Monday, April 30, 2007

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.

Thursday, April 26, 2007

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.

Sunday, April 22, 2007

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.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

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.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

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.

Sunday, April 08, 2007

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.