new heroes give us more storytelling options.
Another use of the Signature Heroes will be in artwork. Previously we’ve produced artwork depicting adventurers in action, but the characters have always been generic ones created separately for each picture. The Signature Heroes provide us with a set of characters we can re-use in different situations, giving the artwork a sense of continuity. In the future, if we were to release a new boss monster (for example) and wanted to make an image of some adventurers fighting it, we’d use the Signature Heroes. The new heroes may appear in other ways as well, for example in Lores and Histories stories.
The ranger is Ozan. He’s a dashing rogue: charismatic, flamboyant, and carefree. He was born amid the bazaars of Al Kharid, grew on the mean streets of Varrock, and since then he’s travelled to every corner of the known world. He seeks out adventure for its own sake, exploring forgotten tombs and pulling off seemingly impossible feats of skill and daring.
The mage is Ariane. She’s a native of Seers’ Village, and has inherited the seers’ limited precognitive ability. She’s studied at the Wizards’ Tower and Mages’ Guild, and dabbled in almost every school of magic. She’s rational and idealistic, driven to discover all the magical secrets of the world, and to use them to make the world a better place.
The warrior is Sir Ewain. He was born in Falador, and worked his way through the ranks of the White Knights before being recruited as a Temple Knight. He’s now one of the Temple Knights’ best agents, and has been granted free rein to pursue the knights’ goals as an independent adventurer. He’s a classic knight in shining armour, but as a Temple Knight he’s also something of a secret agent, prepared to use stealth and deception to achieve his goals.
Besides those three, there are three more Signature Heroes who haven’t appeared in artwork yet. One of them has already appeared in-game: Xenia, from The Blood Pact, an experienced adventurer who acts as a mentor to the other characters. There are two more whom we’ll introduce later: a master smith named Linza, and a mysterious warrior known only as the Raptor.
The seventh hero
In a sense, there’s a seventh Signature Hero: your character. The aim of the Signature Heroes is not to overshadow the player character in the game’s storyline, but to enhance them, by providing a cast of ally characters, a community of other adventurers with whom they can interact. There’s a quest in development right now where you can work with Sir Ewain on a Temple Knight mission, and we’ll be producing quests involving the other heroes later this year.
If you’d like to discuss the Signature Heroes, please check out this forum thread.
RS Dev Blogs : Beyond the Release Posted By Jay on 30/05/10 04:13PM
Since the release of Dungeoneering, a plethora of adventurers have been delving the depths of Daemonheim and uncovering its many secrets. As we've watched and listened to the feedback of these adventurers and observed how they've been reacting, we came up with a bunch of cool ideas of how we could improve the Dungeoneering experience, and so, alongside building the new content for the batch 2 release, we've been working on doing them! These updates are in addition to the new floors, challenge rooms and bosses that we'll be adding to Daemonheim as part of Dungeoneering batch 2, and are likely to be added to the game before batch 2 comes out.
That takes class
One thing we've noticed when watching people play together in parties is that they often specialise in certain roles to help each other out - things like warriors in heavy armour protecting the more vulnerable mages and rangers while also dealing damage, or other players preventing skillers from being attacked while they're providing their party with tasty fish, protective gear and sharp sticks to poke their enemies with.
We thought it would be nice to encourage and reward these player-created classes, so we've been hard at work designing a system to upgrade your Ring of Kinship (using Dungeoneering tokens) for use inside a dungeon.
These upgrades will allow you to specialise in a role, and will provide unique benefits for doing so. There will be specialisations available for each type of player in Daemonheim - be you a noble warrior, an archer extraordinaire, a prodigal mage or an artisan of non-combat skills, there's a Ring of Kinship for you!
