Runescape

Runescape Memership Cards

2010-02-03T07:22:00.000-08:00

Since the launch of RuneScape membership cards in the USA, there has been an increased demand for them from other countries. Jagex are gradually rolling out solutions for many countries with different options for paying, but the cards seem to be the one with growing popularity.

The membership cards have various different lengths of subscription ranging from 1 month - 12months. You can buy them from the Jagex store (you need to select either the EU store or the USA store). The list price on the store doesn't include postage and packaging... so that will be added to the cost.

An alternative type of card to use is the Ultimate Game Card

The ultimate game card is available in many shops across different countries and is one option for people who are unable to use any of the other types of payment method available.

Eventually, Jagex may be able to roll out their own runescape membership cards to other countries - but this will depend on demand for them. Afterall, Jagex is a company and they wouldn't be able to afford to sell the cards if it is going to cost them money.

The stores should stock 30-day and 90-day cards, but I have no idea how many places actually sell them. If you want the longer version direct from the Jagex store itself, you will need to select the right store.

The EU store (UK cards) is at Jagex EU Store
The USA store is at Jagex USA Store

Runescape Videos

2007-11-28T06:43:00.000-08:00

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

2007-10-30T09:05:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-17T22:45:00.000-07:00

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.

Anyway, with more developments on my runescape help site there have been a couple of recently added guides. I have been busy trying to get my business site ready for launch and not been active on the development of my runescape site. The guides recently added were written by other players - hopefully a sign of things to come with more people ready to contribute guides.

The guides added to the site are:
1. Random Event Guide by LewisjBlack
2. Abyss Runecrafting by Feone
3. Prayer Training Guide by LewisjBlack

Three guides along with the recent news updates by Jagex. It isn't a great deal of new information, although it does ensure that some content is being added to the site to continue its development.

Once I have my business site launched I will be able to get a lot more guides onto the site and have it march closer to completion. As always, any runescape player who wants to contribute a guide is welcome - as long as it is a guide they have created or have the full copyright permission to use, I will be able to display it on my site.

Dark Bow and Dragon Arrows

2007-06-02T15:31:00.000-07:00

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 drago 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.

A recently started runescape blog is www.catherby.com that has proven to be an interesting read. I do have plans in the future to work on a consolidated blog and using the wordpress format due to categories being used as well as the many plugins that are available for it.

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

2007-05-24T17:39:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-06T15:02:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-01T17:07:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-30T15:21:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-26T20:41:00.000-07:00

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:

People wrote about the part of runescape that interested them the most
People regularly updated the content - at least weekly would be good
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.

Runescape Addict or Bot Users

2007-04-22T13:35:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-18T16:20:00.000-07:00

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 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

2007-04-17T09:29:00.000-07:00

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 my help site and either add to the existing guides or create their own guides. In the long term, I hope my site proves to be a much used resource that will complement the knowledge base greatly.

Runescape Forum Added

2007-04-08T09:44:00.000-07:00

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

2007-01-02T16:16:00.000-08:00

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

Runescape Affiliate Advertising

2006-12-10T21:59:00.000-08:00

On 21st October I migrated all the information from my original runescape site onto my new runescape help site. I have also looked at the adserving features for the associated runescape blogs and have now implemented banner adserving throughout my mini network.

The next step is looking to increase the potential affiliate sites that will agree to run advertising throughout their sites - and for them to check if they are able to implement or integrate it into their site.

At this stage, there is no direct advertisers available and the main adverts that are running are affiliate based. This is primarily to have some adverts running in order to gather up more information and statistics to be able to approach others for direct advertising opportunities.

Once sufficient statistics have been gathered up I will be in a better situation to assess the demographics of visitors to the network and as a result will be able to identify direct advertisers - which will help ensure long term development of both the site and the network.

Runescape Merchandise

2006-12-02T19:46:00.000-08:00

Runescape is a very popular MMORPG and with it there has been some merchandise brought out by players that can be bought as gifts for special occasions such as birthdays or christmas.

I have added the ability for people to check a selection of the items available on my runescape help site and it has its own section - runescape merchandise.

I plan to add further direct links as I continue to develop the help site and I am currently looking at implementing a banner rotation to my site (as well as related blogs) that will carry direct links to various merchandise available for runescape.

I am also considering offering some merchandise myself, although I haven't quite looked into designing them yet as I am working on several different aspects of my site behind the scenes. I do intend to keep this section updated on the development, although it will likely be sporadic posting rather than any set pattern.

Runescape Search Engine

2006-10-25T07:55:00.000-07:00

There are numerous useful Runescape help sites available on the internet, however, it is not practical to be able to search each one individually when trying to find what you want. This is the reason why I have started a Runescape Search Engine that I believe will enable all runescape players to find whatever they desire about runescape.

