The Grand Exchange - Database

Yeah, we all have our complaints about the in-game trading system now, but now lets talk about the tool they recently’ released, the Grand Exchange Database. For players, this is a miracle-ish type thing, you can easily check an items value and history and would kind of resemble a RuneScape wall-street tool. So in a sense, thats great and all right? Well yeah for the players of course, but with the coming of this also created the death of another. As some of us may know, Zybez was the first RuneScape helpsite to create such a tool, and many many players used it, they worked really hard to keep it up to date, seeing as they have to gather data manually rather than have it easily accessable like Jagex, its easy to say that Zybez put alot of work into their tool. Now this Grand Exchange DB came out, and i won’t deny that its more accurate and useful but it also is another major supporter of my theory. Now onto the next piece of evidence

The Knowledge Base

This was first introduced as a replacement for the game manual but this thing is slowly evolving in my opinion to a fully blown mini help site tool. To be really picky, they have their “Quest Help” tool, which supposedly helps players get past parts of quests that they find confusing, what does this remind you of? RuneScape Help of couse! Except this is Jagex’s version with a little kick to make sure that players play their game more instead of reading a guide and just completing the quest. Then they have their game manual that pretty much tells players anything they really need to know about the game.

So what is the point of this article you may think? Well, in a sense Jagex can really never shut down all the fansites but the things they are doing are helping to drive 3rd party help into extinction, afterall, when a new player signs up, and they need help, the first place their going to probably look now is the RuneScape website, and if jagex keeps on improving, the player will have everything they need at the Runescape website. Maybe this isn’t a loss, maybe its a gain, or it could be the other way around, but it depends on how you interpret these types of events.

We’d like to hear what you think.

Magic Potions – Drink Me!

Should you use these while training mage? Absolutely (well, unless you are casting high alch over and over again…). At today’s cost of 235gp a sip, these are a bargain as well. They increase your mage by +4, significantly increasing not only the chances that you will hit more often, but also that you will do more damage.

I know that some readers are thinking, hmmm, “My inventory slots are more important than having a potion.” I agree to an extent, but you have to be aware that a potion’s effects don’t wear off instantly. I wouldn’t carry one along to a blue dragon task, but I would sure have a sip every time I banked hides and bones. The stat bonus carries me through the entire time.

Can’t make magic potions? I don’t know any high level herblorist who would turn down free herblore XP. I certainly wouldn’t. Today Lants are 1,163 and potato cactus is 965. That is 2128 per potion or 709gp per dose. Is it worth it for a +4 mage bonus? I think so.

The non-combat uses are also worth mentioning here. At level 70, I trained using teleother to Lumbridge with magic potions. On a crowded server, people beg to be teleported, and it is some of the fastest magic XP in the game. (at 71, you should switch from magic pots to Wizard Mind Bombs though).

Ranging Potions – Shoot this!

With Pking gone, these have lost the majority of their value, but are still very worthwhile potions. Today they are 431 a dose. Range potions give a 4-13 (10%+3) level boost. At 60 range that will boost you up to nearly 70. Starting with 70 range will get you up to 80. This is a pretty hefty increase, and will significantly decrease your kill times, saving you arrows (darts, knives, cballs, charges), time, and increasing the rate at which you level up.

In conclusion…

It really is worth it to use what ever stat increasing items and tools you can while training. With the potion market being what it is, they are well worth the investment. With both range and magic potions, it is more expensive to buy the ingredients and get assisted, but still not unreasonable, especially if you happen to have a few lants and dwarf weeds sitting in the bank. The seconds for both are about 1k each, and many people will assist you. Just call it out in the GE, and you should get offers.

Stay tuned until next week when I will outline some of the highest potions in the game and some uses for them that you probably haven’t even though about.

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At this point I noticed a major problem… I’m horrible at graphics, and have no sense of what looks good and what doesn’t. As a result, I decided to assume that everyone will hate those three signatures, and created a slightly different type of signature. For this one, you can choose the colors yourself! Here’s the format:

http://www.therunescapeblog.com/sig/custom_{BG}_{TEXT}.png

… where {BACKGROUND} and {TEXT} are hex codes for the colors you want to use (BG is the backdrop and text is all the text and the border). What? You say you haven’t memorized the hex codes for every color in the rainbow? Well that’s not a problem… head over to http://www.colorpicker.com/ and go crazy! Remember, however, not to include the # in the url. Now that I have sufficiently confused you, let me show you some examples:

(Yes, I did make this one ugly on purpose…)

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Hmm… maybe that didn’t solve my graphical problems after all. Maybe you guys will be able to come up with something nicer looking - make sure to leave a comment if you do! If any of you want to take a shot at designing some signatures from scratch, I’ll gladly take any help I can get, and I’ll code them up right away for everyone to use. If you are wanting to make a design, do whatever you want but try to make them 350px wide if possible, and leave room for the “Recent Posts” and “Statistics” (those two things should be in the same layout as you see in all the above sigs).

