RuneScape Discussion

This month's edition of RuneScape Discussion has articles about various aspects of the game that you may often just take for granted, but have you actually thought about why you do things? First off, Quests! by Johnny takes a look at why people bother doing Quests, and what they get out of it. Is it the Graphics? Storylines? Comedy? Next is another article by Johnny about why people use low leveled items for training high leveled skills. You probably do it on a daily basis, but have you actually ever thought about the reasons? This article gives an insight into the thoughts you didn't realize you made! Finally, Neo Avatars takes a look at whether Jagex is moving into a new era in Hi... Erm... Hello! Listening There?. Did you know that there are places that you can go around the RuneScape Website to make your views guaranteed to be heard? This article will explain about a number of these locations and hopefully help your views get heard!

-Neo Avatars

Quests! - By: Johnny

RuneScape is a game well known for its challenging quests. I, for one, being an owner of the quest point cape, love quests. But why do we do them? Is it for the refulgent rewards? The coruscating challenges? The unbelievable unlockables and awesome abilities? Maybe it's those spectacular storylines that get us gripped? It could just be to beat a bit of boredom. Quests have something for everybody in RuneScape to enjoy, so sit back and enjoy!

Refulgent Rewards
Quests wouldn't be worth doing if there wasn't a reward at the end of the tunnel. Some of these rewards include new pieces of equipment, like the helmet of Neitiznot from the Fremennik Isles, the elf bows and shields from the Roving Elves, or the lovely ripped white Cape of Legends from the apocryphal Legends' Quest. Gaining experience in a skill is also a reason some of us go to the effort of completing quests. Even those one or more quest points are sometimes worth adventuring for. The main goal of the hardcore questers is to obtain the renowned Quest Point Cape of Achievement, which requires the completion of every single quest to wear.

Coruscating Challenges
It's always nice to face a challenge now and again, and quests are the perfect way to do that. From collecting some flour, an egg and some milk to fighting dream-like level-300 monsters without prayer, there's always something for the less experienced or the accomplished adventurer. Fighting Jungle Demons with courage, working out perplexing puzzles with brain power, or using your splendid skills to help somebody out, there's a challenge for everybody.

Unbelievable Unlockables and Awesome Abilities
Probably the paramount reason us RuneScapers take our time to complete quests are for the lustrous new things we can unlock, like the provocative Herblore skill from the Druid's Ritual quest, or the fictitious ancient spell book of Zaros from the Desert Treasure quest. Congruous to unlockable things are awesome abilities, such as being able to wear the rune platemail or wield the dragon scimitar from the Dragon Slayer and Monkey Madness quests. Needing to having 32 quest points, or completing the Heroes' or Legends' Quest are a few reasons us RuneScapers complete quests. Doing those things allows us entry to the magnificent guilds around RuneScape, which everybody wants!

Spectacular Storylines
Gruelling storylines can get anybody gripped to a quest. What happens next? Who is going to do what? The Darkness of Hallowvale quest is a great example of an engrossing storyline, as is the Fremennik Isles quest. From dancing in a jester outfit to fighting the troll king, that quest has it all. Also, the Dream Mentor quest has sad and exciting moments to it that made it a real thriller. During the quest you will be healing a sick warrior, to conquering his phobia of combat by slaying many high level monsters!

Enthralling External Influences
External influences are things from real life that may affect the game. Surely you know of Camelot Village from King Arthur's Reign as king of England , or the book Frankenstein by Mary Shelley? Maybe the fairytale Romeo & Juliet rings a bell. The quests like Merlin's Crystal, Creature of Fenkenstrain and Romeo and Juliet are all influences from real life. Because we already know of these things, quests that include hints from real life make it all the more appealing!

Well, the review of quests comes to an end. Thanks for reading, and next time you log in, take a glance at your quest journal, you may just be missing out on lots of fun!

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Why are low levelled items used for raising high levelled skills? - By: Johnny

Basically every RuneScaper wants to have high levels. Most want their levels fast, but the question is why are low levelled items used for raising high levelled skills?

Using low levelled equipment

People use low levelled equipment such as willow logs in woodcutting , trout and salmon in fishing and iron ores in mining . If you have not already noticed, those are three skills which bring items into the game . Why not use sharks, monkfish, magic logs or runite instead? All will be explained here, so read on.

Reason number:

1. Cheap
Equipment that is cheap is almost suddenly more favourable than that very expensive equipment. Willow logs cost 30 or less gp each, but magic logs cost up to 1000gp each! That's a very big difference, and it would be a very big waste of money compared with willow logs. The same goes for rune essence. There is no point crafting air runes using the expensive pure essence, so people just use the normal essence.

2. Good XP
Even though cheapness is a factor, so is the XP. Willow logs still supply a good amount of XP compared with magic logs. For burning a cheap maple log you earn 135 XP, and for burning an expensive magic log you will earn 303.75 XP. The minority would say it's worth the money to burn magic logs, but the majority would stick with maple or willow logs.

3. Fast
As we may know, fly fishing for trout is much faster than dragging out the harpoon and trying to catch a shark. That's precisely one of the reasons "power fishing" is popular. Power fishing means catching fish then dropping them, saving the time taken to bank them. Trout are also much faster to fish than sharks.

The other instance speed is chosen over XP is woodcutting. Many people choose to chop willow logs instead of the more XP beneficial magic logs. Sacrificing 182.5 XP per log is obviously worth it if you're going to be getting logs ten times at fast!

