Runescape Videos

Many runescape players enjoy making videos to document their ingame activities and to share the experience with other players. This isn't new and has been done my people before youtube was used.

There are many video hosts that enable players to upload and share their game experiences easily, although yotube is likely the most popular - it is also easy for webmasters to embed video content into their websites that help spread the popularity of runescape.

Any player wishing to make their own runescape video should be aware that they should only ever upload videos that are within Jagex rules, otherwise they may risk their youtube account along with their actual runescape account.

I do have plans to try and get a lot more good runescape videos onto my blogs and main runescape help site - although real life has left things very hectic for me and development is not as fast as I would ideally hope. Maybe some players out there would like to help me get achieving this goal by providing some regular videos they wish to share.

Watch the latest videos on YouTube.com

New Runescape Frontpage

Many people will be aware of the new RuneScape frontpage and will quickly get used to it. Although I have never really found the site to be very user friendly and normally found any help required at other fan sites and just experimented myself.

I have also noticed a lot of so called fan sites have adapted the look and feel of the old runescape main page - which is why I am posting this. All runescape players should make sure they are on the main www.runescape.com site before entering their username and password, otherwise your account will have been compromised.

The updated look of the runescape site has not been reflected in my own runescape help site as I still do not have the time to continue its development, although I have had many ideas for different types of sites. One of the ideas is to consolidate all my runescape blogs into a subdomain of my main site and use it for regular tips and informative blog topics that I come across.

If the consolidated blog did become a reality, then I would likely post even less frequently on the curret blogs - as it can become too demanding to update 10+ blogs compared to updating one consolidated blog. Originally I was planning to have several small and focussed blogs that interlinked when relevant - though that has not done me any favours as I find it harder to make some posts when I want. Consequently, there have been few updates in most of my blogs as I have struggled to get the posts that fit close enough to the intended theme.

Anyway, the more I write on this post the more I am convinced I should look at one consolidated blog and then just build from there. Hopefully I will get things moving along quickly next month.

Dark Bow Not Yet Obtained

Since Jagex released the Dark Bow into Runescape I have spent plenty of time fighting at the Dark Beasts in pursuit of a Bow. However, as yet, almost one week later I still have not been fortunate enough to get a Dark Bow in a drop.

According to almost everyone else I have spoken to during my week or so fighting the Dark Beasts, I must have the worst luck in runescape. Almost everyone else has had multiple drops (ranging from 2 - 12).

Initially I had hoped to get a few drops and be able to sell at a higher price. However, as time has passed by and I still haven't managed to get even one in a drop, the price has been the only thing dropping. It is almost at the point where it will be pointless selling should I be lucky enough to get a drop soon.

Maybe next week.

Dark Bow and Dragon Arrows

The Jagex announcement for June updates for runescape has been met with some anticipation by me in particular considering I have 90+ slayer and will be able to hunt for the Dark Bow. Although I am nowhere near the level 83 hunter skill requirement to catch the dragon implings - this is likely how dragon arrows will be gained.

As with each new item runescape introduces, the price will be highest for the first 7-10 days and then will gradually start falling down as more items come into the game and the demand falls. Hopefully I will be able to get a few of the Dark Bows and that I can get my hunter skill up to the requirement.

I am still looking to put together some runescape bloggers and have noted some decent blogs that have recently started (or rather that I recently discovered). There are many opportunities for people to get into writing blogs on runescape (or gaming in general) - and they can monetize their site if they seek out different methods to monetize them.

Anyway, to finish off, hopefully there is some real use for both dark bows and dragon arrows when they come into the game rather than just taking up another bank space.

Shoutbox Added

I have added a shoutbox to the forums so that members who are logged in will be able to chat between themselves (and to me) when I am online.

The forums themselves are not being used as much as was anticipated - afterall, I was asked by a few members to install some forums and am left wondering why those members who requested them haven't used them.

Anyway, I will push forward with working on more runescape guides and I am likely to make basic guides initially. The reason is so each section can be filled with basic information initially and anyone who wants to be a guide writer can help to improve existing guides etc.

This way, more information is available for all runescape players and it should help make the site overall much more useful.

