April 2008 Updates

In February's edition of State of Play we promised to report regularly on anticipated updates, giving you a better idea of how they are progressing. This week, we feel it's the right time to catch up with Summoning, PvP minigames and some other releases we have planned.

Summoning Improvements:

Progress has been made on Summoning 2 and we plan to have this released by the end of the month. It is currently past the balancing and entering the final QA stages.

Many of you have asked what the rebalancing entails. Well, we do not want to ruin the surprise completely, but we can say that we have changed our philosophy towards balancing familiars. Instead of having lots of benefits that ADD UP to create a useful familiar, we have decided to make sure that each familiar will have one stand-out ability that makes it awesome.

Take the beaver, for example: currently, it boosts your Woodcutting, counts as a knife, produces logs when Woodcutting and offers the Multichop special move. On their own, these abilities add up, but don't 'stand out', as such. Well, with our change in policy, the beaver will soon make you logs and planks no matter what you are doing at the time, in a similar vein to Ava's Accumulator from the Animal Magnetism quest.

We can also reveal that the combat familiars will give you XP when used in battle. Each combat familiar will have a specific skill that they raise your XP in during combat - the spirit jelly gives Strength XP, for example. This will be equal to the XP you would receive if you had caused the damage yourself.

Friends List Changes:

When we released the changes to the Friends List on the 25th of February, we never intended them to impact on your enjoyment of RuneScape. In fact, the changes were made so that you could chat easily with your FunOrb friends and vice versa.

Unfortunately, as many of you have pointed out, the text used in the interface was difficult to read for some, leading us to make changes to its colour scheme. This was only a short-term solution, however, and the FunOrb and RuneScape Game Engine teams are collaborating to make something that will be appreciated by 'Scapers and 'Orbsters alike.

Item Lending:

The item lending feature has progressed past the proposal stage. Unfortunately, the Game Engine developers in charge of the project have had to delay it while they work on issues with serverload that came to light during the Audio Week release. These problems meant that worlds went out of action for a period of time and the developers have been tackling this issue so it does not happen again.

We're aiming to have this resolved in the next couple of weeks, so that item lending can be made a priority again. For the moment, we can tell you that the item lending feature will be session-based, allowing you to transfer objects to another player for the period that you are both logged in.

New PvP Minigame:

Our next PvP minigame is entering the last stages of QA. Many of you have asked on the Forums about some aspects of this minigame - in particular, how it differs from the Duel Arena.

Well, firstly, we can promise that the game is nothing like the Duel Arena or even Bounty Hunter. This game calls for strategy, requiring far more than just combat. It demands mastery of both offensive and defensive tactics while offering fantastic rewards that you can receive nowhere else.

We plan for this minigame to be available to both members and F2P, which means that everyone can expect some enhanced equipment with great set effects. We will continue improving both free-to-play and members' PvP content in the future. Expect more news in upcoming State of Plays!

Clan Wars Changes:

We've had a good look at the suggestions players have been sending in for Clan Wars. In particular, we'd like to add a 'run-in' option, where players will be permitted to re-join the battle after they've died. The first team to achieve a pre-agreed number of kills may be declared victorious. Along with this, we're looking to provide a choice of arenas, each with different scenery and obstacles. We've got plenty more Clan Wars features planned - including some 'dangerous' ones - so keep your eyes peeled for information.

Random events:

We had planned some work on the random events of RuneScape quite some time ago. We were looking to see if we could remove most of them, because a decent number were not particularly good at stopping modern-day bots. Since the threat of bots and macros has been largely removed, we feel that this is a perfect opportunity to address the problem again. For the moment, we are concentrating on our PvP minigames to compensate for the Wilderness changes, but the random event proposal has been approved and is in the pipeline.

NOTE - We are certainly not removing every single random event. This proposal gives us the chance to reassess them, see if they are doing their job properly and then take action: removing those that do not work, adding to those that do and improving the rewards of all that remain!

Grand Exchange:

Issues with item images have meant that the Grand Exchange Database has been delayed until mid-April. We apologise for this continued delay; we intend to release the database when we are certain that it delivers on its aim - to give you a strong visual idea of market price trends over a long period of time.