The final example is a thing people do called powermining. Powermining involves mining an ore or two, dropping them, mining more ores and dropping them, mining more ores, etc. Powermining is done using iron ores because they can be one hit. That method is preferred over mining mithril, adamant or even runite, which give much more XP.

On the other hand, skills that take items out of the game, such as firemaking, cooking and fletching, using high level items gets the fastest XP. Depending on the player's wealth, mid level items may be used. But of course those items are obtained from training those skills that bring items in to the game .

In conclusion, the little things that seemed to be a building block in early training can help us with larger goals! Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!

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Hi... erm... HELLO! Listening there? - By: Neo Avatars Well, are you actually going to listen to me, or are you still sitting in your spinny chair drinking tea while staring aimlessly at a computer screen? I gave you my money, and all you can do is ignore me as if I'm a piece of toast, forgotten about and left to go cold. We're two pieces of pizza, joined together by a single strand of molten cheese.

It may seem that those on the other end of the wire are sometimes idle, unaware, and not listening, however the way that some portray this wire between players and Jagex can be completely over the top. Talk of the 'Good Ol' Days' of RuneScape Classic is something that many will be willing to come up with in arguments about how Jagex is moving further and further down the cable away from the players. With numerous announcements similar to New kids on the block , We just keep getting bigger! and Bang! I win! Jagex team photo , it is understandable as to why some people feel that the relationship was strong back then.

The problem was when these announcements started to dwindle, appearing few and far between. It had become hard to live a day in the land of RuneScape without hearing another person saying " jAGex neva listns 2 da plyers or duz wot dey sed " or something similar. It may have been true if there wasn't a certain factor that is often ignored. Without the players, there is nobody to play the game made by Jagex, and without Jagex there are no players. It's this that needed to be crammed into the heads of many, and in some cases it was a successful undertaking, although there were clearly so many people that just didn't understand things, that action had to be taken by Jagex.

Early effects of this change were seen on the Official Forums, although once again there was the problem that it was hidden away in sections that few visit such as Website Feedback. For those that did venture into the depths of these secretive sections, sights of the start of a new era were what would be found. There were threads being made by Jagex Moderators so that they could actually listen, and talk, to the players, making sure that decisions that were being made would actually be useful, and not just a terrible interpretation gone wrong.

One of these threads that was made was by Mod Osborne on a weekly basis so that players could discuss the subject that week's poll with him, along with brainstorming ideas about the upcoming brand new Poll System . This went on for several weeks, with certain posts going into extreme depth on the subject, and ideas put forward that have made the new Poll System even better than it would do otherwise. It has also led to information appearing that shows that Jagex isn't a company full of Robots, but a group of people who are dedicated to making the gaming experience of the millions that play RuneScape as pleasurable as possible. Once the new Poll System appeared, the discussion about it disappeared for a while, although is now back as strong as ever with a Sticky found in Website Feedback that is certainly worth taking a look at.

Other threads have also been made on the Official Forums showing discussions between players and Jagex including discussions about the Wallpapers, which are downloadable from the RuneScape website, and FAQs about areas of the site created by the players - the Postbag from the Hedge and Players' Gallery .

One of the more noticed threads was in the Suggestions forum asking for suggestions for this years' Halloween Holiday Event, reaching over 3680 posts! This thread was then the basis of the second Guaranteed Content Poll, the first one deciding that Varrock would be the next place to get its very own Achievement Diary. This wasn't a decision by Jagex, but one made by the 124,792 people who voted, each one of them showing that they care about the game they play, and want to have a chance to decide just what a certain piece of Future Content will be. Final results of the Halloween Poll included over 250,000 people voting, which is about a quarter of those who were able to vote. That's a quarter of a million people giving their input about what they feel the Halloween Event should consist of, and Jagex taking into consideration the opinion of every last person.

As stated in the results announcement for the Achievement Diary Poll, updates take a long time to produce, something shown by the recent addition to the RuneScape Website of the Development Diaries . This is one huge way that Jagex is making itself more and more transparent, showing players just how updates are made from start to finish, and the troubles involved to make the game as good as possible. An extract from the second diary shows just how dedicated to their work those at Jagex are:

" I had to animate a character carrying some heavy planks, so walked around the office carrying one of the water cooler refills. "

If somebody is willing to do that just to get one small animation right, it's almost impossible to imagine how much effort goes in to make the game an enjoyable place for all, something that doesn't exist purely in the Content Department.

There have been a number of other announcements in the recent past about Real World Item Trading - something which is clearly against the rules. These announcements have made it clear that over 8000 account are banned every week for Macroing, and those who are willing to pay real money for these Items will get punished for doing so with a small thing called a 'Permanent Ban'. In the announcements along, the numbers of people banned for doing this add up to over seven thousand players! These numbers are astonishing, and show that what Jagex does is try to make the game more enjoyable for all.

All these small thing have happened recently within the past few months, and are clear indications that a change is happening. Jagex wants player input, and will spend hour upon hour reading feedback from players. Jagex wants the game to be enjoyable for all. Jagex wants to make decisions that are for the good of the game in the long run, even if they may be somewhat controversial.

Whatever happens, without Jagex there would be no RuneScape, so be grateful for what you've been given, use it well, and try and do your little bit to make the game that small bit more enjoyable for you. Jagex does listen.

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