Such updates warms the heart of  and old player like myself.  Not because I couldn’t play classic before, because I have conserved my classic account through all these years.  No, because the classic servers were dying, and this brought along with it a whole new generation of Classic Players.  It’s amazing to see all the lvl 3-30′s running around asking how to get rid of their fatigue, or why they can’t run before 3 rounds of combat.

Also, the ‘re-release’ saw some nice features added to classic, such as bank ‘x’ and bank ‘all’.  Yet still, something is missing.  Something important, to give it that original classic feel/awesomeness.  And that something is F2P pking.  Now, I do understand why classic can’t be made F2P.  It would open up for RWT all over again.  But why not have a set amount of servers with the F2P restrictions, still members only.  But no iban blasts, no multicannons, no god spells, dragon battleaxes or longswords.  And of course, no super sets.  That’s one of the things people miss the most about classic, F2P pure pking.  Just plain old r2h 3-hitting?

- Hagge

• Voice Chat – I would love for an ingame voice-chat system, however I do see alot of technical difficulties such as moderation of the chat occuring, so I can understand why if it doesn’t happen.
• No more “/” to talk in Clan Chat, ability to switch between public & clan chat, and talk in whichever fit you better.
• More Chat Commands, such as “!pm [display name]” and “!joincc [display name]“.  Could also add “!msg [username]” for a public-chat msg directed at a certain Player.
• Stat commands such as “!wc #[Level] @[Type of Tree]” and “!cmb-est [stats]” to calculate how much you need for your next lvl, or what cmb lvl you would be with certain stats.
• GE commands such as “!ge [item]” to get a chat msg with “[item] [price] [percentage change]“
• Fun commands such as “!roll dice” or “!slap [display name]“

The above are just a few examples of commands and features that could be integrated into the chat system to improve it.  Another useful feature could be a “chat snapshot” button, not to be confused with the abuse report.  This could be used by players in areas with high player population and fast moving chat.  Both for reporting offenders and to find other players who are trying to contact you  for a CWA challenge or Buying/Selling items.  It would be as simple as the player clicking the button, a snapshot window then pops up ingame with the public chat history that was available at that very moment, giving the player all the time in the world to scroll through the history and look for the message in question.  Without having to worry about whether it would disappear from the chat history.

There’s some quick thoughts from me today, over and out

- Hagge

Then as the community grew, it also flourished.  Clans started gaining a stronger foothold within the game, much like nations in the real world.  They would fight to expand, and to wipe out their enemies, to conquer new territory.  The imperialistic online ages had begun.  A difference between rich and poor also started to become more significant, and online crime (Hacking/Scamming) started occuring much more often.  The community divided into several communities, and those communities nurtured a dislike for eachother.  Politics started to come into play.

As more players moved into the online world, a new age grew forth.  The age of aspiring young artists, what you might call the Renaissance Era.  Players became more interested in creating fan art, and fan articles about the game.  Many players started developing their skills, and created masterpieces inspired by the game.  At the same time, fan sites began to grow much stronger.  From earlier where only really one had dominated, a large amount of other fan sites sprouted and became known aswell.  The Renaissance Era was just as much a time of sharing knowledge as a time of art.

Then the time of RWT began, even if it had been a minor problem in the past.  As more players started, a market evolved for those who wanted to aquire their financial means the quick and illegal way.  You could well call these the Industrial Ages.  Gold Farmers started to emerge everywhere, grinding GP to sell on Ebay or other online marketplaces, until the problem grew so big that trading limits had to be put in place.  And the marketplaces had to be organized into the Grand Exhange.

And thus began the modern ages, a time of politics and lies.  Clans now mainly war for political purposes, and the knowledge that once was willingly shared is now lied about by players wishing to gain extra credit in an online clan-chat.  A time of trade restrictions, and stock-brokers controlling the market.  The rich get richer, the poor stay poor, and the middle-class, keeps being the middle-class.  A time when the community really no longer is a community of friends having fun together, as much as a community of extremists screaming higher then eachother in the hopes of being heard, and recieving their 15 minutes of fame.  Few now care for what once was, but is no more, the closely knit community  where you’d pop by and say ‘Hi’, chat about the weather and what you had for breakfast, and then end with ‘Leaving for work now guys, have a nice day’.

As many in Real-Life now looks to Obama to fix the Global Community, rid us of Terrorism, poverty and give people a reason to feel alive again.  We in RuneScape now look to Mark Gerhard to fix the RuneScape community, rid of us of NH and DDoS’ers, price manipulating clans and give people a reason to train again.  And just like Obama, MMG has started on the huge task at hand by taking some steps in the right direction.  Now lets just hope he will continue the good work.  I am one of those who long back to the closely knit community, knowing that it will never be the same, but hoping that it wont always have to be what it currently is either.