Are you constantly slaving over a hot furnace to make items, and wish you could waste less material, and maybe squeeze an extra dagger out of those five bars you made into a platebody? There's a Ring of Kinship for that! Do you spend a lot of time behind a kiteshield, taking all the attacks that would otherwise smush your magic-wielding partner, and wish you could take less damage to make your food last longer? There's a Ring of Kinship for that! Or perhaps you simply spend a lot of time sniping enemies from a distance, and wish your arrows would fly straighter and truer to deal your maximum potential damage more often? There's a Ring of kinship for that, too!
Building the future
We noticed that one of the most common things said is that getting around dungeons could be easier. This is what we originally introduced the Gatestone spell for, but it soon became evident that it wasn't sufficient. For a start, it has a Magic level requirement, plus it takes quite a few different runes.
We also noticed that a few skills - namely Herblore, Farming and Construction - weren't being used as much as we had anticipated within Daemonheim. We deduced that this too was because of accessibility - most skills can be performed within the start room, but Farming and, therefore, Herblore could not, and you can't make potions if you don't have herbs!
On top of this, we realised that the only use for Construction in Daemonheim is in skill challenges. While these do benefit the party by allowing progress, there's nothing that a high Construction level can do for you unless you happen to come across a very specific challenge.
With these issues in mind we came up with something pretty nifty: a Construction hotspot in the start room!
This hotspot will start life as a 'Groupstone portal', a conduit anyone can use to teleport to the new Groupstone (which is similar to the Gatestone, except that everyone in the group can use it and it will never shatter on use). The hotspot can be replaced with various other states, including a Farming patch or a Cooking range. We've also had a second look at the rune cost of the Create Gatestone spell to make it more accessible.
Daemonheim and beyond
We've taken some time to consider the surface world applications of Dungeoneering - things your character can do outside of Daemonheim thanks to their hard work at levelling the new skill. We've come up with the concept of reward dungeons.
Several places across RuneScape will have extra nooks and crannies added that only those skilled in delving the depths of Daemonheim will fathom how to enter. These areas may contain a few extra spawns of that over-camped monster you're trying to kill; or perhaps some additional resources for you to collect with less competition from other players; or maybe, just maybe, a fearsome creature new to the surface of RuneScape, freshly escaped from the frozen depths of Daemonheim itself!
What's in a name?
We've also been wracking our brains to come up with some new awards for the dungeon end interface (or, as we affectionately call it, the 'WIN-terface'), so that you can have all new reasons to show off to your friends (or hang your head in shame) after a bout of Dungeoneering.
Here I go again on my own
And, last but not least, we haven't forgotten the plight of all you solo adventurers. From a technical standpoint, we've been making a fair bit of progress with allowing single players to re-enter dungeons after disconnecting; however, this is a very big project and is technically very costly, so it will still take us some time to perfect the system. As such, this particular update may not be released at the same time as everything else covered in this blog. All we can do is thank you for your patience and assure you that we are definitely working on it .
Well, that's enough blogging for now. All this awesome stuff isn't going to code itself!
By Mod Lion
RS Dev Blogs : Return of the Wise Old Man Posted By Jay on 12/05/10 10:20AM
Its been a long time since we did anything with the Wise Old Man of Draynor Village, so I'm delighted to be working on a new Wise Old Man quest that will feature combat, puzzles, magical hackery and an extremely twisted old woman. I thought I'd call it Love Story.
The Wise Old Man
WOM's notorious trip to the bank.
Let's start by reminding ourselves who the Wise Old Man is...
He turned up quietly enough as a minor character who'd chat about various topics and pay members to do little jobs for him. Suddenly he revealed a whole new side to himself with the violent robbery of Draynor Bank; clearly he isn't the Saradominist good guy that you might have expected him to be! If you look through his telescope, you'll learn that he might be planning another robbery involving the Wizards' Tower. My Swan Song quest calls for the player to accompany the Wise Old Man on one final adventure to conclude his heroic career (his swan song). Following the events of that quest, the Wise Old Man considers himself to be permanently retired from adventuring.
There are clearly some loose ends here. Is he really going to attack the Wizards' Tower? Will the bank guard ever come down from his hiding place in the tree? What does Traiborn mean when he talks about thingummywuts? Who will get the old man's hat off him?
