| abstract
| - Mod Mark: Yes. That’s exactly what we are doing. It’s going to frustrate a lot of players who are used to buying their way to high-level equipment, but we think it’s the right move to make. Mod Fetzki: We are always looking to fill the gaps in training AND in rewards that are triggered by reaching a certain skill level. We have a mix of both in the bag, to be released this year. Mod Mark: Those skills that offer no progression at the top levels or which fail to offer better XP rates at the top levels. Mod Fetzki: Those skills where people only continue to train because of the number on the skills list and not because of what they unlock (like Prayer and Herblore, which respectively don’t have extra features beyond level 70 or level 82). Mod Fetzki: We think that we need to update this game for many years to come. Many skills have room for many updates in the higher regions and we don’t think that we will be "finished" any time soon, so it will probably take even more than three years. Mod Mark: Yes, but not until we have rebalanced the combat triangle. Mod Mark: Yes. Mod Mark: Probably! Though the owners of such ore wouldn’t be too happy about losing it, and we wouldn’t like it much if they came looking for it... Mod Mark: Yes, we plan to fix it. It’s too early to tell how this will be done. Mod Mark: Not likely, but that depends what we discover when we start to analyse things more. Mod Mark: That is unlikely. The big problem about the phrase "high-level" is that it’s subjective - it means different things to different people. For example, the recent Agility course update was generally accepted as a high-level update, but the players on the high-level forum really felt that it wasn’t for them because it was lower than level 99. So, sometimes what we consider high-level is different from your definition. It can also differ from skill to skill - many players think that level 70 in Summoning is high-level, whereas level 70 in Woodcutting isn’t. This is because Summoning is a new skill, and takes a fair amount of effort and money to train, whereas Woodcutting is quite an easy, non-engaging skill to train. We have avoided talking specifically about high-level content in the developers’ blogs simply because of this reason. Mod Fetzki: Skill-related updates are much harder to blog about without giving away too many spoilers, too. We can understand completely that you are eager to learn what we have planned for the higher end of the skills, but I can only assure you that there is at least one update aimed at the higher end of a skill in every month until the end of this year. We will also continue to fill out skills next year. Mod Benny: We have a big set of equipment planned that will have level requirements ranging all the way up to 99; however, these will only be available within restricted settings. Releasing more powerful weapons to the entire game would have big consequences for existing content (especially PvP, as you’ve already pointed out), so we need to have a good look at the whole of combat before we can take items to such powerful levels that they would make current items obsolete. Mod Mark: Yes. We are unlikely to release the full range of 80+ equipment until (or after) the rebalance, though. Mod Fetzki: You see how many things come together when we talk about the rebalance of the combat system. It links into everything that makes RuneScape, from boss fights in quests and how monsters react to player attacks to PvP combat and Duels. The task is immense and needs careful preparation, but we are committed to doing it sometime down the line. Mod Mark: Yes. Mod Mark: Yes. How they are linked to the game would say too much about what they will provide, though, so I can’t elaborate further than that. Mod Mark: It’s full of unique challenges and boss fights. I read through one of the design briefs for the boss monsters and the death mechanic was very... different. Some of the biggest NPC hitpoint counts in the game will exist here. Mod Mark: We are currently planning a Grandmaster quest that will have several level 80 requirements*. I know to some people that is still low-level, but over the last year we have raised our top quest requirements significantly, and will continue to do so over the next year. *Please note that this might not be the next Grandmaster quest we release. Mod Mark: It’s another one of these "massively huge projects" we want to do. It will require a huge amount of our resources, and right now we’re focusing on content like the new skill. There will be at least one more elf-related quest before the city is opened, though. Mod Fetzki: The elves are among my favourites and I am so glad that we will be developing more content for them. Mod Mark: You might have noticed that you can understand creatures at 10 levels above the level you need to summon/rear it. When we add a way to raise your Summoning level above 99 (say, with a potion) then you’ll be able to speak to them. Of course, that’s not what’s stopping you talk to monkeys, which you can do right now, given the right equipment. You might even want to try that when you’re in a different form... It’s something we must do soon - pack yaks certainly do have a lot to say. I’m in no rush to talk to the corporate monster that is the iron titan, though! Mod Mark: No. Mod Fetzki: We do have a small Slayer update planned, but that concentrates on the training aspect of the skill rather than the reward aspect. Mod Mark: Cool idea! We do see Prayer as mainly a combat skill, but ideas like this are possible. That kind of ability would make more sense as a one-off spell rather than a prayer, though. Mod Mark: Never an entire quest, but ideas mostly. Some of my favourites have come from speculations about future developments to storylines that we have read, thought "Yeah, that’s much better than what we had planned" and changed our ideas because