The premade signatures will update whenever anyone comments or a new post is made, so they should always be up to date. The custom colored sigs are actually regenerated every time they are loaded, so they may take a wee bit longer to load (not more than a second though… probably milliseconds).

I hope these see some use, and like I said, this post is about sharing so make sure you use these sigs wherever you can to help The RuneScape Blog keep growing! Again, any submissions or suggestions for new designs are welcome! I may get around to making some under-sigs in the next few days

- Cmafai

Part 1: The basics of using potions to speed up leveling and XP per hour

Super Attack Potions - What they do and why you should use them.

These increase your attack by 20% for a 5-19 level increase. For example if you has an attack level of 80, one sip from a Super Attack would boost your attack level to 96. Not bad for 80 gold pieces, especially when you compare it to a slayer mask that only gives a 15% increase but costs nearly a mil. You could buy 12,300 Super Attack doses for the cost of that one mask, but since the bonuses stack, you really should use both while training slayer for a whopping 35% increase in attack.

Strength Potions - Drink this for Strength

Strength potions, or str pots, increase your strength by 12.5% for a 3-12 level increase. A sip of this boosts a strength of 80 to 90. This is especially useful in F2P, where str increases are few and far between. Increased str makes you to hit for higher damage, causing: faster kills, more XP per hour, and increased drop rate per hour (the more you kill the more drops you get).

Barbarian Mixes - Eat your pots

These are one of the greatest underutilized parts of the game. Cost wise they are pretty bad to make from scratch, but they are great to make if you already have the potions, especially if you are fighting monsters that occasionally hit you and do damage. To make a mix, you need a 2 dose potion and roe. You can decant 2-2dose potions using a 4 dose potion on an empty vial. adding the roe to either an attack or strength potion gives you attack mix(2) or strength mix(2) respectively, and turns the potion into food that heals 6 hp (3hp per dose). Roe is easy enoug to fish near the barbarian outpost, they even have a drop box 1 click away at the Barbarian Assault mini game, it is also very cheap, at only 35gp on the GE, so it is well worth buying, unless you want some fishing XP.

In Conclusion…

Even if you are only killing a monster that just drops bones, it is worth it to use potions. Bones sell for 90gp. Super Attack and Str mixes sell for 80gp and 100 per dose, and easily last more than 2 kills. I am not recommending you stop training to bank normal bones by any means, but I wanted to illustrate how cheap it is to use potions for training. Some more examples are:

- 1 dose of each gives higher bonuses than an Amulet of Fury. Cost:3.2mil vs 180gp
- At lvl 99 str the bonus is 300% better than bandos chest str bonus costing about 15.1mil less
- At str level of 32 the bonus from a str pot is eqivalent to the bonus from a berserker ring for 1/36000 the price.

Happy Potting!

Note from the editor: We suggest you check out Turbo’s blog for some more interesting reading: RS Investor

In any event, this strategy must be working, as after just a few months TRB is already making a large impact all around the web! The one video we have posted so far (See 11’s article on house parties) has received over 1000 views in just a few weeks. Multiple sites from the furthest stretches have cited The RuneScape Blog as a primary source for quality content:

The poster, identified only by the name ThirdEyeOpen, lays out how cheaters and buyers operated as a would-be organized crime ring. ‘Welcome to the Dark Side’ is his chronicle of how he began his Runescape cheating career, and how it all ended. He recounts being ‘interrogated’ online by Jagex Ltd. about his activities, and how the subsequent account banning led to a malevolent wish to get even. His anger eventually snowballed into the creation of an organization of similar-minded individuals, mostly other teenagers, who accumulated a fair amount of real-world currency through exploits in Runescape before cashing out altogether. It’s an interesting read — perhaps a bit disturbing in the sense that he views cheating as a kind of playstyle — but worth checking out all the same.

~ Massively.com

“How to” get 99 Summoning guide, tips and tricks from Deja Vu Xiii who actually got the Summoning cape. I am personally not going to use it and will keep raising Summoning slowly, but if you are in a hurry, take a look.

~ Runewise.net

The RuneScape Blog has also recieved positive notice on PlayNoEvil, Technorati, Digg, and many RuneScape forums.

