Interviews

Welcome to another issue full of great interviews. Firstly, Hok interviews Cookthechef, a member of the forums who frequents the graphics forum and is also talented with his graphics. Also, PinkyTM interviews another interesting member of the forum, Spirit HC. Additionally, Da Scotsman interviews Cyril The Cyndaquil who has just recently been promoted to forum moderator on the official RuneScape forums. Finally, Matt T interviews Dustin, the organizer of the RuneScape Multi-Site Steel Wars, and will be organizing the upcoming fourth war. In these interviews Real Life, the forums and RuneScape are discussed. Enjoy the interviews!

-Prashanna

Interview with CooktheChef - By: Hok

Hok: Thanks for agreeing to do this interview CooktheChef!
CooktheChef: Sure, anytime.

Hok: So let's get started, when did you join Sal's Realm Forums?
CooktheChef: I joined the old forums about 2 months before the big move to the current forums. So that would put me at about September of 2005.

Hok: Cool, Where did you hear about Sal's Realm?
CooktheChef: Well I was into Runescape, of course, probably searched the website for tips and guides. Then after a while joined the forums.

Hok: I see, what is the main reason that made you stay at Sal's for this long?
CooktheChef: There were always a lot of good people. Sal's has a unique community most forums don't have. Another thing that kept me was my interest in Graphics.

Hok: Nice, Do you look up to anyone in the forums?
CooktheChef: How big do you want my list?  

Hok:  , Lets talk about your graphical life. What inspired you to start graphics?
CooktheChef: Mainly the artist's on Sal's, but my father was a painter and my grandfather does many crafts and carvings.

Hok: Very cool, what have you been working on recently?
CooktheChef: Mainly photography and a little bit of photo manipulation, but, I just finished this piece.

Hok: Do you have any artists you look up to?
CooktheChef: Sure, ArchanN, Ontwerjpe, Akutou-san, and Dr4oz are some of the people I look up to.

Hok: Lets move on to the questions about real life.
CooktheChef: Aright then!

Hok: Where are you from?
CooktheChef: California, USA.

Hok: Cool, how old are you?
CooktheChef: Right now, I am 16 years old.

Hok: Do you have any favorite books, movies or T.V. shows?
CooktheChef: My favorite books are probably the Stormbreaker series by Anthony Horowitz, the book Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, along with the rest of the series. My favorite movies are probably V for Vendetta, Forrest Gump, and 3:10 to Yuma. Also, my favorite T.V. shows are probably CSI and Chuck.

Hok: Do you like going to school?
CooktheChef: I enjoy being with friends at school and learning, but I hate doing school work.

Hok: Nice, What is your favorite subject in school?
CooktheChef: I am going to have to say Math.

Hok: Cool, thanks for taking time to do this interview Cookthechef!
CooktheChef: Yep, no problem  .

To find more about CookTheChef's Art, you can visit his pages at:

http://cookthechef.deviantart.com/ and

http://flickr.com/photos/cookthechef/

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Interview with Spirit Hc - By: PinkyTM

Hello Spirit Hc, thank you for taking your time for me to interview you.
You're welcome.

Let's start off about your real life. How old are you?
I am 15 years old.

Do you go to a private or a public school?
I attend a Public school.

What grade do you go to?
I will be a junior next year.

Oh, then I am pretty sure you have a lot of things to review and study for the next year.
Yes I do, luckily I finished all my summer assignments right after school ended in May.

Do you have any pets, if yes, please tell us what they are and their names.
I just have a few fish.

Ok, enough about your real life. When and how did you find out about RuneScape?
I was first introduced to RuneScape by a few friends at a local library a few years ago.

What were your first impressions about the game?
I played RuneScape Classic briefly, but I didn't really get into it until 5-6 years later.

Don't you get angry sometimes for not playing when the partyhats were dropped?
I'm not really into paperhats anymore , if I had one now, I'd be poor because nobody buys them anymore.

Wouldn't it be a pleasure to have such an expensive item on a low character?
I would rather have high skills .