Runescape Co-Founder Andrew Gower Interview

Runescape recently hit 1 million paying subscribers and seems to go from strength to strength in the MMORPG game industry. It is a lucrative market and is showing signs of crossing into the marketing plans of many major industries as the world takes their lives into virtual environments.

I came across this Andrew Gower Interview about runescape and its future. It is an interesting read for the runescape demographic in some regard. I have also noticed that runescape came about through his exposure to text based MUDs - I also discovered text based MUDs while at university and did look at creating one myself (although at the time I asked myself the same questions about making it different to all the others - I settled on keeping it generic as I was not really that much into the programming side of things).

Anyway, nowadays I am getting more into the programming aspect - well more into websites rather than applications development - although I do have the intention of being able to get learning some of the web development technologies available today.

The interview is a rare interview and as Andrew stated they are concentrating more on the product than the marketing - so I wouldn't expect many more interviews to be surfacing. It does prove that they are still 100% focussed on developing the actual game itself and that has to be good news for all runescape players.

Runescape Bots and Real World Trading

The announcement by Jagex today that they had banned 8000 runescape accounts and seized 6 billion runescape gold sent shockwaves through most of the community.

Many players realised that some bots and plenty of real world trading was taking place, but they failed to grasp the scale of it and how it has impacted on the overall runescape economy. This is the seedier side to all MMORPGs in the last couple of years and continues to become a greater influence even after Ebay Delisted sales of virtual currency.

I had longed to see Jagex publicly tackle the issue in this way and even sent in an email with a way to get all legitimate fan sites on the right side of Jagex. I felt the problem would have started to come under control after Ebay took their stance. However, it simply added fuel to the fire and increased the determination of bot users to gather up large sums of virtual gold and sell to players for real dollars.

Jagex have learned that it is going to be a long fight to get it back into check and many current runescape members are feeling hard done by - having to work their way up in skills only to find the prices of items highly unstable, rare item prices rising out of reach and their favourite training locations covered by bot users.

The discussion on the runescape forums had reached more than 70 pages at the time of writing this and it didn't look like it was going to stop there. Many of the most popular fansites also have long discussion threads relating to this incident.

Overall, price instability could be highly volatile over the next week or two as the impact of further bannings takes place within the game and as Jagex increase their mechanisms for effectively detecting and efficiently removing the problem sources.

Runescape Bracelets

Runescape now has bracelets available for players after the update by Jagex today. Previously the jewellery available in the game were rings, necklaces and amulets. The addition of bracelets has also added new enchanted affects to these jewellery items.

A summary of the new bracelets:

• Bracelet of Clay (Saphire Bracelet) - enables 28 pieces of soft clay to be mined before the bracelet breaks
• Castlewars Bracelet (Emerald Bracelet) - Wielder will do extra 20% of damage against a bearer of their side's flag. Castlewars bandage heals 50% more to wielders of the bracelet. Has 3 charges. Bracelet loses one charge each time wearer starts a game of Castle Wars. Bonuses apply even if castlewars bracelet has used its last charge and been destroyed.
• Bracelet of Innoculation (Ruby Bracelet) - Protects the wearer from an amount of disease damage. Breaks when protection has been used up.
• Abyssal Bracelet (Diamond Bracelet) - Prevents wearer from being skulled when entering the Abyss. Player still suffers from Prayer drain. This item has 5 charges before breaking.
• Bracelet of Combat (Dragonstone Bracelet) - Allows wearer to teleport to Warriors', Champions' and Ranging Guild as well as the Monastery. Updates wearer with their Slayer totals every tenth target they need to kill. Item holds 4 charges. Can be recharged at totem in Legends' Guild (requires completion of Legends' Quest).
• Bracelet of Regeration (Onyx Bracelet) - Doubles the natural Hitpoint recovery. This item has an infinite number of charges.

Overall, the new bracelets in runescape have some interesting affects although there are no additional wearable locations introduced so people wishing to have any cumulative affects with existing items will be out of luck.

My opinion is that yet more items being introduced that are in the main junk fodder with plenty of people looking to take advantage with high prices for the items likely to be charged for the next week or so, until people realise that most of them are pretty much obsolete items.

I am all for Jagex developing runescape and having regular updates. However, by continually introducing junk fodder items into the game, the only purpose really served is to create nightmare bank situations for players who go from member to non-members. As on free to play runescape the bank is pretty limited and many of these new items will simply be a waste of bank space in the long term.