of the forum posts. I just chatted to Mod Nancy, the penguin quest writer, who tells me that she is definitely going to name the next quest in the series after the amazing name suggestions we had after Hunt for Red Raktuber ("Goldflipper" being her favourite ;)). Mod Mark: Yes. By the time you read this there will already be a dragon pickaxe in the game. We’re looking at some high-level spell additions now, but, currently, these are more cosmetic than damage dealing abilities. Mod Fetzki: We have a small update planned for this year, but the large update that you are talking about will have to wait until a later date. For now, we are just are looking at additions. We rather want to do this properly and look at everything that is involved: cost, time to train, balance against Ranged and melee, speed of training and, of course, the immense power that some of the Ancient Magicks have. We have, therefore, reserved a large chunk of time for it further down the line. Mod Mark: The so-called Kudos Island has the beginnings of an awesome idea that Mod Maz and I had a few years ago. I have every intention of producing that island...one day. It’s just that our plans right now are quite big and it’s just not the right time to start designing. It is pretty cool, though. Maybe after the Mahjarrat storyline is complete... As for the Soul Altar: when we need more soul runes! Mod Mark: Yes, it’s being concepted right now. I would expect to see it sometime next year. Mod Fetzki: We hope that this will be the skill we are working on now! That’s why we are taking our time with this skill: we want to make it really good, which is why it won’t be ready until (hopefully) sometime in 2010. Mod Fetzki: But white dragons don’t exist... ;) Mod Mark: Potentially. We have all sorts of future plans to do with dragon variants. Paul: Not all of the Mahjarrat wear gems. In fact, I only know of Jhallan and Lucien who do. Zemouregal certainly doesn’t. I don’t know if anyone has dared ask those two Mahjarrat why they’re wearing green stones. It might just be some sort of Mahjarrat fashion statement, or they might be enchanted gemstones to enhance the power of their skulls. Mod Mark: Tough question. Magic "armour" is rarely tough and bulky, and comes with sparkly bits and soft flimsy robes. They traditionally offer little defence from the blade, relying on the spell-casting prowess of the wearer to soak up damage. It’s more likely we would reinforce the damage prevention side of Magic rather than cover mages in armour; however, this is purely speculation and it’s really too early to tell. Mod Mark: Honestly, it’s not the Sailing skill. That was a crazy rumour based on a picture of a mage on a dock, who apparently is sailing a ship. He isn’t, and there is no Sailing skill. Interestingly, several of the team here at Jagex love sailing, so it did give us some cool ideas for the future. Oh, and the new skill is far better than sailing. Mod Fetzki: We couldn’t believe it when we saw the fake Sailing icon that someone had put on to the highscore list, but the community identified it as a fake very quickly. Paul: He is a god who was active during the God Wars. He was sometimes known as the god of the skies and many of his followers were flying creatures. Since then, he has largely disappeared and, as a result, his following has waned. Some creatures of Armadyl, such as the aviansie, were wiped out during the God Wars. Other followers just stopped following him when he disappeared. Since the end of the God Wars, some gods have taken less interest in RuneScape and turned the majority of their attention elsewhere. Is Armadyl one of these or are there other reasons for his inactivity? (Haha, now I’m the one asking the questions!) The few followers of Armadyl who remain maintain that he is a good god. We’ll have to think about doing some more Armadyl specific plot one day, as there does seem to be interest in him from quite a few players. Mod Mark: Indeed, what you have described is a tactic used. Many would argue that the area effect spells mages have access to are far too powerful and affect multiplayer games in a far greater way than a group of melee users in dragonhide. I do agree that, 1-on-1, the effect of dragonhide in the hands of the melee user is something I would like to examine. Mod Fetzki: We already have a lot of skills in this minigame; the addition of any other skill would significantly increase the minigame’s complexity, so probably not. Mod Fetzki: I’ve always enjoyed pets for what they are: a companion who loves a little bit of attention, but doesn’t do much else than being there whenever you need a little cheering up. Mod Mark: Pets are only meant as a cosmetic benefit and to show off your Summoning level. Any useful functions tend to be designed for familiars. The main reason for this is that we can predict how long creature familiar will last for and, therefore, give appropriate rewards for the activities it engages in. Pets are for fun, not for training! 1.
* Are monster drops to a specific type of monster(I will use Tormented demons for this example) determined as soon as it spawns, during the curse of the fight, or at the end of the kill?/ 2.
* Is it calculated with factors like damage dealt, damage received, speed of the kill and others like the drop rate of a specific item(Dragon Claws), LSP* and ring of Wealth? does it use factors at all? and if so what are they? (*Loot Share Points) 3.
* Every monster spawn at a particular spot wich is diferent from other monsters in the same area, is the drop calculated as a total of all the monsters killed in that server? For example if whoever kills the 300th monster of that particular species gets the rare drop that we were all fighting for. or is it calculated for each individual spawn? 4.
* Does the number of monsters you have killed add to your lsp, even if its not the same type of monster? 1.
* 2.