A quest about questing
I'm very fond of the character of the Wise Old Man because he's so flawed while still being likeable. He's a Saradominist adventurer; people like that tend to be stereotypical good guys; however, the bank robbery shows that he's really not such a good guy after all. Yet he doesn't see himself as a bad guy. If you confronted him about the bank robbery, he'd have explained that he was furious to find that the world had never adequately rewarded him for his lifetime of doing adventures to help people, so he felt that he had the right to take what he wanted from that bank. Perhaps he was never such a good guy in the first place if he did it all in the hope of rewards; I'll leave you to ponder the ethical issues at your leisure.
The Wise Old Man is a sort of archetypal adventurer figure who's done lots of heroic deeds throughout his life. In a way, he's a lot like a player doing quests! What is a typical quest? Someone wants help. They can't solve the problem themselves, so they need a passing adventurer to do the job. At the end, the adventurer is rewarded and is sent away satisfied that they've helped. That's basically the Wise Old Man's history too; it's been established that he did adventures like these when he was younger, helping save villages from monsters and other similar deeds. We can, therefore, think of the Wise Old Man as being like a player who's primarily interested in questing. During Love Story, you'll even get to see him perform the Quest Cape emote.
What would be a fitting opponent for this archetypal quester? I came up with the idea of an enemy who'd hate the Wise Old Man (and you) because she doesn't like people doing quests. So, in this quest, you won't just be fighting for your own life, you'll be defending the reputation of all adventurers against a foe who thinks you're a stupid bunch of do-gooders.
Along with the combat and puzzles, this will be a chance to step outside the fantasy for a moment and take a tongue-in-cheek look at what the game's characters might think of their universe and the players wandering around it.
Development
WOM's "player-owned" house!
I've been keen to produce another Wise Old Man quest for a very long time. Despite having been in the RuneScape Content Team for over 5 years, I've only written two quests (Swan Song & My Arm's Big Adventure), which came out years ago. Most of my work since then has been rather less exciting, even if it affects more players (such as the right-click option for replying to private messages), so it's a nice change for me to be working on a quest again.
I first pitched the concept to Mod Mark over a year ago, but it's only recently that we've had the chance to get this quest into development. Mod Mark and Mod John A helped me adjust the proposed plot to make the romance less abusive, then Mod Alex R and Mod MikeW started work on the graphics while I churned out vast swathes of code. As soon as the final cutscene was complete, Mod Bond began creating sound effects and arranging the quest's music.
Mod Animal, Mod Frantic and Mod James H from the Quality Assurance team are now busily hunting for bugs and suggesting improvements. In the meantime, I'd recommend getting your Construction, Smithing and Crafting to the upper 60s, and your Magic to the upper 70s.
I hope you enjoy it when it comes out.
RS Dev Blogs : Clan Submissions Page Posted By Jay on 30/04/10 03:47PM
Editor's note
Hello everyone and welcome to April's Clan Submissions Page! It's been a very exciting time around RuneScape with the release of the new skill and work ongoing with the planning of this year's Jagex Cup 2010. In this edition, we're taking an exclusive look at the initial plans for the Jagex Cup so that we can get your feedback, because, after all, it's a competition for you all. More information on that later in the blog. As always, we want to hear about you, your clan and what you're doing in the community. If you have something you'd like to have added to the page in future editions then send it on through to me at postbag@jagex.com with 'Clan' in the title and I'll see what I can do.
Mod Timbo
Clan artwork
Staff interview: Mod Mat K, part 1
Not only do we like to interview some of the most interesting clans in the community, we also interview members of staff who are involved with clans or have been during their RuneScape career. This month, I caught up with Mod Mat K to talk about clans. As a lot of people already know, Daddy K was involved with the clan community before he joined Jagex and has been involved ever since - both in a personal and official sense. Now no longer working with clans, I thought I'd talk to him about his experiences, what he's learned and how he got introduced to the clan community.
