21 Jump Street; A Review
Posted by Landerpurex on March 19th, 2012, 3:05 am. Category: Scribery Entry
9/10
I consider myself a comedy connoisseur. Whether it's the fine wine comedy of Monty Python, the outrageous antics of Will Ferrell in Step Brothers or Old School, or the recently over-the-top Wanderlust, and even further back to classics such as Caddyshack, National Lampoon, Animal House, and even further to the Stooges and Charlie Chaplin. I've seen it all. I have not, however, always enjoyed it all.
21 Jump Street was, simply put, a fantastic comedy. I wouldn't consider myself a huge Jonah Hill fan, but he does well in this movie. The star who really excels is Channing Tatum, however. As some other reviewers mention, seeing the actor exit his (boring, in my opinion) romantic role and enter into a comedic one is fantastic. His simple, yet sincere character is one we've seen time and again, but it's incredibly funny and somehow fresh in this film. Jonah Hill's character is similar to those in the past, the outcast bookworm, but again, it fits the movie.
The premise of the movie is that Tatum and Hill are newly graduated policemen, and aren't at all good at their job. After losing some perpetrators doing drugs in the park, they are reassigned to the run-down undercover unit at 21 Jump Street. Here, their captain (A hilarious Ice Cube) assigns them to pose as students to try and take down the supplier of a new hallucinogenic drug called HFS (Holy F'ing
). Simple enough premise. A large part of the comedy of this movie is currently edgy, and will hit home with our generation for years to come. Tatum and Hill return to school to find that studying, caring for the environment, and being tolerant is now 'cool'. This, of course, is openly satirizing the abrupt shift that is taking place with youth today, for good or ill and remains a very potent comedic strand throughout the movie. In a memorable scene, when the two first return to high school, they are bombarded by new cliques, such as asians dressed in cosplay and the now infamous hipsters. Again, it's humor that has a target audience and works incredibly well for us who are mired in these new cultural phenomena.
Interestingly enough, there are a few good action scenes to be had in this movie as well. It's no Jackie Chan movie, but the director manages some good action, explosions (and satirizing the convention of explosions), car chases and shootouts to change the pace when a change is warranted.
This isn't an art film, and will not wow you with presentation, cinematography, sound, or any other technical aspect. It is driven by its humor, strong acting, and script, which is always enough with a successful comedy. We are meant to pay attention to the jokes, not what the camera angles suggest. It is sufficient enough technically that we aren't distracted by *bad* decisions, there is just not anything that will wow you in that respect.
There are many laughs to be had in this movie, for people of all ages and backgrounds. The guys are forced to try the new drug right away to prove they're not police, and the insanity ensues. Tatum bursts into the band room and destroys and disrupts. Hill returns to drama class and somehow nails himself the lead part in the school's production of Peter Pan. In an attempt to get in with one of the dealers, the guys throw a party of wicked proportions, and kids from a rival school show up. This ends in Tatum punching almost anyone who steps in front of him and Hill getting stabbed with some kind of artifact. Then, their parents return and break up the party.
This movie toes the line between ridiculous and incredibly funny exactly the way a great comedy should. It's witty, edgy, and simply funny nearly all the time, with very strong acting and writing throughout all the while remaining grounded in a decent enough story. There are even a few great surprises to be had, including a fantastic cameo. The ONLY reasons this film garners a 9 instead of a 10 from me is because it falters in the final scenes, going too far with a shock device that seems totally unnecessary given the merit of the rest of the film. There are also some cliches to be had, but they serve their purpose in the plot.
In short, go and see this film as soon as possible.
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Guild Wars 2 (Pre-Purchase) April 10th
Posted by killa kiaba on March 15th, 2012, 6:52 pm. Category: Scribery Entry
https://buy.guildwars2.com/
All pre-purchase editions include these exclusive bonuses:
Access to all Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend Events
Three days of headstart access
Hero’s Band (+2 to all stats)
DIGITAL EDITION $59.99
Guild Wars 2 game
DIGITAL DELUXE $79.99
Guild Wars 2 game
Summon Mistfire Wolf Elite Skill
Rytlock Miniature
Golem Banker
Chalice of Glory
Tome of Influence
COLLECTOR'S EDITION $149.99
Guild Wars 2 game
Summon Mistfire Wolf Elite Skill
Rytlock Miniature
Golem Banker
Chalice of Glory
Tome of Influence
10-inch figurine of Rytlock
112 page Making of Guild Wars 2 book
Custom Art Frame
Art Portfolio and Five Art Prints
Best of Guild Wars 2 Soundtrack CD
Minimum System Requirements*
* Due to potential changes, system requirements may change over time, and you may be required to upgrade your current system (or obtain a new system) to continue to play the game.
Windows® XP Service Pack 2 or better · 2 GB RAM
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, Core i3, AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 or better
NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800, ATI Radeon™ X1800, Intel HD 3000 or better (256MB of video RAM and shader model 3.0 or better)
25 GB available HDD space
Broadband Internet connection
Keyboard and mouse
All pre-purchase editions include these exclusive bonuses:
Access to all Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend Events
Three days of headstart access
Hero’s Band (+2 to all stats)
DIGITAL EDITION $59.99
Guild Wars 2 game
DIGITAL DELUXE $79.99
Guild Wars 2 game
Summon Mistfire Wolf Elite Skill
Rytlock Miniature
Golem Banker
Chalice of Glory
Tome of Influence
COLLECTOR'S EDITION $149.99
Guild Wars 2 game
Summon Mistfire Wolf Elite Skill
Rytlock Miniature
Golem Banker
Chalice of Glory
Tome of Influence
10-inch figurine of Rytlock
112 page Making of Guild Wars 2 book
Custom Art Frame
Art Portfolio and Five Art Prints
Best of Guild Wars 2 Soundtrack CD
Minimum System Requirements*
* Due to potential changes, system requirements may change over time, and you may be required to upgrade your current system (or obtain a new system) to continue to play the game.
Windows® XP Service Pack 2 or better · 2 GB RAM
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, Core i3, AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 or better
NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800, ATI Radeon™ X1800, Intel HD 3000 or better (256MB of video RAM and shader model 3.0 or better)
25 GB available HDD space
Broadband Internet connection
Keyboard and mouse
The Mars Volta - Noctourniquet (3/27/2012): A Review
Posted by defeat on March 12th, 2012, 8:14 pm. Category: Scribery Entry
Rating: 9/10
There are few bands I expect to blow me away with every release, and The Mars Volta is one of them. In any form of art there is an indefinite number of artists trying to take their chosen medium to the next level of originality. This is especially true in music, but most tend to get hung up on the concept of genres. It’s an easy thing to do, as genres are the best reference points art has to describe it. A genre is sometimes necessary for description, but at other times putting a label on a work of art can hinder the art itself. Trying to describe The Mars Volta’s music is hard enough, but putting one specific genre or label on it is simply impossible. One thing that they have stuck by, however, is the pop format. Granted, their songs aren’t the verse/chorus/verse all-in-under-four-minutes that Top 40 radio stations have come to embrace (it’s more like intro/verse/chorus/verse/bridge/chorus/outro, all-in-sometimes-10-minutes-or more), but they do have choruses that fans of intensely poetic, non-linear lyrics can try and sing along with. I say try, because, come on…Who can sing that hauntingly beautiful falsetto like Cedric Bixler-Zavala?
Throughout their career The Mars Volta have incorporated everything from jazz to Latin into their music, but their latest release, entitled Noctourniquet, comes closer to being a pop/rock album than any of the others. There. I said it. It’s a pop album. This shouldn’t have come as such a surprise to me, as the last release, 2009’s Octahedron, only had a single song over eight minutes (a huge departure from the band’s early days that spawned songs like the 35+ minute epic “Cassandra Gemini”). It was a surprise, though. Maybe it’s surprising because this is the first album they’ve released that I’ve heard parts in songs that could have come from other bands. “Aegis” has a feel reminiscent of Muse in the verses. “Zed and Two Naughts”’ drums instantly brought A Perfect Circle’s song "Weak and Powerless" to mind. Even the lead single has a guitar riff that could have come from any of the songs on Queens of the Stone Age’s album, Era Vulgaris, or any of Jack White’s past and present projects. I’m not saying that they were trying for any similarities, but when you make a pop album, it’s impossible to completely avoid them, even for The Mars Volta…
…And a The Mars Volta album it is! Even with these few similarities, the above mentioned songs are undoubtedly and uniquely straight from TMV’s songwriter and producer, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. His guitar playing is as riff-tastic and sometimes nothing but effects per-usual. He’s always been an experimental little guy, and even with Noctourniquet’s pop sensibilities, he's still pushing the boundaries of music. Their usual use of keyboards has changed from jazzy piano and organ to synth (possibly due to the departure of keyboardist "Ikey" Owens), although their trademark sound manipulation can be heard throughout the album’s entirety. Fans of The Volta’s past efforts won’t be disappointed, especially with the songs “Dyslexicon”, “Molochwalker”, and “Trinkets Pale of Moon”, which range from in-your-face to soft and sweet, respectively. One thing some fans tend to complain about is the revolving door of drummers since Jon Theodore stopped playing with the band in 2006. I never jumped on that band wagon, and really enjoyed Thomas Pridgen’s drumming on the last two albums. However, the only complaint I have about Noctourniquet is just that, the drumming. New drummer, Deantoni Parks, just doesn’t do it for me. He seems to be trying way too hard to live up to the sonic pummeling that the previous albums have featured, and sometimes fails miserably (evident in “Lapochka”).
If you haven’t heard The Mars Volta before, disliked their previous efforts for being too artsy, or are one of the many who haven’t liked an album of theirs since the full length debut (2003’s De-Loused in the Comatorium), Noctourniquet is a great album to get acquainted with, as it’s their most accessible and listener friendly album to date. Fans of the entire discography beware…
It’s a pop album. There. I said it again...
Recommended if you enjoy: Radiohead, Muse, Queens of the Stone Age's Era Vulgaris and/or Jack White
The official lead single can be listened to here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh0stkLanx4&ob=av3e
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning; A Review
Posted by Landerpurex on February 15th, 2012, 12:33 am. Category: Scribery Entry
Overall rating: 8/10.
I've done my homework on this game, both before and after buying it. Everyone seems to be looking at it completely the wrong way. Other reviewers and consumers are comparing this game to Skyrim, Mass Effect, and many other juggernaut RPGs. This is a mistake. Reviews range from a 9/10 from IGN to a 5/10 from Adam Sessler at G4TV.
Kingdoms of Amalur is similar to other RPGs in some respects, and in others it is radically different. If we analyze and enjoy this by itself, it's a great game. If we stand it next to Skyrim, it falters badly in some respects, and excels in others.
The things this game does well are apparent from the moment you start playing. Environments are very vibrant, and are sufficiently unique. They're somewhat linear, but also allow for quite a bit of exploration and free roam. There are enough hidden treasures, places, and quests to keep you busy for many hours. Often I would venture off the path in search of a treasure that showed up on my map thanks to my 'detect hidden' skill, and would instead spend a few hours saving a town from some kind of spider woman. This had nothing to do with the main quest or any of the 'factions'.
The story for this game is very good, and has RA Salvatore's flair. Sometimes, however, this is its undoing. Every little quest has five minutes of backstory or lore, when you might simply be trying to complete a quest for a quick buck or exp gain. I sometimes found myself skipping dialog for meaningless side quests. On the other side of this issue, the main storyline and faction quests are well-done. I especially loved the storyline of the House of Ballads, a group of elf-like people who endlessly reenact battles and adventures long past. In short, the overarching story isn't anything unconventional, but there are many originalities and nuances to be enjoyed. It's easy to see the care that went into the story, and that a good novelist was the one who oversaw it.
I can't write a review about this game without mentioning it's greatest strength: the battle system. It's fast-paced and more than simple button mashing. I like the emphasis on combos and certain attacks, such as those that 'pop up' your enemy, making them vulnerable for further hits. The amount of attacks is satisfying, but the key is exploring which ones work best together.
The game's skill system is pretty basic but fulfilling at the same time. There are plenty of skills and styles to be explored, without there being *too* much. The destiny system is great, you can unlock bonuses for your character as you dump points into any of the three skill trees. You can also unlock destinies for hybrid classes, even ones for supporting all three trees. This allows for a fantastic amount of customization with ample reward for whichever tree/s you choose to support.
That being said, this game's mechanics allow for one of the best roleplaying opportunities I've seen. The destiny system and hybrid classes make for an experience that really hasn't been amply explored in other titles. If you couple this with the strong story and hundreds of quests, then you have a very enjoyable recipe.
The game, of course; is not without faults. Some consumers have complained about the voice acting, but I actually enjoyed it. I found it more inspiring than some, and dialog seemed to fit the character saying it. I will be the first to admit that character models and facial expressions are lacking. Though the voice acting is good, it is not paired with good facial modeling. The characters are expressionless and half the time, their mouths don't even follow what they're saying.
Other cons involve slight dips in framerate, but nothing that was at all gamebreaking. I also often found the shops lacking, I finished the game with over 5 million gold. Granted, I was a money-making machine with max mercantile and detect hidden skills, but there was literally nowhere for me to spend my money after about 2/3 of the way through the game.
I spent about 50 hours on this game, and I was thoroughly satisfied with my experience. There seems to be dozens more hours of content, as I finished with over 50 side quests unfinished, and who knows how many more I left not taken. The replayability of the game is high as well, with trophies/achievements awarded for each playstyle. Though it would be just as easy to totally re-allot your skill points than to start over, but what's the fun in that?
The game is pretty standard fantasy fare on almost every front, while excelling in a few respects; namely the battle system and the major storylines. As other reviewers have pointed out, this game seems to borrow the best features of a lot of other titles and implement them in game to the point where they work together to near perfection. Loot, story, battling, skills, environment, and more. Overall, this game was a great experience and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a new, solid RPG to play from a new studio, but with some very hard-hitting names behind it.
The Woman in Black; A Movie Review
Posted by Landerpurex on February 6th, 2012, 1:05 am. Category: Scribery Entry
Rating: 7/10
This was a good movie, not a great one. It did its job, it scared me (badly) at times, and there were very great technical things happening with this movie. However, it was inconsistent and Radcliffe's acting was just awful.
This movie is pretty typical as far as horror stories go, it's set in early 1900s England. The main character Arthur Kipps (Radcliffe) plays a lawyer or paralegal, hard up for a break. He is sent by his firm to a sinister house near a small town, where the spirit of a woman terrorizes the town and the house. His son and their nanny are supposed to join him at the house after some time. Don't be fooled by the PG-13 rating, I learned with Insidious that underrated movies can be terrifying.
The opening scene of this movie was literally the most technically sound, and perhaps the best scene in the movie. While any opening scene should be great, it shouldn't be the best scene in the film. We're shown three young girls playing in an upstairs room, and nothing seems to be wrong. After a few moments, one of them drops their little teacup. It shatters. They then get up and advance towards the three windows, one of the trampling the teapot on the way. Here we have many good things in the cinematography and editing. Short takes. Shades of montage. Short jump cuts. This serves to confuse us, and it works very well. The three girls step up to the sill simultaneously, and jump out the windows. Then we're taken to Arthur's house, shocked by the previous scene and left with many questions.
The worst thing about this film, I felt, were its inconsistencies. It's easy to see that the aforementioned scene was meticulously cared for during production, whereas the rest of the film only shows glimmers of that care. As I said previously, Radcliffe's acting is terrible. He never shows any emotion, both when he realizes his wife has died in childbirth, nor at the end of the film when he is reunited with his son. This movie didn't call for him to strive for any awards, most of the time Arthur runs through the house chasing various noises. I was disappointed that when the script called for a little acting, he didn't deliver. And this took me away from the movie.
The movie delivers through jump-scares that we've come accustomed to with modern horror cinema. The cinematography is sound, with several first person shots that round corners, raising suspense. Of course, the scares don't come when we expect them. Moreover, there are several scenes in this film with these creepy, awkward, grimy toys that often act on their own. This was perhaps the most unsettling thing about the film. Picture a porcelain clown toy from that era, that contorts itself and ends with a close-up shot of his grinning face. Don't see this (or do) if you're afraid of clowns. *shudder*
Along those same lines, there is a scene where Arthur is (you guessed it) checking a noise he heard in the house. He's using a candle, and upon entering the room, there are closeups of the aforementioned toys, and the light of the candle is reflected in their eyes. It's moving with Arthur, and subsequently, moving in the eyes of the toys, making it seem as if they are following his movement. There are similar scenes to this, such as one where Arthur sees the reflection of the ghost in a mirror, but when he turns to check, she is gone. Subtle tricks like these make this movie a positive experience.
The house is a major star in the film, as it should be. It is sinister, old, foreboding, dusty, cobwebby, and simply everything a haunted house should be. There is a cemetery on the grounds that adds to the feeling. In addition to that, there is a lone wooden cross in the front yard where a little boy died when he sank into the swamp.
When we are first introduced to the house, Arthur goes downstairs, exploring. His job in the place is to make sure there are no more official papers in the home and to try and find the owner's last will and testament. When he enters the room, there is a newborn baby crow on the floor. He picks the baby up and puts it in the nest nearby. As soon as he does so, he is attacked by mama bird. I enjoyed this scene, it seemed an homage to the horror of yore, movies like The Omen and Hitchcock's The Birds, where birds figure heavily in the horror.
Additionally, this scene bears a stark parallel with the final moments of the movie. Clever foreshadowing, or heavy-handed symbolism? Go see the movie and find out!
In short, I really enjoyed this movie, both at the surface level of modern horror and as an amateur film student. Its inconsistencies are many, but the great scenes it offers do redeem it. It is scary in the same way that other modern horror films are, and is easily enjoyable by anyone that loves the horror genre. I recommend this film.
The Devil Inside: A Movie Review
Posted by Landerpurex on January 25th, 2012, 3:43 am. Category: Scribery Entry
Before we get started, let me state that there will be plot points discussed in the following text, but I will do my best to keep crucial points a secret. Let me also state that I am not a professional critic, but have more critical film expertise than most people; having taken several film courses in college.
Rating: 3/10
The premise that a woman named Maria Rossi kills three people in 1989. Her daughter, Isabella, goes to the hospital in Italy where her mother has since been committed. Isabelle then attends a class full of priests about exorcism. She befriends two of them, and sets out to find what has actually happened to her mother and document it on camera.
Let me first say that this movie was completely horrible. Awful. Terrible. The plotline was as jagged as a piece of broken glass, and not nearly as sharp. I don't even know where to begin with this one. The movie opens with a short black-screened scene that lets us listen in on the 911 call after Maria has killed three priests. This is, without a doubt, one of the scariest scenes in the movie, which isn't saying much. Then we are treated to some convoluted storyline and some basic 'travel' footage of Isabella and her cameraman in Italy. There's nothing of significance in the first portion of the film.
After a bit, we see Isabella visit her mother in the hospital. I was intrigued by the fact that the staff seemed to trust the woman, even though she had a violent past. I was surprised that her daughter was even allowed to see her. This was one of the numerous gaping plotholes in the movie, but I was willing to forgive if it could deliver in the scary department.
Maria Rossi's character is sufficiently creepy, especially on the first meeting. She's clearly insane, and looks the part. Her hair is frazzled, she looks completely gaunt and malnourished, and she has been cutting crosses into herself, into painful areas like the inside of her lip. She asks her daughter if she knows how to "connect the cuts..." which was creepy. But it wasn't nearly enough. Maria screams a scream that is certainly not human, and Isabella leaves the hospital.
Between 'exorcisms' we're treated to mundane storyline, and the ever present battle between the two priests. One wants to exorcise Maria and others like her to help them, the other is afraid of losing his priesthood as the two are doing these exorcisms without the church's consent. While the idea is nice, and shows another side to the politics of the catholic church, it is the same conflict between characters we've seen in thousands of other movies. It fails to deliver, and the bad acting doesn't help.
The film's only redeeming scene comes when the priests decide that Isabella should accompany them on a separate exorcism to learn more about the practice. In this scene, the victim does numerous disturbing things, such as popping her shoulder out of place and generally contorting her body. It's nothing more than what we've come to expect from this genre, but it is effective still.
After this, the film loses all its merit. The group returns to the hospital to exorcise Maria, only to have her multiple demons jump into one of the priests, the cameraman, and Isabella. There are generic scenes such as one when the lights go out with the possessed priest upstairs.
Lastly, I must comment on the ending of this movie. I warn you, I am about to spoil it. But then, a movie as poorly made as this doesn't deserve the decency of secrecy.
In the final moments of the film, with the possessed priest dead, the cameraman is rushing Isabella to an exorcism expert in Rome. He becomes 'possessed', takes off his seatbelt, and veers into oncoming traffic, causing a wreck and the presumed death of the people in the car. The movie then ends. Abruptly. We are told the case is unresolved, and that we can visit http://www.therossifiles.com/ to find out more. Is this a clever blending of modern technology to enhance your moviegoing experience, or is this cheap, pathetic advertisement? A good film shouldn't need some website to further explain itself, and the site doesn't even do that from what I could gather.
The way endings like this work in a positive way is if we have been on a satisfying journey throughout the movie. In this one, we have not. We don't care about the characters. We can barely process what's going on as we see multiple exorcisms and the demons jump into the characters. There are no technically sound aspects to speak of, this movie is low-budget and it shows. It takes from a really great genre, the 'documentary', 'found-film' horror. Such titles like the Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity work because they utilize the cheap camerawork to make it look real. There are clear plot arcs. There are foundations in classic horror, and there are innovations as well that make up for unknown (but not always bad) actors. The Devil Inside has none of these, as I've mentioned.
The Exorcism horror sub genre never stood a chance. In it's premier, the original Exorcist movie got it right the first goddamn time. And no good exorcism movies have been made since, only cheap, floundering copies cashing in on the same idea.
There were some decent things about this film, but not enough to make it any good and certainly not enough to redeem the ridiculous ending. It was as if the movie itself were saying "Ha-ha for watching this garbage, now go yourself" and the ending was the exclamation point on that statement. Don't waste your money on this movie, hopefully it'll soon be out of theaters and we can move on.
Rating: 3/10
The premise that a woman named Maria Rossi kills three people in 1989. Her daughter, Isabella, goes to the hospital in Italy where her mother has since been committed. Isabelle then attends a class full of priests about exorcism. She befriends two of them, and sets out to find what has actually happened to her mother and document it on camera.