Once again, thanks to all of our devoted readers, especially those who leave comments and submit suggestions, and thanks doubly to those who have submitted content. We have more articles in the editing/drafting stages now, so be sure to keep checking back!

Update: To help spread the word, we have added an easy-to-use social bookmarking tool to the bottom of each post. Simply select the site you would like to share the article on, and it will be posted!

- Cmafai

In a small unknown town a young computer nerd sat and waited for his teacher to arrive to class. What another kid in this young, future Runescape addict’s class said next, would be the birth of an addiction causing loss of time, life, money, and energy.

“Runescape is so cool. I reached level 15 yesterday.”

“Level 15? My mom could reach that in 5 minutes” K13, the nerd, was overhearing a conversation similar to the one above. He had no idea that the fact that he was eavesdropping on his classmates conversation, would have such a huge impact of his computer gaming life.

Him being the conversation joining person he was, asked, “What is Runescape?”

“A cool game where you fight and drink beer!”

“That game sounds…interesting, how and where do you play?” Asked young little K13.

“www.runescape.com, just sign up and start playing.”

So as most people would, he tried to play the game. He wasn’t really in to MMOs at the time, so he didn’t really get the point. At this point the game had no addicting effects on his life and later left the game at level 11.

About 6 months later it all came back to him. He was bored on a Saturday in the middle of summer and decided to revisit the game to pass the time. He started a brand new account and when he did, he was a full on addict. 10, 20, 30, then 40, he was leveling fast and working on the skills that could get his gear on a role. Getting tantrums when someone tried to make him leave the game. Questing and grinding for 10 hours, seemed like 10 minutes and he couldn’t get enough. His goal was to reach level 99 and to be able to pk in the wilderness. Unfortunately he never killed anyone in the wilderness and quit the game at level 47.

During his journey in the game, he had many hardships. At many times playing for 5,6,7 hours a day. Late into the night, and long into the day he kept on playing. He dealt with 2 Chinese black market dealers, -$40 bank accounts (that’s a lot of money for a 12 year old kid), and a lot of heartache (I will go into detailes about all of these things, all linked together in 1st person… I hope).

Chinese black market dealer 1- One day I decided to buy some Runescape gold because some person kept spamming me on Instant Messenger. I paid the money and was told to meet at the east bank in Varrock. All was well and I later sold half of the gold to my friend that also played the game.

Chinese black market dealer 2 (and the bank account thing) - This one was a little more intense. Chinese black market dealer number two was from a website called buybuy or something similar. I saw that they could off for a decent price, so as most buyers would I tried it out. I paid using PayPal, but for some reason it went through my bank account. I didn’t have enough money in my account so when it tried to make the payment my bank charged me 20 dollars (which I didn’t have). When PayPal charged my account again in an attempt to make the payment there were still (because of the negative balance). Now with an $(40.00) balance, he found out the payment didn’t go through. I demanded my gold either way and they didn’t know the payment hadn’t gone through. When they found out they were MAD. They demanded that I pay them asap or they would take action. After I did pay them, They still bugged me! so while telling them to leave me alone on IM one day and they made creepy comments (that my brother found, not me). Eventually I got the funds back from my bank and in the end, all was fine, but it was not worth all the troubles I had.

Runescape is an addicting game with dangerous qualities. As we know, Runescape can be played free of charge. Because of this it is a dwelling land for pedophiles and rapists alike. If you tell some one you are 10 (figuratively) they usually say they are 10 also. In fact, a good friend of mine got a ‘girlfriend’ on Runescape and was told he was talking to someone his own age. I talked to her on my account and she told me was divorced and had 4 kids. Although I am incredibly against these qualities of the game I will always play a little bit. I rid myself of all the addictions related to playing the game and have kept it that way for quite a while. My story might not be as intense as yours but I believe that 500+ hours I have spent on the game was time badly and well wasted. Sorry if I made a mistake in this post. It is my first one on TRB.

My friends and me were once talking about earning GP, when I started wondering if it was possible for the value of the Gold Coin to decrease like the American Dollar. The more money in the sytem, the less that currency is worth, right? After a few minutes of pondering, I realized that this was not possible because the big “J” has implemented a few factors into the game that do not allow this to be possible.