Mod Timbo: How did you get introduced to the clan community from when you were playing RuneScape?
Mod Mat K: I am afraid that I have to blame my wife for that. Back in 2004, both my wife and I played RuneScape, and she joined a clan (whose name will remain secret). I came along to a few of their events and PK trips and soon after I joined too.
Mod Timbo: What was the biggest lure to you from the clan community that made you stay?
Mod Mat K: Undeniably, it is the people that you meet and play with. Every day you would see someone being passionate about the clan, whether it be a warlord telling you off for piling the wrong person, recruitment drives or someone having a personal problem and looking for a bit of support. The passion, purpose and focus of being in a clan is very addictive.
Mod Timbo: Which clans stood out to you over the years either from just talking, warring or being a part of them?
Mod Mat K: You know, I thought long and hard about this question. The easy answer would have been to say clans like Damage Incorporated, Dark Slayers or Noobs Inc - all are awesome clans - but I think that the clans that I remember the most are two clans that really stood out for me. The first is THE clan - every time I fought alongside or against them they were a good bunch of people with a great supportive mentality.
The other clan that has stood out to me is The Wilderness Guardians, not least because of His Lordship's dedication to the clan community. He has been a forerunner in the clan community ever since I can remember.
Mod Timbo: Are you still involved with a clan today?
Mod Mat K: Once you are in the clan community, you are always involved with a clan... There is no escape.
Continued further down...
Jagex Clan Cup 2010
Last year, we held our first large-scale competition called the Jagex Cup, which was designed to show who was the best clan in three categories: combat, skilling and a combination of the two. The competition was a great success and everyone that took part had a lot of fun with us finding out who the best three clans were:
The Titans - Combat Cup winners
Divination - Skilling Cup winners
Wicked Fury - Combination Cup winners
We took a lot of feedback from the players during the planning stages of last year's competition that helped shape the competition and iron out a few creases with processes and rules. This is why we're doing so again, so that your voice can be heard during the planning stages of the competition!
The full plan for the Jagex Cup 2010 can be found at this forum thread that I've set up in the Clan Discussion forum. If you would like to get involved with the planning, feedback and suggestions for this year's competition, then sign in and get posting! Here is a quick list of changes made from last year to whet your appetite:
•Inclusion of sub-divisions to the Combat Cup to include a ‘pure' division, a P2P division and capped wars.
•A clearer system of registering your players and your clan in the competition, including live member lists of each clan.
•A new way of scoring a clan in the Skilling Cup with our ‘buddy skills' method.
I very much look forward to seeing your feedback and suggestions!
Mod Timbo
Clan Facts
As a regular feature, we'll be spotlighting a few of our clans from the community in different categories. Don't worry if you're clan doesn't appear here and you think that it should; let us know via email at postbag@jagex.com with ‘Clan' in the subject and we'll see what we can do.
Some of our highest-level clans:
Team TKO Blitz, Violent Resoultion and RuneScape Dinasty
Some of our oldest clans:
Wilderness Guardians, Noobs Inc and Dark Slayers
Some of our more unusual clans:
Skillers of the Round Table, The Organisation of Assassins and Friend Space
Some of our newest and upcoming clans:
TheUpside, Agony of Defeat and Ancient Slayers
Clan Articles
Every so often, we receive a number of articles about clans through Postie Pete's electronic mailbox and it's high time that we got to share them with you all! As always, if you have something that you'd like to write about and share with the community about clans, send it to us via postbag@jagex.com with 'Clan' in the title so we can pick it out. Without any further ado, here is the article written by Ocean Azure.