Let me first say that this movie was completely horrible. Awful. Terrible. The plotline was as jagged as a piece of broken glass, and not nearly as sharp. I don't even know where to begin with this one. The movie opens with a short black-screened scene that lets us listen in on the 911 call after Maria has killed three priests. This is, without a doubt, one of the scariest scenes in the movie, which isn't saying much. Then we are treated to some convoluted storyline and some basic 'travel' footage of Isabella and her cameraman in Italy. There's nothing of significance in the first portion of the film.
After a bit, we see Isabella visit her mother in the hospital. I was intrigued by the fact that the staff seemed to trust the woman, even though she had a violent past. I was surprised that her daughter was even allowed to see her. This was one of the numerous gaping plotholes in the movie, but I was willing to forgive if it could deliver in the scary department.
Maria Rossi's character is sufficiently creepy, especially on the first meeting. She's clearly insane, and looks the part. Her hair is frazzled, she looks completely gaunt and malnourished, and she has been cutting crosses into herself, into painful areas like the inside of her lip. She asks her daughter if she knows how to "connect the cuts..." which was creepy. But it wasn't nearly enough. Maria screams a scream that is certainly not human, and Isabella leaves the hospital.
Between 'exorcisms' we're treated to mundane storyline, and the ever present battle between the two priests. One wants to exorcise Maria and others like her to help them, the other is afraid of losing his priesthood as the two are doing these exorcisms without the church's consent. While the idea is nice, and shows another side to the politics of the catholic church, it is the same conflict between characters we've seen in thousands of other movies. It fails to deliver, and the bad acting doesn't help.
The film's only redeeming scene comes when the priests decide that Isabella should accompany them on a separate exorcism to learn more about the practice. In this scene, the victim does numerous disturbing things, such as popping her shoulder out of place and generally contorting her body. It's nothing more than what we've come to expect from this genre, but it is effective still.
After this, the film loses all its merit. The group returns to the hospital to exorcise Maria, only to have her multiple demons jump into one of the priests, the cameraman, and Isabella. There are generic scenes such as one when the lights go out with the possessed priest upstairs.
Lastly, I must comment on the ending of this movie. I warn you, I am about to spoil it. But then, a movie as poorly made as this doesn't deserve the decency of secrecy.
In the final moments of the film, with the possessed priest dead, the cameraman is rushing Isabella to an exorcism expert in Rome. He becomes 'possessed', takes off his seatbelt, and veers into oncoming traffic, causing a wreck and the presumed death of the people in the car. The movie then ends. Abruptly. We are told the case is unresolved, and that we can visit http://www.therossifiles.com/ to find out more. Is this a clever blending of modern technology to enhance your moviegoing experience, or is this cheap, pathetic advertisement? A good film shouldn't need some website to further explain itself, and the site doesn't even do that from what I could gather.
The way endings like this work in a positive way is if we have been on a satisfying journey throughout the movie. In this one, we have not. We don't care about the characters. We can barely process what's going on as we see multiple exorcisms and the demons jump into the characters. There are no technically sound aspects to speak of, this movie is low-budget and it shows. It takes from a really great genre, the 'documentary', 'found-film' horror. Such titles like the Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity work because they utilize the cheap camerawork to make it look real. There are clear plot arcs. There are foundations in classic horror, and there are innovations as well that make up for unknown (but not always bad) actors. The Devil Inside has none of these, as I've mentioned.
The Exorcism horror sub genre never stood a chance. In it's premier, the original Exorcist movie got it right the first goddamn time. And no good exorcism movies have been made since, only cheap, floundering copies cashing in on the same idea.
There were some decent things about this film, but not enough to make it any good and certainly not enough to redeem the ridiculous ending. It was as if the movie itself were saying "Ha-ha for watching this garbage, now go
yourself" and the ending was the exclamation point on that statement. Don't waste your money on this movie, hopefully it'll soon be out of theaters and we can move on.
Lamb Of God - Resolution (01/24/12): A Review
Posted by defeat on January 23rd, 2012, 5:49 pm. Category: Scribery Entry
Rating: 7/10
I almost didn’t review this album after listening to the first half of it. I was thinking, “Oh….It’s (2009's) Wrath…again, and I’ll have nothing to say…” After giving it another chance, the second half of the album was indeed Lamb Of God’s saving grace.
Every member of Lamb Of God have seemingly evolved over the years, except for the second most talented member, drummer, Chris Adler. Don’t get it wrong. He’s a favorite drummer of many, as he’s a consistent, speed drumming machine with great fills and feet faster than light. Come with the dynamics already, though, Chris! Maybe, it’s the production that’s held you back with your sound. Maybe, it’s the way you tune your drums (Let them resonate a bit next time, eh? Every, single, solitary drum shouldn’t have the short thump of a bass drum…). Maybe, you just don’t care. Some don’t. Oh, well...so it goes. (I've been reading a lot of Vonnegut as of late.)
Resolution, contradictorily to the drumming, is LOG’s most dynamic release yet. Some thought the band had been lost to “The Graveyard of Previously Great Bands” with the bore that was their previous release, Wrath. It just seemed like a filler album without any originality. Resolution is an adventurous turn of events in LOG’s discography. Guitarists’ Mark Morton and Willie Adler have given us a new take on The New Wave of American Heavy Metal with some softer, more progressive, off-time riffs in the songs “Barbarosa”, “King Me”, and lead single “Ghost Walking”. In most metal, the bass guitar is just a copy of the lead riff, just lower. In this release, though, bassist John Campbell is pleasantly noticeable in parts throughout Resolution’s entirety.
It would be fantastic to have Machine back at the production helm instead of Josh Wilbur, as some minor kinks in the production are what took away some audio enjoyment points. The drums have been mentioned as a major issue. Other kinks were really just post-production snafus. “Barbarosa” and “Invictus” is clearly one song. With fourteen tracks, it’s not like LOG were scraping the barrel for material. Some of the songs on the second half of the album should have been mingled with the first half to break up the turn off of early monotony. This takes away from the listening experience the most. God, is that second half great, though…
In other news, vocalist, Randy Blythe is still alive.
Lead single: "Ghost Walking" Official Video
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows; a review
Posted by Landerpurex on January 7th, 2012, 7:28 am. Category: Scribery Entry
Before we get started, let me state that there will be plot points discussed in the following text, but I will do my best to keep crucial points a secret. Let me also state that I am not a professional critic, but have more critical film expertise than most people; having taken several film courses in college.
Rating: 8/10
Everyone knows the story of Sherlock Holmes, renowned detective. This movie is no different, with Holmes needing to solve a difficult case involving a sinister man named Professor Moriarty. The movie is deliciously mysterious, with Moriarty's motives in question until the final moments. Holmes of course enlists in the help of Dr. Watson, who is newly married; and the two go on an adventure that spans the European Continent to uncover Moriarty's plans and to try to save his intended victims that include Dr. Watson, his wife, a gypsy, and eventually all of Europe.
This movie was fantastic. Robert Downey Jr, Jude Law, and Jared Harris can do no wrong. The acting is superb, though sometimes over the top. I have, however, come to expect this of Downey Jr in general as well as within this franchise, so it works. He and Law make a fantastic pair, and the charisma and camaraderie come across well. Jared Harris makes a great villain as well, it's that simple.
The film lives up to its predecessor. It leaves a trail of clues that you are expected to notice, but not expected to piece together as Holmes does in the end. Certain important items are centered in the shot from Holmes' point of view, labeling them as imperative. The cinematography is sound, using multiple angles and distances when necessary. Sound is coupled with this approach as well. For example, there is one scene where one of Moriarty's lackeys is shown smoking a hand rolled cigarette. The cherry burns extra bright, and the sound of it burning can be heard over the other things going on in the frame. I wondered to myself, 'how is this important?' And I had a great time racking my brain trying to figure it out. I felt accomplished when it was revealed that the cigarette was important to the plot. This movie's greatest quality is that it makes you think and guess along with Holmes.
The film's comedy is fantastic, though sometimes ridiculous, as with the killing and revival of the poor bulldog (again). Though, once again, Downey Jr has made Holmes his own and put a modern spin on the man. That is not to say that the movie doesn't take certain liberties with the classics, because it does. Which is one of the reasons it remains an 8 out of 10 instead of a 9 or perfect score.
The great fighting scenes narrated strategically by Holmes return, though they go awry by variants not considered by Holmes. In the final scenes, Moriarty himself interjects in Holmes monologue and engages in a match of wits with the detective that is both exciting and original.
Speaking of which, editing must be mentioned. The film uses jump-cuts when necessary, and very effectively as well. Just before the scene mentioned prior, parallelism is used to near perfection as Holmes and Moriarty are having a game of chess. The movie cuts between chess moves and the exploits of Watson and the gypsy as they attempt to reveal an assassin and ultimately, Moriarty's plot.
My biggest problem with this movie was the extreme slow-motion. It was only in one scene, but that makes it stand out and it went on for far too long. Ever since 300, movies have been abusing slow motion. It was over the top in that title as well, but at least it was consistent. In an otherwise great, sound, smart movie I felt this was the only thing that seemed uninspired and frankly, too stereotypical Hollywood.
In closing, this move was very enjoyable. It was a bit on the long side, but I was sad it was over. In some ways, it is very typical action, in others, it is original, fun, and smart in a lot of ways modern movies are not. It is technically sound, but not ambitious. The cast delivers and I hope they continue to do so. The plot keeps you guessing right until the final moments, and there are many twists and turns to be had.
Go and see this movie while it's still in theaters.
Rating: 8/10
Everyone knows the story of Sherlock Holmes, renowned detective. This movie is no different, with Holmes needing to solve a difficult case involving a sinister man named Professor Moriarty. The movie is deliciously mysterious, with Moriarty's motives in question until the final moments. Holmes of course enlists in the help of Dr. Watson, who is newly married; and the two go on an adventure that spans the European Continent to uncover Moriarty's plans and to try to save his intended victims that include Dr. Watson, his wife, a gypsy, and eventually all of Europe.
This movie was fantastic. Robert Downey Jr, Jude Law, and Jared Harris can do no wrong. The acting is superb, though sometimes over the top. I have, however, come to expect this of Downey Jr in general as well as within this franchise, so it works. He and Law make a fantastic pair, and the charisma and camaraderie come across well. Jared Harris makes a great villain as well, it's that simple.
The film lives up to its predecessor. It leaves a trail of clues that you are expected to notice, but not expected to piece together as Holmes does in the end. Certain important items are centered in the shot from Holmes' point of view, labeling them as imperative. The cinematography is sound, using multiple angles and distances when necessary. Sound is coupled with this approach as well. For example, there is one scene where one of Moriarty's lackeys is shown smoking a hand rolled cigarette. The cherry burns extra bright, and the sound of it burning can be heard over the other things going on in the frame. I wondered to myself, 'how is this important?' And I had a great time racking my brain trying to figure it out. I felt accomplished when it was revealed that the cigarette was important to the plot. This movie's greatest quality is that it makes you think and guess along with Holmes.
The film's comedy is fantastic, though sometimes ridiculous, as with the killing and revival of the poor bulldog (again). Though, once again, Downey Jr has made Holmes his own and put a modern spin on the man. That is not to say that the movie doesn't take certain liberties with the classics, because it does. Which is one of the reasons it remains an 8 out of 10 instead of a 9 or perfect score.
The great fighting scenes narrated strategically by Holmes return, though they go awry by variants not considered by Holmes. In the final scenes, Moriarty himself interjects in Holmes monologue and engages in a match of wits with the detective that is both exciting and original.
Speaking of which, editing must be mentioned. The film uses jump-cuts when necessary, and very effectively as well. Just before the scene mentioned prior, parallelism is used to near perfection as Holmes and Moriarty are having a game of chess. The movie cuts between chess moves and the exploits of Watson and the gypsy as they attempt to reveal an assassin and ultimately, Moriarty's plot.
My biggest problem with this movie was the extreme slow-motion. It was only in one scene, but that makes it stand out and it went on for far too long. Ever since 300, movies have been abusing slow motion. It was over the top in that title as well, but at least it was consistent. In an otherwise great, sound, smart movie I felt this was the only thing that seemed uninspired and frankly, too stereotypical Hollywood.
In closing, this move was very enjoyable. It was a bit on the long side, but I was sad it was over. In some ways, it is very typical action, in others, it is original, fun, and smart in a lot of ways modern movies are not. It is technically sound, but not ambitious. The cast delivers and I hope they continue to do so. The plot keeps you guessing right until the final moments, and there are many twists and turns to be had.
Go and see this movie while it's still in theaters.
The Darkest Hour: A Movie Review
Posted by Landerpurex on January 7th, 2012, 6:49 am. Category: Scribery Entry
Before we get started, let me state that there will be plot points discussed in the following text, but I will do my best to keep crucial points a secret. Let me also state that I am not a professional critic, but have more critical film expertise than most people; having taken several film courses in college.
Overall rating: 5/10
This movie was nothing that the previews didn't show. In short, it's about a pair of software designers either fresh out of college or in the twilight of their college careers. They are in Moscow to pitch an idea for a user-based online comprehensive travel guide to some executives. They meet with a Swedish exec who has basically stolen their idea and screwed them out of a major (multi-million dollar?) deal. After this, the guys go to a club and meet a couple girls vacationing as well, and know of one of them due to her use of their program. Then come the invisible aliens. The creatures are made of electromagnetic energy and are somehow able to vaporize people. But their weakness is that they give themselves away and set off any and all lights and electronics when they approach. The rest of the movie is spent showing the characters trying to escape these creatures and get 'home', though they soon find similar landings and destruction have happened all across the world. Near the end, the group find out that there is a nuclear submarine waiting to help transport survivors back to their homes and/or to a safer facility.
First, it takes some time for the creatures to land. This is notwithstanding the fact the the premise of the guys' reason to be in Moscow is convoluted, not paramount to the plot, and completely forgettable. Though there were a few comic moments, there was nothing to be had in the first quarter of the film. Once the creatures land, I was intrigued. This movie's lone strength is the originality of the aliens and the plausibility of their form and powers. But the scripting failed to deliver more on the subject, with only a few lines from a Russian militant describing the nature of the aliens in no terms understandable by most people; myself included.
Speaking of the Russian militants, their characters are amusing, but completely stereotypical and over the top. They spout catch phrases like 'welcome to Russia' when fighting the creatures, they speak stereotypical nationalist dialog such as stuff about protecting their home, as well as typical, completely uninspired dialog about war and tactics. Couple this with forgettable characters all around and it makes for an equally forgettable experience.
The technical side of the movie was unimpressive as well. Nothing incredible in terms of cinematography, sound, or anything else.
The star of this film is the city of Moscow. It's exotic, beautiful, and foreboding. The architecture is fantastic, and there are some shots that are worth looking at.
In short, this was a movie that offered very little in terms of excitement, technical inventiveness, writing, and basically everything else that makes a film good. It had a tiny bit of originality with the creatures but this was not appropriately handled by anyone. The city was fantastic, but left one wanting. I did not see this movie in 3D, but I'm positive it would have been a debacle.
This movie was far from the worst I've seen, but falls very short. If you've seen the preview, you've seen everything cool there is about the movie.
Overall rating: 5/10
This movie was nothing that the previews didn't show. In short, it's about a pair of software designers either fresh out of college or in the twilight of their college careers. They are in Moscow to pitch an idea for a user-based online comprehensive travel guide to some executives. They meet with a Swedish exec who has basically stolen their idea and screwed them out of a major (multi-million dollar?) deal. After this, the guys go to a club and meet a couple girls vacationing as well, and know of one of them due to her use of their program. Then come the invisible aliens. The creatures are made of electromagnetic energy and are somehow able to vaporize people. But their weakness is that they give themselves away and set off any and all lights and electronics when they approach. The rest of the movie is spent showing the characters trying to escape these creatures and get 'home', though they soon find similar landings and destruction have happened all across the world. Near the end, the group find out that there is a nuclear submarine waiting to help transport survivors back to their homes and/or to a safer facility.
First, it takes some time for the creatures to land. This is notwithstanding the fact the the premise of the guys' reason to be in Moscow is convoluted, not paramount to the plot, and completely forgettable. Though there were a few comic moments, there was nothing to be had in the first quarter of the film. Once the creatures land, I was intrigued. This movie's lone strength is the originality of the aliens and the plausibility of their form and powers. But the scripting failed to deliver more on the subject, with only a few lines from a Russian militant describing the nature of the aliens in no terms understandable by most people; myself included.
Speaking of the Russian militants, their characters are amusing, but completely stereotypical and over the top. They spout catch phrases like 'welcome to Russia' when fighting the creatures, they speak stereotypical nationalist dialog such as stuff about protecting their home, as well as typical, completely uninspired dialog about war and tactics. Couple this with forgettable characters all around and it makes for an equally forgettable experience.
The technical side of the movie was unimpressive as well. Nothing incredible in terms of cinematography, sound, or anything else.
The star of this film is the city of Moscow. It's exotic, beautiful, and foreboding. The architecture is fantastic, and there are some shots that are worth looking at.
In short, this was a movie that offered very little in terms of excitement, technical inventiveness, writing, and basically everything else that makes a film good. It had a tiny bit of originality with the creatures but this was not appropriately handled by anyone. The city was fantastic, but left one wanting. I did not see this movie in 3D, but I'm positive it would have been a debacle.
This movie was far from the worst I've seen, but falls very short. If you've seen the preview, you've seen everything cool there is about the movie.
1-6-2012 Modern Warfare 3
Posted by Tanksandguns on January 6th, 2012, 4:43 pm. Category: Scribery Entry
As a man who has played every Call of Duty game since Call of Duty 3, and sporadically before that since Big Red 1 I like to consider myself one of Call of Duty's biggest fans. Call of Duty has taken it's place as THE First Person Shooter. It's the franchise that comes to mind first when one talks about FPS games, and until recently, has had little to no competition in the field.
Rating: 9/10
Campaign
Modern Warfare 3 builds itself off of the same story line that we saw in CoD4 and MW2. It follows multiple story lines as you play several different characters across each and also brings back the memorable duo of Captain Price and Soap MacTavish. Modern Warfare 3 starts right where Modern Warfare 2 left off. The world is in chaos, and Makarov is still at large. The game has the player visit several cities completely ransacked with war and destruction, including New York City and Paris, France.
The overall flow of the campaign is excellent. The transitions between missions and the pacing is wonderful. And the whole games had sitting on the edge of my seat, with a subtle anxious feeling the whole time. I was constantly wondering what would happen next, and where I was traveling to.
The game is also very challenging. Having completed the first two games on Veteran difficulty, this was my first choice on my first play through of the game. I quickly learned, that this game doesn't beat around the bush, and I couldn't even make it past the first checkpoint. I quickly dropped the difficulty to Hardened, and again to Normal. Even while playing Normal, I found myself dieing fairly frequently, and I loved it. I enjoy a real challenge while playing video games, and to get one in a FPS is no easy task. I also didn't find myself in the slow buildup of anger mode that usually comes with the frustrating deaths of FPS Campaigns. At one point, mid-combat, the game cycles between one the ground fighting, and in the sky fighting in an AC-130 gunship. This is one of the best moments that I can remember throughout all the games, second only to 'Ghillie in the Mist' from Call of Duty 4. The developers did a stunning job of transitioning immediately after an explosion from the AC-130 missile, to the ground troops in the smoke and debris of where the shell had just impacted.
The game itself is really beautiful (or as beautiful as a war-torn city can be). I played the entire campaign on a non-HD TV, and still found myself staring in amazement at the graphics. When I moved over to an HD TV for multiplayer, I found that they were spectacular.
The storyline does an excellent job of wrapping up the first two games. I had few questions left after I had finished, and even teared up at one point during the story. If you played the first two, I can assure you that you will not be disappointed in the final game.
Multiplayer
The multiplayer has been reworked again from Modern Warfare 2. They have new Kill Streaks, and introduced things called 'Strike Packages.' Strike Packages affect what kill streaks you are awarded, and how they are awarded. They offer three types you can choose from: Assault, Support, and Specialist. Assault focuses on killing enemies to gain enemy killing kill streak rewards. It includes, AC-130, Predator Missiles, and Attack Helicopters. Support focuses on objectives such as capturing a flag, planting a bomb, capturing a Domination point, etc. It doesn't require kills to advance through the rewards, but kills also help. Also, Support doesn't reset on death, so you can keep on dying and unlocking rewards. This was my personal favorite. This can give you UAV, Care Packages, Stealth Bomber, etc. The final Strike Package you can use is Specialist. Instead of giving you kill streak rewards, it unlocks perks every 2 kills the player makes. By 8 kills, the player then has all the perks in the game. These have really reworked how the multiplayer feels, and it feels a lot more balanced than the second game ever did.
My main problems with Modern Warfare 2, were that there were kill streaks in the air almost constantly, and there was little anyone could do about it. That feeling has really subsided with Modern Warfare 3. There doesn't seem to be helicopters, AC-130's, and Predator Missiles clogging up the sky nearly as much as it did in the second game, and there's more that can be done about it. More launchers, Sam Sites, and fewer overpowered kill streaks make for the multiplayer experience to be a lot more enjoyable.
Another complaint that I had with MW2, was the the Sniper Rifles seemed extremely underpowered. It took 2, sometimes 3 shots to kill someone in a Core match. In MW3, this has been fixed. One shot to the torso is more often than not, a kill shot. I find this to be my favorite change that was made. I'm finally not getting angry that my high velocity round isn't killing someone when it should.
With CoD: Black Ops came the addition that CoD had been missing for all of its games that Halo and the likes had picked up on. Split Screen multiplayer available online, either through multiple Xbox Live accounts or the use of Guest Accounts. Modern Warfare 3, thankfully, did not change this. You can now play with a buddy on the same TV, online.
Usually with First Person Shooters, I find myself hating a majority of the maps. For whatever reason, Modern Warfare 3 seems different. I only really dislike one or two maps. All the others I seem to have a blast on! They're all beautiful, fun and fairly small. The only complaint I have, is there's really no open area map that is good for Snipers.