* The number of kills you have gained is irrelevant. Only the loot affects your LootShare Points (LSP), but loot from one monster does affect your LSP in all situations, regardless of whether or not you are fighting the same type of monster. Most drop tables are completely random in that they have a long list of possible items with different odds attached to them, and a random number is generated to select one of them. Some items, such as charms, are dropped separately from the monster specific item table Drop tables that are affected by other factors, such as the ring of wealth, may have this random number modified to improve the likelihood of better items being chosen. The ring of wealth, in particular, is not a wide-ranging factor, but only used in manually selected drop tables, so, in some cases, the ring of wealth may have an impact, and in other cases not. 3.
* Each drop is calculated individually. You are just as likely to get a specific drop on the first kill of a monster as you are on the 1,000th kill, and so on. 4.
* Yes. Mod Mark: As you know, in some minigames we are allowing the use of Ava’s Accumulator. For other games, there may well be other changes made to make it less expensive. As I mentioned above, though, the effect of things like Ancient Magicks are so great in terms of damage and XP in multiplayer games, we are unlikely to change the way they work. Mod Mark: I have some crazy ideas to do with a Kalphite King and Queen Black Dragon. ;) We do want to improve the drops on some of the older bosses, but it’s unlikely we would change how they behaved. Many players like the less challenging monsters, so we want to provide a mix. Certainly, most of my clan mates in-game find the God Wars bosses quite challenging! Mod Mark: You’ve identified the biggest problem right there - drop rarity. Creating the ability to fight infinite boss monsters would either have to cost the party money (i.e. investing in the potential drops) or nerf the drops. Either way, I would wager that players would still prefer a standard world for a standard fight. Competition in MMO games is part of the game. If you want to stop being defeated by bigger opponents - whether that’s competing for magic logs, fighting duels or dominating training areas - get bigger or try somewhere else. Mod Mark: You are right; the secrecy around the ring of wealth should end. I have asked our Knowledge Base team to add something to the Game Guide as soon as they can. Mod Mark: We tend to give untradeable rewards out for quests rather than via monster drops, but what you’re talking about isn’t impossible. Mod Mark: Not all areas need to have an Achievement Diary. Interestingly, we do plan to have an Achievement Diary set with a potential set bonus. Who’s to say that there won’t be more areas, or indeed more slots, in a few years’ time? Mod Mark: It is possible to do - 99 is just a number we picked - but we currently have no plans to go above that. Mod Ian: This is something we would love to do in the Audio team. There are some practical considerations to consider such as the sheer number of songs available that would all need reworking, but we are doing some work on redesigning a higher quality bank of sounds, mainly to test out the feasibility of this kind of exercise and if the management team like the results. Perhaps this could go ahead in the future, but, at this stage, we can’t make any promises. Some of you will be familiar with the reworked version of "Temple Desecrated", which we are using on our splash page when you first log into RuneScape. This is an example of what we can achieve without totally rewriting existing songs, but still get a reasonable increase in the overall sound quality. Mod Ian: Certainly, when it comes to orchestral music, the file sizes are very restrictive, as it’s difficult to squeeze an articulate, emotional instrument out of a tiny amount of data, but not so much the actual writing of the songs themselves. Contrary to popular opinion, MIDI isn’t actually a very restrictive format, though we still have to ensure the amount of MIDI data is kept to a minimum, and huge gains could be made simply by changing the instruments themselves into much higher quality versions. File size restrictions will certainly mean we have to simplify things. When I rewrote the theme tune and produced "Scape Main" it was originally three times its file size and required a lot of "trimming down" so it would fit within our constraints. Mod Ian: Again, it’s a matter of opinion: can we justify spending quite a long time reworking all the songs if the overall impact is not what players expect? Will they actually want to download a large file so their music plays in higher quality? Also, we have to consider the increased data the server will have to hold and the potential impact of very large files being downloaded from it. Obviously, as audio developers, we do think it would make a worthwhile difference, but we don’t have the luxury of DVDs full of song data to utilise! Reworking the sound effects would be a mammoth task as there are literally thousands of sounds included in the game, but, again, there are certain techniques we could use to increase quality, etc, which could be used at the expense of a larger download size and more of your computer’s processing power. Mod Ian: I’ve already discussed this with Andrew and the management team to an extent and they liked the idea, but there are lots of practical considerations, not least of which would be transcribing the music into a format suitable for sheet music. We will certainly be revisiting the theme tune again to see where improvements can be made, but I expect that the more players that ask for this, the likelihood of it becoming a reality would certainly increase! Mod Ian: Music and sounds will always be getting updates as far as the Audio team is concerned. A lot of the work we do is behind the scenes and we’ve worked on quite a few updates to sounds recently, some of which have been released, some of which haven’t. Some are more noticeable than others. The main issue for us when doing updates is the sheer number of things that require attention - if we change one