About warring and having fun
Written by Ocean Azure
It seems the focal points of clans nowadays are centered around warring in attempt to gain recognition and enhance social status within the community. Motivational techniques, peer pressure and the constant reminder of clan loyalty often result in large amounts of money being spent on wars, lots of preparation, allot of passion and a general expectancy to win. Whilst the triumphant team experience feelings of joy and pride, and are congratulated for good teamwork, the defeated side experience quite the opposite. This in time leads division amongst clans and negative attitudes between them, where the losing side express their hate and disappointment through flaming/abusive language and the winning side emphasize their superiority over the other clan. This scenario does not relate to every single war that takes place, however it does accurately describe what generally does happen at most ranked wars.
What can we do to mend this? Where has the fun gone in wars? Why am I telling you this? All these questions will be answered shortly.
Oblivion has a very different approach. We want our events to bring clans together, make our own community stronger and above all - for everyone to have a good time and enjoy themselves. One of the ways we do this is by exploring fun special events that range from Scavenger Hunts to Quizzes to Costumed Clan War Battles. Each Saturday Oblivion hosts a creative, odd and unusual event. These events are extremely rare and each event will only happen once every several months or only once a year. Here is a small report of one of our special events called Furious Ninja's vs Spartan Warriors.
On Saturday the 10th of October 2009 around 40 members of Oblivion gathered at Clan wars at 8pm. Our leader handed out the outfits (for a small fee of course). The Spartans were given swords and shields whilst the Ninja's were given knives and claws. After un-noting them at the nearby bank, the Spartan warriors and the Furious Ninja's formed lines and diverged into their designated clan chats. The battle began. Would the brute force of the Spartans overcome the stealth and speed of the Furious Ninja's?
The battle saw the Spartans attacking and the Ninja's defending. The Spartans mighty roars echoing into the distance shook the very ground beneath their feet. The Ninja's, unfazed had formed a cunning plan. The thud of the heavy Spartan boots suddenly drew closer. "They are coming!" a ninja cried. As soon as the first Spartan warrior came into sight, the ninja's scattered confusing the Spartans. The Ninjas then sent their strongest to the front line. The Spartans immediately attacked them. As soon as the Ninjas had the attention of several Spartans they drew them out of their ranks opening large unprotected gaps in the Spartan team. The remaining Ninjas attacked the weakened side picking of easy targets. The Ninja's could taste victory but Spartans never give up. The Spartan leader gathered the dispersed warriors together, and they bravely fought side by side wave after wave of Ninja's. Outnumbered 2 to 1, the Spartans managed to wipe out a large chunk of the Ninja soldiers.
But the damage was already done, the game ended and the Ninja's won the battle. After the event the Ninja's applauded the brave Spartans who in the end put up a brave fight. The Spartans congratulated the organized Ninjas and everyone went home. The Ninjas had one this battle, but the Spartans knew it was not over. This was only the first of many more battles to come.
We want your submissions!
That's right, YOU! If there is anything that you would like to share with Jagex and the clan community here on the Clan Submissions page, then do let us know! The way in which you can do this is by sending us what you have, preferably as an attachment if it's any artwork, to postbag@jagex.com, putting ‘Clan' in the subject somewhere. We'll take a look at what you've sent us - be that clan facts, interviews, articles, artwork and much more - and then pick out what people would like to see and put it on the page. I hope you enjoyed this edition of the Clan Submissions page!
To read the previous Clan Submissions page, click here.
To find out more about clans, check out our knowledge base article about them.
To see what's happening in the clan community, check out the clan forums.
Staff Interview: Mod Mat K, part 2
Mod Timbo: What was your most memorable moment from your time with clans?
Mod Mat K: Blimey, there are so many memories it is hard to pick just one, but, if push came to shove, it would be when I was in a friendly war with one of our allies and NI crashed, NI didn't last long, TBH.
Mod Timbo: What sort of clanner are you? Are you a warring clanner, a skilling clanner or more of a social type?
Mod Mat K: I enjoyed the wars, but when I lead a clan I was acutely aware that not everyone wanted to fight and die (multiple times) every night. So, we used to do several events every day, from Castle Wars to skilling competitions to Fishing Trawler trips (still my favourite non-combat event). So, the tl;dr versions is: loved warring, liked everything else.