- Hagge

Now, it has been announced that Jagex will host a similar competition for 2010, and I’m already lookin forward to that.  Hopefully most of the issues encountered in the first cup will have been tweaked by then, and it will be even more awesome.  I love it when Jagex take interest and part-take in the community like that.  It gives clans a goal to work for, and many clans flourish during such tournaments.  New members joining, old members returning from retirement and the current members taking a little more interest and training up for the fights.

However, it’s a shame that this only happens once a year.  Me personally, I would love for a clan league to put in place for clans, made by Jagex, to give them something to work for all year round, without leaving it up to uber-active leaders/warlords to take care of arranging the fights.  As in the latter case it has a tendency to get out of hand, and the pressure on the members grow too high.  And I do have a couple of ideas for how this could work out.

• Copy the football-league setup.  3 pts for a win, 1 pt for a tie & 0 pts for a loss.  No knock-out fights, only run-ins.
• For the 1st season, clan entered are divided into divisions of 10 clans each.  Member count and Cmb Avg used to calculate which league a clan belongs in.  Clans entering after the deadline for the 1st season will be placed in the lowest available division, regardless of member stats.
• Each clan fight eachother twice per season.  Two fights each month per clan.  After a season finishes there’s a 2 month period with no fights.  Preferably during the same period the ‘Jagex Cup‘ is fought.
• All fights must be: All styles, F2P cwa, turrets arena, 1h cap, most kills.
• Screenshots used to determine the winner, or Jagex could train some players to be ‘ref’s…
• A tie is whenever there’s less then 5% of the total amount of kills seperating the two clans.  So for example a fight where one of the clans get 52 kills and the other get 47 would be determined as a tie.  If one get 52 and the other 46, it’s not a tie.
• Top 2 of a lower division advance to take the spot of the bottom 2 of the division above, whilst the 3rd and bottom 3rd fight qualification matches.
• If a clan forfeits a match, the clan who showed up wins on walk over by 80 kills.

Those are just a few of my thoughts on the matter, I believe this would be a great way for Jagex to assist clans, I don’t believe it would cause too much of a work-load if done correctly (Use community-focused players as best you can).  And it would hopefully give Jagex a little more insight and control of what goes on in the off-site clan community.

That’s all from me for now, and oh, computer’s working again

- Hagge

And then there’s the last update, the Sawmill minigame, available to players with 80+ woodcutting.  I must admit, I’ve grown very fond of this minigame in the few hours I’ve tried it so far.  The xp/h ratio isn’t as high as poison ivies, but it’s relaxing, fun, doesn’t require much effort and give decent xp/h still.  BUT, I do see both room and need for a few tweaks and fixes to both it’s logic and practical abilities.  Right now, it offers the player no more then a source to grind, really grind in the true meaning of the word, xp.

I mean to remember not many months ago, I read a statement by Mark Gerhard in his Q&A, saying that the idea of F2P skill capes had been ditched for now.  The reason given for this was simply that JaGeX didn’t want to give free players another incentive to grind their skills on the same content over and over, skill capes should wait till there was enough free content for players to get their 99′s without grinding.  And I can’t help but feel this update contradicts those words in it’s current state.  There is nothing to this sawmill minigame then grinding xp, and for what reason?  To get 99 woodcutting.  You need level 80 woodcutting to use it, and at level 80 woodcutting you can already use all the content for the skill that exist in the game.  And I can’t help but think that with this update being a pure woodcutting update, there will be some time till the skill is updated with higher lvl content.  Leaving me with the conclusion that this updates purpose is to be able to grind to 99 quicker.

Now, if the minigame would’ve had more rewards/abilities given then just grinding xp, that statement could be disputed, as you would get something more in return then just the experience.  Which leads me to suggest the minigame should be updated to include a few more, simple rewards to make it worthwhile (not just for xp).

The rewards could include:

1. After ‘X’ amounts of tasks finished, you would be allowed to bring in a batch of your own logs, regular/oak/teak/mahogany to cut into planks on the sawmill, free of charge.

2. Each task would give a certain amount of reward points when finished, these could be used to buy the special shaped planks for use to create special furniture in your POH.

3.  Coin rewards in addition to the xp rewards for each task finished, most workers usually get paid!

Another problem is the amount of halves you end up with from ruining half the plank, I’d rather have it that you either ruin the entire plank, or none of it.

Other then that, it was a great update, and I hope to see more like it for other neglected skills such as firemaking/prayer/mining/smithing/etc…

That’s it for today folks,

- Hagge

Magic is the most obviously overpowered side, especially after the recent updates to the skill allowing players to hit 10% more damage if wearing a staff.  Few now use the regular magic spellbook, and almost everyone has changed to using “ancients”.  These spells have the power to freeze a player for 20 seconds and at the same time hit constant damage 30+, on any armour.  Also, there is the lunar spells with the specific spell vengance, which is not affected at all by armour worn by the player.  Allowing the player to recoil 75% of the damage taken to their enemy, without delaying their own attacks.  Meaning a ranger or a meleer using vengance (A magic spell) can one-hit other players without even using special attacks.