The first one is probably obvious. The players with lots of gold quit and when they do, the money pretty much leaves the system because the coins will never go to another player who might be able to use it Of course, they may give it out in the Falador Party Room, but lower-leveled players leave the game even more often than the more higher ones. The second one is the one most players might not suspect…Summoning. “What do you mean?” you might ask. Where do the Spirit Shards and Pouches come from? Players can’t make them, and the only way you can actually acquire them is to buy from NPCs. Well where do the Coins go when you buy the shards and pouches? They get destroyed. And the amount of Shards and Pouches needed to get to 99 Summoning is 120 Million gp! The amount is never achieved by most players.

That’s all I could think of for now, and hopefully I have answered some of your guy’s questions out there :).

2001

I started playing Runescape classic (on a really bad computer with a dial-up connection) when I was 14 years old and just entered high school, this was right around the time Christmas crackers were dropped (December 2001). I had no clue what was happening that day and some guy gave me 2 partyhats, which I dropped after a while because they took bank space. My classmates introduced me to this game and about everyone in my class started playing. It was all just fun and new for me, I had never played a MMORPG before and was only used to games like red alert. I started doing some quests with my classmates and got addicted pretty fast. And after my mom saw the phone bill for that month she wasn’t very happy. Luckily we got cable pretty fast.

2002

I was still very noobish, because all I did was a few quests and training a bit on cows, I figured I needed to get myself some money. The Runescape world was still very small back then and members or f2p didn’t exist yet. So I spent a few days picking up bronze scimitar’s in Rimmington (the house with the bronze pickaxe), and sold them to the general store on the other side of the road for a few GP. After a while I could finally afford my black long sword from the sword shop I had seen in Varrock, sadly I died in a cave when I started training with it and lost it pretty fast after. Luckily one of my classmates that had been playing for a while longer could give me a Mithril (which I used to think was rune) one very easy. Once I had my mithril armor I spent most of my days getting my combat up and doing quests, it didn’t take me to long to do all quests besides dragon slayer. Which had the reputation of being a hard quest (this is a time way before there were any rune smithers). After training up till about level 80 I finally took the courage to do dragon slayer and finished it pretty easily.

After I was done with all the random stuff I started working on two skills in particular, woodcutting and Firemaking . You would mostly train woodcutting and Firemaking at the same time since you took a full inventory to a forest (Draynor forest) and you would automatically drop the logs you cut, u just used your tinderbox on the logs that fell on the ground (you couldn’t burn any logs besides normal logs). The only other way to train it was with someone else dropping lines of normal logs and you walking after them lighting the logs. I was finally done with Firemaking somewhere December 2002 and was 3^rd to get 99 Firemaking and 7^th to 99 woodcutting a little later.

2003

After this I started PK’ing a lot with 2 friends that lived in the same street as me. We starting making tactics like luring in the lower wilderness around the castle above Edgeville by having one of us pick up runes without armor to lure people in attacking him. When It had worked one would close all doors in the castle and the other logged in next to the one fake collecting runes. As far as I know hardly anyone PKed in the higher level wilderness at that time and the person with the highest combat level was far from maxing out since combat training was only about 30k an hour max. At this time I created a pure and trained him to like 60 att, def and like 80 str. But we got bored with the PK’ing after a few months and I decided to go back to my main and train his combat up some more.

This is a time I remember pretty well because I spent days and night in that one area never having to leave since the spiders I trained on didn’t hit that hard. I think it was about 25-30k an hour training on the spiders in Underground Passage. I remember there was a really ugly spider called Balrog in there that was just a tiny level 3 spider with increased size. I also was in this cave when Scythe’s were dropped (not sure where I was when bunny ears were dropped, but I have those as well). After getting my combat up to about 100 (pretty high for that time, halfway 2003). I spent a lot of time training agility at the wilderness course and got it up to about 82 (pretty high for that time).

After I got enough of agility (August 2003) I set my eyes on a new goal, rank 1 Firemaking. I quit Firemaking right at 99 and I am not quite sure what XP the rank 1 (jamie2002) had when I started going for rank 1 but I remember him being ahead about 10mil XP. But when I started Firemaking so did he and this turned out to become a long battle lasting several months, I finally overtook him around December 2003 (A year after I got 99). We had around 38-40m XP back then and the discussion about RS2 and the BETA were starting up. While I was still trying to get further ahead of Jamie I heard “dropfishing” was removed and bought a ton of feathers and started “dropfishing” right away, I got it to about 93 in a really short time (was about 120k/hour).

2004

Runescape 2 was launched and I had to change my way of Firemaking, not sure what was the best way yet I started cutting willows in Draynor and burning them when my inventory was full. I did this till about 60m experience and if I remember correct I was first to get 60m XP in a skill. But when I thought I was far enough ahead I stopped doing Firemaking and started doing some random skills, not really focusing on something. I remember woodcutting and fletching a lot though. But I wasn’t doing the fasted methods back then (I think I cut inventory’s of maple and fletched them to unstrung bows.