Runescape Guides and Bloggers

Runescape has a significant amount of people who write constantly about the game, either through providing guides or certain indviduals providing an insight into the average players mind. In an equal world everyone would have their voice heard and their good work appreciated. Sadly the world is not equal.

Due to the popularity of runescape it has attracted a number of people who hover like vultures trying to drive web traffic to their sites - mainly to get people to pay for runescape money. Unfortunately, people pay money over for runescape coins and then risk their account as Jagex catch many people via that method.

The popularity of runescape has also attracted a lot of spam bloggers who are constantly updating daily to generate more buzz for such shops. It annoys me that I am trying to get a group of bloggers together who are interested in promoting the game and associated runescape guides without any secondary agenda of funding an activity that breaks Jagex rules. However, the only active bloggers I come across are generally the people that are working together to cross promote their sites.

I guess I could say I am appealing to all honest runescape players, that is the players that play within runescape rules, for them to make a stand and help me form a network of runescape bloggers that have an agenda to help promote legitimate runescape help.

Requirements would simply be:

1. People wrote about the part of runescape that interested them the most
2. People regularly updated the content - at least weekly would be good
3. People within the network helped each other through advice on writing technique or on other technical issues with whatever blog platform or content management system was used for the website or blog.

Those three requirements would be simple to achieve if people were willing to help establish such a network for runescape players. If anyone does want to help form such a group then please get in contact via the contact form on my main runescape help site.

People who are interested can either want to write runescape blogs or simply become a runescape guide writer to help develop my main site.

***Update***

I let my main site expire when Jagex announced EoC so it no longer exists. To bring it up to date would have required a substantial overhaul and a large time investment. Since then, Jagex have released 07 runescape servers and a friend has started a dedicated wiki type site for 07 runescape at http://www.07runescape.com. I am sure he would appreciate any help updating information for that site to ensure it becomes a valuable reference for all 07 runescape players.

Runescape Addict or Bot Users

Recently I came across some interesting information about runescape and how long the average player spent on the site. The information was on web metrics studies and it showed runescape players generally spent 6 hours 32 minutes on the actual runescape web site.

The next closest site in terms of time spent online was Electronic Arts Online - with visitors spending on average of 3 hours 7 minutes on the site.

In essence, runescape players spent twice as long on the runescape site as people visiting any other monitored site. It leads to the question is runescape highly addictive? Or has the figures been distorted by bot users?

Runescape can easily become an addiction and players spending large amounts of time ingame would not be too uncommon, although 6 hours 32 minutes does seem excessive. There are plenty of runescape addicts that would account for some of this time, the average player may not spend quite as long on the site. Consequently, some other factors would need to be looked at.

In this case, I believe that the monitoring figures may reflect the time spent on the site by bot users or runescape macro users. Generally the macro would be set to run for long periods of time, 16-24 hours a day would not be uncommon. This would ensure that the average time spent on the site would increase.

Combining the addictive nature of runescape and the bot abuse that provides a never ending battle for Jagex to contend with, the overall time spent on runescape site by actual players is distorted to some degree. The actual degree of distortion would be hard to account for without knowing how the data was initially compiled and to what extent runescape is infested by macro or bot users.

Runescape Bloggers

Runescape is an MMORPG that has a lot of dedicated fans, many of whom are avid bloggers who like to express their opinions to the masses. Unfortunately, many players do not maintain their blogs over a sustained period of time and leave plenty of unfinished thoughts.

Personally, I had stopped writing on my runescape blogs when I got bogged down in real life with a course for starting your own business. It has now finished and I have started blogging again, hopefully I will continue to be able to do so in my spare time as frequently as I can.

In that time I have also read a lot about blogging communities as a whole and I have improved my writing style to be more inclusive of other runescape sites in general. This is what I believe will help keep me motivated to continue blogging this time - including others and making it a community.

If anyone wants to get involved and are an existing blogger (doesn't have to specifically be about runescape - but if you play the game it will be so much easier to know the way things work), then get in contact as we can work together and be more helpful to the overall runescape community - instead of letting the writing stop, we can keep each other motivated to continue and increase the overall help offered.