Another problem is rangers.  Rangers hit damage too constant, regardless of armour worn by the opponent.  Especially with hand cannons or diamond/dragon bolts.  Not to mention the dark bows special attack have the ability to hit more then 96 damage out of a maximum 99 hitpoints on players.

Which brings forth meleers who can use godswords and dragon claws, definatly overpowered items that also, regardless of armour worn, can one hit players with their special attacks.

And the last problem with the combat triangle, the ability to combine different styles, or so-called “hybrid” without many negative effects.

I have a few suggested changes that I believe would balance the combat triangle out much better.

1. Eliminate hybriding the way it currently works.  Make robes give negative melee/ranged attack bonuses, and make range armour give negative melee attack bonuses (already give negative magic attack).  Make things the same way it is for melee.  Furthermore, make the magic attack bonus matter for how much damage the vengance spell can deal, leaving it a spell mainly for use by healers.  Don’t allow rangers/meleers to fully take advantage of it.

2. Make defence matter more.  Damage taken even when 99 defence is ridiculously high.  Both defence levels and armour defence bonus should matter alot more.  Also, make staves give more melee defence (not ranged), giving mages the ability to protect agains’t melee attacks.  Whilst dragonhide should be weak to melee, and very strong against magic.

3. Reduce the damage dealt by ancient spells, their bonus effects is more then good enough as it is, they don’t need to deal such massive damage on top of that.  That would give people a reason to use the other spell books aswell.

4. Make penalty timers for switching armour/weapons.  It’s natural that un-equipping and re-equipping armour should take some time, especially if you’re in combat.  This would also allow for more diversity in choice of which weapon to use.  Meleers shouldn’t be allowed to use a whip for it’s accuracy, then quickly switch to dragon claws for two quick special attacks, and then switch back.  If you want to use the dragon claws special attack, you should be forced to fight a little with them aswell.

5. Reduce the ridiculous amounts of damage dealt by godswords.

Those are some solutions off the top of my head, please, if you can think of anything to add to that leave a comment below.

Anyways, the conclusion is that all the combat styles have been massively overpowered, mainly because of JaGeX succumbing to the masses claiming their style is underpowered compared to the other styles, and instead of removing power from the other styles more power has been added to weaker style, over and over, until PvP now is more a game of who can one-hit the other person first, or who drops their protection prayers first.  Something needs to be done, and it’s not to give more power to either side.  I know JaGeX is working on something, I hope it’ll be great, but I do also hope they take the above-mentioned points into consideration, and that this ‘fix’ will be the beginning of the end of ‘fixes’.

That’s me on PvP and overpowered combat styles.

- Hagge

There is another word, closely tied to the ‘Free’ market.  This word is Collusion.  Collusion is a crime in most western countries in real life.  In RuneScape it’s known as Price Manipulation, not to be confused with Merchanting.  Price Manipulation is a growing problem in RuneScape, JaGeX have taken a few, but only a few steps agains’t it.  It’s now considered scamming to use your own members in a Price Manipulation clan to further increase the income from manipulating the prices of certain items, however, Manipulating the prices alone is still allowed.

The definition of Collusion, or Price Manipulation is when a group co-operates to buy out and withhold the major stocks of an essential item, to force a false shortage of supply to the market and increasing the items value.  In RuneScape this is represented by so-called “Merchant Clans” buying huge stocks of a specific, popularly traded item.  In real-life, it can be compared to if alot of rich people go together, buy up the majority of the water supply in the world, creating a personal monopoly of the item, and withholding the stocks to be able to set the price themselves.  Obviously, in real life, this is illegal and therefor impossible.  But in RuneScape, it’s still allowed aslong as you don’t lie to the other collaborators.

But the fact is this is just as much a scam as any other scam.  The extreme demand is created by a FAKED shortage of supply, it would be similar to pre-Grand Exhange, if someone came over to you and asked you to buy their very “rare” Black Fish, or Charcoal.  These Collusion Clans force the prices up by withholding their stocks, which makes the item SEEMINGLY very rare, whilst in fact it’s a very common item.  Then as soon as they have fooled the consumers, they flood the market, causing the items price to crash.  Hurting both the consumers and the producers of the item.  A very dangerous effect this usually have on the market, is that if the item is the finished product; such as a potion, food or summoning pouch/scroll, the prices will crash below the price of the resource, making the producers end up with a negative income.  This can be compared to the recession, because as soon as the price crash, the profit from making the item will be marginal, if there is any profit to be made at all.  People will stop buying the resources, and the producers will stop making the product, basically taking the item out of play, and a load of players to loose their source of income (Their job you might say).  It will then take months for the item to build up any substantial value again, and for the production to start again.