All in all, I was extremely happy with the subtle tweaks they made to the multiplayer experience. Prestige Mode now goes to level 80 (ten times), and they added Prestige tokens which can unlock little bonuses such as Double XP, Double Weapon XP, and Emblems and Titles, among other things. Each player starts out with 3, and since I haven't prestiged yet, I'm unsure whether you get 1 ever prestige level or more than that.
Spec Ops
Modern Warfare 3 sees the return of the Spec Ops mode. This can be done either solo or with a friend. I tried doing several of these solo, and found that once I had a friend help me out, they became significantly easier.
Spec Ops mode is a series of missions and objectives, some from the campaign, some completely fresh that test your speed and accuracy. Also, they can be a major challenge. From capturing the Russian President aboard his airplane, to killing waves upon waves in a Firefight type game mode, Spec Ops is nothing short of fun. Infinity Ward added a new style that resembles Horde from Gears of War and Firefight from Halo, where you face wave after wave of enemies including foot soldiers, dogs, helicopters and the infamous Juggernaut soldiers. For those looking for something after the campaign and after you get bored with multiplayer, I would recommend Spec Ops with a friend. It's an absolute blast!
Conclusion
All in all, I would say that Modern Warfare 3 was definitely worth the money I spent on it. It provided me with hours of entertainment, and will continue to do so for months to come. It fixed a lot of the issues I had with the previous game, and added some awesome touches as well. It did not disappoint me, and so far has lead to a lot less frustration with the game than Modern Warfare 2 did. I would recommend this game to any First Person Shooter fan, any fan of the Call of Duty franchise, and anyone looking for one of the best multiplayer experiences in gaming. I won't beat around the bush though, some of the fan-boys and the some of the casual players of MW3 can ruin your multiplayer experience, but that's why there's a mute feature.
~Tanksandguns
Rating: 9/10
Campaign
Modern Warfare 3 builds itself off of the same story line that we saw in CoD4 and MW2. It follows multiple story lines as you play several different characters across each and also brings back the memorable duo of Captain Price and Soap MacTavish. Modern Warfare 3 starts right where Modern Warfare 2 left off. The world is in chaos, and Makarov is still at large. The game has the player visit several cities completely ransacked with war and destruction, including New York City and Paris, France.
The overall flow of the campaign is excellent. The transitions between missions and the pacing is wonderful. And the whole games had sitting on the edge of my seat, with a subtle anxious feeling the whole time. I was constantly wondering what would happen next, and where I was traveling to.
The game is also very challenging. Having completed the first two games on Veteran difficulty, this was my first choice on my first play through of the game. I quickly learned, that this game doesn't beat around the bush, and I couldn't even make it past the first checkpoint. I quickly dropped the difficulty to Hardened, and again to Normal. Even while playing Normal, I found myself dieing fairly frequently, and I loved it. I enjoy a real challenge while playing video games, and to get one in a FPS is no easy task. I also didn't find myself in the slow buildup of anger mode that usually comes with the frustrating deaths of FPS Campaigns. At one point, mid-combat, the game cycles between one the ground fighting, and in the sky fighting in an AC-130 gunship. This is one of the best moments that I can remember throughout all the games, second only to 'Ghillie in the Mist' from Call of Duty 4. The developers did a stunning job of transitioning immediately after an explosion from the AC-130 missile, to the ground troops in the smoke and debris of where the shell had just impacted.
The game itself is really beautiful (or as beautiful as a war-torn city can be). I played the entire campaign on a non-HD TV, and still found myself staring in amazement at the graphics. When I moved over to an HD TV for multiplayer, I found that they were spectacular.
The storyline does an excellent job of wrapping up the first two games. I had few questions left after I had finished, and even teared up at one point during the story. If you played the first two, I can assure you that you will not be disappointed in the final game.
Multiplayer
The multiplayer has been reworked again from Modern Warfare 2. They have new Kill Streaks, and introduced things called 'Strike Packages.' Strike Packages affect what kill streaks you are awarded, and how they are awarded. They offer three types you can choose from: Assault, Support, and Specialist. Assault focuses on killing enemies to gain enemy killing kill streak rewards. It includes, AC-130, Predator Missiles, and Attack Helicopters. Support focuses on objectives such as capturing a flag, planting a bomb, capturing a Domination point, etc. It doesn't require kills to advance through the rewards, but kills also help. Also, Support doesn't reset on death, so you can keep on dying and unlocking rewards. This was my personal favorite. This can give you UAV, Care Packages, Stealth Bomber, etc. The final Strike Package you can use is Specialist. Instead of giving you kill streak rewards, it unlocks perks every 2 kills the player makes. By 8 kills, the player then has all the perks in the game. These have really reworked how the multiplayer feels, and it feels a lot more balanced than the second game ever did.
My main problems with Modern Warfare 2, were that there were kill streaks in the air almost constantly, and there was little anyone could do about it. That feeling has really subsided with Modern Warfare 3. There doesn't seem to be helicopters, AC-130's, and Predator Missiles clogging up the sky nearly as much as it did in the second game, and there's more that can be done about it. More launchers, Sam Sites, and fewer overpowered kill streaks make for the multiplayer experience to be a lot more enjoyable.
Another complaint that I had with MW2, was the the Sniper Rifles seemed extremely underpowered. It took 2, sometimes 3 shots to kill someone in a Core match. In MW3, this has been fixed. One shot to the torso is more often than not, a kill shot. I find this to be my favorite change that was made. I'm finally not getting angry that my high velocity round isn't killing someone when it should.
With CoD: Black Ops came the addition that CoD had been missing for all of its games that Halo and the likes had picked up on. Split Screen multiplayer available online, either through multiple Xbox Live accounts or the use of Guest Accounts. Modern Warfare 3, thankfully, did not change this. You can now play with a buddy on the same TV, online.
Usually with First Person Shooters, I find myself hating a majority of the maps. For whatever reason, Modern Warfare 3 seems different. I only really dislike one or two maps. All the others I seem to have a blast on! They're all beautiful, fun and fairly small. The only complaint I have, is there's really no open area map that is good for Snipers.
All in all, I was extremely happy with the subtle tweaks they made to the multiplayer experience. Prestige Mode now goes to level 80 (ten times), and they added Prestige tokens which can unlock little bonuses such as Double XP, Double Weapon XP, and Emblems and Titles, among other things. Each player starts out with 3, and since I haven't prestiged yet, I'm unsure whether you get 1 ever prestige level or more than that.
Spec Ops
Modern Warfare 3 sees the return of the Spec Ops mode. This can be done either solo or with a friend. I tried doing several of these solo, and found that once I had a friend help me out, they became significantly easier.
Spec Ops mode is a series of missions and objectives, some from the campaign, some completely fresh that test your speed and accuracy. Also, they can be a major challenge. From capturing the Russian President aboard his airplane, to killing waves upon waves in a Firefight type game mode, Spec Ops is nothing short of fun. Infinity Ward added a new style that resembles Horde from Gears of War and Firefight from Halo, where you face wave after wave of enemies including foot soldiers, dogs, helicopters and the infamous Juggernaut soldiers. For those looking for something after the campaign and after you get bored with multiplayer, I would recommend Spec Ops with a friend. It's an absolute blast!
Conclusion
All in all, I would say that Modern Warfare 3 was definitely worth the money I spent on it. It provided me with hours of entertainment, and will continue to do so for months to come. It fixed a lot of the issues I had with the previous game, and added some awesome touches as well. It did not disappoint me, and so far has lead to a lot less frustration with the game than Modern Warfare 2 did. I would recommend this game to any First Person Shooter fan, any fan of the Call of Duty franchise, and anyone looking for one of the best multiplayer experiences in gaming. I won't beat around the bush though, some of the fan-boys and the some of the casual players of MW3 can ruin your multiplayer experience, but that's why there's a mute feature.
~Tanksandguns
Skrillex-Bangarang (12/23/11): A Review
Posted by defeat on December 23rd, 2011, 7:11 pm. Category: Scribery Entry
Rating 5/10
Listen. I’ll start off by saying I’m as on the fence with the newest Skrillex release, entitled Bangarang, as I have been with all the others. The guy is an exciting producer, and the voice samples/hooks he’s used are unforgettable. However, as with his other releases, the mid-register robotesque bass lines, four to the floor beats, and general feel are the same as they ever were and absolutely forgettable. You’ve got the electronic industry by the balls, Skrillex, and the time to fix your broken record is nigh.
When Skrillex became an instant success, and his songs could be heard everywhere, I was impressed with the mash up of genre’s with him and Korn in the Korn single “Get Up“, and really enjoyed "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites" and “Kill Everybody” off of Skrillex’s EP with the same name Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites. It seemed like a fresh, American take on the dubstep scene. That fresh take quickly turned into endless copycats and the post dubstep sub-genre dubbed “brostep”. As the forerunner of this new trend, Skrillex didn’t impress me with his first release, mildly did with his second release, and fails to with his newest.
There are definitely moments of production clarity on Bangarang in the title track (a song referencing the movie Hook?! Awesome!) and the non-bass line heavy house song “Right On Time“, but he even uses a broke up, syncopated, unintelligible, Asian sounding voice on the track “Summit” juuuust like he did on the track “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites”. In a nutshell, Bangarang should be entitled Sonic the Househog On Crack. It’s got a Sonic the Hedgehog music + house + brostep sound on most of the songs on the seven song EP. If you are already a die-hard Skrillex fan (and I know you are out there as I just read the comment “Skrillex is life.“ from a fan on Skrillex’s Facebook page), you are going to absolutely love this album. If you haven’t ever heard Skrillex, and are into dubstep, you are probably going to like this album. The rest of us will either like it, dislike it, or think it’s OK (Mitch Hedberg anyone?). It does have bass drops and a couple buildups/breakdowns that make you smile with delight, so even after I write this review.....I’m still on the fence.
The title track:
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross-T.G.w.t.D.T.Soundtrack: A Review
Posted by defeat on December 12th, 2011, 11:14 pm. Category: Scribery Entry
Rating: 10/10
When Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor work together, they don't just make music. They mold sounds into layers of emotional synesthesia, and their newest masterpiece, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, is no different. Your brain and body don't quite know what to do with themselves. You smile. You get the chills. You get creeped out. You contemplate, yet sometimes you stop thinking all together.
After the near three hour playtime ended, I took my headphones off and the first thing to come to mind was Homer's epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey. If Homer were alive today, he'd be furiously writing a screenplay, day in and day out, so Reznor and Ross could give it the sonic pulse it (I'm sure) would deserve. They are just that good.
Reznor has always been one of my favorites as far as extremely layered music goes. I consider Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile to be the greatest double-album of my generation, and it's a perfect example of Mr. Reznor's musical depth. Atticus Ross, on the other hand is more of a minimalist, and I was first introduced to his music when he did some programming and/or produced Nine Inch Nails' last four albums. He also caught my attention whilst watching the movie The Book of Eli. The entire time I was thinking to myself, "This HAS to be either Trent, Atticus, or Saul Williams doing the soundtrack for this...." It was indeed Atticus, and I became a fan.
The soundtrack for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a drone type of electronica with some darker ambient soundscapes layered in, and when I write "layered in", I mean it as emphatically as is possible. It's the most complex minimalistic album ever created, if that's even possible. You'll always hear synth, and you'll sometimes hear keys, bells, guitars, strings, vibrations, xylophones etc., etc. One of the songs even has vocals, and oddly enough it's a cover of Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" (featuring Karen O on vocals) In a nutshell, it's epic in every way possible. Find three hours and treat yourself to what's bound to be a Grammy winner.
Recommended if you enjoy: Sigur Ros, Ghosts I-IV by Nine Inch Nails, The Book of Eli (soundtrack), The Social Network (soundtrack)
When Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor work together, they don't just make music. They mold sounds into layers of emotional synesthesia, and their newest masterpiece, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, is no different. Your brain and body don't quite know what to do with themselves. You smile. You get the chills. You get creeped out. You contemplate, yet sometimes you stop thinking all together.
After the near three hour playtime ended, I took my headphones off and the first thing to come to mind was Homer's epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey. If Homer were alive today, he'd be furiously writing a screenplay, day in and day out, so Reznor and Ross could give it the sonic pulse it (I'm sure) would deserve. They are just that good.
Reznor has always been one of my favorites as far as extremely layered music goes. I consider Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile to be the greatest double-album of my generation, and it's a perfect example of Mr. Reznor's musical depth. Atticus Ross, on the other hand is more of a minimalist, and I was first introduced to his music when he did some programming and/or produced Nine Inch Nails' last four albums. He also caught my attention whilst watching the movie The Book of Eli. The entire time I was thinking to myself, "This HAS to be either Trent, Atticus, or Saul Williams doing the soundtrack for this...." It was indeed Atticus, and I became a fan.
The soundtrack for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a drone type of electronica with some darker ambient soundscapes layered in, and when I write "layered in", I mean it as emphatically as is possible. It's the most complex minimalistic album ever created, if that's even possible. You'll always hear synth, and you'll sometimes hear keys, bells, guitars, strings, vibrations, xylophones etc., etc. One of the songs even has vocals, and oddly enough it's a cover of Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" (featuring Karen O on vocals) In a nutshell, it's epic in every way possible. Find three hours and treat yourself to what's bound to be a Grammy winner.
Recommended if you enjoy: Sigur Ros, Ghosts I-IV by Nine Inch Nails, The Book of Eli (soundtrack), The Social Network (soundtrack)
allbroke- Broke/Free EP (12/02/2011): A Review
Posted by defeat on December 6th, 2011, 11:23 pm. Category: Scribery Entry
Rating: 10/10
The dubstep scene is in two factions at the moment. You’ve got the UK kids who are all, “Yeah, Yeah dubstep…it’s played out and now the Americans are catching on late….yet again.” And we also have the US kids who are getting into dubstep because the US producers/programmers decided to 1-UP the UK’s scene. I personally don’t get into all that myself. If the track is good…..the track is good, wherever and whenever it came out.
Now on to the album you all need to know about. Allbroke has had a few songs independently released recently, and his Facebook was droppin’ hints about a present to us all (his fans). It’s here. His present is the absolutely free EP Broke/Free.
This you are going to enjoy. It’s a mix between UK and US dubstep in all the right ways. The music itself tells a subtle sci-fi story in it’s four song way. Makes me wish dubstep was around when The Matrix was being produced. I think It would have been very cool for Allbroke to have had a couple songs on there.
“The Device” is the opener, and from start to beginning it walks us through a device being used to make some nasty drops. It’s a very unique song. I have yet to hear of anyone doing what Allbroke is doing here. With this opener you know you’ve stumbled upon something unique.
“Nostromo” is second in line and well. It’s pretty chill at first until 55 seconds in when it drops and don’t stop….in a good way. Enter some sci fi dialogue. Great song.
“Orion” The third track I really, really, really , really enjoyed. Sweet, sweet tension and release I am a fan of. This one however has more of a UK sound to it. Not that I’m complaining .
“Field Medic” This closure is the epitome of what I was trying to get across up in hurr. It’s a UKUSA dubstep orgy.
Over all this albums broke down the boundaries between UK and US dubstep with one fell swoop. I was impressed with the dynamics of it all. Solid, Solid, EP.
Recommened if you enjoy: Ed Solo, Datsik, skrillex, Nero
Now how about a music video combining the songs for maximum epic? EH?
The link to the FREE EP is
http://www.facebook.com/spirographed?ref=tn_tnmn#!/Allbroke
Like the page, download the nasty.
The dubstep scene is in two factions at the moment. You’ve got the UK kids who are all, “Yeah, Yeah dubstep…it’s played out and now the Americans are catching on late….yet again.” And we also have the US kids who are getting into dubstep because the US producers/programmers decided to 1-UP the UK’s scene. I personally don’t get into all that myself. If the track is good…..the track is good, wherever and whenever it came out.
Now on to the album you all need to know about. Allbroke has had a few songs independently released recently, and his Facebook was droppin’ hints about a present to us all (his fans). It’s here. His present is the absolutely free EP Broke/Free.
This you are going to enjoy. It’s a mix between UK and US dubstep in all the right ways. The music itself tells a subtle sci-fi story in it’s four song way. Makes me wish dubstep was around when The Matrix was being produced. I think It would have been very cool for Allbroke to have had a couple songs on there.
“The Device” is the opener, and from start to beginning it walks us through a device being used to make some nasty drops. It’s a very unique song. I have yet to hear of anyone doing what Allbroke is doing here. With this opener you know you’ve stumbled upon something unique.
“Nostromo” is second in line and well. It’s pretty chill at first until 55 seconds in when it drops and don’t stop….in a good way. Enter some sci fi dialogue. Great song.
“Orion” The third track I really, really, really , really enjoyed. Sweet, sweet tension and release I am a fan of. This one however has more of a UK sound to it. Not that I’m complaining .
“Field Medic” This closure is the epitome of what I was trying to get across up in hurr. It’s a UKUSA dubstep orgy.
Over all this albums broke down the boundaries between UK and US dubstep with one fell swoop. I was impressed with the dynamics of it all. Solid, Solid, EP.
Recommened if you enjoy: Ed Solo, Datsik, skrillex, Nero
Now how about a music video combining the songs for maximum epic? EH?
The link to the FREE EP is
http://www.facebook.com/spirographed?ref=tn_tnmn#!/Allbroke
Like the page, download the nasty.
A battle of time on communities
Posted by Demon on December 5th, 2011, 6:42 pm. Category: Scribery Entry
Time moves on inevitably, as I’m sure anyone can tell. Childhood memories become just what they are – memories. Not much can stay the same in a world rapidly evolving with people snaking along just as quickly towards some mysterious, unknown goal of worth we, as a society and race, have decided is vitally necessary. This is also true for the internet, but at a much broader and faster rate because of instant gratification and the scope of available tools for developers to build. While driving down ‘memory lane’ after twenty-odd years may bring the shock of finding your childhood home destroyed and a new shopping plaza in its place, you can still find your breath taken away at the vast and expanding internet. Simply visit Google and type in a keyword relative to your life (anything) and you’ll find more information instantly available than you can possibly read in your lifetime… with more being released as you’re reading!
Thus, what happens to a memory of a place once you can no longer visit it or feel that connection you once felt? How often do you drive or walk down a new, but familiar street where memories seem to come alive and flood into your conscious? Where do you go when you begin to relive those days of happiness, the shared, raw energy of a community? The whole experience can be quite a downer once you start thinking about those childhood playmates or perhaps the teenage adventures while testing the world, knowing you had your parents as a safety net. Where, then do you go when that memory is an online community?
Too often I’ve found myself needing information and simply visiting search engines like Google and Bing to find a quick resolution to any situation which may arise. This includes anything from technological break-downs, news, or entertainment; basically anything which would be best served instantly. It seems, at least to me, that technical forums and online ‘gurus’ have become a thing of the past. Why? Most times, ‘Googling’ an issue will bring up a laundry list of posts in forums with the exact problem, usually followed with an answer. However, the post was made and answered anywhere from ten years to a more recent four years. In either case, unless it’s a new product, there is no real need for posting on a forum only to wait days (if you’re lucky) for an intelligent response and possibly longer to get a true answer.
So where do communities fit into this? It seems only natural that communities, though once warm and welcoming to the casual internet browser, has become a thing of the past. They’ve been replaced with blogs and social networking where, again, everything revolves on instant gratification for the end-user. What kind of communities have survived? Other than those directly linked with a brand (Dell Technical Support – Love them) or with a particular product (Tip.It – A fansite based on a MMO game), it would seem there is little opportunity for growth among other communities. Yet there are still communities with mixed interests (Runevillage – A fansite-turned-general interest) where a wisp of memory and the attachment of veterans keep the community together, even through difficult times.
Despite the fondness of memories in our compulsive visits to places we’ve known and grown to love, there is a sort of sweet sorrow in their parting. Just as we must one day say goodbye to our parents, it feels there is an inevitable end to all communities – online or not. In a more directed note, while the Village may be the dear home of a few dedicated users who have stayed around for nearly the entirety of its life, the difficulty lies not in reviving the dead, but re-angling the community to be both ageless and timeless where simple trends don’t direct the life of the site as a whole. I’d say this has been the bane of countless sites with a targeted audience, because there was never any room allowed or even acknowledged to open the door for a broader scope of inclusion for outsiders and thus lays the self-imprisonment of sites with too little a mind to approach a large audience.
Simply putting it, the only means by which to survive in the rapid change and growth of the internet is to build and evolve with it, rather than staying focused on a single niche. A stubborn, slow mind will only be left behind as the community gathered moves on to bigger and better things, though they may still visit every so often (like an old man in a retirement home, perhaps). There can only be success where success is actively perceived and rendered into a useable model; building a strong community is great while there is community to build, but there has to be some means of bringing new users in and getting them attached the same way everyone else has become attached.
Thus, what happens to a memory of a place once you can no longer visit it or feel that connection you once felt? How often do you drive or walk down a new, but familiar street where memories seem to come alive and flood into your conscious? Where do you go when you begin to relive those days of happiness, the shared, raw energy of a community? The whole experience can be quite a downer once you start thinking about those childhood playmates or perhaps the teenage adventures while testing the world, knowing you had your parents as a safety net. Where, then do you go when that memory is an online community?
Too often I’ve found myself needing information and simply visiting search engines like Google and Bing to find a quick resolution to any situation which may arise. This includes anything from technological break-downs, news, or entertainment; basically anything which would be best served instantly. It seems, at least to me, that technical forums and online ‘gurus’ have become a thing of the past. Why? Most times, ‘Googling’ an issue will bring up a laundry list of posts in forums with the exact problem, usually followed with an answer. However, the post was made and answered anywhere from ten years to a more recent four years. In either case, unless it’s a new product, there is no real need for posting on a forum only to wait days (if you’re lucky) for an intelligent response and possibly longer to get a true answer.
So where do communities fit into this? It seems only natural that communities, though once warm and welcoming to the casual internet browser, has become a thing of the past. They’ve been replaced with blogs and social networking where, again, everything revolves on instant gratification for the end-user. What kind of communities have survived? Other than those directly linked with a brand (Dell Technical Support – Love them) or with a particular product (Tip.It – A fansite based on a MMO game), it would seem there is little opportunity for growth among other communities. Yet there are still communities with mixed interests (Runevillage – A fansite-turned-general interest) where a wisp of memory and the attachment of veterans keep the community together, even through difficult times.