That leads us into my next question, how did you get to get such high skills in freeplay?
It was easy, I gambled on the Grand Exchange when it first came out and won. I first got the idea from Lilshu when he donated willow logs to me. Afterwards I discovered that you can buy willows at 15ea on the RuneScape forums and sell them on the ge for 22ea, After a month and a half had passed by, i had 4-5x my starting cash.

Could you tell us around how much that was?
Around 100m cash. Later on I invested in Santa hats which got me to around 150m before they fell back down in value. When they did, I invested in Easter eggs for almost 2 months, after that I had 200m. And I made one last investment in May/June which gave me an additional 50m.

What level were you at that time?
I was around level 10.

Wow, must've felt great to have so much money on such a low level.
It felt the best winning them on the Grand Exhange .

Now that you've become P2P, do you have any goals, perhaps some P2P ones?
Just 99 prayer, I have already invested about 1/3rd of my cash on it.

Do you plan on staying P2P after you get 99 prayer?
I plan on becoming f2p again, I won't be 'pure' f2p anymore though.

Random: would you ever pose for playboy if you looked like a female but were a male?
Probably not, unless I was paid.

Thank you for taking this interview; it was a pleasure to interview you. Is there anyting other you would like to say to Sal's?
Get 99 mining Salmoneus!!!!!!

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Interview with Cyril the Cyndaquil - By: Da Scotsman

Hello Cyril and thanks for your time.
No problem.

So how did you find out about Sals?
I searched on Google 'Runescape fakes' and Sal's was the first on the list. I also used it a lot for its guides, but never even knew it had a forum.

What do you enjoy about Sal's that keeps you coming back?
The community with the nice people in it.

What other activities do you enjoy doing?
I like playing football (that's the soccer football), running and more things involving going fast around places.

Time for the classic question which is of course, what is your favorite food?
Pork chops.

Which part of Britain are you from?
I'm from the border of Scotland, in Cumbria. I live in Carlisle, which is near the Lake District.

If you could move anywhere in the world where would it be?
I wouldn't move anywhere. Home's best.

As I'm sure many people know you were recently promoted to RuneScape forum moderator. First of all congratulations on your promotion.
Thank you very much.

What was your reaction when you found out about your new position?
I thought it was a scam, because I hardly spend any time on the forums, I spend most on my time on Sal's.

Could you give us a brief summary of what a RuneScape forum moderator does?
You have responsibilities to uphold the forum.

What powers does your new position grant you?
I get to lock threads and hide posts, and give people temporary bans. There's also a *secret* forum.

How did you find out about RuneScape?
One of my friends played it in school. It seemed like a good game so I joined it.

What do you enjoy doing most in RuneScape?
Joining Sal's Clan Chat and spamming my heart out.

Do you have any RuneScape goals at the moment?
Try and get another Barrows set, and 50+ in all skills.

Well thank you very much for your time Cyril. It has been most illuminating.
Thank you very muchly.

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Interview with Dustin - By: Matt T

Dustin is the organizer of the Multi-Site Steel wars which prove to be very popular amongst the RuneScape fansite community. He's 20 years old, lives in Canada and is a moderator at RuneVillage. Keep an eye on the Events Forum for more information on when the next Multi-Site Steel War will be held.

Hi Dustin. What happens at a Multi-Site Steel War?
All the MSSW's previous to this one have been pretty basic. You go to a spot and attack a sea of people. As an event that is pretty awesome since large groups of people in the Wilderness are always followed with a good time.

How have the Wilderness Changes affected the wars?
Due to the changes to the Wilderness a different approach had to be taken. After a lot of debating (like a month) with a bunch of people we came to the conclusion that clan wars using a tournament style system would be the best way to make MSSW4 happen. So basically this war will function like a tournament style clan war.

What problems have you faced when running the wars in the past?
There have been many problems (basic things like people using magic and such), but the one I could of done the most to prevent would have been when I limited the weapons to steel for MSSW1. People were hitting 6's as their max and the war lasted for like an hour. However it was still a good time so I guess that is all that matters.