If blogging was tried and writing guides would be better suited, then any player can register on my main runescape help site (site no longer existing - but editors and guide writers can sign up at http://www.07runescape.com for old school runescape game help) and submit a guide for inclusion in the database. Hopefully in 12 months time the site will be much more comprehensive on the help offered and that I would have a good team of guide writers working together.

Runescape Knowledge Base

Runescape knowledge base has been updated in the latest overhaul by Jagex to make it more accessible and more used by all players. The idea of the knowledge base has come about mainly due to the fact that so many fan sites have been developed over the years that addresses things that Jagex had not previously catered for.

Jagex obviously stepped up efforts at improving their overall customer service by incorporating the knowledge base into their main runescape site. This gave many players a basic understanding of many of the different features in the game, and it made runescape much easier to play in effect.

The ideal situation, from a fan sites' point of view would have been if Jagex had endorsed some of the actual fan sites as official help sites instead of developing their own solution. Obviously I would have much preferred my own runescape help site to have featured in an official list of endorsed help sites, alas Jagex didn't make this happen.

Anyway, the update in the knowledge base is merely showing continued support by Jagex to address many issues not covered ingame itself. The runescape faq is much more prominent as well as combined with the new feature of article of the week, the new knowledge base will help players out more.

Overall, some fan sites may lose out on some of their audience but it will help reduce any runescape scams if players use the knowledge base or some of the more reputable help sites to get their queries answered.

Players wishing to compile their own runescape faq can register on any decent help site and either add to the existing guides or create their own guides if permitted. In the long term, sharing knowledge about the game on good sites helps everyone get more out of the game.

Runescape Forum Added

After being requested to add a forum to the runescape help site I integrated a forum into the existing help site that meant registered users did not have to re-register in order to be able to post. However, there are not many people making use of the forum and it has been somewhat disappointing as it was a requested feature to add to make the overall runescape help site more interactive and gather more feedback.

Adding to this, I still require more runescape guide writers who are wanting to submit their guides, tips or even comments on existing runescape guides in order to make the overall site more useful. There is no long term committment expected, however, any guide written should meet the basic requirements and should be 250 words or more - they can include pictures to help break up any text.

April / May I plan to work through all the mini game guides for runescape and ensure that a guide exists for each on on the main help site. Any help is appreciated if you already have a guide written or if you have a favourite mini-game, then help this become reality by the end of may.

Any other guides may be submitted in the mean time as there are many runescape guides still required in order to make the overall runescape help site more useful. After the mini-games have been completed I will look at another aspect and then aim to complete that section.

Runescape Guide Writers

Guide writers for runescape are indeed a rare entity. Through the creation of my site I have been approached by many people who desired to write plenty of guides to be published - however, when asked to actually write a guide they have not returned or have simply tried to copy a guide from another runescape fan site and claim it as their own guide.

Without doubt, the biggest burden of my time has been trying to establish a good guide writing team who will be dedicated to helping me realise a complete runescape help site.

The overall task is enormous by myself and the progress is somewhat slower than I had anticipated - as real life comes into play and the time available is reduced significantly when I am practically the sole provider of guides.

I have found one consistent guide writer in Aj that has taken care of the free to play quest guides in runescape, although there are still many more areas that need to be covered in greater detail.

Currently I am looking to finish off the price guides that were initially inspired by Tomisme from the main runescape forums and after that I will look to get some information in each of the main categories on my runescape help site.

If there are any budding runescape guide writers wishing to be part of my guide writing team they can contact me via msn or via my main help site contact form. I do not expect someone to come in and write every guide available, although I do expect that any guide writer will be able to provide a decent quality guide from some aspect of runescape.

Most guides that have been rejected either fail to cover anything to any significant degree or are simply a copy from another fan site. The basic requirement for any guide to be accepted is that it should cover one topic or one aspect of the game that provides sufficient detail to warrant inclusion as a standalone guide (or mini-guide) depending on the topic it covers.

Overall, the website attracts consistently over 100 new people per day but I have not been able to concentrate on promoting it as I am too busy trying to get the background info updated and new guides online to make the site more complete. If anyone wants to help me promote the site or write some guides then they only need to get in contact as I do need all the help I can get.

Thanks,
Latona