single sound effect we have to ensure it will work in all the scenarios where it is used, that nothing gets forgotten, and that it doesn’t cause any unpleasant side effects as a result. At the moment, we are concentrating on making existing sounds as good as they can be with our current audio system, adding in more variation to repetitive sounds, and trying to improve them rather than just increase their quality (and, therefore, file size). There has been much discussion regarding if and when the sound quality in the game will be updated. This is something we will certainly be looking into, to see how practical it would be to accomplish. Mod Fetzki: Andrew covered this in his Q&A, in response to questions about night and day: "Not at the moment. While it would be graphically attractive, it wouldn’t really give more than a few minutes of enjoyment if it was purely cosmetic." Mod Knox: Thanks for your question. As we have mentioned in various replies to blog-entries, it can be difficult for us to go in to detail about some projects because, as has been shown during the unfolding of the latest dwarf quest, we change our minds quite a bit throughout the production process. So, with items, skills and anything else that has numerical values and strong in-game effects, it is always going to be difficult for us to say anything without creating false assumptions, which can ultimately be damaging within the community. That said, we do try to keep the content of blogs varied, so, over the coming months, we will strongly consider which projects we do and do not reveal details about. As always...we hate spoilers! Mod Mark: I disagree. This assumes that weapons of higher level would have to do more hitpoint damage. Aspects like damage prevention or, indeed, types of damage (we only use poison and disease, which relate to hitpoints anyway) like elemental or stun damage are all options we can consider when rebalancing the combat triangle. It doesn’t mean we have to raise the cap. Mod Fetzki: There are several possibilities: create better armour, add tactical choices to attack and defence, give melee its own combat triangle, etc. And this is just what we are thinking of BEFORE we start. Thinking outside the box is what being at Jagex is all about, so I am sure we will come up with many more ideas. Mod Mark: Our developers are always inspired by what they read on the forums - it’s like our muse - however, it’s impossible to credit specific posts or even hazard a guess at how many ideas are inspired in this way. Mod Mark: Erm, play the game? If you see your idea, then feel proud! It’s often the case that several people come up with the same idea, but it doesn’t matter who it came from, does it? Mod Fetzki: We know that you and many others who are busy suggesting new ideas would love more feedback as to why some aspects of it might not be possible, or why other ideas would perhaps create side-effects that you hadn’t thought of, and we are trying to do this wherever we can, but the sheer amount of suggestions forbids us from doing this in the majority of cases. Many ideas are great and we love looking through them, though. Mod Mark: Yes, we plan to add particle effects and bloom aspects to pell animations, bringing them up to standard. Our artists mention it weekly! Mod Fetzki: It is a massive task and a unique challenge to get this done to a high standard, in both Standard and High Detail modes. The early prototypes look great, though!
* Rewards?
* Story/Gielinor History?
* Music/Sounds?
* Graphics?
* A Mix of the Above? Mod Mark: A mix. We try to make sure that updates to the game support the ones released around it, so if we do one quest that focuses more on storyline than on unique rewards, we redress that balance by creating other quests that focus on the opposite. Mod Fetzki: I am most looking forward to the Slayer update, which will bring a small, but nice, item with it. That said, I am really biased, since Slayer is among my favourite skills. Mod Mark: There is some huge storyline development planned for next year which we have been paving the way for in the last year. It’s storyline I have been involved with since I started here, so it’s exciting to finally see some of my ideas come to light. Mod Fetzki: Each of these storylines deserves to have top priority and it is a huge challenge, but we have made progress and one of the storylines you mention is nearing its completion. Others will continue to be updated for months and probably years to come. The dwarf quest series is the one we are currently focusing on (Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf was just released), but we are planning on new entries for all these storylines in the foreseeable future. Mod Mark: I’d like to. I also always liked the idea of a tattoo slot where the player can get a runic symbol emblazoned on their body. It’s certainly in keeping with the style of the game and there is room in on the "paper doll" (the thing in the Worn Inventory interface). Mod Mark: Haha! Have you been looking in Mod Fetzki’s wardrobe? *ducks* :) Originally, many of those kinds of locations gave random, useless items like buttons and bits of roofing. We decided to remove that feature because it was just clogging up people’s banks with chaff (pointless bits of, erm, stuff). There are some locations in the game where you can obtain strange costumes from searching in dodgy wardrobes, though... Mod Fetzki: We don’t distinguish between player suggestion updates and non-player suggestion updates. Our developers get their inspiration from many different sources, one major source being suggestions from players, but also from playing RuneScape themselves, playing other computer and board games, reading books and many other sources of inspiration. Mod Mark: We have always had a healthy mix of the two, and even the idea of "fantasy" strays quite far from the Tolkien-esque standard we tend to associate with computer games. Looking back at the early game, we always had quests like Earnest the Chicken supporting the more recognisably fantasy stylings of Dragon Slayer, Hazeel Cult, etc. We do have some quests coming up that do feel less fantastical - hopefully, they will redress the imbalance you perceive. Mod Fetzki: It quickly became apparent that we couldn’t just do upgrades and that we needed to add new gameplay as well. As soon as only one update within two months was a quest, we received quite a bad reception from our player base, so we made sure that we put a bit more emphasis on additions to the game than the "Upgrade Year" would suggest. Mod Mark: Upgrading everything was not achievable in one year, and, frankly, defining a whole year as a year of upgrades was an overstatement. There are many things we are yet to upgrade that were right at the top of our list, like Duel Tournaments, Gnomeball and Barbarian Assault. We haven’t forgotten them. Mod Fetzki: Certainly, we have a solution to the Duel Tournaments problem finished in code, but we still need to make sure the solution is sound. Mod Mark: Not his own quest, but you may well call on his support in the near future. He is one of my favourite characters, actually, along with Rantz. :) Mod Srowley: Developers often try to include new information about RuneScape’s back story in new content - a good recent example being the Mahjarrat quests. RuneScape’s history has already been extensively mapped out, as has a proposed future story arc, which helps us to make the universe more consistent and believable - we don’t just make everything up as we go along, honest. Sometimes, though, when we want to fully explain something, or give lots of details (which would break the flow of content like quests), we can add something to the website - in the Lores or Postbag, for instance, or as a wallpaper. Mod Mark: Nice ideas. The main kudos of 99 Construction is the big throne and the skillcape, but you’re right, we could do more. Mod Fetzki: We always try to keep the balance between not giving away any big surprises and keeping you informed about what we are planning to do with RuneScape. Take the latest dwarf quest, Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf: while we wanted to tell you that we are working on this storyline, we didn’t want to spoil the surprise that it would come with the dragon pickaxe (Mod Mark: or the hand cannon), a level 90 pick-pocketing update, a mine cart expansion to the Grand Exchange, a new combat/Mining area... Admittedly, we are aware that we can get much better at this and are aiming to talk about more projects in developers’ blogs in future. Mod Fetzki: Firstly, that is just an opinion; we prefer the new look. If we never updated the game at all, it would look very dated. Since the launch of RuneScape Classic in 2001, we have constantly updated the graphics and will continue to do so to reflect that our tools become much more powerful and that we can do effects now that we could only dream of in 2001. Mod Mark: Various animations run on the ice giants and the speed of those animations does change during combat. It is not specifically designed to beat faster as the fight progresses, though. I don’t actually see them as beating hearts; they are more like pockets of elemental energy trapped inside the shell of the beast. Mod Mark: At the moment, we are focused on populating existing land masses and finishing off the coastlines of the existing continent before we create too many new islands or start any new continents. There are some areas that we have pencilled-in outlines of future plans. In fact, there are some very interesting maps around the office with plans etched all over them... Mod Fetzki: We feel we are close in getting the balance right between skilling, PvE and PvP content. With the addition on bounty hunting on PvP Worlds we have given PKers a good source of income, and we think that it compares well to the income you can generate by killing NPCs or by using your skills. Mod Mark: We might do some more, yes. Last year, we added something small for Thanksgiving, and also the French "Fete du Travail" festival this year with the lily. Mod Mark: No. This kind of data would be more frustrating to have than useful. Mod Mark: Excellent question. Here are my top five things content must have to make it great: 1.
* It’s got to be fun. 2.
* It must be something you want to experience again. 3.
* It must fill a gap rather than occupy a space filled by other content. That applies conceptually, geographically and economically. 4.
* It has to be "easy to grasp, but tough to master". 5.
* It has to have the right team making it and for the right reasons. Mod Fetzki: The relationship between being innovative and practised needs to be balanced, the same as with the relationship between technical restrictions and creative freedom. There needs to be time for polishing too, but you need to know when it’s done and not take all the edges off the end product. Mod Mark: It was a deliberate move to only have one Grand Exchange. We wanted to replicate the feel of the busy Varrock trading worlds we had in the past rather than segregate the goods community in different Grand Exchanges. However, it’s likely that we will provide other options to some players in the future. Nothing as drastic as allowing GE purchases to be made from the bank, though. Mod Mark: We hit a bit of a snag with the animation packs. As you know, we’re working on new technology that will allow much of RuneScape’s graphics to run smoother, faster, at a higher definition, and which gives us many more options for the future. We thought we had finished with all the technology relating to the animations, but we weren’t, so rather than rework things (like emotes) now, then finish the tech and have to rework them again, we’ve decided to wait and just rework them once. That way, we can save time and use it to work on other things. Mod Srowley: I believe the character you’re referring to is Bertam Aubrey (mentioned in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, but never introduced as an actual character). That’s in no way linked with the RuneScape character called Aubury, aside from having a name that sounds similar. Mod Fetzki: We are pretty confident that we can claim our Aubury was there first. :) He was (and still is) an NPC in RuneScape Classic, which was first released in 2001 (Half-Blood Prince