Mod Timbo: How has your knowledge of the clan world helped you in your role at Jagex? Was your knowledge a factor in getting a role within Community Management?
Mod Mat K: Actually, my move into Community Management (this was 2006) was more facilitated by me previously being a P-Mod, and I joined CM as a P-Mod curator; however, when we first started taking a more active role in the clan community, the fact I had been banging on about clans every day for two years meant I was a shoo-in. But then you know that because you were there too!
Mod Timbo: How long have you been playing RuneScape? Do you still keep in touch with your old clans?
Mod Mat K: Over six years now, five of those while I have been working here. I still keep in touch with individuals that I met in the clan community, however, many of them don't know it is me... Spooky!
Mod Timbo: Do you remember your first war with a clan? How did it feel and did you win?
Mod Mat K: My first war was against a clan called The First Class. I don't believe they are around anymore, though. They were primarily a New Zealand-based clan, so you can imagine the problems trying to arrange a convenient time between a mainly US/UK clan and a New Zealand one. The time zones were a nightmare. Oh, and we trounced them...and I have pics to prove that too. :p
RS BTS : Behind the Scenes – July Posted By Alixzander on 01/07/10 01:17PM
The next update this month looks at new rewards to use outside of Daemonheim. Originally, the dungeon entrances just east of the Wilderness required vast amounts of resources to build, which were to be gathered in secret by the dungeon’s workers. To this end, the forces behind it created many resource dungeons around RuneScape, closed off and hidden from prying eyes. As adventurers become wiser regarding the mysteries of Daemonheim, they will find they are able to discover and enter these hidden resource dungeons scattered around the world. There are more than fifteen of these resource dungeons to be found in existing areas, such as Edgeville Dungeon (several being available in the free game), each of which requires a certain Dungeoneering level to enter. Each resource dungeon provides a one-off reward for finding it, plus resources such as new rune rocks or the lair of a mighty frost dragon (lvl 166)!
If that doesn’t float your Fremennik longboat, how about the new class ring rewards we’re introducing for use within Daemonheim. With three rings each for rangers, mages, warriors and skillers, we’re sure that everyone will find at least one class ring to suit their play style. Just choose your favourite ring ability and use your Dungeoneering tokens to upgrade it up to tier 10; you even can switch your ring’s class for 'hybriding' within a dungeon, so long as you’re not in combat. Perhaps you’re a skiller who wants higher returns from resource spots; maybe you’re a big melee tank who wants to be able to soak up even more damage; or you could be a ranger who needs to be able to snipe targets for even greater damage; and even mages can get huge boosts to elemental damage with the Blazer class ring.
We’re also adding the Construction skill to Dungeoneering in the form of a new building spot to the smuggler’s room. Players with the appropriate Construction level will be able to create their own locations in the start room, whether it’s a prayer altar or farming spot, or even the new group gatestone portal (fantastic for getting your team about within larger dungeons), there’s bound to be something useful you can build (assuming you have the appropriate materials, of course).
We also plan to have the work for single-player instance dungeons completed, so those solo Dungeoneers who need to log out for five minutes or who suffer some infernal disconnection issues will find their dungeon still remains when they come back. For more info on all of these Dungeoneering updates, check out this blog.
Our final update this month starts with a rework of our old treasure trails. We wanted to make sure that players felt more rewarded for doing every treasure trail and not just rely on blind luck to get a treasure trail-only reward or cool pieces of costume. So we’ve changed all of the existing trails to ensure that you’ll always get a unique, trail-specific reward every time you open the reward casket at the end! Naturally, to achieve this, we needed to add a plethora of new rewards and challenges, so this update will also introduce a brand new set of treasure trails – called the elite treasure trails – and new rewards.