Despite the fondness of memories in our compulsive visits to places we’ve known and grown to love, there is a sort of sweet sorrow in their parting. Just as we must one day say goodbye to our parents, it feels there is an inevitable end to all communities – online or not. In a more directed note, while the Village may be the dear home of a few dedicated users who have stayed around for nearly the entirety of its life, the difficulty lies not in reviving the dead, but re-angling the community to be both ageless and timeless where simple trends don’t direct the life of the site as a whole. I’d say this has been the bane of countless sites with a targeted audience, because there was never any room allowed or even acknowledged to open the door for a broader scope of inclusion for outsiders and thus lays the self-imprisonment of sites with too little a mind to approach a large audience.
Simply putting it, the only means by which to survive in the rapid change and growth of the internet is to build and evolve with it, rather than staying focused on a single niche. A stubborn, slow mind will only be left behind as the community gathered moves on to bigger and better things, though they may still visit every so often (like an old man in a retirement home, perhaps). There can only be success where success is actively perceived and rendered into a useable model; building a strong community is great while there is community to build, but there has to be some means of bringing new users in and getting them attached the same way everyone else has become attached.
LLL: Updated 1/07; info on my future in the scribery
Posted by Landerpurex on December 1st, 2011, 2:55 am. Category: Scribery Entry
**EDIT**
Alright, so I daresay you editors and high ranking officials at RV are not interested in pure literature or creative works being put on the front page. Though I think that is ludicrous, I also see why that is. The bottom line is that I go to the movies, like, A LOT. Think on a weekly basis, pretty much. I hope to make some topics there on the front page through reviewing new movies. I have already written two and dedicated several hours to doing so in an effort to help this place. I know they are somewhat outdated, Darkest Hour being most so but I intend to review newer releases soon. I plan on seeing The Devil Inside tomorrow, so perhaps you can expect that review soon.
I also know that there are tons of other movie review sites, far more comprehensive and those that have professional critics (HA), but I tried to take a frank, fresh approach to the movies that will help anyone who is looking for such information. I also have to say that I am inspired by Defeat, but no longer will I allow him to take the brunt of the responsibility here, and the glory along with it.
Bottom line is, I am not going to write nor post creative works if they have no chance of being used, similarly how I am not going to write to no end for the Villager.
If someone wishes to refute or update me on Scribery and subsequently, front page quality policy, I would be much obliged.
Also it should be noted that I would like to buy the new RPG coming out in February called Kingdoms of Amalur, so dibs on that review assuming I actually get the game.
***
This is the thread I'm gonna reserve for the (hopefully) many contributions I make to RV in its new direction. For now, I'm only posting one poem but expect more in the future. This is perhaps my favorite piece that I've written, and I believe it shows. Later, expect more poetry, short stories, and snippets from my novel/s.
That said, I need to post a small disclaimer: I hope to make a living as a writer someday, and much of what I post will be some of my best work. I retain all rights to my work as the author. In the unlikely event that I sell the rights to some of my work, I may ask for it to be taken off the site but that does not seem to be something that is possible for me to accept.
This was something I wrote for a two week intensive poetry seminar. I wrote this in response to my classmates who often said that my work was too triumphant, that it wasn't sad, depressing, or void of conflict. I hope you appreciate the satire. It's a form called "letter poetry" which I had never tried before, but I seem to be at least somewhat good at.
Alright, so I daresay you editors and high ranking officials at RV are not interested in pure literature or creative works being put on the front page. Though I think that is ludicrous, I also see why that is. The bottom line is that I go to the movies, like, A LOT. Think on a weekly basis, pretty much. I hope to make some topics there on the front page through reviewing new movies. I have already written two and dedicated several hours to doing so in an effort to help this place. I know they are somewhat outdated, Darkest Hour being most so but I intend to review newer releases soon. I plan on seeing The Devil Inside tomorrow, so perhaps you can expect that review soon.
I also know that there are tons of other movie review sites, far more comprehensive and those that have professional critics (HA), but I tried to take a frank, fresh approach to the movies that will help anyone who is looking for such information. I also have to say that I am inspired by Defeat, but no longer will I allow him to take the brunt of the responsibility here, and the glory along with it.
Bottom line is, I am not going to write nor post creative works if they have no chance of being used, similarly how I am not going to write to no end for the Villager.
If someone wishes to refute or update me on Scribery and subsequently, front page quality policy, I would be much obliged. Also it should be noted that I would like to buy the new RPG coming out in February called Kingdoms of Amalur, so dibs on that review assuming I actually get the game.
***
This is the thread I'm gonna reserve for the (hopefully) many contributions I make to RV in its new direction. For now, I'm only posting one poem but expect more in the future. This is perhaps my favorite piece that I've written, and I believe it shows. Later, expect more poetry, short stories, and snippets from my novel/s.
That said, I need to post a small disclaimer: I hope to make a living as a writer someday, and much of what I post will be some of my best work. I retain all rights to my work as the author. In the unlikely event that I sell the rights to some of my work, I may ask for it to be taken off the site but that does not seem to be something that is possible for me to accept.
This was something I wrote for a two week intensive poetry seminar. I wrote this in response to my classmates who often said that my work was too triumphant, that it wasn't sad, depressing, or void of conflict. I hope you appreciate the satire. It's a form called "letter poetry" which I had never tried before, but I seem to be at least somewhat good at.
Lander wrote:
Dear self,
You will never triumph against anything.
To presume otherwise is nothing
short of maniacal nonsense.
Wallow in your self pity,
Fill a pool with it,
Drown in it,
Glub.
Write your farewell poem in blood,
Then hang yourself.
Um, don’t do any of that.
I’m being facetious.
It surely wouldn’t kill you,
To let your weakness through
Every now and again.
Death dances around you.
He dances a jig in Swedish clogs.
He trips over his own robe,
Wreaking hellish havoc.
Pontificate.
Your father, dead by simultaneous stroke and heart attack
Your Uncle, dead by spidery spider cancer
Your cousin, dead by asthma attack
Your cousin, dead by drowning
Your mother, dead by house fire
Let a tear chart a new course
Down your cheek.
Taste bitterness.
Become angry.
Shout for no reason,
Curse the people who get under your skin.
Do it to their faces.
Your car’s a piece of,
Drive it til the wheels fall off,
Then light it on fire.
Loosen up and stop hiding
Your past and your trials.
They happened.
Pretending they aren’t real will only
Cause a quarter-life crisis.
Affectionately,
Me
You will never triumph against anything.
To presume otherwise is nothing
short of maniacal nonsense.
Wallow in your self pity,
Fill a pool with it,
Drown in it,
Glub.
Write your farewell poem in blood,
Then hang yourself.
Um, don’t do any of that.
I’m being facetious.
It surely wouldn’t kill you,
To let your weakness through
Every now and again.
Death dances around you.
He dances a jig in Swedish clogs.
He trips over his own robe,
Wreaking hellish havoc.
Pontificate.
Your father, dead by simultaneous stroke and heart attack
Your Uncle, dead by spidery spider cancer
Your cousin, dead by asthma attack
Your cousin, dead by drowning
Your mother, dead by house fire
Let a tear chart a new course
Down your cheek.
Taste bitterness.
Become angry.
Shout for no reason,
Curse the people who get under your skin.
Do it to their faces.
Your car’s a piece of
,Drive it til the wheels fall off,
Then light it on fire.
Loosen up and stop hiding
Your past and your trials.
They happened.
Pretending they aren’t real will only
Cause a quarter-life crisis.
Affectionately,
Me
By far, the most exciting news in the last year was the announcement of the latest entry in the Elder Scrolls series, Skyrim. Along with this announcement was a vast amount of detail on what would be included in the final product, as it would be released in less than 12 months, on November 11. The game is now out, and the biggest question series fans have had is this: Is it going to live up to previous games in the series?
I have to say what excited me was the announcement that this game would attempt to walk the line between Morrowind and Oblivion; Morrowind being one of my favorite games from childhood, and Oblivion being a technically good follow up set in a fairly generic setting. This is a pretty tall order. The magic of Morrowind, anyone can tell you, was in the discovery. You never knew what powerful ring you would find in that tomb across the river, or what daedric relic you'd pull out of the abandoned dwemer tower just outside of town.
Oblivion did away with this system, simply rewarding you these one of a kind items through quests; sure, a dungeon might provide a bunch of loot, but none of it had "pizzazz". None of it belonged to some great, unnamed warlock, and it certainly didn't belong to a demigod. You had to go talk to those guys in person, and you had to make sacrifices, but only when you hit the right level. Not the right level? Go back to Rockmilk and wait for those bandits and marauders to kill each other! Maybe after about ten delves you'll have fired your bow enough to get a level or two. It kind of got... boring. Not that other games don't have ridiculous amounts of grinding, but in a game claiming to be bigger and better than Morrowind, I expect even more relics to be dug up, not to just be handed to me for running between vendors and grabbing a shovel.
Skyrim, I'm happy to say, walks the line and leans toward the Morrowind side of the series. There's no telling what you'll find in any given cave, be it a powerful enemy wielding a magic weapon or a dragon wall providing you with immense power. The quests to find powerful artefacts often trigger just from discovering the tomb or strange item, so you still get the thrill of finding the artefact without feeling like you're a means to an end.
The world is wonderfully alien, just as it was in the good old days of the series. Expansive plains have herds of mammoths and giants wandering through, with beautiful mountains always in view. Rivers and streams flow through the landscape and look wonderful, although they are as much a nuisance as they are a beauty to look at. Often, there is no good way to cross a river without walking for what seems like miles out of your way. Attempting to wade across often goes awry, as there typically isn't a good way to climb out of said river. At this point, the best you can hope to do is survive the waterfall inevitably waiting 200 feet downstream and hope that you'll come out somewhere close to an actual road on the other side.
That's not to say that Oblivion's additions to the series were completely cut from the game; if anything, its shortcomings were tweaked until they became strengths for the game. While it didn't provide much in the way of setting, the fourth game in the series did a few things right: It simplified everything, and it added randomness in items. Skyrim expands on this.
Previous entries in the series required you to build your character around your Attributes, which governed skills, of which several selected as Major and [sometimes] Minor. You could only level up by increasing one of these selected skills, and then you had to weigh the pros and cons of increasing an attribute. These dilemmas are no more. Attributes: Gone. Major Skills: Nope nope. Minor Skills: That's been out of fashion for like ten years! All skills start the same, save for racial bonuses. You don't pick a class. You don't make a class. Whatever you use increases, and when a certain number of skill increases has been achieved, you level. You choose to increase your Health, Magicka, or Stamina bars, and then you get a perk to use to specialize in something. That's it. While I DO miss the challenge of increasing my luck, it's even better that I don't have to worry about respecializing in things after I've made my character. That isn't even a concern until after level 15 or so.
Building on the simplification of "Blade, Blunt, and Marksman", the weapon distinction has now become "One handed, Two handed, and Archery", with different sub-specializations within each skill tree that are up to you. One handed weapons include daggers, maces, swords, and one handed axes, and are great for damage dealers who don't want to take any damage. It goes hand in hand with the stealth tree, which only serves to make assassin characters even more overpowered (a common complaint I've heard of the game). From here you have the option to dual wield, a new feature to the series. It dramatically decreases your ability to block an attack, but the idea here is that you aren't going to be hit before this happens. Two handed is for people who don't mind getting punched in the face a couple times while swinging there weapon. These include greatswords, axes, and warhammers. Where does archery fit into all this? Very neatly, since it's so much more powerful than it ever was before. Put enough points into it, and it’s just as effective as any other weapon you could use.
Delving dungeons simply for magic items is always beneficial, especially at lower levels. Don't wear heavy armor, but still REALLY want that archery bonus? With the return of the Enchantment skill, items can be destroyed to learn their properties for use in making new ones. This means that equipment gathering is no longer the endless cycle of finding and selling and paying your first born to the Mage's Guild to make stuff temporarily better.
Oh, and dragons. With how late this review/rant is coming out, you've probably heard a lot about them already. Not a whole lot I can say on that matter except that they are far more fun than any of the other boss fights I have been involved with in this game up to this point. Fight them. Relish them, but remember that they are common throughout this game. If I had a nickel for every time I came out of fast travel and had to save a town, I wouldn’t have much money, because I don't think I've killed more than 20 dragons, and only like half those attacked towns. But I still feel like a boss.
Last, the main quest. I'm not going to get too much into this, because I honestly haven't done much with it. This shouldn't be a problem for many fans of the series, as no one really plays through it. From what I've seen of other people playing it, it is greatly improved story wise from Oblivion. What I can tell you is that guilds are back, with the Fighter's Guild and Mage's Guild being replaced by awesome. Dark Brotherhood is more disturbing than ever, and the Thieves Guild is... changed...
While a great game in and of itself, it stacks up with the best of the Elder Scrolls series. If you enjoyed any of those, give it a shot. It's definitely the best entry in the series. If you didn't, check it out anyway. Enough has changed that you may find yourself a new fan.
I have to say what excited me was the announcement that this game would attempt to walk the line between Morrowind and Oblivion; Morrowind being one of my favorite games from childhood, and Oblivion being a technically good follow up set in a fairly generic setting. This is a pretty tall order. The magic of Morrowind, anyone can tell you, was in the discovery. You never knew what powerful ring you would find in that tomb across the river, or what daedric relic you'd pull out of the abandoned dwemer tower just outside of town.
Oblivion did away with this system, simply rewarding you these one of a kind items through quests; sure, a dungeon might provide a bunch of loot, but none of it had "pizzazz". None of it belonged to some great, unnamed warlock, and it certainly didn't belong to a demigod. You had to go talk to those guys in person, and you had to make sacrifices, but only when you hit the right level. Not the right level? Go back to Rockmilk and wait for those bandits and marauders to kill each other! Maybe after about ten delves you'll have fired your bow enough to get a level or two. It kind of got... boring. Not that other games don't have ridiculous amounts of grinding, but in a game claiming to be bigger and better than Morrowind, I expect even more relics to be dug up, not to just be handed to me for running between vendors and grabbing a shovel.
Skyrim, I'm happy to say, walks the line and leans toward the Morrowind side of the series. There's no telling what you'll find in any given cave, be it a powerful enemy wielding a magic weapon or a dragon wall providing you with immense power. The quests to find powerful artefacts often trigger just from discovering the tomb or strange item, so you still get the thrill of finding the artefact without feeling like you're a means to an end.
The world is wonderfully alien, just as it was in the good old days of the series. Expansive plains have herds of mammoths and giants wandering through, with beautiful mountains always in view. Rivers and streams flow through the landscape and look wonderful, although they are as much a nuisance as they are a beauty to look at. Often, there is no good way to cross a river without walking for what seems like miles out of your way. Attempting to wade across often goes awry, as there typically isn't a good way to climb out of said river. At this point, the best you can hope to do is survive the waterfall inevitably waiting 200 feet downstream and hope that you'll come out somewhere close to an actual road on the other side.
That's not to say that Oblivion's additions to the series were completely cut from the game; if anything, its shortcomings were tweaked until they became strengths for the game. While it didn't provide much in the way of setting, the fourth game in the series did a few things right: It simplified everything, and it added randomness in items. Skyrim expands on this.
Previous entries in the series required you to build your character around your Attributes, which governed skills, of which several selected as Major and [sometimes] Minor. You could only level up by increasing one of these selected skills, and then you had to weigh the pros and cons of increasing an attribute. These dilemmas are no more. Attributes: Gone. Major Skills: Nope nope. Minor Skills: That's been out of fashion for like ten years! All skills start the same, save for racial bonuses. You don't pick a class. You don't make a class. Whatever you use increases, and when a certain number of skill increases has been achieved, you level. You choose to increase your Health, Magicka, or Stamina bars, and then you get a perk to use to specialize in something. That's it. While I DO miss the challenge of increasing my luck, it's even better that I don't have to worry about respecializing in things after I've made my character. That isn't even a concern until after level 15 or so.
Building on the simplification of "Blade, Blunt, and Marksman", the weapon distinction has now become "One handed, Two handed, and Archery", with different sub-specializations within each skill tree that are up to you. One handed weapons include daggers, maces, swords, and one handed axes, and are great for damage dealers who don't want to take any damage. It goes hand in hand with the stealth tree, which only serves to make assassin characters even more overpowered (a common complaint I've heard of the game). From here you have the option to dual wield, a new feature to the series. It dramatically decreases your ability to block an attack, but the idea here is that you aren't going to be hit before this happens. Two handed is for people who don't mind getting punched in the face a couple times while swinging there weapon. These include greatswords, axes, and warhammers. Where does archery fit into all this? Very neatly, since it's so much more powerful than it ever was before. Put enough points into it, and it’s just as effective as any other weapon you could use.
Delving dungeons simply for magic items is always beneficial, especially at lower levels. Don't wear heavy armor, but still REALLY want that archery bonus? With the return of the Enchantment skill, items can be destroyed to learn their properties for use in making new ones. This means that equipment gathering is no longer the endless cycle of finding and selling and paying your first born to the Mage's Guild to make stuff temporarily better.
Oh, and dragons. With how late this review/rant is coming out, you've probably heard a lot about them already. Not a whole lot I can say on that matter except that they are far more fun than any of the other boss fights I have been involved with in this game up to this point. Fight them. Relish them, but remember that they are common throughout this game. If I had a nickel for every time I came out of fast travel and had to save a town, I wouldn’t have much money, because I don't think I've killed more than 20 dragons, and only like half those attacked towns. But I still feel like a boss.
Last, the main quest. I'm not going to get too much into this, because I honestly haven't done much with it. This shouldn't be a problem for many fans of the series, as no one really plays through it. From what I've seen of other people playing it, it is greatly improved story wise from Oblivion. What I can tell you is that guilds are back, with the Fighter's Guild and Mage's Guild being replaced by awesome. Dark Brotherhood is more disturbing than ever, and the Thieves Guild is... changed...
While a great game in and of itself, it stacks up with the best of the Elder Scrolls series. If you enjoyed any of those, give it a shot. It's definitely the best entry in the series. If you didn't, check it out anyway. Enough has changed that you may find yourself a new fan.
24th September 2009 - RuneScape Q&A – Localisation
Posted by Dark Paladin on September 24th, 2009, 1:51 pm. Category: RuneScape News
RuneScape.com wrote:
It’s time for the last in this round of Q&A sessions, by way of the Localisation teams. Their live Q&A will take place tonight at 8pm (BST/official forum time). In the meantime, you can read the questions they’ve already answered either in this developers’ blog or this forum thread.
Mod Heiko (German Team Leader), Mod Talula (French Team Leader) and the Language Support Team’s Mod Catia will be answering questions in a live Q&A on the forums tonight from 8pm (BST/official forum time). Mod Ges, Mod Linda and Mod Betina will be translating them as they go for the relevant localised forums. Questions asked on this forum thread shall be answered on this forum thread; these threads will become available at 8pm.
Mod Anna W
Localisation Manager
Mod Heiko (German Team Leader), Mod Talula (French Team Leader) and the Language Support Team’s Mod Catia will be answering questions in a live Q&A on the forums tonight from 8pm (BST/official forum time). Mod Ges, Mod Linda and Mod Betina will be translating them as they go for the relevant localised forums. Questions asked on this forum thread shall be answered on this forum thread; these threads will become available at 8pm.
Mod Anna W
Localisation Manager
Welcome to the Staff Team DragonCrusher1! + Emails work!
Posted by Glodenox on September 24th, 2009, 11:49 am. Category: RuneVillage News
I'm certain this is no surprise to anyone who works behind the scenes, because basically this was long overdue already 
For all the time you've already put in the various staff areas you're active in, we felt you deserved the special Staff rank
Thanks and congratulations!
Note: the actual promotion already took place 2 days ago, so you may have noticed this change already before seeing this topic.
EDIT: Also, I'd like to add that the mail system has been fixed again. The past couple of days it wasn't working. I won't go into details, but it's working again now!
- Greetz Glodenox
For all the time you've already put in the various staff areas you're active in, we felt you deserved the special Staff rank
Thanks and congratulations!
Note: the actual promotion already took place 2 days ago, so you may have noticed this change already before seeing this topic.
EDIT: Also, I'd like to add that the mail system has been fixed again. The past couple of days it wasn't working. I won't go into details, but it's working again now!
- Greetz Glodenox
23rd September 2009 - Billing Web Pages - New Look
Posted by Dark Paladin on September 23rd, 2009, 12:04 pm. Category: RuneScape News
RuneScape.com wrote:
We have redesigned our billing web pages. The subscription process is still the same, just with a brand new look to improve your experience.
Old billing style:
New billing style:
Our billing pages remain as secure as before, and you will find the wide range of payment options that you are used to. From today when you subscribe or manage your subscription, you will be redirected to the usual, secure location, and you will be greeted by pages that now have a brighter, clearer design.
Old billing style:
New billing style:
Our billing pages remain as secure as before, and you will find the wide range of payment options that you are used to. From today when you subscribe or manage your subscription, you will be redirected to the usual, secure location, and you will be greeted by pages that now have a brighter, clearer design.
23rd September 2009 - Woodcutting Rebalance
Posted by Sweep on September 23rd, 2009, 10:38 am. Category: RuneScape News
Quote:
Willows, maples and magic trees all have their uses, but what of the lesser known vegetation such as the hollow trees of Mort Myre or the arctic pines of the Fremennik isles? With this week’s update, we’ve taken a closer look at the Woodcutting skill, rebalancing experience for the less popular trees and cultivating some new forms of training, but it’s not just XP rates that we’ve been analysing...
Teak and mahogany trees now also have a special log or two up their sleeves, which are worth much more than their weight in gold to the right buyer! Choking ivy has been seen clambering up the stone walls of RuneScape’s major cities and is much tougher to deal with than it looks. We’ve also tweaked arctic pine-splitting and put up some Prayer-refreshing hollow bark torches in the Haunted Woods, so get your hatchets out and your arms chopping!
Finally, the workers at the Lumber Yard are inviting high-level woodcutters to participate in 'Sawmill Training', where you can grab, slice and saw your way to greater experience. For more information on all of these changes, head over to the Woodcutting section of the Game Guide.
Mod Trick
RuneScape Content Developer
In other news...