was released in 2005)! But, of course, creativity does not mean that we have to invent the wheel over and over again. We are taking inspiration from everywhere and we hope we give something back to the creative community. Mod Srowley: Even so, how many pieces of media are there with characters who share names with people in RuneScape? If you go looking: loads! There’s a character in a Star Wars book with the name of Reldo. There are even restaurants in Canada and Ireland called Evil Dave’s (they both do a lovely STEW of DOOM...probably). :) We do often include references in the game and on the website, from blatant things like lines from Monty Python to much more subtle things like the time on Catherby bank’s clock (10:04/Back to the Future). That said, you can find links between almost any two things if you go looking for them, even if they’re not intentional. Sometimes, though, a name is just a name. Mod Fetzki: We’ve always wondered how many players would actually go back and reply any quests without getting an additional reward...so we tried it out. With the recent Fur 'n' Seek quest, we have made it so that you can repeat the boss fight and also get a little bit of experience while doing it, but the feedback was that if the XP rates don’t make this more attractive than skilling, then most players wouldn’t bother going back and doing a fight again, so I am not sure that a big project for us like this would actually find a lot of approval in our playing community. Whenever it comes to topics like this, I feel how hard the job of prioritising projects really is. Is it really worth committing development time to give players the ability to experience something again or use that time to develop something new? We think that there are many other things that we should do with quests, such as looking at some rewards that are ridiculously low or increasing the quality of the cutscenes - things that more players will get enjoyment out of. We will definitely keep the idea of replaying quests in mind, though. Mod Mark: Some quests like Dragon Slayer have been changed massively since they were first released and I too would like to experience that on my ch00b account. :) Mod Mark: Yes. Mod Fetzki: It will be a small, but nice, feature. Assuming in addition that 75% of RuneScape is covered by water, this leaves 2443.75'x' of this area to be land. This is double, if not triple, the land area of RuneScape. It is likely, however, that you guys at Jagex are aware of none of this, as Lumbridge apparently situated just north of the equator clearly has a temperate climate, whereas lands further south have tropical ones. One thing to note is that a player can walk across the world and experience several climate changes in just several hundred steps. Mod Mark: These theories are based entirely on Earth-based calculations and measurements - I’m sure Harrison would be proud. However, these principals simply do not apply to Gielinor. The behaviour of the compass and sextant are as much affected by magic as they are by the curvature of Gielinor’s surface. Finally, Earth has the advantage of being fully covered and mapped (aside from some remote jungles and seas), whereas even the greatest of RuneScape’s scholars (so, Reldo, then) can only guess at what lies beyond the great seas. Mod Mark: This was not our intention. It’s often quite difficult to tell a story when the main character is being controlled by millions of users. Sometimes we have the avatar (your character) say very little, but it can come across as quite boring. These days, we have other ways of talking around the avatar, like using Zanik in the goblin storyline (she gets to be the opinionated one during those quests), but it’s not always the right approach to take. Zaros just happens to be slightly mysterious and less predictable, so the player often seems pro-Zaros, where, in fact, we’re just trying to make them seem ’pro-adventure‘, meaning they just like the intrigue that the mysterious Zaros offers, rather than specifically worshipping him. Mod Srowley: There’s nothing particularly conclusive in what the character says - it’s open to your own interpretation and perception of who your character is. Personally, I see my character as a Guthixian who simply helps any faction - Zamorakian, Zarosian, Saradominist, etc - so as to keep the world in balance. Mod Mark: We do try to announce when we make changes, particularly, these days, in the patch notes. I have just checked with our balancing department and they reliably inform me that the drop rates of dragon claws have never been changed since they were added to the live game. In fact, the only changes we have made to claws relate to their sound effects and to a bug with the lent version. As far as drops in general go: sometimes you’re lucky, sometimes you’re not. A friend of mine got the draconic visage on the first dragon kill they made after the update. She almost threw it away since she assumed it was some junk that had appeared (she hadn’t played in a while). She has been killing lots of dragons since, but hasn’t received another visage drop. That doesn’t mean we "nerfed" it, it just means she is less lucky now. I myself have received four Robin Hood hats from the fifty or so treasure trails I have ever done, yet have never received any Barrows gear in over fifty attempts. Try to remember that while someone might think they are "owed" a drop, luck has no rules. Mod Fetzki: The reward from these gloves can only be as generous as it is because of the high risk involved in using them - the higher the risk, the higher the reward. It’s not surprising that something as good as double XP comes with the risk that you could lose the gloves and we think the trade-off is a fair one. Mod Fetzki: I haven’t come across the idea of Bob the Jagex Cat having a birthday - that sounds lovely. No promises, though. :) Mod Mark: Ranger’s Aid is the new beer there, which was released along with the pub. We don’t plan to make any more new beers for that pub. Mod Fetzki: Can I answer this in any way that you would believe? I’ll try. Try imagining why someone who can create cool quests or create the most fun in a minigame