So this war isn't going to be steel only?
Lol, no. In this war you are free to use any melee weapon you want. The only war that had that limitation was MSSW1.

Was it hard having to make the decision on whether to postpone the war or not?
It was a very difficult decision, but after looking at what JaGex is promising for this new clan wars system I believe that it will make the event more fun and because of that it is worth delaying... I just hope that this doesn't turn into another POH update.

Another POH update?
JaGex said that POH was coming out soon - some time near the start of RS2 (this is going off memory, so take it with a grain of salt) and then it was delayed and delayed and delayed.

When are you hoping the update happens?
As soon as possible.

There have been 3 wars previous, who have been the winners?
MSSW1 - RSC, MSSW2 - RSC and MSSW3 - Tip.it.

Not Sal's?
Not yet, but your chances are looking much better in MSSW4 than they were in MSSW1. You guys weren't even added to that war until 2 weeks before it happened. When I saw Sal's I knew it would be a great addition.

Let's hope so. Tactics must be an important part of the war, what seems to work best?
In the previous MSSW's having seas of people was the best strategy, but using the clan wars system I would imagine it would be having high level people that know what they are doing, which when worded that way sounds very sad, but with the current update that is the only way it can be... unless of course the update brings back more of a classical wilderness *hopes*.

What's the turnout like for the wars?
Every time the world fills up (in MSSW3 the world was full like 20 minutes before the actual event), but if I had to guess I'd say that the total turnout is around 800-1000 people.

Wow, how do you plan for an event as massive as one like this?
The first MSSW was hosted just like any other event I had ever hosted (choose a time, date and place and then show up there), but as the event has gained popularity I have sunk more time into the appearance of the topic. For MSSW2 I added a countdown to the signature, MSSW3 I created a universal time converter (which helped a lot of people), and now for MSSW4 I created live stats where the more a signature is viewed the higher the bar is on the live stats image. This was a great idea in concept and the code for it was very nice but I didn't factor in the magnitude of people [that would] view it. Within a few hours there were so many people refreshing the image that the increment method actually produced a core dump. So it appeared as if the site had 0 views which could not be further from the truth.

This is the first time I've seen live stats like that.
They are hosted using http://dimg.biz/ which is a site that specialises in dynamic images. When the code for the live stats is updated to handle the capacities that a MSSW requires then you'll probably see them more often. I know that a world war with a signature like that would be epic.

Yep, do you have any other people helping you organise the wars?
At Runevillage there is a group called The Legends. They have helped with almost every area of the war from it's name (originally it was going to be named "The Ultimate War") to where the fighting would happen.

How do you work out when you're going to hold a war, is there a time that suits nearly everyone?
Any Saturday will work. I try not to host them so often that the event becomes meaningless. Usually that means a MSSW will occur about 3 times every 2 years.

If someone wanted to host a big event, how should they plan for it?
That is a tough question to answer, since there really is no sure fire way. I know for huge events I'd say that you should plan things out in your head for a day at least and then post it in some hidden forum for people to criticize. Once they think it is good and you think it is good then odds are it is good. The worst thing you can do is throw something together quickly and expect people to ignore all the little problems, since little problems will always make a huge difference when you are presenting something to a large group of people. I mean things like spelling mistakes and poor formatting. Basically anything that can be improved in a little amount of time but is not due to laziness.

Are you active in RuneScape?
There was a time when I was, but this past year I haven't even touched the game. I actually logged in a week ago and it said I hadn't been on in over 100 days. I was pretty proud of that since while being level 97 is nice it isn't an achievement in real life that I am very proud of.

How's life outside organising events?
Very good. I have a pretty good job (wont say where, but it involves programming) and I play lots of PlayStation games. I recently picked up Pixel Junk Eden and that game has sucked up like 10 hours of my life... but that is nothing compared to what I have done recently in GTA4 and MGS4.

I see. Computer programing?
Some, I'm pretty good in Java, but lately I have been working with Visual Basic Scripting to editing the Windows Registry (which is a nightmare since I have lost touch with Windows since I adopted Linux).

Good luck with organizing the war, I might see you there.

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