Hobgoblins were starting to feel a bit left behind in the looks stakes compared to their Bandosian brothers, so we've given them a graphical rework.
We've removed the doors to Edgeville's furnace to make it easier to use, but moved the furnace two squares further from the bank to maintain the balance. You will still need to have completed the necessary Varrock Achievement Diary tasks in order to use the furnace.
You might notice a small new feature has been added to the Friends List (the ability to move the line separating players’ names and online status). This feature is associated with the Display Names update, which we’re hoping to release later this year.
Teak and mahogany trees now also have a special log or two up their sleeves, which are worth much more than their weight in gold to the right buyer! Choking ivy has been seen clambering up the stone walls of RuneScape’s major cities and is much tougher to deal with than it looks. We’ve also tweaked arctic pine-splitting and put up some Prayer-refreshing hollow bark torches in the Haunted Woods, so get your hatchets out and your arms chopping!
Finally, the workers at the Lumber Yard are inviting high-level woodcutters to participate in 'Sawmill Training', where you can grab, slice and saw your way to greater experience. For more information on all of these changes, head over to the Woodcutting section of the Game Guide.
Mod Trick
RuneScape Content Developer
In other news...
Hobgoblins were starting to feel a bit left behind in the looks stakes compared to their Bandosian brothers, so we've given them a graphical rework.
We've removed the doors to Edgeville's furnace to make it easier to use, but moved the furnace two squares further from the bank to maintain the balance. You will still need to have completed the necessary Varrock Achievement Diary tasks in order to use the furnace.
You might notice a small new feature has been added to the Friends List (the ability to move the line separating players’ names and online status). This feature is associated with the Display Names update, which we’re hoping to release later this year.
New Woodcutting "Minigame"
Hidden:
New Features?
Hidden:
21st September 2009 - Friends and Clan Chat Rollback
Posted by Dark Paladin on September 21st, 2009, 2:17 pm. Category: RuneScape News
RuneScape.com wrote:
During the migration of one of our storage systems, we have regrettably lost five days' worth of Friend List and Clan Chat updates for approximately one quarter of our players. Unfortunately, restoring from a newer backup is not an option in this situation, and the only course of action we have is to revert to the pre-migration data from last week.
As you may be aware, we have been moving our core systems from their current home in Cambridge to new, faster facilities located in central London. As part of this move, we are switching from a local server and disk storage system to a storage area network (SAN). The SAN is designed to allow us to scale our storage needs better in the future, and should have provided us with more resilience in the case of hardware or network failures.
The data in the SAN is replicated from the primary hosting facility, in real-time, to a secondary facility where we can run systems from in the event of a failure of the primary. Data is also backed up continuously from these two sites to our offices in Cambridge.
In this instance, however, during one of the system moves, we inadvertently triggered a flaw in the new storage system. This flaw caused the server hosting the fourth set of friend data to cease writing updates to the SAN at about midday last Wednesday. Because the data was cached in memory, and not flushed to the SAN, none was replicated to the second facility or backed up to our offices.
Despite this the friend storage system appeared to be working normally and we didn't spot the problem until this afternoon when we restarted the server for other maintenance. It is important to note that we DO have comprehensive backups, but in this case they didn’t help because the data was (invisibly) not saved to disk at all, so wasn’t there for us to rollback to.
We are currently investigating the root cause of the write failures, and will not migrate any further core systems until we have determined the cause of and resolved this problem. We are also more closely monitoring the systems we have already migrated, so if similar problems occur we can deal with them in a timely manner.
Please accept our sincerest apologies for any Friend List or Clan Chat updates you may have lost as a result of this failure.
As you may be aware, we have been moving our core systems from their current home in Cambridge to new, faster facilities located in central London. As part of this move, we are switching from a local server and disk storage system to a storage area network (SAN). The SAN is designed to allow us to scale our storage needs better in the future, and should have provided us with more resilience in the case of hardware or network failures.
The data in the SAN is replicated from the primary hosting facility, in real-time, to a secondary facility where we can run systems from in the event of a failure of the primary. Data is also backed up continuously from these two sites to our offices in Cambridge.
In this instance, however, during one of the system moves, we inadvertently triggered a flaw in the new storage system. This flaw caused the server hosting the fourth set of friend data to cease writing updates to the SAN at about midday last Wednesday. Because the data was cached in memory, and not flushed to the SAN, none was replicated to the second facility or backed up to our offices.
Despite this the friend storage system appeared to be working normally and we didn't spot the problem until this afternoon when we restarted the server for other maintenance. It is important to note that we DO have comprehensive backups, but in this case they didn’t help because the data was (invisibly) not saved to disk at all, so wasn’t there for us to rollback to.
We are currently investigating the root cause of the write failures, and will not migrate any further core systems until we have determined the cause of and resolved this problem. We are also more closely monitoring the systems we have already migrated, so if similar problems occur we can deal with them in a timely manner.
Please accept our sincerest apologies for any Friend List or Clan Chat updates you may have lost as a result of this failure.
RVET #24: Kalphite Queen Hunt (Over, thanks for coming!)
Posted by Dark Paladin on September 20th, 2009, 11:36 pm. Category: Global announcement
RVET Event #24: September 2009
Kalphite Queen Hunt!
Indiana Jaron lead the way, carrying his trusty pair of ropes which were required to reach the evil demon's lair. As his personal theme song played in the background, his allies began praying to their respective Gods to grant them protection from magical spells in preparation for the offensive they were about to lead. The Villagers, having recently awoken from a year-long hibernation, refreshed and ready for battle, reached the giant cavern and charged inside.
They were confronted by a giant beetle - the Kalphite Queen. She began to attack, using her melee, magic and ranged abilities to inflict pain upon the mighty villagers, but they would not yield! Slowly, they wore her down, until she cried out and fell to the ground. The Villagers rejoiced, as Indiana Jaron cracked his Abyssal Whip happily.
Suddenly, the corpse disappeared - and was quickly replaced by a flying creature! The battle wasn't over yet, but they had beaten her once. Surely...they could do it again!
General Information
What: Kalphite Queen Hunt!
When: Sunday, September 27
World: 104 (P2P)
Time: 6 PM GMT (7 PM BST), 2 PM EST, 11 AM PST
Meeting Place: Shantay Pass (See map below)
(The above map is taken from the RuneVillage Kalphite Queen Guide.)
Kalphite Queen Hunt Information
The RuneVillage Events Team is gearing up for its first-ever Boss Hunt, and you're invited! Do you have what it takes to go up against the fearsome Kalphite Queen and escape unscathed--or at the very least, alive? Find out with us as we trek into the desert of RuneScape this Sunday with the aim of vanquishing this giant foe.
Many of you will probably already know the ins and outs of the Kalphite Queen's lair, or perhaps boss hunting in general, but here are a few tips to make our excursion a bit easier.
- The Kalphite Queen is level 333, and although she might not be the toughest boss in RuneScape anymore, she'll kill off anyone that takes the challenge lightly. Be sure to read the RuneVillage Kalphite Queen Guide so you know what to bring and what to expect!
- We will gather in a Clan Chat in-game (to be announced at the event) to communicate better with each other during the fight.
- This is a Dangerous event! You can be killed if you're not prepared, and dying in the Kalphite Queen's lair means you will lose the items you are carrying.
So, does the Kalphite Queen frighten the adventurer in you, or will you courageously step forward and help us be the thorn in her side? We hope to see you all this Sunday!
Recent RVET Winners
This section proclaims the winners of past RVET events. Want to have your name up here on a Global for all to see? Come on down to our events and give it your all!
August '09 Games Room Champions: ZinyX (Runelink) and Jackstick (Draughts)
July '09 Skilling Contest Winners (FI & WC): Avian Maid & Glodenox
April '09 Skilling Contest Winners (FM & RC): Vincent Ashe & mentos
February '09 Barbarian Assault Team: Glodenox, Weirdocal, Jaron, Vincent Ashe, Jimmybe
January '09 Staff vs. Villagers War: Villagers win
December '08 Fight Pits Champion: Jaron
August '08 Who's that Villager Winner: Jackstick
May '08 Castle Wars Winners: Team Saradomin
April '08 Trouble Brewing Team: Caedo, Goten, Jaron, Justin, Shadow7, Simons Pure
March '08 Egg Hunt Winners: Simons Pure (2 eggs), Shadowsmage, Zinyx, Devil Fly
February '08 Snowball Fight Victors: Justin's Wind Faction
January '08 Fight Pits Champions: Simons Pure, Paidea, Ges2
December '07 Games Room Champions: Dark Paladin, Jaron, The123king, The Slayer
About the RVET Events Team
The RuneVillage Events Team is a team lead by Dark Paladin, dr henry, and Jaron, with strong support from Jimmybe and Tyler. Together, we plan one event every month for all of RuneVillage to participate in. Hopefully, you will enjoy this event as well as every other event we host, as a lot of thought and time goes into each and every one we do. Also note that if you have an idea for an event and want our help, please do not hesitate to contact us and we shall see if we can help out.
- The RuneVillage Events Team -
RuneVillage 2.0 - Development Diaries II (Re-post)
Posted by A5chow on September 20th, 2009, 10:56 pm. Category: RuneVillage News
*Original topic has been lost. This is a re-post/duplicate. Stay tuned for the third installment, coming soon!*
Introducing the new and improved: RuneVillage 2.0!
RuneVillage 2.0 will be the website's massive and revolutionary overhaul. It combines a simplistic design, user-friendly features, and easy browsing to maximize one's playing experience.
What will be new?
- A complete overhaul and organization of the menus, allowing us to display more items without sacrificing easy browsing
- An update and improvement of our standards in graphics, guides, and database items
- The ability for registered users to customize certain areas
- New multimedia and tools to improve the playing experience of RuneScape
- And many more to come...
Today, we've released our second entry of the Developmental Diary for RV 2. This entry describes our overall progress and focuses on the thought processes that go behind designing the pages of our new website. Last time, we released thumbnail images of our mock-ups. Since then, we've been able to complete and finalize the designs of a lot of guides and indexes, and we decided to make some of them available for public viewing.
Please enjoy this second installment of our Development Diary!
Quests Index
By Jackstick
We have made some changes to the quest index to make it briefer yet more informative about each quest.
The new Quest Index layout will give you all of the basic information about the quest: Quest Name, Members/Free-To-Play, Quest Points, Difficulty, Length, and Rating (or, how fun we deem the quest to be). You will be able to reorganize the quest index table to show the hardest/easiest quests first, the quests with the best rating, those with the most quest points, etc. The table will use images for the rating levels in the new quest index instead of the single-letter rating system that we currently use. The Difficulty and Length level will be based on the actual difficulties and lengths that Jagex has in their quest guides. The Rating level will depend on those submitted by our users.
You may have noticed two buttons above the Quest Index table. The first button leads to the Quest Planner; a tool that you can use to keep track of your quests, check which quests you can do, plan for future quests, etc. The second button is for the Quest Series page. The Quest Series page will give you all the information you need about a quest series (Example: Plague City). It's pretty simple, and we hope you will find it useful.
Skills Index
By Donut Juice
The Skills Index has received a significant update. In fact, it’s not even comparable to the original. Fear not; while it has been updated greatly, we’ve retained the simplistic, yet powerful interface you’re used to.
Before this, we simply offered a list of skills. Now, we offer a beautiful layout complimented by stunning graphics and more features. So, instead of the list, it has been replaced by buttons with the skill icon and description, giving you a visual image and description to clarify the skill. Plus, we've provided an advanced search feature.
We’ve also added a “Further Help” section that allows just that - further help. If you require any further information, we can offer links to other areas of the site that may answer your questions.
Individual Skill Guide Index
By Donut Juice
We’ve updated the index of the skill itself. Taking a leaf from the Knowledge Base, we’ve realized that in some of the larger, more comprehensive guides, we can't throw it all on one page in order to supply you with the best information possible.
Our solution? An index! Upon clicking on the skill you wish to receive information about, you’ll be brought to another index breaking down the skill into its fundamental aspects. Some include “The Basics”, “FAQ”, “Training and Tactics”, “Quests”, etc. These are dynamic and will change with each guide you click on. (Example: Slayer may have a section on “Slayer Masters” while Agility may have a section on “Agility Courses”. Naturally, you won't find any "Agility Masters" or "Slayer Courses.")
Like the Skills Index, the index for the actual skill has the similar button index, so the layout is consistent across the site.
These indexes are similar to what we offered with our Table of Contents, but now it’s more organized and easier to access. Each aspect of the Table of Contents now has its own button in the index that brings you to its page upon clicking, instead of being jumped half way down in a mile-long page.
Like the skills index, it has a Further Help section as well as an advanced search feature, combined with updated graphics
All in all, they’ve received a significant update, but we’re confident that the layout changes will be easy to learn and will greatly improve your browsing experience.
By Jackstick
If you go look at our current Items Database page, you'll see that it's not very impressive. All of the items are thrown into one page, and there is only one search option. The table is hard to follow, and it looks very boring. The new Items Database will be nothing like that.
The main page will be a sort of index page with a nice banner, an introduction, and a much better search function. Instead of listing every single item on the first page, the main page will only show the top ten most-searched-for items, and if your item is not on that list then you will have the option to browse through all of the items in the database, or use the search function. You can search the entire items database, or you can be more specific by searching for an item's name, quest-relation, and its examine text. There is also an option to search for items that begin with a certain letter.
The Items Database table is a great improvement from the old one. The table shows a picture of the item, the item name, whether or not it is a members/tradeable/quest item, and the item's price (assuming that it can be traded/bought). You will be able to re-organize the table to display the items alphabetically/reverse-alphabetically, by members/f2p, tradability, quest, and by price. The interactive table, coupled with the search function, will make item-searching a lot easier than it is on our current items database.
Q: Alright, this is great, but when will I be able to access the site and use it personally?
A: We're getting closer to that magical day, but we still have some things we need to tidy up. It's not far off, but we want to avoid potential disappointment.
Q: Are you improving things at the cost of simplicity?
A: Definitely not. Things will stay simplistic, but with more advanced features. If anything it will be easier, more simplistic, and with an improved user-friendliness. There's nothing but improvement this time around.
Q: Can I join the Website Team?
A: Thanks for your interest! At the moment, we don't require assistance in creation of ideas and concepts, but if you have experience in coding, please contact Glodenox. The need for additional coders is over - Glodenox
Q: Why can't you tell us everything you're doing?
A: We want to keep a sense of secrecy, for our own protection. We need an impressive release that surprises everyone, and we don't want other people to catch onto our ideas and steal them before we can implement them. The wait is long, but it will be worth it.
Q: Is every aspect of the site going to be updated?
A: Eventually, yes. You definitely won't see any sign of the grey-on-red (or whatever that color is) we have now, but not every aspect of the site will be brand new and polished right away. We plan to release updates to the site after the release, so it won't slow down the release itself. (Think, RV 2.1, for example.) Almost all the main, popular aspects of the site will be updated completely for the launch.
Q: I have another question!
A: Please post it on this thread.
Leaders
A5chow - The Project Manager
Organizes and manages individual projects and the overall progress of RV 2.0.
Jackstick - Head of Graphic Designing
Leads graphic designers.
Glodenox - Head of Programming and Coding
In charge of programming, coding, and the technical side of the website.
The Web Developing Team
Web developers develop and process ideas, concepts, and suggestions. They are our thinking tank.
Blackmage172 - Web Developer
Dark Paladin - Web Developer
Dragoncrusher1 - Web Developer
Elanthiel - Web Developer
Goten - Web Developer
head cheff - Web Developer
Jackstick - Web Developer
Jaron - Web Developer
Rocky Martin - Web Developer
Gamestar - On leave
Donut Juice - On leave
The Programming Team
The programmers are our engineers. They code and program the ever-so important features for our website.
Glodenox - Head of Programming and Coding
demonviper16 - Programmer
Dragoncrusher1 - Programmer
John - Programmer
Nathan - Programmer
The Graphics Team
Our graphic designers create and design the amazing graphics you'll see on our website.
Jackstick - Head of Graphic Designing
Goten - Graphic Designer
Sarah - Graphic Designer
Steely Mallon - Graphic Designer
Rollback got you feelin' down?
Posted by Christopher on September 20th, 2009, 12:19 am. Category: RuneVillage News
Well then nothing brightens a person's heart quite like smileys!
That's right, my dear villagers - We have yet another new bundle of smileys fresh from the oven and ready to serve! After the rollback, we found our newly neatened smiley list back in its old horrendous state. Devastated, we quickly restored the newer smileys, and decided to add to their former newer glory! Our newest changes include;
List of additions:
List of replacements:
Some of you may have also noticed that we've changed the quicklist of smileys once again. We tried to match it to the old one as best as we could remember, and included some of the newer ones that we think you'll enjoy using. Keep in mind though that we're completely open to feedback and suggestions concerning both these smileys and the quicklist.
It's also worth letting you know that the Default Avatar Gallery has been restored to its former newer glory as well, with over one-hundred RuneScape pixel avatars for anyone to use.
And on a final note, please make sure to restore your post counts and group memberships if you haven't already, as well as help fill the War Chest if you can!
Many thanks for the support and patience with this whole roleback ordeal,
-The RuneVillage Staff
That's right, my dear villagers - We have yet another new bundle of smileys fresh from the oven and ready to serve! After the rollback, we found our newly neatened smiley list back in its old horrendous state. Devastated, we quickly restored the newer smileys, and decided to add to their former newer glory! Our newest changes include;
List of additions:
-
- :XD.: -
- :lmao.: -
- :admire.: -
- :spite.: -
- :smooth.: -
- :awesome.: - Updated version of
(Original remains on the smiley list) - Updated version of (Original remains on the smiley list)
List of replacements:
-
to replace 
-
to replace 
-
to replace 
Some of you may have also noticed that we've changed the quicklist of smileys once again. We tried to match it to the old one as best as we could remember, and included some of the newer ones that we think you'll enjoy using. Keep in mind though that we're completely open to feedback and suggestions concerning both these smileys and the quicklist.
It's also worth letting you know that the Default Avatar Gallery has been restored to its former newer glory as well, with over one-hundred RuneScape pixel avatars for anyone to use.
And on a final note, please make sure to restore your post counts and group memberships if you haven't already, as well as help fill the War Chest if you can!
Many thanks for the support and patience with this whole roleback ordeal,
-The RuneVillage Staff
18th September 2009 - Game Worlds Moving...
Posted by Dark Paladin on September 18th, 2009, 8:30 am. Category: RuneScape News
RuneScape.com wrote:
Following on from the game world outage in July, we are in the process of moving from the affected ISP as promised to a new facility that is not only robust but has significantly more bandwidth to support our continued growth requirements. We have been using the new ISP at a different location for some time, so we know they are competent.
Unfortunately, this will mean some down-time while the servers are moved to the new facility. Starting today, and continuing over the course of this weekend, the following worlds will be offline while they are moved:
7,8,9,13,14,19,20,22,
27,28,29,30,37,42,47,
48,56,61,62,64,66,70,
100,113,114 and 115.
When the worlds are taken offline, you will receive the "System update in 10 minutes" warning.
We have tried to minimise disruption to various worlds (themed or otherwise) so that all game features are available during this time.
I sincerely apologise for the inconvenience but, rest assured, we are making these changes to improve your gaming infrastructure.
Thanks,
Mod MMG
CEO
Unfortunately, this will mean some down-time while the servers are moved to the new facility. Starting today, and continuing over the course of this weekend, the following worlds will be offline while they are moved:
7,8,9,13,14,19,20,22,
27,28,29,30,37,42,47,
48,56,61,62,64,66,70,
100,113,114 and 115.
When the worlds are taken offline, you will receive the "System update in 10 minutes" warning.
We have tried to minimise disruption to various worlds (themed or otherwise) so that all game features are available during this time.
I sincerely apologise for the inconvenience but, rest assured, we are making these changes to improve your gaming infrastructure.
Thanks,
Mod MMG
CEO
17th September 2009 - Advisors and Objectives
Posted by Muscular Ape on September 17th, 2009, 4:36 am. Category: RuneScape News
www.runescape.com
Guess that's what the sign was
Quote:
Today’s update sees a rework to the very earliest portions of the game, plus a new feature called the objective system, which can be accessed via the new tab on the side interface (the signpost icon left of the Friends List).
Objective system
The objective system allows you to set yourself an objective to work towards, be that a specific skill level or the completion of a certain quest. This can either be randomly generated or something of your own choosing. The system will then track how you are doing in meeting that objective.
It was initially developed with new players in mind, as it will give those who are boggled by the vast array of things to do in RuneScape something to focus upon, and provide some direction as to the sorts of things they could be aiming for. We have, however, designed it in such a way that we hope more experienced players will find of use, and that they too will enjoy setting themselves goals and tracking their progress towards them.
New tutorial and Advisor system
The previous tutorial and the Lumbridge tutors were not giving the best first impression of RuneScape to new players, nor were they the most effective way of teaching new players how to play the game. Much of the information they gave was not of interest to players until later on in the game, and came across as too wordy and boring. We’ve found that most players prefer to get stuck into the game and figure things out by actually playing.
As such, a lot of this information has been moved out of the tutorial, and the tutorial has been replaced with a slightly shorter introduction to the game, which focuses on the basic controls. Much of the information that was taught in the previous tutorial can now be accessed as mini tutorials, as and when players want to learn, through the new advisor system.
The advisor is a helpful old fellow by the name of Roddeck, who can be found by clicking on the new “question mark” button (next to the logout button). The advisor system works dynamically depending on where you are and what you are doing at the time. You can either do a mini tutorial (a much more interactive way of learning things) or “Ask Roddeck for advice” (if you just want a quick answer).
The advisor system currently only covers basic activities, but we are planning to flesh it out to cover more skills and activities.
Starting area
We’ve defined an area of the game as the starting area, in which you can access the new tutorials, as well as making it a safer area for new players. There are guards and gates placed at the various entrances to the starting area, so new players can tell where the borders are. The area is quite big, covering Lumbridge, Varrock and Draynor.
The gates have been designed so as not to slow down more experienced players (i.e. everyone with a total level of 60 or more). Simply click on the other side of the gate in the game window (or on the minimap) and you will automatically walk through, without any more clicks than normal. Players with a total level below 60 will need to confirm that they really do wish to leave the starting area.