would use their time to do something as unrewarding as that. Is there any reason why he or she would? I certainly can’t think of any. If someone has broken the rules, then we punish them either with mutes or with bans, but if they enjoy the game, then we don’t interfere with that at all. Mod Mark: Yes. There are often aspects of content that are cut before release. This can happen for many reasons, but we try to avoid it as much as possible. Truffles were going to be hunted by a wild boar pet/familiar, originally as part of the Summoning skill. We then considered adding them to the While Guthix Sleeps quest along with the broav, but time simply did not allow, so it had to be cut again. Mod Fetzki: Of course, every item that you get from quests can be regained somehow. In this case, you need to talk to the Oneiromancer on Lunar Isle and also bring some coins (30k to be precise) and she will give you a new lunar staff. :) Mod Fetzki: I am glad you liked them so much. We could, perhaps, reuse them at any point, but, normally, we want holiday events to remain as unique opportunities for all players to have some fun with a small update. The second time round is never as much fun - that’s why we prefer to do something new each Christmas. Mod Mark: Popular holiday event characters have come back from time to time, so who knows what the festive spirit will bring. Mod Mark: Yes. We recently made an update to Construction in which we fixed many bugs, and we do plan to add more rooms (like the recent menagerie) in the future. It’s tough to add new features when we knew that aspects of the graphics were broken - we had to fix them rather than add more broken content. Mod Mark: We added a mobile price checker feature, which you can easily use to calculate the value of single items, or even inventory-loads of items. We did, at the time, consider a bank feature to value the total contents of your bank, but decided not to add it for several reasons: Firstly, the game isn’t supposed to be all about making money. For some people it is, but adding a feature like that would make it too prominent for everyone. Secondly, it would actually cause some technical issues if we wanted it to be totally flexible and updated as frequently as you peeps are likely to want. Finally, the bank interface is going to get a lot more cluttered if we start to add features like this, and we would have to move buttons around (which is undesirable for many reasons). Such a feature is not a good enough reason to do so; we only move buttons around if we absolutely have too. Focusing on making money is reward in itself. If you want a fat wad of cash, then so be it; however, we’re not going to encourage people to compete at making money. Mod Mark: Interesting ideas! I shall consider those when we next modify the Friends List. Mod Fetzki: The highscore module is a very old one and we are currently looking at a major rewrite, which should enable us to add more features in future. Mod Fetzki: I would be more careful in labelling what is going on with the RuneScape economy - it’s not simply inflation. Only certain items in the game get more expensive, including some rare items, but, overall, we see steady prices in most raw materials and some of the high prices are already coming down. Just look at the curve that the dragon chainbody’s price has drawn over the last six months. Mod Mark: Many things. The forums are a great place of inspiration for me, as are my friends. Sometimes it’s a simple case of thinking of something in the real world and then saying to yourself: "I wonder how that would work in RuneScape..." I love to visit historical sites and ancient temples, as well as going to storytelling festivals - those places are a great place for inspiration. Often it’s a case of letting the RuneScape world inspire you. When we play through the game ourselves, we often think "Hmm, we need something else here" or "Hmm, that doesn’t make sense to me; how can I fix this?" It’s often those sorts of problems that lead to the most creative solutions. Mod Mark: No plans, currently. As Andrew said in his answers: "Maximum experience is unlikely to rise. It’s already a long way above the maximum level cap." Music. Animal Husbandry (Mounting, Riding, whatever you want to call it). Necromancy. Which one is it? Mod Mark: Erm, what about the "Random Guessing" skill? I bet you’d be great at that. :) Mod Fetzki: Other than the gravestones, we have no plans to change the effects of death. The reason that rewards such as these can be so good is because they are balanced against the risk of losing them when you use them, so we think this is quite neatly balanced. Mod Fetzki: Every time we try to get mounts into RuneScape, we run into severe problems that we think would just spoil the fun, such like that we would need to limit the items that you can wear when sitting on a mount or restrict players to certain routes that mounts can be used on. Until we have overcome these problems we won’t have any mounts, as much as we want it ourselves. Mod Chihiro: We have more than one way of determining when a repeatable piece of content can be attempted again. Some are based on the time elapsed since you last did the event, others are based on an ‘absolute time’. The fairest way to do this is to look at when you did the task last, and let you do it again after (for example) a week has elapsed. This way, we know that if a player logs in again exactly one week later they will be able to do the task again, but not before. If there is a common reset time, players who knew when that time is would be able to do the same task twice very quickly in succession, just before and just after the reset. There would also be a small advantage to being logged in at a certain time of day. That would be annoying if that time happened to be at 4am where you live! The ‘absolute time’ method is more ‘memory expensive’ - it requires us to store when each player last did that event, so we don’t do this universally. Sometimes, though, we have to use an absolute time; Distractions and Diversions have to be based on absolute time as they have to be available at the same time to all players on that