The idea is that over time I will ensure only quality runescape help sites are included in the runescape search engine. This means any query within Jagex rules should easily be resolved by browsing the results or entering more specific search criteria to get what you need.

It is much better than the previous runescape community search that I was using as the new search will be taking results from websites that I include in the index whereas the previous search was taking results from the whole web, many of which were not relevant to runescape users.

An additional benefit is that any user can simply type the word they are want to find help on without the need to have runescape in front of it - this can bring much better results in context (although sometimes it may be required to put runescape in front of a query if the results are not specific enough to resolve your isssues).

Hopefully all runescape players will see an enormous benefit from adding my new runescape search engine to their favourites list (bookmarking it or whatever), and using it anytime they have a specific runescape query.

Happy surfing and scaping (or surfscaping).
Latona

New Site Name and Testing new Search

2006-10-25T01:05:00.000-07:00

I have now restructured my original help site and relaunched it on its own domain name.

The new site can be found at : http://www.runescape-help.net/

The new runescape search facility is part of Google Co-Op and adds to what was previously being used as now I can add and remove the sites that should contain all the results that runescape players want.

The added control that is offered by the Co-Op enables me to ensure results are better suited to the community needs and wishes and enables me to exclude sites that are obviously of no use whatsoever.

As I add and refine the pages and sites to include in the results of the community search, they will become much more useful.

In addition, on my new runescape help site any player wishing to write any runescape guides can simply register and submit their guide for approval. Again, over time this will enable my own site to much better handle the requirements of the runescape player community.

Latona.

ps. Remember to bookmark my new help site - http://www.runescape-help.net/

pps. Remember to tell your friends about my new site as well so that they can contribute any guides they may want to make as well.

Community Driven Runescape Search Help

2006-08-20T23:51:00.000-07:00

I have just signed up to a Swicki that will become a useful community driven search portal for all Runescape players.

The idea is simple, when people perform their normal searches they can provide feedback to the usefulness of the resources they found were. As time goes by, the useful resources will become the first found results and thereby helping all players find more useful results for their query.

It should be noted that the search portal is intended to be a helpful resource that stays within Jagex rules for any Runescape search and as such the sites that it returns first should also adhere to Jagex rules. Players are requested to report any sites violating Jagex rules in order to make it much more effective.

The long term affect will naturally help all legitimate runescape helpsites and ensure people will be able to find more relevant results quicker without having to trawl through the mountains of spam that is normally returned in most search engines.

Social Bookmarking

2006-07-14T16:21:00.000-07:00

I have added social bookmarking below each post as this is a growing aspect of websites - especially blog style websites. It will enable people to add to their social bookmarks page and share with their friends. It is kinda similar in style to viral marketing, but instead of informing your friends of interesting sites, you are letting your friends find sites that appeal to you.

Below each post is 10 social bookmarking links that will allow people to add to their favourites and share with their friends. There are many more social bookmarking sites available on the internet, however, I felt 10 was sufficient for now and have chosen some of the more popular ones to prevent too much clutter at the end of posts.

Hopefully in the long term, the social bookmarking, viral marketing and constant development of links and content will help make the process of establishing my runescape helpsite a lot easier.

I have had a few ups and downs in the search rankings, and there is a considerably higher number of people that visit the main site when I make an appearance in some of the top pages - however, still relatively young for a website, I quickly disappear in the search results again and then only a handful of people find the site.

I have noticed though, that around 10% or so of visitors come back to this site again, whether they find it through a different search term, or have it bookmarked. I do encourage people to bookmark the main site at least as it will give you access to all the blogs associated with the site also and can act as a kind of runescape portal.

Viral Marketing

2006-07-10T19:17:00.000-07:00

Since I have introduced several blogs to cover various aspects of Runescape, I was hoping to have the word of my site spread further among the runescape players. However, the main way of finding my site still appears to be through search engines.

I have registered on some forums and tried to make an appearance on some to get the word out that my site exists. Although daily traffic appears to increase slowly but steadily, the main problem is still with getting the site more interactive via the forums or any of the blogs.

For anyone reading this particular post, they can help my site by telling their friends - this is the viral marketing aspect. The blogs offer an ideal way for people to tell their friends about my website existing, as they can simply forward a link to their friend via email (the picture of the letter below each post makes it even easier).

Basically, if any readers find any of my posts interesting or useful, or even some parts of the site, then I would appreciate it if you could share this with your friends and forward any posting that you feel would be of interest to them.

As always, I am on the lookout for guide writers and am especially interested in quest guide writers as I am looking to add more content to my main site over the next few months in the hope of catching up to the same level of content as other established sites. Any help to achieve this is appreciated, so I ask if you know anyone that is wanting to write guides, or has already written guides, then let them know about my site.