Other changes
We’ve made various other changes due to the above:
* As these mini tutorials are more interactive, they’ve rendered obsolete some previous features we had in Lumbridge for helping new players. These features had built up over the years and were making Lumbridge feel rather cluttered, so you’ll find that most of the Lumbridge tutors and the Lumbridge money making features have been removed from the game. The items which you could previously get for free from the tutors are now available as free samples from certain shops.
* The Air Altar’s location has moved to southwest of Varrock, next to the River Lum. It’s the same distance from Varrock’s west bank as it used to be from Falador’s east bank.
* We’ve added a new fishing shop to Lumbridge.
* A new tanner has set up shop in southwest Varrock.
* A new pottery has been opened in Draynor Village.
* A new bridge has been built over the River Lum (near the Champions’ Guild).
* Small changes have been made to some easy and beginner Achievement Diary tasks. Also, the “Craft 196 air runes simultaneously” task in the Falador Achievement Diary has changed to “Craft 140 mind runes simultaneously”.
* Woodcutting skillcapes can now be bought from Wilfred, who can be found among the trees north of Falador.
* Goblins and giant spiders now have slightly improved drop tables.
Paul
RuneScape Content Developer
Objective system
The objective system allows you to set yourself an objective to work towards, be that a specific skill level or the completion of a certain quest. This can either be randomly generated or something of your own choosing. The system will then track how you are doing in meeting that objective.
It was initially developed with new players in mind, as it will give those who are boggled by the vast array of things to do in RuneScape something to focus upon, and provide some direction as to the sorts of things they could be aiming for. We have, however, designed it in such a way that we hope more experienced players will find of use, and that they too will enjoy setting themselves goals and tracking their progress towards them.
New tutorial and Advisor system
The previous tutorial and the Lumbridge tutors were not giving the best first impression of RuneScape to new players, nor were they the most effective way of teaching new players how to play the game. Much of the information they gave was not of interest to players until later on in the game, and came across as too wordy and boring. We’ve found that most players prefer to get stuck into the game and figure things out by actually playing.
As such, a lot of this information has been moved out of the tutorial, and the tutorial has been replaced with a slightly shorter introduction to the game, which focuses on the basic controls. Much of the information that was taught in the previous tutorial can now be accessed as mini tutorials, as and when players want to learn, through the new advisor system.
The advisor is a helpful old fellow by the name of Roddeck, who can be found by clicking on the new “question mark” button (next to the logout button). The advisor system works dynamically depending on where you are and what you are doing at the time. You can either do a mini tutorial (a much more interactive way of learning things) or “Ask Roddeck for advice” (if you just want a quick answer).
The advisor system currently only covers basic activities, but we are planning to flesh it out to cover more skills and activities.
Starting area
We’ve defined an area of the game as the starting area, in which you can access the new tutorials, as well as making it a safer area for new players. There are guards and gates placed at the various entrances to the starting area, so new players can tell where the borders are. The area is quite big, covering Lumbridge, Varrock and Draynor.
The gates have been designed so as not to slow down more experienced players (i.e. everyone with a total level of 60 or more). Simply click on the other side of the gate in the game window (or on the minimap) and you will automatically walk through, without any more clicks than normal. Players with a total level below 60 will need to confirm that they really do wish to leave the starting area.
Other changes
We’ve made various other changes due to the above:
* As these mini tutorials are more interactive, they’ve rendered obsolete some previous features we had in Lumbridge for helping new players. These features had built up over the years and were making Lumbridge feel rather cluttered, so you’ll find that most of the Lumbridge tutors and the Lumbridge money making features have been removed from the game. The items which you could previously get for free from the tutors are now available as free samples from certain shops.
* The Air Altar’s location has moved to southwest of Varrock, next to the River Lum. It’s the same distance from Varrock’s west bank as it used to be from Falador’s east bank.
* We’ve added a new fishing shop to Lumbridge.
* A new tanner has set up shop in southwest Varrock.
* A new pottery has been opened in Draynor Village.
* A new bridge has been built over the River Lum (near the Champions’ Guild).
* Small changes have been made to some easy and beginner Achievement Diary tasks. Also, the “Craft 196 air runes simultaneously” task in the Falador Achievement Diary has changed to “Craft 140 mind runes simultaneously”.
* Woodcutting skillcapes can now be bought from Wilfred, who can be found among the trees north of Falador.
* Goblins and giant spiders now have slightly improved drop tables.
Paul
RuneScape Content Developer
Guess that's what the sign was
17th September 2009 - Living Rock Caverns
Posted by Muscular Ape on September 17th, 2009, 4:34 am. Category: RuneScape News
www.runescape.com
Quote:
Flowing meltwater from Ice Mountain, coupled with some rather over-enthusiastic dwarven mining, has opened up an entrance to what the dwarves have named the Living Rock Caverns. This previously sealed-off area offers a rich source of ore for the dedicated miner, plus two new species of fish for the keen angler.
The caverns are home to more than fish, however! The living rock guardians of the caverns take umbrage with adventurers plundering their home, so be on your guard, and beware of the rock of the caverns themselves! Particularly lucky (or should that be unlucky?) adventurers may even encounter a living rock patriarch, which are rumoured to wander the caverns in search of careless individuals to smite with its mighty fists.
Mod Rathe
RuneScape Content Developer
Summary:
Where to access the Living Rock Caverns:
Enter the caverns at the northern end of the Dwarven Mine.
Requirements:
85 Fishing (to bait cavefish)
90 Fishing (to bait rocktail)
73 Mining (to mine living rock remains)
77 Mining (to mine concentrated coal deposits)
80 Mining (to mine concentrated gold deposits)
88 Cooking (to cook cavefish)
93 Cooking (to cook rocktail)
The ability to defeat level 120+ foes would be a distinct advantage
In other news...
We've added a caret (aka text cursor) to the chat box to allow you to move within any text you type to correct typos or insert extra words. To move the caret through your text either hold down 'Shift' and use the arrow keys, or simply click where you'd like the caret to be. This should save considerable time when correcting typos!
As promised in the RuneScape Content Live Q&A, we've increased the POH room limit from 30 up to 32. These two extra rooms become available at Construction levels 38 and 44 respectively.
The dragon pickaxe has been added to the list of items you can CoinShare via the LootShare system.
We've removed more delays (e.g. when drinking potions and running).
We've increased the shop stock of bone bolts.
Bounty Hunter worlds have been changed slightly to allow players to access the Grand Exchange area of the map for all your combat needs.
The caverns are home to more than fish, however! The living rock guardians of the caverns take umbrage with adventurers plundering their home, so be on your guard, and beware of the rock of the caverns themselves! Particularly lucky (or should that be unlucky?) adventurers may even encounter a living rock patriarch, which are rumoured to wander the caverns in search of careless individuals to smite with its mighty fists.
Mod Rathe
RuneScape Content Developer
Summary:
Where to access the Living Rock Caverns:
Enter the caverns at the northern end of the Dwarven Mine.
Requirements:
85 Fishing (to bait cavefish)
90 Fishing (to bait rocktail)
73 Mining (to mine living rock remains)
77 Mining (to mine concentrated coal deposits)
80 Mining (to mine concentrated gold deposits)
88 Cooking (to cook cavefish)
93 Cooking (to cook rocktail)
The ability to defeat level 120+ foes would be a distinct advantage
In other news...
We've added a caret (aka text cursor) to the chat box to allow you to move within any text you type to correct typos or insert extra words. To move the caret through your text either hold down 'Shift' and use the arrow keys, or simply click where you'd like the caret to be. This should save considerable time when correcting typos!
As promised in the RuneScape Content Live Q&A, we've increased the POH room limit from 30 up to 32. These two extra rooms become available at Construction levels 38 and 44 respectively.
The dragon pickaxe has been added to the list of items you can CoinShare via the LootShare system.
We've removed more delays (e.g. when drinking potions and running).
We've increased the shop stock of bone bolts.
Bounty Hunter worlds have been changed slightly to allow players to access the Grand Exchange area of the map for all your combat needs.
Want to help RuneVillage? Join the guide writers!
Posted by Head Cheff on September 16th, 2009, 7:26 pm. Category: RuneVillage News
RuneVillage Guide Writers.
A great way to help the village.
Want a great way to help RuneVillage? Then why not join the guide writers...?
We are a group of villagers dedicated to writing new guides as well as updating the old ones. This is very important for the release of RV 2.0 so we are looking for any motivated players to join the team. We suffered a huge setback when RV was rolled back a year losing any forum based work so we are doubling our efforts to get back on track.
If you wish to join the team and are a dedicated, motivated individual then either, drop me a pm or do the following...
Click on user control panel > usergroups > select Runevillage guide Writers > click join group at the bottom of the page
I look forward to seeing some of you soon!
Already a guide writer? Then please take a look at this topic.
A great way to help the village.
Want a great way to help RuneVillage? Then why not join the guide writers...?
We are a group of villagers dedicated to writing new guides as well as updating the old ones. This is very important for the release of RV 2.0 so we are looking for any motivated players to join the team. We suffered a huge setback when RV was rolled back a year losing any forum based work so we are doubling our efforts to get back on track.
If you wish to join the team and are a dedicated, motivated individual then either, drop me a pm or do the following...
Click on user control panel > usergroups > select Runevillage guide Writers > click join group at the bottom of the page
I look forward to seeing some of you soon!
Already a guide writer? Then please take a look at this topic.
15th September - Dev Diary: Retro Revival
Posted by Glodenox on September 15th, 2009, 1:28 pm. Category: RuneScape News
Retro Revival
by Mod Jack H 15-Sep-2009
What is Classic?
For those who do not know, RuneScape Classic is the name we now use to refer to the very first version of RuneScape, the original basis for RuneScape as it is today. As discussed in the RuneTek 5 blog, RuneScape Classic was RuneTek 2. When we upgraded the game engine to RuneTek 3, we renamed the first game to RuneScape Classic, and the RT3 engine took over the RuneScape moniker.
That RT3 engine has long since evolved, through RT4 (High Details) and the now all-encompassing RT5 (the version of RuneScape we all play today). But we do still run a version of RuneScape Classic on our servers for those people who have continued to play it over the years. We’re currently working on a project to revamp RuneScape Classic and open it up again to everyone who wants to play.
Introduction from Mod Mark
Mod Mark: When Mod MMG joined the company, the first thing he and I spoke about was RuneScape Classic (often just called ‘Classic’). He wanted to know more about this "retro" version of RuneScape, and was surprised when I told him we had closed account creation, but that the game was still running. Despite the fact we had not supported the product for years (with updates), we still had an active player base. He was keen for me to liaise with the other Classic fans in the company to work out what needed to be fixed in order for us to relaunch it.
This was the best news I had heard in ages, because Classic has always been very important to us as a company, and as individual players of the game. Without Classic, the current versions of RuneScape simply would not exist. It made us who we are today. Not supporting it was really quite painful for us, but it had just become impossible to support due to the movement in technologies in the new version of the game. I’ll hand you over to Mod Jack H, the developer for this project, to give some more details.
Over to the developer
I have to admit it was a bit of a surprise when I was told that I would now be working on RuneScape Classic! The game had not been updated for years, only a few people who had worked on it were still with the company, and nobody could really remember the details of how it worked. But Classic was about to become the basis for a totally new idea for Jagex: player-owned virtual servers. But I’m getting ahead of myself...
My first job was to get Classic into a state in which we could release it again. The Jagex systems which handle updating and releasing new content and game engine updates have moved on a long way since Classic was last released. In order to be able to make changes to the game again, I had to fit it out with the same systems that RuneScape uses to handle things like loading the game code, downloading the content (such as maps, 3D models and sprites), managing your Friends and Ignore lists, and sending abuse reports. I also had to add support for the new display names system that Mod Duncan is working on, and we got some bonuses, like the ability to private chat between Classic and RS2.
So far, we would have had to do all this anyway, because the display names project affects all our games (including Classic), so it had to be updated to support it and we had to be able to release it again. But Andrew and Mod MMG had much bigger ideas for Classic. They wanted to make it available to new players again, and solve the problems that caused it to be restricted in the first place.
The problem that needed solving was how to stop the macroing which was crippling Classic without changing the game. We didn’t want to add to Classic all the measures to stop macroing and cheating that we’ve developed for RuneScape, because that would stop Classic being Classic. We could have just enabled all the cheat codes in the game so macroing would become pointless, but that would make the game quite pointless too. So here’s what we came up with...
And then over to you...?
How about if players could rent and administer their own Classic servers? As a server owner, you could enable or disable any cheat codes you liked, add people to the invite list or banned list, or give individual friends any privileges you liked within your world. In this way, the activities of macroers would become pointless, as you could go on to a cheating-enabled world and get all the stuff you wanted for free if you wanted, but there would still be worlds where you’d have the satisfaction of knowing you worked for your stuff. I should explain that your character would be saved separately for each world, so you couldn’t cheat on one world then use the stuff you gained on a non-cheating world. The different rules set by the owner of each world would really make each world a different game, with different people in positions of power, wielding cheat codes and unleashing Classic’s most awesome spells and items, or making everyone work to get ahead...
Finally, to reassure our loyal Classic members who’ve stuck with the game all the way through, these new ‘player-run’ Classic worlds will be in ADDITION to the two restricted Classic worlds we already operate. We plan to leave those unchanged and not invaded by lots of newcomers or cheat codes.
We reckon this will be a lot of fun, but what do you think of the idea? It’s going to be a lot of work for us to make it a reality as we’ve never done anything like this before. Would you rent a server? How much would you be willing to pay? What sort of features would you want to see? Do you have any other comments or suggestions? Let us know.
by Mod Jack H 15-Sep-2009
What is Classic?
For those who do not know, RuneScape Classic is the name we now use to refer to the very first version of RuneScape, the original basis for RuneScape as it is today. As discussed in the RuneTek 5 blog, RuneScape Classic was RuneTek 2. When we upgraded the game engine to RuneTek 3, we renamed the first game to RuneScape Classic, and the RT3 engine took over the RuneScape moniker.
That RT3 engine has long since evolved, through RT4 (High Details) and the now all-encompassing RT5 (the version of RuneScape we all play today). But we do still run a version of RuneScape Classic on our servers for those people who have continued to play it over the years. We’re currently working on a project to revamp RuneScape Classic and open it up again to everyone who wants to play.
Introduction from Mod Mark
Mod Mark: When Mod MMG joined the company, the first thing he and I spoke about was RuneScape Classic (often just called ‘Classic’). He wanted to know more about this "retro" version of RuneScape, and was surprised when I told him we had closed account creation, but that the game was still running. Despite the fact we had not supported the product for years (with updates), we still had an active player base. He was keen for me to liaise with the other Classic fans in the company to work out what needed to be fixed in order for us to relaunch it.
This was the best news I had heard in ages, because Classic has always been very important to us as a company, and as individual players of the game. Without Classic, the current versions of RuneScape simply would not exist. It made us who we are today. Not supporting it was really quite painful for us, but it had just become impossible to support due to the movement in technologies in the new version of the game. I’ll hand you over to Mod Jack H, the developer for this project, to give some more details.
Over to the developer
I have to admit it was a bit of a surprise when I was told that I would now be working on RuneScape Classic! The game had not been updated for years, only a few people who had worked on it were still with the company, and nobody could really remember the details of how it worked. But Classic was about to become the basis for a totally new idea for Jagex: player-owned virtual servers. But I’m getting ahead of myself...
My first job was to get Classic into a state in which we could release it again. The Jagex systems which handle updating and releasing new content and game engine updates have moved on a long way since Classic was last released. In order to be able to make changes to the game again, I had to fit it out with the same systems that RuneScape uses to handle things like loading the game code, downloading the content (such as maps, 3D models and sprites), managing your Friends and Ignore lists, and sending abuse reports. I also had to add support for the new display names system that Mod Duncan is working on, and we got some bonuses, like the ability to private chat between Classic and RS2.
So far, we would have had to do all this anyway, because the display names project affects all our games (including Classic), so it had to be updated to support it and we had to be able to release it again. But Andrew and Mod MMG had much bigger ideas for Classic. They wanted to make it available to new players again, and solve the problems that caused it to be restricted in the first place.
The problem that needed solving was how to stop the macroing which was crippling Classic without changing the game. We didn’t want to add to Classic all the measures to stop macroing and cheating that we’ve developed for RuneScape, because that would stop Classic being Classic. We could have just enabled all the cheat codes in the game so macroing would become pointless, but that would make the game quite pointless too. So here’s what we came up with...
And then over to you...?
How about if players could rent and administer their own Classic servers? As a server owner, you could enable or disable any cheat codes you liked, add people to the invite list or banned list, or give individual friends any privileges you liked within your world. In this way, the activities of macroers would become pointless, as you could go on to a cheating-enabled world and get all the stuff you wanted for free if you wanted, but there would still be worlds where you’d have the satisfaction of knowing you worked for your stuff. I should explain that your character would be saved separately for each world, so you couldn’t cheat on one world then use the stuff you gained on a non-cheating world. The different rules set by the owner of each world would really make each world a different game, with different people in positions of power, wielding cheat codes and unleashing Classic’s most awesome spells and items, or making everyone work to get ahead...
Finally, to reassure our loyal Classic members who’ve stuck with the game all the way through, these new ‘player-run’ Classic worlds will be in ADDITION to the two restricted Classic worlds we already operate. We plan to leave those unchanged and not invaded by lots of newcomers or cheat codes.
We reckon this will be a lot of fun, but what do you think of the idea? It’s going to be a lot of work for us to make it a reality as we’ve never done anything like this before. Would you rent a server? How much would you be willing to pay? What sort of features would you want to see? Do you have any other comments or suggestions? Let us know.
11th September 2009 - Machinima Competition Results
Posted by Dark Paladin on September 13th, 2009, 11:42 am. Category: RuneScape News
www.RuneScape.com wrote:
Before I get to the opening of any golden envelopes, allow me to go misty eyed for a moment while I reminisce...
Tehnoobshow helped us in launching this competition on our YouTube channel. It wasn’t long before it became clear that August would involve a lot of pizza, popcorn, salami, beer, buffering and general YouTubery.
I can honestly say that I witnessed pure player genius. We laughed so hard we cried (sometimes, I just cried), but, all things told, we were blown away by both the quality and quantity of player videos, which left the judges with the very difficult task of trying to shortlist the submissions. Their mission was to choose their favourite five videos to go into a player polls. They really struggled to reduce the list to six finalists, given the awesome list of videos that were submitted.
The poll has now closed, the judges are hopefully speaking to each other again, and we now know who our grand prize winner and runners-up are. Ladies and gentlemen (and trolls): the winner of the RuneScape machinima competition is...Excl!
Congratulations to Excl, whose video really captured the trauma that so many video makers went through during this competition. Excl wins some signed Jagex goodies, a lifetime RuneScape membership, and an all-expenses-paid trip to Jagex Games Studios! So, pack your bags and dig out your passport, Excl – you’re coming to visit us!
That leaves Arrow gun 99, Bumbum007, Jinsr44, KKcomics and MommaKitty as runners-up. They each win signed Jagex goodies and a lifetime RuneScape membership, so a big congratulations to them too!
We’d like to say a massive thank you to everyone who entered and made the competition the event it was. Congratulations, everyone, you truly raised the bar for RuneScape machinima. =) Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and keep sending us your RuneScape videos!
We’ve got plenty more competitions up our sleeves, but we’ll save the details for the next Community Management blog.
Finally, in the spirit of inviting players to party with us, we’re also asking Excl and a handful of the top players (both free and members) to also join us at our next Studio Jolly later this month.
Take care and have fun!
Mark Gerhard
CEO, Jagex
Tehnoobshow helped us in launching this competition on our YouTube channel. It wasn’t long before it became clear that August would involve a lot of pizza, popcorn, salami, beer, buffering and general YouTubery.
I can honestly say that I witnessed pure player genius. We laughed so hard we cried (sometimes, I just cried), but, all things told, we were blown away by both the quality and quantity of player videos, which left the judges with the very difficult task of trying to shortlist the submissions. Their mission was to choose their favourite five videos to go into a player polls. They really struggled to reduce the list to six finalists, given the awesome list of videos that were submitted.
The poll has now closed, the judges are hopefully speaking to each other again, and we now know who our grand prize winner and runners-up are. Ladies and gentlemen (and trolls): the winner of the RuneScape machinima competition is...Excl!
Congratulations to Excl, whose video really captured the trauma that so many video makers went through during this competition. Excl wins some signed Jagex goodies, a lifetime RuneScape membership, and an all-expenses-paid trip to Jagex Games Studios! So, pack your bags and dig out your passport, Excl – you’re coming to visit us!
That leaves Arrow gun 99, Bumbum007, Jinsr44, KKcomics and MommaKitty as runners-up. They each win signed Jagex goodies and a lifetime RuneScape membership, so a big congratulations to them too!
We’d like to say a massive thank you to everyone who entered and made the competition the event it was. Congratulations, everyone, you truly raised the bar for RuneScape machinima. =) Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and keep sending us your RuneScape videos!
We’ve got plenty more competitions up our sleeves, but we’ll save the details for the next Community Management blog.
Finally, in the spirit of inviting players to party with us, we’re also asking Excl and a handful of the top players (both free and members) to also join us at our next Studio Jolly later this month.
Take care and have fun!
Mark Gerhard
CEO, Jagex
10th September 2009 - RuneScape Q&A - RuneScape Content
Posted by Dark Paladin on September 13th, 2009, 11:41 am. Category: RuneScape News
www.RuneScape.com wrote:
This time it’s the turn of the RuneScape Content team to field its Q&A. The answers can be read either on this forum thread or in this developers’ blog.
Mod Mark (Lead Designer) and I will also be taking part in a live Q&A session on the forums tonight, from 8-10pm (BST/official forum time). So, if you have anything else you’d like to ask, head over to these questions and answers forum threads at 8pm.
Mod Fetzki
Head of RuneScape
Mod Mark (Lead Designer) and I will also be taking part in a live Q&A session on the forums tonight, from 8-10pm (BST/official forum time). So, if you have anything else you’d like to ask, head over to these questions and answers forum threads at 8pm.
Mod Fetzki
Head of RuneScape
RV Donor Icon Competition!