These trails (dropped only by high-level boss monsters like the Skeletal Horror and Bork) introduce a new puzzle known as the celtic knot. These knot puzzles are similar in style to the sliding tile puzzles, but with a whole new set of challenges to solve them. You may also be asked to fight a Guthix wizard while searching for the 150+ new rewards, many of which have been added to the existing trails in the game. Look out for dragon masks, 3rd Age prayer gear, holy ranger gear, treasure trail-specific familiars and animal staves to name just a few.
Have fun!
Mod Mark
RuneScape Lead Designer
RS BTS : Behind the Scenes – June Posted By Alixzander on 04/06/10 05:11PM
Hi, and welcome back to the Behind the Scenes! We used to publish articles like this to let you know about upcoming updates, so you could plan ahead. For a number of reasons, we tried other ways of talking about content, but nothing was as popular as the Behind the Scenes. But now...it’s back!
Behind the Scenes – June
Characters from RuneScape are due to be arrested for crimes ranging from Littering to Assault & Battery, and will need a hero to represent them. To prosecute or defend their cases, you’ll need to obtain a ‘court summons’ from Treasure Trails, by pickpocketing NPCs or from a few other methods. After gathering evidence, interviewing witnesses, comparing fingerprints and identifying weak members of the Jury, you’ll have the chance to prove their innocence or send them away for a very long time. The choice is entirely yours, and healthy doses of Attack or Defence XP await those clever enough to solve the case.
The cases are written to make you think and raise a chuckle, so we’re hoping you’ll enjoy solving them as much as we enjoyed writing them. Fancy prosecuting the Drunken Dwarf for disruptive behaviour? Perhaps you feel his freedom to call everyone "matey" and ram kebabs in their hands is a basic Dwarven Right (don’t worry, it won’t result in the return of him as a random event). Thanks to everyone who gave us feedback after reading the blog: it really helped to shape the content, especially in terms of where the court summons drops come from.
The first courtroom launch will feature 5 different cases and a new piece of costume. You can expect more cases over the next twelve months: we have 16 cases planned in total!
Also this month, we will be introducing ancient effigies to the game, available through high-level combat. These objects ask very experienced (level 91-97) players to use a variety of skills to engage in a little restoration. Players with insufficient skill levels will still be able to use the Assist System to work at the effigy and claim the benefits. Naturally, asking for skills of these kinds of levels makes for some very generous XP rewards.
After 2008's Spirit of Summer and Summer’s End quests, and the Mysteries of the Mahjarrat quests in 2009, we decided to release another complete quest series this year. As usual, we want to outdo ourselves and, rather than settle for a storyline made up of just quests, we have decided to make three quests and a related activity! Throughout the series, you’ll learn more about the different orders of knights in the game and the relationship between them all, especially regarding the mysterious Void Knights and their pests.
June will see the launch of the first of these quests - Quiet Before the Swarm: an 'intermediate level' quest (the highest requirement is 42 Strength) that is heavily puzzle and story-oriented, linking to favourite characters of ours like Sir Tiffy. There’s no equipment preparation needed for the quest, aside from completing (but not necessarily winning) a single game of Pest Control. If you fancy a game, try World 144, and if you’d like to read more about the Void Knight series, read the blog.
In other news...
Some of the ‘In other news...’ you can expect to see this month will be: adding a waypoint marker to your world map; making it easier to get hunter supplies from the penguin areas; and adding new functionality to the Orb of Oculus (machinima camera). We’ve also opened RS Classic sign-up until Tuesday 15th June for any members who fancy a nostalgic trip to yesteryear.
If community events are more your type of thing, why not get involved in our Triumvirate community game? There are a series of events happening, focusing on three factions – the Reavers, Lords and Judges. These events are run and organised by our Player Support teams and you, the players. If you’d like to know more, check out the main Triumvirate thread. This weekend sees a huge series of 27 Castle Wars battles, making use of last week’s Castle Wars update (originally intended for a June launch, but launched a week early for you to war over the Bank Holiday weekend). I hope to see you there!
Enjoy!
Mod Mark
RuneScape Lead Designer
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