2005

I was doing all quests when they came out and making guides for some as well, then when slayer was released I spent a while doing that and making the guide for it. But after that was done I got bored with Runescape and quit for a little while until I heard about farming coming out and you could get seeds already by thieving the master farmer, so I spent a few weeks thieving the master farmer in Draynor. When farming came out I jumped right in it and made the farming guide and got to rank 7 farming, but when I ran out of good seeds I quit again.

2006

In my quitting period which lasted for a few months I did check hiscores every now and then and when I saw “Leronea” getting closer and heard “Xxx Neo Xxx7” was after my rank I decided to sell my blue partyhat for 200 mil GP and I bought enough yew logs for 200Mil Firemaking XP (I had 60m XP at this time). From December 2005 till end May 2006 I spent doing about 1m Firemaking every day. When I was finally done with this construction had come out (may 18^th) and I decided to start doing that by cutting oak logs outside my house portal in Rimmington and let the butler plank them then build oak dining tables. I did this till I was 87 construction.

Then I decided to get 99 thieving on knights in Ardougne which was about 100k XP an hour (Pyramid Plunder wasn’t out yet). And when I finally got it I heard about Pest Control being really fast combat experience and since I had been 108 combat for ages I thought it was time to get this up. With about 120k XP an hour it turned about to be really easy to max my combat stats (I did a lot of Pest Control each day, because there were a lot of rumors about it getting nerved soon and huge complaints on the forums about it). I think I ended up with about 123/124 combat and maxed out range (planned on doing magic later by alching the bodies from crafting).

After selling my blue partyhat for 200m Firemaking XP and losing my red partyhat because of my own stupidity, I still had a lot of them left and they were worth huge amounts at that time so I decided to sell one for 99 Prayer and 99 Smithing. I made a alter in my house and got 99 prayer in a few days, after that I bought enough bars for 99 Smithing and got that a few weeks later. After this I spent ages trying to get 99 fishing on monkfish, I didn’t play a lot at that time and the experience was really slow but I managed to get it 99 mid September 2006.

After this I decided to downgrade one of my partyhats (I am not sure which color because this were all one day decisions) to buy 99 crafting and I bought a lot of blue leathers and crafted them to bodies and got 99 crafting mid October, I was planning on alching the bodies but decided that was stupid and sold the bodies and went back to Pest Control and got 99 Magic in a few days (I got 99 Crafting and Magic on the same day because I waited a little with the last few XP from Crafting so I could get them together). After this I quit till January 2007.

2007

I was slowly picking back up in January by doing a few skills at the same time Farming, Herblore, Hunter and Agility. I had to work and learn at a company for school but since there wasn’t a lot of work to do I did a lot of Agility and Hunter there. But slowly I got more addicted again and was doing a few hours of agility every day and combining that with doing 2 farm runs every day, 10 Magic trees, 4 Palm trees and 1 Calquat (Since Partyhats were still pretty high at this time I sold one of my party hats and bought enough seeds for 99 farming at once, which was I think about 200m in total) every day for a pretty long period. A Month after starting again I got 99 Agility on 4 February, I started with 94.

Right after my Agility was finished I jumped to Hunter which was 91 and I was still doing Farm rounds daily, my level was about 93 when I started Hunter. It took me about 2 weeks to get 91-99 Hunter, not sure how much I did every day but I was playing quite a lot again. After this I bought enough oak planks for 99 Construction and did Oak dungeon doors for a week and a half and got 99 Construction late February. Having done Farming rounds for the entire period of hunter and construction I got Farming from 93 to 97.

With march starting I was getting pretty bored with Runescape and my Work/Learn project for school was almost over, but I wanted to finish Farming so I decided to do a bit of mining while waiting for my trees to grow I got 90 to 93 mining and 98 + 99 Farming. After my Farming party on 10 March I quit again till mid May.

After taking a nice 2 month brake I wasn’t quite sure what to do yet, but I wanted to get Herblore 99 for a while now. I was planning on paying for this with Runecrafting so I sold a low party hat and bought enough pure essence for level 99 Runecrafting. Starting out with 82 Runecrafting I still had a very long way to go, I wanted to start off with fast free laws W66 till 91 (Double Nats). But when I finally reached 91 Runecrafting mid June I realized there was a double nat crafting company which was a lot faster than running yourself.

