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.

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 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 Player Owned Houses

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.

Runescape Royal Trouble

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.