Imagine, several months where you couldn’t buy prayer pots on the GE.  Several months where you would be better off selling your rannarrs then making the potion yourself.  The rippling effects of this would be endless, and it would not only damage the GWD’ers, PK’ers, Corp’ers and anyone else using prayer pots.  It would damage people training, who need the armour the GWD’ers sell.  It would damage cooks, who create food for the PK’ers.  It would damage woodcutters and miners, who need the dragon pickaxes and dragon hatchets people get from training, or DK’ing.

As mentioned, endless rippling effects, crippling the economy.  So I ask you, is a free market really free?  Or is it only as free as the rich let it be.  It’s more damaging to those who have little money to begin with, and the only people making money from it are those who have alot of money in the first place.  Now where’s the freedom of that?  When the majority of the RuneScape population is crippled to work as slaves for the rich?  I don’t see the big difference from Feudal society.

Now, this is just my opinion and my thoughts on the matter, but I think we need rules agains’t Collusion in RuneScape too, to keep the ‘free’ market free.

- Hagge

First off, my personal favourite while training is doing slayer.  I know not everyone are such great fans of slayer, and some people prefer to grind the same monster over and over.  One of the great benefits slayer give you is the variety of monsters you kill, plus if you’ve done “Smoking Kills” you can save up slayer points to buy Death/Mind runes from a slayer master, which gives a nice bonus to the money you already make from the slayer tasks.

One of the biggest misconceptions out there is that slaying is expensive.  Fact is that Power-Slaying is expensive, but that’s because those methods are designed to get the most xp/h in the Slayer skill possible, with no regards to cost.  It’s amazing how much money you can save by not doing your aberrant spectres tasks with constant prayer, and instead of doing the task in one trip, spend 3-4 trips finishing your task instead.  Not just because you spend less money on potions, but that means you can pick up more drops aswell, and the bank is within reasonable range.  If you don’t have the agility level to use the spikey chain, get it.  It doesn’t take that long.  As second way to save money is to use the herbs/seeds/food you get as drops on your tasks instead of selling it, and buying the finished products whenever you need them.  The more you rely on the Grand Exhange to get your resources, the more money you pour into merchants and price manipulators.

I have to admit, I do power-slay certain tasks myself.  But I normally then choose the tasks that usually pay off the least, and only multi-zone tasks.  Cannoning through a Kalphite task is amazing xp, and they don’t have many amazing drops either.  So you still barely fill up an inventory with loot from a task of 150-199 Kalphites.  Another bonus with slaying is that you increase your odds for better drops.  This have nothing to do with any game code or anything that makes drops on slayer tasks better (Even though that would be nice ).  The reason for this is simple probability maths.

The variety of the tasks, is what improves your chances as opposed to grinding the same monster over and over.  To explain this, imagine you have 5 decks of cards on the table infront of you, randomly shuffled.  Your aim is to draw a picture card (Jack or higher).  In the first deck you draw a picture card on your first attempt.  That deck will then have 1 picture card less left in it then the other 4 decks.  So instead of drawing from the same deck over and over again, you draw from one of the other decks to increase your odds of getting another picture card.  Slayer tasks are the same, instead of grinding the same monster over and over again to get another good item, you regularly switch to new monsters increasing your odds of getting more good items.

Another big mistake many people are making when slaying is that they don’t pick up some items.  Remember, aslong as the item is worth more then what you already have in the inventory slot where you want to put it, it’s profit!  I often pick up bones or big bones on my slayer tasks, or even ashes, just to fill my inventory before I have to bank.  If you don’t have a use for it, you can always sell it on the Grand Exhange or to a General Store.  And surprisingly, bones and big bones definatly have a decent value, considering their drop rates.  Regular bones sell on the Grand Exhange for between 70 and 100 gp each, big bones sell for 300-500 gp each.  Depending on whether or not they’re being merchanted.  Even if you only pick up 5-10 on a trip, with time you will build up a substantial amount and it would have been worth it.

And last, but not least.  Always pick up stackables.  Items that stack in your inventory such as notes, coins, or runes have that great ability that no matter the amount they still only take up one inventory slot.  Even if 100 coins isn’t that much, if a lvl 80+ monster drop 100 coins, it’s most likely gonna drop that often, meaning that in a task of 199 fire giants, you will get coins almost half of the drops.  That’s 10k profit extra right there for that task.  Much better then that one grimy avantoe or grimy irit you might’ve picked up instead, if you didn’t pick up the first coin drop.

That’s all for today folks, I might add some short entries on stuff I notice ingame, but the next “article” will be tomorrow.

Take care,

- Hagge