So I sold all my pure essence and decided to buy 90 to 99 Herblore before getting 99 Runecrafting, but I wanted to get this real fast so I no-lived Herblore for a week. First off course I had to buy the supplies, I decided to do Saradomin brews and bought a lot of watered vials a whole lot of toadflax and crushed nests. This was well before GE so a lot of spamming on the Runescape forums and buying in small amounts. I Reached 99 Herblore about a week after I started and was ready to do the last bit of Runecrafting. Since it was vacation I nolifed badly and managed to get 91 – 97 Runecrafting (in just a little over 2 week) before I went on Vacation for a month on 10 July.

After my vacation I was still going to the beach and such so I didn’t have a lot of time for Runescape but in august I managed to get 98 and 99 Runecrafting. After this I was planning on getting 99 Mining but after just one level I decided it was not worth wasting my life like this so I quit for well over 3 months and didn’t get any levels in September, October or November. In December I heard about Summoning coming and I wanted to start playing again and because I had a few weeks off I decided to start again and this time I really wanted to get mining over with and got 99 Mining on 29 December.

2008

January 2008 I had just finished my Mining and Summoning was coming soon and since I was really low slayer (75) and all other skills were maxed out there wasn’t much to do then the skill I had hated like forever because it was really slow and I didn’t really like training combat skills since I was maxed. So till Summoning came out I did the easy slayer levels and when Summoning came on 15 January I had 82 Slayer. But very soon I realized that Slayer and Summoning were pretty easy to combine and I was pretty happy.

So with Summoning out there was new interest for me in doing Slayer, doing research on which tasks were the best for which charms and collecting loads of charms kept me interested. As well as the news of the second batch of monsters coming. When that finally came 31 March I was already 95 Slayer and trying very hard to sell my Yellow Partyhat. When I finally managed to sell that I was trying to buy a lot of Seconds in GE, but so was everyone else so that didn’t go to fast. When I had a few Summoning levels banked I got them and reached 91 Summoning on 20^th of April. Still doing slayer mostly I got 98 Slayer on 26 April.

I didn’t do that much slayer in April and wanted to max as fast as possible and finally be done with this game, so I got 98 to 99 Slayer in 9 days on 4 May. With the charms from my last Slayer levels I was able to get 93 Summoning. After this I went to Waterbirth island to barrage Rock Lobsters for my last charms and got 99 Summoning on 13^th may. I am currently doing a bit of Fletching, Cooking and I might do some thieving later on but I am not sure what the future brings for me. I am not really feeling like putting much effort into getting a few ranks. Wasting this much time on a game is kind of sad but playing even more while done, I am not sure.

The End

1. The Knowledge Database

This helpful database is more than just that. It is Jagex own self-structured fansite, giving their players all the information they could possible need, all in a convenient location on RuneScape.com – awesome deal for everyone, right? But let’s look at the reasoning behind this. Would Jagex really spend their time amassing all of this knowledge into one place so that their players would have a more enjoyable (and easier, which is a key part too… but I’ll get to that later) gaming experience? This is how Jagex introduced the update:

“The aim of this update is to provide better support for our players, so that if you’re stuck or just need some friendly advice, you can quickly get the help you need rather than asking Customer Support or hoping someone is talking about it on the forums.”

(News Archives – March 13, 2008)

That seems a bit contradictory to the follow up posts by Jagex Moderators on the forums saying that the intention of the K-Base was to “protect players from malicious third-party websites”.

2. The Grand Exchange Database

Being a staff member on a separate tipsite, it is not often that you will hear me singing praise of our “competition”, but there is not denying the incredible work that Ben (Goten) and the rest of the Zybez staff did when they compiled their famous market price guide. The introduction of the Grand Exchange Database is a direct stab at that project, and furthermore it seems that Jagex has gone out of their way to make it as inconvenient as possible to extract data from their databases. I have truthfully no idea why a readable format of the data has not been released, as was done with the hiscores - although that was yet another example of Jagex only helping out tipsites indirectly because they couldn’t stop it and they would prefer to save bandwidth. Is it not ironic when Jagex finds it necessary to begin each news post with something along the lines of “We did this in response to player feedback”? Read on:

“Many of you asked for the ability to view graphs of market values and track item prices as they rise and fall. Well, this week we introduce the Grand Exchange Database Beta, which does exactly that!”