world. So, for many events, especially daily ones, this is the method we use. Mod Mark: We will add some links between the game and the book, but nothing that would confuse someone who had no experience of either the book or the game. We work closely with Tom Church (whenever time allows) to make sure anything he creates fits in with our own mythology. Mod Fetzki: Yes! But no redwood or cherry, I’m afraid. Mod Mark: Zaros was the original god who many considered to be evil, or at least embraced the darker side of things. Zamorak was a Mahjarrat and a servant of Zaros who, through some dodgy deals, managed to overthrow Zaros and become what most people now assume is an "evil" god. However, Zaros is not completely gone and still has strong followers...as I am sure you will find out. Mod Mark: We generally come up with ideas as we go, though there are several skills we know we want to make one day. I’m not sure how many more we could squeeze in! There is certainly no limit. Mod Mark: Possibly. Right now, though, it’s not a focus. Mod Mark: No. Mod Mark: Yes. Mod Mark: Originally, you could PK anywhere outside Lumbridge Castle. Indeed, the original RuneScape was mostly combat-focused. You could argue that the non-combat side of the game was always under represented and so updates in the future should concentrate on pure skilling. Mod Fetzki: I think it is the coexistence between combat and skilling that makes RuneScape stand out from other MMOs. Many players see themselves as adventurers who rely on more than just their strength and combat abilities, and use their wit and skills to advance in their world. We don’t think that the updates we are working on are more focused on combat rather than skills - I would say it is rather balanced. Mod Mark: Revenants aren’t designed to be killed for drops. They are there to provide the aspect of risk that the old Wilderness provided. We didn’t want to lose that feeling of danger on non-PvP Worlds. Mod Mark: That’s an idea I’m never going to give up. I’m never going to let it down. I’m never going to turn around and desert it (in the dessert). Glad to see you remember him in all his pre-Rickrolled glory. :) Mod Mark: That’s a feature we recently added to Mobilising Armies, but that’s because you can get better equivalent rewards later. We’re not planning to add such a feature to any other minigame at this time. Mod Mark: This is unlikely. POH is a real push on the game as it is, in its current state, so we would need to make some drastic improvements before expanding things to a whole town. Mod Mark: Yes, it’s called beer. :) Oh, and there is the Zamorak brew - that’s pretty evil. Mod Mark: The developer for that storyline was very busy with While Guthix Sleeps for a long time and, since then, has been working on other projects (including, recently, a different storyline). After that, they will work on Myreque part 5! We actually have a nearly finished design brief for the next quest in the series, but it’s not in development yet. Mod Mark: We made a conscious decision not to allow too much training in POH, apart from the Construction skill itself. We didn’t want to split the community. Imagine how dead a cool fishing spot like Piscatoris would be if half the players had their own monkfish spot in their player owned pond. It’s just not good for the community. Also, as I said earlier on, we have to monitor the flow of new materials into the market; giving players the ability to own their own coal mine, for example, would make that impossible. Mod Mark: Yes, indeed, +10 max damage does stay intact for the whole seven minutes. Mod Mark: No, that’s not true. The Grand Exchange trapdoor is a special dwarf entry point. Mod Mark: We’re due to launch them very, very soon. Wait and see! Mod Mark: No, holiday items are not planned to be released again. We like to think of holiday events as just a bit of fun, and also a bit of a non-bank-busting opportunity for players to show off something cosmetic. Mod Mark: Level 99. You can pot it up to 112 if you have the right herbs, too. Lol. No, in all seriousness, it depends entirely on your monitor and environment. The options are there so that you can find your own correct level. Mod Fetzki: The short answer is yes! There are some complications to get around, but we think we finally have the right idea to address this problem. Since it really is one of the long-standing problems that RuneScape has, I am quite pleased that we are finally tackling it. Mod Fetzki: We are in two minds about this. On one hand, we appreciate that many players want to prepare for an update (and know when the one update that they have been waiting for is coming), so that they can play it immediately. On the other hand, we have experienced that many people judge an update before they have seen it. At other times when we've talked about updates, a hype got generated by speculation on the forums and fansites that, once the update was out there and not full of features that players thought would be in there, the update underwhelmed, hence we stopped it and looked into a new way of talking about future updates. We have seen that developers' blogs are popular, but that players want more information, so we have taken this on board. Mod Mark: I have really enjoyed writing the Behind the Scenes articles over the last five years, but, sadly, Mod Fetzki is right. Another issue is that people prefer some updates to others - so if they knew that we were releasing something they wanted (like, say, Mobilising Armies, which we first talked about a year before launch), every day they would ask "When is it coming?". If we wrote about something else, they would be disappointed because it’s not what they wanted. So we have decided not to talk so much about ALL the updates we have planned, just some of them in blogs. If you look back a few years ago to when we launched the Construction skill, the only thing we said in the BTS article that month was "And you’ll be able to sit down on chairs this month", so the skill release was an awesome surprise for everyone. We don’t think there’s anything wrong with that kind of approach.
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