Thanks.

Latona.

ps. Dont forget to bookmark my site and visit regularly as I plan to update both the main site and the associated blogs on a regular basis.

pps. Dont forget to tell your friends :P

Another Launch?

2006-07-07T06:36:00.000-07:00

I recently found an interesting site that lets you edit in and make your own Newspaper Clipping. I thought I would try it out and see what it looked like.

Here is the result - it took me a couple of minutes but it looks ok.

Website Promotion

2006-06-29T19:28:00.000-07:00

Over the last month since launching my site I have undergone 3 site re-designs due to internet explorer not following the W3C standards and thereby causing some issues with the overall look.

I have settled on a simple design that has so far been fluid on all screen resolutions and browsers. I hope this will continue to be the case as it really has detracted from me adding more quality content guides about runescape. I know I have a lot of work to do to catch up with the established help sites, but it is gradually getting there.

Originally this blog was going to be solely about the development of my runescape help site and how to get a foothold into the playerbase given the amount of paranoia around new runescape sites couple with the advertising ban ingame ... it is truely a challenge to get established as a honest source of help.

I realise now that it is impossible to solely keep on topic, but I have created additional blogs about various aspects of runescape and I will use those blogs to keep on topic and provide an informative niche area within the game.

This blog will therefore become more of my general views on any aspects within the game, any aspects with my site development and any other aspects relating to site promotion and becoming established as an entity.

One main problem is the ability of bad websites to gain a lot of traffic playing against the rules of the major search engine guidelines but at the same time outranking my site that I am trying to develop in the true spirit of the web. I continually become disheartened when I see other bogus sites outranking mine, especially on google where my site has virtually disappeared and sites that copied some of my content outrank me due to them having been in existence before my site... truely demoralising.

Runescape Player Owned Houses

2006-06-27T16:51:00.000-07:00

Player Owned Houses:

Since RuneScape classic there have been people wishing to get into developing their own player owned houses on RuneScape. The game developers took their time in delivering the eagerly awaited addition to the game ... the question is was it worth it?

There will be many people who love everything to do with their own house on RuneScape, but there may equally be as many people who detest the introduction as it has had a great affect on the whole virtual economy.

Almost 1 month after the release, there is still large amounts of players that are unconvinced about what player owned houses or POH has meant to them. On the whole, there has been heavy investments by the early people who managed to get their construction skill to level 99 and have the ability to create everything offered by Jagex.

Change is inevitable over time, and my personal opinion is that I am glad they have released it as it finally means there is no further talk of what might be involved, but instead some grumblings of things that were not involved.

A new Runescape Marketplace is afoot

2006-05-28T01:37:00.000-07:00

Currently I am working on a new runescape marketplace that I am hoping to give some interactivity to my website and some usefulness to the people visiting it. The numbers of visitors has been increasing daily since starting to show on some google search results. Hopefully this is a good sign and that it continues in the same direction.

The marketplace will ideally serve as an alternative to runescape forums themselves ad people will find great use from them. Time is yet to tell if it will catch on and help people in runescape to find the items they are after.

Edited: I abandoned the marketplace system as the script was no longer being supported and I was unable to get a reply as to whether or not I would be able to adapt the script for my purposes.

Runescape Royal Trouble

2006-05-22T11:22:00.000-07:00

Jagex updates continue before I catch up. I am still working alone as the people that have volunteered to help out have failed to deliver. Nothing new or unexpected there then.

I can understand it that people are eager to help a new website develop especially amongst a community they enjoy. However, not many people realise the amount of time, energy or effort that is required to try and build a new part of that community.

There is too much distrust among a large number of Runescape players for them to readily accept a new helpsite as legitimate... I guess it will only prove itself over time.

I urge any player who is interested in writing guides for runescape to step up and register on my site (www.runescape-help.net) and together we will gradually get caught up with other successful sites and then will be able to be more innovative.

Runescape help, guides, tips and making money site

2006-05-21T18:18:00.000-07:00

Runescape help, guides, tips and making money site
Recently launched helpsite for runescape. Currently looking to develop the community and receive some feedback for future development of the site.

The help site is article based and all runescape players can register to submit their guides or tips. However, the guidelines should be followed as the aim is to build a comprehensive interactive runescape help site.

The aim is really to get at least 10 guide writers who are willing to work together to build up the site. All guides will be considered provided the guide writer is the original creator of the guide.

Blog Created

2006-05-12T06:47:00.000-07:00

This will be a retrospective blog on the evolution of my website which I am currently trying to finish off and release officially by the end of this month.

After the website is launched I will continue to Blog some information on a regular basis detailing any major changes with Runescape and such like.