(News Archives - April 15, 2008)

3. QuestHelp

QuestHelp, in summary, is Jagex taking a primary role of fansites and attempting to render it obsolete. I feel that is all I must say for this one; does it really seem necessary to make a half-ass attempt at quest guides that simply comes off as the creators of the game making the game itself easier? What is their incentive to lower the required IQ for the game? Well, the younger crowd is taking over RuneScape now, and Jagex is doing nothing to stop it (although they only recommend the game for those ages 13 or older). Why would they want to prevent potential customers from playing? As long as they are paying, it doesn’t matter what age they might be. Getting back to QuestHelp, however, it is nothing more than Jagex realizing that tipsites are having a negative impact on some of their players. Once again, they have taken steps to make RuneScape.com another contender in the tipsite world, and cleverly disguise it as being “for the players”:

We know […] that simply resorting to looking up the entire solution can take all the fun out of the quest and often results in you seeing more solution than you wanted to see. This can leave you with the feeling that you didn’t really solve bits you could have done.

(News Archives - May 10, 2006)

But well done, Jagex. You have succeeded in being the first case I have ever seen where a beta version of a feature has lasted 2 years without receiving any changes whatsoever.

The list goes on. If you look at the way they redid the forums, or how they have modeled the hierarchy of their own website, you will see the same patterns. Only once, excluding content in the Knowledge Base, has Jagex truly recognized the fan site community in a public way. It resulted in the second largest riot to ever grace the likes of RuneScape (For the record, that puts it in a close second place to the wilderness and trade updates; aka “The Day RuneScape Died”). Yes, you guessed it. The riot I am speaking of was the one resulting from Jagex’s changes to rules 7 & 9 – the rules regarding third party software, and specifically clients.

On January 2^nd, 2007 Jagex “extended rule 7 to make it clear that it DOES now include third party RuneScape clients/world switchers” (News Archives), meaning that all runescape clients other than the official one were outlawed, as they provided an “unfair advantage” - to use Jagex’s favorite phrase. Once again let’s investigate their reasoning/justification for this radical change:

“When RuneScape fansites are distributing programs which are then used to discuss breaking the rules or result in their own users being scammed, it’s clear that our rules need revision! We don’t want to be unnecessarily restrictive, but we obviously also have to balance that with protecting our users.”

(News Archives – January 2, 2007)

…A classic example of Jagex cutting of the nose to spite the face. If your users are losing their accounts and passwords due to third-party software, sure, some action may be warranted, but severing one of your major lifelines has never been a good choice for Jagex, and they never seem to learn. When at first the update was met with incredulous pleas for withdrawing the new rules, Jagex quietly inserted another paragraph into their news announcement:

“We have done this for two main reasons: a) The sheer number of users losing their account/password to programs which pretend to be one thing but actually steal their password; b) Problems with some of these programs including extremely unsafe chat channels where large amounts of scamming go on, and users encourage each other to try to break the rules.” (News Archives – January 2, 2007)

So Jagex is now pointing the center of blame at the security issue, and has seemingly forgotten their original claim that the reason was that programs such as SwiftSwitch provided players with an “unfair advantage”. In fact, Mod Burgess on the forums would go on to say that IRC is “unmoderated” and “promotes rule-breaking” – a statement that could almost be no further from the truth. This may come as a shock to Jagex, but RuneScape players get scammed in RuneScape. If you want to fix that problem, fix your game… remove trading or something if you have to hahaha… (wait a minute…).

Anyways, now that I have discussed what Jagex has said in response to these updates, let’s look more at what some players said when those changes were made. (Quotes all taken from the RuneCrypt forums - original posters may not still hold these opinions)

“Runescape is evolving more and more into a communist state. The chat filter is already oppressive and now even things that aren’t directly part of the game are being questioned and controlled.

I could quite easily live without SS, I survived without it for a LONG time and only recently started using it. What I disagree with is the freedom of choice that’s being taken away yet again.”

(Agent Yuri)

“Banning SS because it provides a thriving clan community a source of communication, and because Jagex failed to satisfy their customers, is stupid. Jagex you were well aware of SS already, you also made numerous promises to make a clan communication system and you did NOT do that.

Jagex, you backstabbed your customers with a false promise, then you turned a safe client that was acceptable into some taboo thing that will now get you banned. SS is safe and better.

Jagex, you failed to do the obvious, and instead took the only decent means of communicating through clans over RS away from us.

May as well ban in-game trading, I mean scams happen in trades too?”

(X Sam Sam X)

The topic of freedom came up on multiple occasions during those debates and discussions, and then continued as Jagex gave Player Moderators the green light to mute any protestors. You may not come from America, but the freedoms of speech and assembly are somewhat basic rights, especially in such a “politically correct” game.