Posted by Sayaka on September 11th, 2009, 5:09 pm. Category: RuneVillage News
Let's try this again. Something RuneVillage has been missing for a little while are the little icons to the left of someone's post that shows they've made a donation to RV. Since RuneVillage's main source of upkeep are donations from the community, it's important that those who have donated (any amount, no matter how long ago) are recognized. We've hit a critical snag in our attempt to bring them back, though--it's tough to display Donor Icons when we don't have any to show! The original icons are now outdated, and a couple of new ranks need to be made besides. That's where you guys come in. 
Are you graphically talented in the least? Want to do something cool for the Village that will be seen by every single person that drops by? We're looking for new Donor Icons to display next to donors' posts, and we'd love it if you'd give it a shot. The final winning entry (to appear all over the forums) will be chosen by a village-wide vote, much like the Tag Ranks, Offline/Online banner (when it was in use), and the Champion of Saradomin (5,000-postcount) rank title.
If you'd like to enter the contest, simply make up an icon of your very own and post it in this thread! Here's what we're looking for:
Obviously, everyone will have something different in mind, so feel free to take any creative liberties as you see fit. (And if you want to make an icon for just one of the ranks before committing to all of them, that's fine, too!)
Here's a quick example of what can be done with just 80x50 pixels:
A big "Thanks!" in advance goes out to everyone that participates in this competition. If you have any questions, of course, you can ask them in this thread, or PM me. Good luck!
- The RuneVillage Administration
Something RuneVillage has been missing for a little while are the little icons to the left of someone's post that shows they've made a donation to RV. Since RuneVillage's main source of upkeep are donations from the community, it's important that those who have donated (any amount, no matter how long ago) are recognized. We've hit a critical snag in our attempt to bring them back, though--it's tough to display Donor Icons when we don't have any to show! The original icons are now outdated, and a couple of new ranks need to be made besides. That's where you guys come in. Are you graphically talented in the least? Want to do something cool for the Village that will be seen by every single person that drops by? We're looking for new Donor Icons to display next to donors' posts, and we'd love it if you'd give it a shot.
The final winning entry (to appear all over the forums) will be chosen by a village-wide vote, much like the Tag Ranks, Offline/Online banner (when it was in use), and the Champion of Saradomin (5,000-postcount) rank title.If you'd like to enter the contest, simply make up an icon of your very own and post it in this thread! Here's what we're looking for:
- The icons should be between 80x50 pixels and 120x80 pixels. (Anything bigger can be posted, but we can't 100% guarantee it will qualify.)
- We need icons for the following Donor Ranks, with the year (2009) displayed:
- Guardian
- Knight
- Prince
- Princess
- Wizard
- We need an additional icon that just says "Donor", but does not include a date.
- We need an additional icon that says "FOH" (for Friends Of Hiker), but does not include a date.hiker wrote:btw... the "FOH" thingy can be in the form of an underbanner, to be used beneath another icon...
Obviously, everyone will have something different in mind, so feel free to take any creative liberties as you see fit. (And if you want to make an icon for just one of the ranks before committing to all of them, that's fine, too!)
Here's a quick example of what can be done with just 80x50 pixels:
A big "Thanks!" in advance goes out to everyone that participates in this competition. If you have any questions, of course, you can ask them in this thread, or PM me. Good luck!
- The RuneVillage Administration
A big THANKS! /The War Chest/Last Day - split topic!
Posted by hiker on September 11th, 2009, 4:30 pm. Category: RuneVillage News
ok.. first i'd like to thank everyone who's pitching in on our recovery... especially A5Chow, Jackstick and Goten for reviving the RV 2.0 project and picking us up about where we left off... also a special to Scar, Dragoncrusher1, Dark Paladin and Gamestar for locating and restoring ALL of the guides uploaded in the past year (plus a few more!)! Let's keep the effort up everybody-- we still have a few forum things to recover!
now.. about the War Chest... as i mentioned before, this incident pretty much rips it with our current host. however, recall that i've also stated before that donations are pretty slow these days, and the main reason we've stayed with this host is that they let us be behind in our hosting fees.
well.. it's time to change all of that, but before i can go shopping for a new host, we have to have to get the War Chest filled up. it's hard to shop for something with empty pockets! we've also got to be up-to-date with the current host before we can move to a new one (no, we can't stiff them for the fees-- we have to be current for them to let us move our data), and we will have to have *both* hosts active for at least one billing cycle. additionally, i'd like to see at least two months hosting fees in the chest when we make the move.
i have been doing some looking, and it's likely that when we make the change, we will be able to change over to a VPS instead of regular shared hosting, which will make Glodenox and Frogger happy. I'm still looking (remember, i don't know what we can spend yet) but we can likely get a VPS for not much more than our current costs, so it should not unduly burden us in the future.
While we're not talking tons of cash, it's still a good bit more than our usual monthly needs.
And before anyone asks, no, i don't release figures. Other than the fact that underneath it all, RV is still my business, if people know all the figures in a situation like this, some people tend not to donate if they think we have 'enough' money in the coffers. You'll just have to trust me to do what's right, or not.
I'm also posting a competetion in the Graphics forum for a special underbanner for those who contribute during this period-- this will be different from the normal 'donor' icons which are also being worked on, as is an updated donor's page.
So the War Chest is open for those who can to toss in bags of gold. I'll keep everyone posted on the progress, and the sooner the chest is full, the sooner we can move.
Thanks!
EDIT: see last post by me.
now.. about the War Chest... as i mentioned before, this incident pretty much rips it with our current host. however, recall that i've also stated before that donations are pretty slow these days, and the main reason we've stayed with this host is that they let us be behind in our hosting fees.
well.. it's time to change all of that, but before i can go shopping for a new host, we have to have to get the War Chest filled up. it's hard to shop for something with empty pockets! we've also got to be up-to-date with the current host before we can move to a new one (no, we can't stiff them for the fees-- we have to be current for them to let us move our data), and we will have to have *both* hosts active for at least one billing cycle. additionally, i'd like to see at least two months hosting fees in the chest when we make the move.
i have been doing some looking, and it's likely that when we make the change, we will be able to change over to a VPS instead of regular shared hosting, which will make Glodenox and Frogger happy. I'm still looking (remember, i don't know what we can spend yet) but we can likely get a VPS for not much more than our current costs, so it should not unduly burden us in the future.
While we're not talking tons of cash, it's still a good bit more than our usual monthly needs.
And before anyone asks, no, i don't release figures. Other than the fact that underneath it all, RV is still my business, if people know all the figures in a situation like this, some people tend not to donate if they think we have 'enough' money in the coffers. You'll just have to trust me to do what's right, or not.
I'm also posting a competetion in the Graphics forum for a special underbanner for those who contribute during this period-- this will be different from the normal 'donor' icons which are also being worked on, as is an updated donor's page.
So the War Chest is open for those who can to toss in bags of gold. I'll keep everyone posted on the progress, and the sooner the chest is full, the sooner we can move.
Thanks!
EDIT: see last post by me.
RuneVillage Interview with Jagex - Mod Mark
Posted by Pyro3000 on September 9th, 2009, 11:45 am. Category: RuneVillage News
As I’m sure a large number of you know (Assuming you’ve been keeping up with RuneScape’s recent News and Updates), JAGeX has begun showing some fan sites their support. RuneVillage is grateful to be one of these websites.
JAGeX has held special e-mail interviews with a few websites and we were lucky enough to be a part of that. While we, the staff, realize we were a little late on getting OUR interview up, it was only because we were spending our time on it to make sure that things turned out the best they could. In fact it was Mod Mark, the Lead Designer over at JAGeX that personally answered all of our questions! Needless to say we are very proud of the turnout and hope for their continued support.
So here we are with answers to the questions that YOU, the heart of RuneVillage, asked the team. While we may have touched up the submitted questions a bit, the questions we submitted were very much the ones all of you wanted answered. Sadly we did have to trim some of the questions out of the final product that we sent in. Don’t worry though, I think I can safely say that this won’t be our only time speaking with the JAGeX team!
So without further delay here are the answers you’ve been waiting patiently for! If you want to just jump right in and find the question that you asked, go ahead and look for your username. The credit for each question has remained with the person(s) that asked it.
The RuneVillage Interview With Mod Mark
[Eastgotenks] - Have you ever given thought to adding a feature that says how much time you've spent in the game is or even allow a player to see how old their character is?
[ Mod Mark] Yes. It’s something we know players would love to see but have never found a good way to get that information to our players. We have given a few out recently via the forums but I know we’re working on a better way for everyone.
[DragonCrusher1] - How do you feel the game and its community have progressed over the years?
[ Mod Mark] Community - Fantastically. I really enjoyed the small community we had back in the classic days, but we could never have kept that kind of personal approach given the volume of players we had. These days we can do other things like support your events and give staff presence at key moments ingame, which we really struggled to do before. I’m very proud of our community (and to be part of it) and am always pleasantly surprised by the kind of discussions in our forums.
The game is even more amazing for me. I don’t want this to sound like a sales pitch but I still love it after 6 years, as a player and as a designer. The recent graphical update has given the game a new feel again and it’s always exciting to work in new areas. In my mind, the game and quality continues to grow, certainly if you look at the way our quest writing has changed over the years, and the depth of the new content we release. I do reminisce of the days of classic and “thinking” about mining, but am very pleased at the way the game has progressed. I do miss the old RS classic dragon longsword inventory model though, that ruled. Anyway its sounding a bit too much like a marketing blurb so I will stop there.
[Donut Juice] - Have you ever thought of raising the skill level cap past 99, whether it be through lowering the experience between skills or simply extending the cap with the current xp ratios? With certain weapons, it's almost possible to hit the maximum amount of hitpoints, so hitpoints for example would be a skill that could benefit from having a higher cap.
[ Mod Mark] Yes we do talk about this kind of update, but there are negative sides to doing something like that. For example, to lots of players, reaching 99 is a big enough achievement without us raising it even higher. However we are aware that 99 hit points might not be enough to compete much longer, especially if we introduce weapons even more powerful than the current top gear.
[Matt258] - Currently the experience cap is 200m experience, a cap which many players have reached in various skills. That being said, have you considered changing the cap to a higher number?
[ Mod Mark]Yes we do think about these sorts of updates, 200m was just a number we picked. It could easily have been a different number. We do always consider those players at number 1 who reached 200m first, and would have to carefully consider all options before doing something like that. We don’t want to remove the achievements made by people to get there first.
[Purez Skillz] - Is there any plan to revisit the drop tables of old monsters who have had their rare drops become more common and decrease in value?
[ Mod Mark] Yes. Rebalancing existing content is arguably harder than introducing new content, but were not happy about areas of the game which aren’t considered worthwhile anymore. We will fix them, just give us time.
[Pyro3000] - What has been the hardest update?
[ Mod Mark] The introduction of trade limits and changing the old wilderness. It wasn’t something we really wanted to do, but we knew we had too to preserve the game. I honestly believe that if we hadn’t done it the game would be in a terrible state right now, but it certainly wasn’t fun or easy to do. Normally we really enjoy all the updates we write, but that one was a toughy.
[Snake1235] - Are there any plans for Jagex to add content relating to the eastern lands mentioned by one of the sailors in Port Phasmtys?
[ Mod Mark] Yes! Ak-Haranu isn’t a mad man. He really does come from a far eastern land and we do want to produce content for it. However, I am quite keen to conclude more of our existing storylines and finish of our existing coastlines before making any more.
[Boa1891] Can you give us any insight into whether or not Jagex plans to add more hands-on or fun methods of training boring skills like woodcutting or fishing?
[ Mod Mark] We like to think there is room in our game for engaging skills and the more straight forward skills like this one. However, right now we’re looking at making mining more interesting at higher levels so yes, potentially. Certainly we want more diversion content like the evil tree, which in my mind is a more interesting way of woodcutting, but not on its own right with the limit of how many per day you can use.
[Matt258] - Will the Party Room ever be changed to have only your Friends able to attend it instead of the entire world?
[ Mod Mark]Possibly
[Boa1891] Do you have an official statement on what, in general, Jagex considers as "high-leveled"?
[ Mod Mark]Nothing official. Personally I consider general skills to be high leveled after about level 80, and a members only skill to be high leveled at about lvl 70.
[Blackmage172] - Do the standard laws of supply and demand and other macroeconomic/microeconomic measures affect the Grand Exchange, or does Jagex play an active role besides setting prices for new items? In other words, is RS a mixed or free market economy? What can players expect under the chosen system?
[ Mod Mark] We generally don't play an active role, besides setting the initial price, except where we have to cap the maximum or minimum price an item is allowed to reach to make the gameplay fair for everyone. The price caps are obvious when hit, since the market price of an item will be the same as either the minimum or maximum price. Also, we're looking to remove a large number of the price caps on items in the game very soon.
[Donut Juice] - Do you plan to keep discontinued items (Half Wine, Disk, etc.) and holiday items (Party Hats, H'Ween Masks, etc.) in the game forever?
[ Mod Mark]Yes.
[Palo] - Has Jagex ever considered creating a quest completely based on the fictitious "ScapeRune" area?
[ Mod Mark]Yes! We had some very odd ideas for random events based in ScapeRune, including rebuilding cows (that’s actually what the beehive event became).
[dustin] - Horses are a very popular suggestion as well. Have you ever given thought to adding horses to RuneScape, be it as transportation or for increased inventory spaces?
[ Mod Mark] Summoning provided the additional inv space. We’ve always had technical issues of making the player model fill a bigger space (which it would if it also had a horse in it), but those kinds of issues are slowly disappearing.
[Landerpurex] - Do you feel that you have properly combated real world trading and people who level unfairly using bots and other programs?
[ Mod Mark] We have combated against it as much as we feel we can right now and are happy with the results. This doesn’t mean we will stop and will continue to fight if more problems arise.
[Palo] - Will there be a new quest storyline starting soon (such as the Plague City storyline)?
[ Mod Mark]We just started a new storyline with “Tales of the Muspah” and will be resurrecting the old dwarf quests. I’m also working on a new storyline specifically for grand master quests.
[Blackmage172] - What is the future of RuneScape Classic? Many players hold the opinion that Jagex seeks to "kill" RSC; will there ever be any plans for the opening up of Classic?
[ Mod Mark] I think the act that classic is still there at all is clear enough that we don’t intend to kill it. There have been various discussions about RS classic recently and so I wouldn’t be surprised if we made an announcement about it soon.
[Rocky Martin] - Could you give us any information on an upcoming skill?
[ Mod Mark] Massive!
[Xr Rx] Will there ever be a function added to switch between first-person and third-person views in RuneScape, such as in other MMOs along the lines of Final Fantasy XI?
[ Mod Mark]Unlikely.
[RipTide] - Have you given thought to adding smilies (perhaps akin to the ones on your forums) in-game?
[ Mod Mark]No, I am not a fan of making weird icons via chat. What’s wrong with a simple :] ?*
[Landerpurex] - With the new president, do you feel like you're finding the right balance between fixing the small things and big new content releases?
[ Mod Mark]I’ve not received any more complaints from Mr. Obama about the speed of fishing monkfish or the PvP worlds, so I guess we have the balance right ? If your referring to our new CEO, then yes, I think we do have the right balance.
[Pyro3000] - What has been your favorite update?
[ Mod Mark]There’s so many. As a JAGEX employee, Chompy bird hunting was one of my favorite updates because it was the first project I QA’ed on my own for a live launch and also Tytn had let me write a few things in it so I was excited about my first launch. Icthlarins little helper was my first launch in charge of the RuneScape team, so that was pretty cool. As a player, I enjoyed mornings end part 2 immensely because it was a genuinely tough puzzle, and I love puzzles. Also the launch of the roleplaying server was a massive plus for me, because now I have somewhere to go and roleplay! I find RS much more fun if you have your own stories around your character. It’s not for everyone though and it can get in the way of leveling sometimes ?
[Landerpurex] - What level are you in RuneScape?
[ Mod Mark] I have a few accounts but my main has just hit his target of total skill lvl 1700. Next I’m trying to get my herblore up to 80! I have about 18m in the bank after selling a whole shed load of prayer pots on the GE. I’ve let my questing slip recently so have not done “While Guthix sleeps” yet, but I have the levels to do it!
JAGeX has held special e-mail interviews with a few websites and we were lucky enough to be a part of that. While we, the staff, realize we were a little late on getting OUR interview up, it was only because we were spending our time on it to make sure that things turned out the best they could. In fact it was Mod Mark, the Lead Designer over at JAGeX that personally answered all of our questions! Needless to say we are very proud of the turnout and hope for their continued support.
So here we are with answers to the questions that YOU, the heart of RuneVillage, asked the team. While we may have touched up the submitted questions a bit, the questions we submitted were very much the ones all of you wanted answered. Sadly we did have to trim some of the questions out of the final product that we sent in. Don’t worry though, I think I can safely say that this won’t be our only time speaking with the JAGeX team!
So without further delay here are the answers you’ve been waiting patiently for! If you want to just jump right in and find the question that you asked, go ahead and look for your username. The credit for each question has remained with the person(s) that asked it.
The RuneVillage Interview With Mod Mark
[Eastgotenks] - Have you ever given thought to adding a feature that says how much time you've spent in the game is or even allow a player to see how old their character is?
[ Mod Mark] Yes. It’s something we know players would love to see but have never found a good way to get that information to our players. We have given a few out recently via the forums but I know we’re working on a better way for everyone.
[DragonCrusher1] - How do you feel the game and its community have progressed over the years?
[ Mod Mark] Community - Fantastically. I really enjoyed the small community we had back in the classic days, but we could never have kept that kind of personal approach given the volume of players we had. These days we can do other things like support your events and give staff presence at key moments ingame, which we really struggled to do before. I’m very proud of our community (and to be part of it) and am always pleasantly surprised by the kind of discussions in our forums.
The game is even more amazing for me. I don’t want this to sound like a sales pitch but I still love it after 6 years, as a player and as a designer. The recent graphical update has given the game a new feel again and it’s always exciting to work in new areas. In my mind, the game and quality continues to grow, certainly if you look at the way our quest writing has changed over the years, and the depth of the new content we release. I do reminisce of the days of classic and “thinking” about mining, but am very pleased at the way the game has progressed. I do miss the old RS classic dragon longsword inventory model though, that ruled. Anyway its sounding a bit too much like a marketing blurb so I will stop there.
[Donut Juice] - Have you ever thought of raising the skill level cap past 99, whether it be through lowering the experience between skills or simply extending the cap with the current xp ratios? With certain weapons, it's almost possible to hit the maximum amount of hitpoints, so hitpoints for example would be a skill that could benefit from having a higher cap.
[ Mod Mark] Yes we do talk about this kind of update, but there are negative sides to doing something like that. For example, to lots of players, reaching 99 is a big enough achievement without us raising it even higher. However we are aware that 99 hit points might not be enough to compete much longer, especially if we introduce weapons even more powerful than the current top gear.
[Matt258] - Currently the experience cap is 200m experience, a cap which many players have reached in various skills. That being said, have you considered changing the cap to a higher number?
[ Mod Mark]Yes we do think about these sorts of updates, 200m was just a number we picked. It could easily have been a different number. We do always consider those players at number 1 who reached 200m first, and would have to carefully consider all options before doing something like that. We don’t want to remove the achievements made by people to get there first.
[Purez Skillz] - Is there any plan to revisit the drop tables of old monsters who have had their rare drops become more common and decrease in value?
[ Mod Mark] Yes. Rebalancing existing content is arguably harder than introducing new content, but were not happy about areas of the game which aren’t considered worthwhile anymore. We will fix them, just give us time.
[Pyro3000] - What has been the hardest update?
[ Mod Mark] The introduction of trade limits and changing the old wilderness. It wasn’t something we really wanted to do, but we knew we had too to preserve the game. I honestly believe that if we hadn’t done it the game would be in a terrible state right now, but it certainly wasn’t fun or easy to do. Normally we really enjoy all the updates we write, but that one was a toughy.
[Snake1235] - Are there any plans for Jagex to add content relating to the eastern lands mentioned by one of the sailors in Port Phasmtys?
[ Mod Mark] Yes! Ak-Haranu isn’t a mad man. He really does come from a far eastern land and we do want to produce content for it. However, I am quite keen to conclude more of our existing storylines and finish of our existing coastlines before making any more.
[Boa1891] Can you give us any insight into whether or not Jagex plans to add more hands-on or fun methods of training boring skills like woodcutting or fishing?
[ Mod Mark] We like to think there is room in our game for engaging skills and the more straight forward skills like this one. However, right now we’re looking at making mining more interesting at higher levels so yes, potentially. Certainly we want more diversion content like the evil tree, which in my mind is a more interesting way of woodcutting, but not on its own right with the limit of how many per day you can use.
[Matt258] - Will the Party Room ever be changed to have only your Friends able to attend it instead of the entire world?
[ Mod Mark]Possibly
[Boa1891] Do you have an official statement on what, in general, Jagex considers as "high-leveled"?
[ Mod Mark]Nothing official. Personally I consider general skills to be high leveled after about level 80, and a members only skill to be high leveled at about lvl 70.
[Blackmage172] - Do the standard laws of supply and demand and other macroeconomic/microeconomic measures affect the Grand Exchange, or does Jagex play an active role besides setting prices for new items? In other words, is RS a mixed or free market economy? What can players expect under the chosen system?
[ Mod Mark] We generally don't play an active role, besides setting the initial price, except where we have to cap the maximum or minimum price an item is allowed to reach to make the gameplay fair for everyone. The price caps are obvious when hit, since the market price of an item will be the same as either the minimum or maximum price. Also, we're looking to remove a large number of the price caps on items in the game very soon.
[Donut Juice] - Do you plan to keep discontinued items (Half Wine, Disk, etc.) and holiday items (Party Hats, H'Ween Masks, etc.) in the game forever?
[ Mod Mark]Yes.
[Palo] - Has Jagex ever considered creating a quest completely based on the fictitious "ScapeRune" area?
[ Mod Mark]Yes! We had some very odd ideas for random events based in ScapeRune, including rebuilding cows (that’s actually what the beehive event became).
[dustin] - Horses are a very popular suggestion as well. Have you ever given thought to adding horses to RuneScape, be it as transportation or for increased inventory spaces?
[ Mod Mark] Summoning provided the additional inv space. We’ve always had technical issues of making the player model fill a bigger space (which it would if it also had a horse in it), but those kinds of issues are slowly disappearing.