To make it easy for you to see, I have collected gathered some statistics from RuneCrypt’s user databases and public polls.

• 1 in 4 members stay active on the fansite after retiring from RuneScape.
• 1 in 8 active members changed their status from P2P to F2P, or changed it to “Retired” after the changes to rules 7 & 9
• 1 in 3 active members uses some sort of third party software while playing RuneScape.

What can we learn from this data? 1. Fansites keep players in the RuneScape community when RS itself can’t. 2. Updates targeted at fansites are generally unpopular, and result in Jagex losing members. 3. Players don’t listen to Jagex’s advice, and prefer to use third-party software.

But if there is a Jagex employee reading this article, take this as a plea. Regardless of what I just said, I believe that 98% of the decisions made by Jagex are spot on. The company as a whole has fully deserved the awards it has won, and RuneScape will forever be an MMORPG that can’t be mimicked. It is vastly different from any other game I have ever played, and I think that the 98% of good choices could be increased to 99% if more trust was put in the hands of the players, and in turn to the fansites. When it comes down to it, the upper level of the fansite community is administered by at most 25 people working their asses off to serve the most loyal fans – would it be asking too much to give us a break now and then? RuneScape wouldn’t be RuneScape without it’s players and fans. Jagex is simply shooting themselves in the foot by trying to protect their players from the big, bad tipsites who are run by… their players.

It certainly has been some time since my last article. I am terribly sorry for the unexpected hiatus! However, I am back and I am here with a present.

Speaking of presents, I want to present a very special presentation that will hopefully present to me some very presentable responses from you!

I am very happy to announce that The Runescape Blog has made its first Vlog (Video Blog!) and we are possibly the first Runescape-centered blog to do so! It is quite a large video, around thirty-five minutes long and i have embedded it below. Enjoy!

If you did not already know I am going to describe to you the sort of fun you can have at the house parties in world 31, Rimmington. These have been a big part of my life as a Runescaper because they are simply so exciting! Each time I enter a dungeon I know, due to the thousands of different variables, that I am going to have a completely new experience each time. The best part is that I know every time I will have fun!

As recently stated, there are many variable situations included in a session of ‘house partying’ in RS and because of this I found it difficult to write a succinct article about it. However, I came up with the idea of videoing myself partaking in my favorite past-time of all; this has allowed me to cut out much of the heavy information that was weighing down my old article.

Now that all of this has been said, let us get down to the real business of partying!

The fundamentals of house parties.

Such fundamentals are:

• The roles of different players (e.g pkers: mages, rangers, meleers, tankers, pures) or; (skillers, people who are using different furnishings found in the house/dungeon for skills) or; (party-hosts or people who are achieving a goal, these players are usually the hosts of the dungeon/house and are inviting people in to share their achievement.)
• The fact that if you are in the dungeon/combat ring, you are most likely going to be attacked.
• The fact that you are most likely going to encounter mean spirited people who will try to annoy you; just ignore them :).
• The fact that you are definitely going to have some form of enjoyment!

House parties are dynamic.

In every party you will see different:

• House layouts (including dungeon layouts!)
• Monsters
• Furnishings
• People
• Parties
• and the list goes on and on…

Because of this each party is different to the last!

How to gain maximum enjoyment from the party:

Bring friends!

I can not stress how important this is! Going to a party on RS without your friends is not only rude but it is also very boring! Not only is it more fun with friends but it opens up the party for you for several reasons:

• You get to share the experience which creates memories… memories strengthen friendships!
• You can team up on other people and completely decimate them :-p
• You can have fun battles against each other to see who can claim victory!
• amongst many other things… you are going to have to find out for yourselves!

Utilise a strong arsenal of weapons and armour

This is another very important point that I must stress. If you bring poor weapons and armour you will get killed far too often. It is in your best interests to purchase the best weapons and armour you can afford so that you can do your best in the dungeon! (Looking cool also goes a long way with some of the people who go to house parties :-p!)

Have your wits about you

House parties are fun, however, they can also be the breeding ground for fighting. Make sure you do your best to steer clear from this sort of behaviour… if you cause a fight the best thing you can do is to just ignore it!

Don’t be too serious

Dying is not shameful, nor is it annoying. Don’t flame other people if they kill you and you respawn outside the portal. Just accept that you did not win…. that time :D!

To sum this article up:

• House parties are fun!
• Bring friends, good weapons and armour, your wits and your happy face to have the most fun!
• I hope to see you at some House parties in the near future!

Now go watch the video!

Ta ta for now :-).

`11