[Landerpurex] - Do you feel that you have properly combated real world trading and people who level unfairly using bots and other programs?
[ Mod Mark] We have combated against it as much as we feel we can right now and are happy with the results. This doesn’t mean we will stop and will continue to fight if more problems arise.
[Palo] - Will there be a new quest storyline starting soon (such as the Plague City storyline)?
[ Mod Mark]We just started a new storyline with “Tales of the Muspah” and will be resurrecting the old dwarf quests. I’m also working on a new storyline specifically for grand master quests.
[Blackmage172] - What is the future of RuneScape Classic? Many players hold the opinion that Jagex seeks to "kill" RSC; will there ever be any plans for the opening up of Classic?
[ Mod Mark] I think the act that classic is still there at all is clear enough that we don’t intend to kill it. There have been various discussions about RS classic recently and so I wouldn’t be surprised if we made an announcement about it soon.
[Rocky Martin] - Could you give us any information on an upcoming skill?
[ Mod Mark] Massive!
[Xr Rx] Will there ever be a function added to switch between first-person and third-person views in RuneScape, such as in other MMOs along the lines of Final Fantasy XI?
[ Mod Mark]Unlikely.
[RipTide] - Have you given thought to adding smilies (perhaps akin to the ones on your forums) in-game?
[ Mod Mark]No, I am not a fan of making weird icons via chat. What’s wrong with a simple :] ?*
[Landerpurex] - With the new president, do you feel like you're finding the right balance between fixing the small things and big new content releases?
[ Mod Mark]I’ve not received any more complaints from Mr. Obama about the speed of fishing monkfish or the PvP worlds, so I guess we have the balance right ? If your referring to our new CEO, then yes, I think we do have the right balance.
[Pyro3000] - What has been your favorite update?
[ Mod Mark]There’s so many. As a JAGEX employee, Chompy bird hunting was one of my favorite updates because it was the first project I QA’ed on my own for a live launch and also Tytn had let me write a few things in it so I was excited about my first launch. Icthlarins little helper was my first launch in charge of the RuneScape team, so that was pretty cool. As a player, I enjoyed mornings end part 2 immensely because it was a genuinely tough puzzle, and I love puzzles. Also the launch of the roleplaying server was a massive plus for me, because now I have somewhere to go and roleplay! I find RS much more fun if you have your own stories around your character. It’s not for everyone though and it can get in the way of leveling sometimes ?
[Landerpurex] - What level are you in RuneScape?
[ Mod Mark] I have a few accounts but my main has just hit his target of total skill lvl 1700. Next I’m trying to get my herblore up to 80! I have about 18m in the bank after selling a whole shed load of prayer pots on the GE. I’ve let my questing slip recently so have not done “While Guthix sleeps” yet, but I have the levels to do it!
9th September 2009 - Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf
Posted by Garth on September 9th, 2009, 7:31 am. Category: RuneScape News
Runescape.com wrote:
Those of you who have completed Forgettable Tale of a Drunken Dwarf may remember discovering a dire threat to the Dwarven city of Keldagrim. Then again, given the nature of that quest, you may have discovered it and not remember.
In today's new quest the people of Keldagrim are under threat once again. Dwarves have been going missing, and Commander Veldaban does not have the guards he needs to properly investigate. Volunteer to help him and you'll unravel a mystery with grave consequences for both the city and for Veldaban himself. This time, can you escape with your memory intact?
This quest unlocks access to a new mining area in Keldagrim and a combat area with unique drops.
We've also released a new story in the Lores and Histories section of the website. The Coat Thief deals with an incident in Commander Veldaban's life that begins the chain of events leading up to the start of the new quest.
Mod John A
RuneScape Content Developer
Summary:
Where to start Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf:
Speak to Commander Veldaban in the Black Guard HQ in Keldagrim West.
Requirements to complete Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf:
61 Hunter
61 Firemaking
69 Strength
Forgettable Tale of a Drunken Dwarf
Between a Rock...
In other news...
The delays/click lag and other slightly slower actions caused by last week’s engine upgrade should now have disappeared and all behaviour should be back to normal.
We've created a new item - the spirit shard pack - that contains 5,000 spirit shards for your purchasing pleasure. Also, pet shop owners now accept large quantities of spirit shards via a right-click sell option.
The following items have increased in stock in their respective shops: harpoons, jugs of water, death runes, empty buckets, cooking apples and butterfly jars.
The Keldagrim Consortium has decided to make Keldagrim easier for humans to reach. Mine cart travel to and from Keldagrim is now free of charge, and there is an additional mine cart route between Keldagrim and the Grand Exchange in Varrock.
The dwarf traders in the Keldagrim trade floor can now be pick-pocketed with level 90 Thieving.
In today's new quest the people of Keldagrim are under threat once again. Dwarves have been going missing, and Commander Veldaban does not have the guards he needs to properly investigate. Volunteer to help him and you'll unravel a mystery with grave consequences for both the city and for Veldaban himself. This time, can you escape with your memory intact?
This quest unlocks access to a new mining area in Keldagrim and a combat area with unique drops.
We've also released a new story in the Lores and Histories section of the website. The Coat Thief deals with an incident in Commander Veldaban's life that begins the chain of events leading up to the start of the new quest.
Mod John A
RuneScape Content Developer
Summary:
Where to start Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf:
Speak to Commander Veldaban in the Black Guard HQ in Keldagrim West.
Requirements to complete Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf:
61 Hunter
61 Firemaking
69 Strength
Forgettable Tale of a Drunken Dwarf
Between a Rock...
In other news...
The delays/click lag and other slightly slower actions caused by last week’s engine upgrade should now have disappeared and all behaviour should be back to normal.
We've created a new item - the spirit shard pack - that contains 5,000 spirit shards for your purchasing pleasure. Also, pet shop owners now accept large quantities of spirit shards via a right-click sell option.
The following items have increased in stock in their respective shops: harpoons, jugs of water, death runes, empty buckets, cooking apples and butterfly jars.
The Keldagrim Consortium has decided to make Keldagrim easier for humans to reach. Mine cart travel to and from Keldagrim is now free of charge, and there is an additional mine cart route between Keldagrim and the Grand Exchange in Varrock.
The dwarf traders in the Keldagrim trade floor can now be pick-pocketed with level 90 Thieving.
Quest reward spoiler!
Hidden:
DRAGON PICKAXE
Hidden:
Restores and Fixes for Post Counts, Group Membership....
Posted by hiker on September 8th, 2009, 5:15 pm. Category: RuneVillage News
ok.. we've got some folks doing some great work on restoring pages from various internet archives-- but they're being posted all over, making them hard to find-- same with requests for post count changes, etc.
sooooo....
if you have some links to pages to restore, or copies of guides, or anything of that nature, Scar has made a topic and got an excellent batch of restored pages. So any that you have please add to his topic, so that the staff can find them all.... also you may wish to check here and be sure that it's not already posted.
http://runevillage.com/ThePub/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=428865
Same thing with requests for updating your post counts, group memberships, name changes-- anything of a personal nature here:
http://runevillage.com/ThePub/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=428870&p=3526908
this way the staff can find things without having to search around.
NOTE TO STAFF: please edit and note which items have been done from each list.
thanks!
sooooo....
if you have some links to pages to restore, or copies of guides, or anything of that nature, Scar has made a topic and got an excellent batch of restored pages. So any that you have please add to his topic, so that the staff can find them all.... also you may wish to check here and be sure that it's not already posted.
http://runevillage.com/ThePub/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=428865
Same thing with requests for updating your post counts, group memberships, name changes-- anything of a personal nature here:
http://runevillage.com/ThePub/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=428870&p=3526908
this way the staff can find things without having to search around.
NOTE TO STAFF: please edit and note which items have been done from each list.
thanks!
Did the server actually reset to a whole year ago?
4th September 2009 - Machinima Competition – Cast Your V
Posted by Justin on September 7th, 2009, 8:47 pm. Category: RuneScape News
Runescape.com wrote:
The RuneScape Machinima Competition judges were this week faced with the tough challenge of reviewing all the entries and deciding which of the 1,000+ mini movies should place in the top five. Thirty-four hours of non-stop video, litres of coffee and a few ‘discussions’ later, the judges came out of their bunker, braved the sunlight and held aloft the six videos (it was too hard to handpick five) that they unanimously agreed to be their favourites.
Now it’s the turn of the RuneScape community to use this week’s player poll to decide which of the six finalists should win the grand prize. The poll will run for seven days, after which time we’ll announce the winner!
You can view the finalists in one of two ways. You can either find them on our “favourites” list on our YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/runescape), or you can check them out by cutting and pasting the video links contained in the polls into your browser (we recommend opening the links in a new tab/window to avoid having to log out, and back into, the polls module).
Although we’ve had to settle on just six finalists, we fought over quite a few others. To see a selection of our favourites, we’ve created a new playlist on http://www.youtube.com/runescape called “How We Lolled”.
Thank you to everyone who participated in the competition for making it such a great success. We can’t wait to launch the next competition!
Mod Paul M
Community Management
Now it’s the turn of the RuneScape community to use this week’s player poll to decide which of the six finalists should win the grand prize. The poll will run for seven days, after which time we’ll announce the winner!
You can view the finalists in one of two ways. You can either find them on our “favourites” list on our YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/runescape), or you can check them out by cutting and pasting the video links contained in the polls into your browser (we recommend opening the links in a new tab/window to avoid having to log out, and back into, the polls module).
Although we’ve had to settle on just six finalists, we fought over quite a few others. To see a selection of our favourites, we’ve created a new playlist on http://www.youtube.com/runescape called “How We Lolled”.
Thank you to everyone who participated in the competition for making it such a great success. We can’t wait to launch the next competition!
Mod Paul M
Community Management
Here's the 6 videos that were chosen:
3rd September 2009 - RuneScape Q&A – Andrew Gower
Posted by Justin on September 7th, 2009, 8:41 pm. Category: RuneScape News
Runescape.com wrote:
Andrew Gower, RuneScape’s creator and Lead Developer, has fielded the third of the RuneScape Q&A sessions. His answers have now been published and can be read either on this forum thread or in this developers’ blog.
We shall also be running a live Q&A session with him on the forums today, starting at 4pm (BST/official forum time) and running for a couple of hours. If you’d like to participate, head over to this forum thread at 4pm.
Mod Kelvin
Head of Community Management
We shall also be running a live Q&A session with him on the forums today, starting at 4pm (BST/official forum time) and running for a couple of hours. If you’d like to participate, head over to this forum thread at 4pm.
Mod Kelvin
Head of Community Management
2nd September 2009 - Changes to Autocasting Spells
Posted by Justin on September 7th, 2009, 8:36 pm. Category: RuneScape News
Runescape.com wrote:
We have redesigned the way autocasting combat spells works so that it no longer requires a magic staff. Now, you can set a spell to autocast via the redesigned Magic Spellbook interface. This change is designed to make autocasting spells easier and more intuitive.
A summary of the changes is as follows:
Mod Rathe
RuneScape Content Developer
A summary of the changes is as follows:
- Autocasting no longer requires a magic staff.
- Autocasting is now controlled via your spellbook. To set a spell to autocast, simply select the “Autocast” option from the spell icon in your spellbook.
- You can still single-cast spells by selecting the “Cast” option from the spell icon in the spellbook.
- In the standard spellbook, “Autocast” is now the default option (left-click) for combat spells, with “Cast” as the alternate option (right-click).
- In the Ancient Magicks spellbook, “Cast” remains the default option (left-click), with “Autocast” as the alternate option (right-click).
- As with before, there are no spells in the Lunar spellbook that can be set to autocast.
- You can still choose whether to receive Defence XP or not when autocasting spells via the new toggle button in the bottom-left corner of your spellbook.
- You can now also receive Defence XP for single-casting spells that deal damage, if you have this option toggled on.
- Four buttons have been added to the bottom of the Magic Spellbook interface that allow you to filter what spell icons are visible. Click on these buttons to toggle the visibility of combat, teleport, skill-based and miscellaneous spells.
- As staves are no longer required for autocasting, we have granted some of the more special ones the ability to cause 10% more magic damage. The following staves receive this bonus:
o Ahrim’s staff
o Master wand
o Void Knight mace
o Zuriel’s staff
o Corrupt Zuriel’s staff
o Ancient staff
- Finally, it is also now possible to autocast these spells:
o Saradomin Strike
o Flames of Zamorak
o Iban Blast
o Claws of Guthix
Mod Rathe
RuneScape Content Developer
2nd September 2009 - RuneTek 5 Game Engine
Posted by Justin on September 7th, 2009, 8:33 pm. Category: RuneScape News
Runescape.com wrote:
This week sees the release of a massive upgrade to several elements of the RuneScape game engine. These include the RuneTek 5 graphics upgrade described in last week’s developer blog as well as key parts of the game server and RuneScript systems.
The graphics engine update brings with it a complete revamp of the Standard Detail option, bringing resizable window (for everyone) and fullscreen (members only) modes, as well as optional new features that include:
We've also improved High Detail mode with shadowing across all world levels (if your computer can support it) and an improved minimap in both versions. You'll also be pleased to know this upgrade has allowed us to fix several long-standing bugs, including:
Less visibly, we've also taken the time to heavily update parts of the server action and scripting systems. This follows on from work we did earlier in the year which Andrew described in this blog. The aim behind this batch of changes was to try to make the timing of actions more consistent across the game, which will help to make future content bugs less likely. We have done weeks of additional testing on these server updates, however, they are quite extensive and incredibly wide-ranging, so if any bugs have managed to slip through the net, we encourage you to submit a bug report.
All told, we have written or re-written around 50,000 lines of the game engine over the last few months to really improve these key areas and allow us to create a whole new set of exciting upgrades over the coming months and years.
This update to the game engine has allowed us to pull both the SD and HD versions of the game into the same applet. As such, we have updated the home page of the website so there is now only one ‘Click here to play’ button. If you wish to switch between using free or member worlds, this can be done using the ‘World Select’ feature, which can be found on the game applet's main menu.
Whether you see an advert above the login screen or not is dependent on whether the last world that you logged in was a free or a members’ world.
Mod Chris E
Game Engine
In other news...
One thing the new engine has allowed us to do is create context-sensitive cursors. If you choose to turn this option on in the Game Options menu, your mouse cursor will display a small icon of the default interaction with any object, location or NPC – e.g. “Open Door” will change your mouse cursor to an icon of a door opening. These cursors have not been added for every default interaction just yet, but we will be looking to expand upon them in future.
The Special Attack bar in the combat interface now also displays the amount of special attack energy you have remaining as a percentage.
We’ve made some changes to the World Select page. Firstly, you’ll notice we’ve removed some of the information to clean it up a bit. The Quick Chat and PvP columns have moved into the more general ‘Activity/Location’ column. This column will now only specify a flag and country if the world doesn’t have a theme, and we’ve created a RuneScape flag to go with the latter. On the right-hand side you’ll notice a ‘Ping’ column. This displays the response time between you and the servers – lower is better, so this should help you find a lag-free world near you. Note that some of your preferences may have changed if you were previously sorting by some of the removed columns. Simply select your new preferred choice(s) and it will store those for next time.
Mobilising Armies themed worlds now come in two varieties: worlds where games require four players for a game to start, and worlds where games require 20 players to start. Visit the Themed Worlds page to see how many players are required to start a game on each world.
The graphics engine update brings with it a complete revamp of the Standard Detail option, bringing resizable window (for everyone) and fullscreen (members only) modes, as well as optional new features that include:
- Distance fogging and sky colour.
- Ground blending and path smoothing.
- Underwater visibility.
We've also improved High Detail mode with shadowing across all world levels (if your computer can support it) and an improved minimap in both versions. You'll also be pleased to know this upgrade has allowed us to fix several long-standing bugs, including:
- Mis-clicking in heavy load areas (such as the Grand Exchange) causing unwanted actions.
- Progress bars on Grand Exchange interfaces not working on several graphics cards.
Less visibly, we've also taken the time to heavily update parts of the server action and scripting systems. This follows on from work we did earlier in the year which Andrew described in this blog. The aim behind this batch of changes was to try to make the timing of actions more consistent across the game, which will help to make future content bugs less likely. We have done weeks of additional testing on these server updates, however, they are quite extensive and incredibly wide-ranging, so if any bugs have managed to slip through the net, we encourage you to submit a bug report.
All told, we have written or re-written around 50,000 lines of the game engine over the last few months to really improve these key areas and allow us to create a whole new set of exciting upgrades over the coming months and years.
This update to the game engine has allowed us to pull both the SD and HD versions of the game into the same applet. As such, we have updated the home page of the website so there is now only one ‘Click here to play’ button. If you wish to switch between using free or member worlds, this can be done using the ‘World Select’ feature, which can be found on the game applet's main menu.
Whether you see an advert above the login screen or not is dependent on whether the last world that you logged in was a free or a members’ world.
Mod Chris E
Game Engine
In other news...
One thing the new engine has allowed us to do is create context-sensitive cursors. If you choose to turn this option on in the Game Options menu, your mouse cursor will display a small icon of the default interaction with any object, location or NPC – e.g. “Open Door” will change your mouse cursor to an icon of a door opening. These cursors have not been added for every default interaction just yet, but we will be looking to expand upon them in future.
The Special Attack bar in the combat interface now also displays the amount of special attack energy you have remaining as a percentage.
We’ve made some changes to the World Select page. Firstly, you’ll notice we’ve removed some of the information to clean it up a bit. The Quick Chat and PvP columns have moved into the more general ‘Activity/Location’ column. This column will now only specify a flag and country if the world doesn’t have a theme, and we’ve created a RuneScape flag to go with the latter. On the right-hand side you’ll notice a ‘Ping’ column. This displays the response time between you and the servers – lower is better, so this should help you find a lag-free world near you. Note that some of your preferences may have changed if you were previously sorting by some of the removed columns. Simply select your new preferred choice(s) and it will store those for next time.
Mobilising Armies themed worlds now come in two varieties: worlds where games require four players for a game to start, and worlds where games require 20 players to start. Visit the Themed Worlds page to see how many players are required to start a game on each world.
2nd September 2009 - Personalised Shops
Posted by Justin on September 7th, 2009, 8:32 pm. Category: RuneScape News
Runescape.com wrote:
As of today, shops in RuneScape are now personalised for every player. The amount of stock you see in each shop is now unique to your account and, therefore, no longer affected by the actions of other players.
This has a number of advantages:
With this personalising of shop stocks, we realised that it would negate some of the rewards earned from the Varrock and Karamja Achievement Diaries, so we’ve substituted them for other rewards.
The majority of Karamja diary’s easy reward is that you get better prices from Karamja’s shops. We couldn’t take this reward away without replacing it, so we have added Dell Monti, a pirate with a passion for pineapples, who will freely share his fruity bounty with you on a daily basis (if you are wearing your Karamja gloves).
Varrock diary’s smaller reward regarding shop prices is replaced with a greater possibility of obtaining skull sceptre parts from creatures in the Stronghold of Security, as well as doubling the charges it has if you make it while wearing your Varrock armour. Please note that the reward for buying battlestaves from Zaff while wearing Varrock armour has not been affected by this update in any way.
Mod Fetzki
Head of RuneScape
This has a number of advantages:
- Most importantly, it allows us to relax the price limits on the Grand Exchange. For somewhat complicated reasons, it means it is safe for us to drop the minimum price for many items, and raise the maximum price for some items. This means many items will no longer have their price set against an artificial limit, allowing prices to move more freely and better match player supply and demand. Similarly, many items that are popular for high-alching have had their lower limits relaxed to make the Grand Exchange work more smoothly.
- It means shops no longer have to offer unlimited stock to meet everyone's needs. Because each player sees their own stock, we can put in more realistic stock behaviour, where the stock (and price) goes up and down as you buy and sell, without worrying about one player buying out all the stock and depriving everyone else. Unlimited stock has weird effects on the economy of the game, and getting rid of it is vital for being able to relax the Grand Exchange price limits. Don’t worry, the stock is still very generous and should be plenty to supply ordinary play – particularly for items that you might need in greater numbers (e.g. arrows, runes and other consumables will be available in higher quantities than items like armour, tools and weapons).
- Shops may now be more worth selling your items to. A general store will never be full of other players’ unwanted items and specialist stores may offer better prices when they are low on stock. This means they are more useful for converting ‘junk’ items into cash, because each player has their own separate allowance for how much they can sell into the shop before the price drops.
With this personalising of shop stocks, we realised that it would negate some of the rewards earned from the Varrock and Karamja Achievement Diaries, so we’ve substituted them for other rewards.
The majority of Karamja diary’s easy reward is that you get better prices from Karamja’s shops. We couldn’t take this reward away without replacing it, so we have added Dell Monti, a pirate with a passion for pineapples, who will freely share his fruity bounty with you on a daily basis (if you are wearing your Karamja gloves).
Varrock diary’s smaller reward regarding shop prices is replaced with a greater possibility of obtaining skull sceptre parts from creatures in the Stronghold of Security, as well as doubling the charges it has if you make it while wearing your Varrock armour. Please note that the reward for buying battlestaves from Zaff while wearing Varrock armour has not been affected by this update in any way.
Mod Fetzki
Head of RuneScape
yep.. in case you missed all the excitement, another account on our server was hacked and it brought the whole thing down.... our soon-to-be ex-host only had a backup from last november, so here we are!
thanks to Glodenox for getting us back up on the forum, and even worked in a software update in the process, after using his site for a temp forum the past couple of days.
thanks in advance to jackstick, dark paladin, landerpurex, dragoncrusher1 and whoever i forgot for jumping into restoration of the site and forum... obviously we're missing everything for the past year, so it will be quite a task-- but the Village is up to it!
EDIT: see! i already missed one-- add Justin to the list of restorers... thanks Justin!
welcome home.
thanks to Glodenox for getting us back up on the forum, and even worked in a software update in the process, after using his site for a temp forum the past couple of days.
thanks in advance to jackstick, dark paladin, landerpurex, dragoncrusher1 and whoever i forgot for jumping into restoration of the site and forum... obviously we're missing everything for the past year, so it will be quite a task-- but the Village is up to it!
EDIT: see! i already missed one-- add Justin to the list of restorers... thanks Justin!
welcome home.