March 2008 Update Thread

« Last edited by librascythe on Apr 1st 2008 »

The first of April's updates seems to attract abbreviations: F2P, PvP, OMG - all of these could be used to describe Fist of Guthix, our next combat minigame. We could say that this will be a safe, single-way, Wilderness-based game available to both free players and members, but that would ignore some important details. Attack strategies, defensive tactics, well-timed escapes: Fist of Guthix will employ all of these to create a memorable combat minigame.

There is a massive range of rewards to win for playing Fist of Guthix, so we'll give you a wee teaser. The rune berserker shield, like most of Fist of Guthix's rewards, degrades with use, but it also offers you some hefty defence bonuses and a Strength boost; the battle robe set will sometimes pay for mind, chaos, death or blood runes that you use when casting a combat spell; and the Runecrafting gloves will double the experience you gain from crafting runes of the glove's type!

Talking of rewards, where could you possibly find a top hat, animal mask, adamant cane and black crossbow? It could only be the Treasure Trails, and this month will bring our next installment. Among the new weapons, clothes and hats will be some brain-twisting new clues to untangle, ranging across the medium and hard difficulties.

It is at this point in the month that the skies will darken, a fog will descend and a bloodcurdling scream will echo out. What could bring on this strange and eerie change? Ah, it must be the fourth in our Myreque quest series: Legacy of Seergaze! With no help forthcoming from Misthalin and vampyres continuing to collect their scarlet tithes, the Myreque have been calling on mercenaries to aid their cause. Meanwhile, deep in Paterdomus, Drezel has found something strange that could shed light on Morytania's gloomy past...

Not so gloomy are the graphical improvements to the Morytania entrance area and the icefiends of RuneScape. Expect Paterdomus temple and its grounds to become more grand and foreboding, and the icefiends a sight more icy and fiendish.

A nod must be given to the website updates. The Grand Exchange Database will be released this month, having had its image issues resolved, displaying graphs and statistics of Grand Exchange market prices. There's also a Summoning guaranteed content poll, the latest Players' Gallery and the Postbag from the Hedge.

thank you they are allowing you to transfer items again for a bit..

A number of Guthix druids have discovered an unexplored cave under the lower Wilderness, just north of Varrock. Inside is a new, one-on-one, tactical PvP combat minigame, available to both members and free players!

The cave appears to have been left undisturbed since the time of the god wars, guarded over the years by Fiara, a giant earwig and protector of something called the Fist of Guthix. Great powers emanate from this 'Fist' and the druids have managed to convince Fiara to allow them to gather charges from it. Being light on numbers, they need others to help them, which is where you come in!

In the spirit of Guthix, Fiara has introduced a 'balance' to this minigame. For each adventurer looking to absorb the power of the fist, there is another trying to chop, range or cast spells at them!

You and another adventurer must each take a turn being the hunted or the hunter. The hunted's task is to survive as long as possible, storing charges in a stone of power as the time counts down, while the hunter simply has to defeat the hunted in as quick a time as possible!

The energy of this mysterious area has quite an impact on those who attempt to absorb the power from the Fist of Guthix. Even the mightiest of warriors will find themselves severely weakened as they avoid the hunter, making it incredibly difficult to survive for long. The cave does offer some help in the form of places to hide, but will this be enough?

After both you and your opponent have had a chance to be the hunted, victory is assigned to those who stored the most charges in their stone of power. Fist of Guthix tokens will then be given out, based on how well you did, with which you can purchase a wide variety of rewards, including magical gloves to help you boost your XP, spiked shields and many more.

Fist of Guthix is available to play on ALL free and members worlds. There is a list of recommended worlds on the Themed Worlds Knowledge Base page.

We have also put a cap on the number of players who can play Fist of Guthix on any world at any time, which is set at 250 players. This will maximise your enjoyment of Fist of Guthix and minimise any conflict from other ongoing matches!



In other news...

Hunter pet variations have been added to many places in RuneScape. Monkeys, squirrels, raccoons and geckos can now be found in several different shapes, colours and sizes, so get hunting!

The Party Room chest has been changed to better reflect the value of the items that are in it. It now checks the items against the Grand Exchange market price, so you should find a more accurate drop party value in banks or the Party Room.

Having looked at feedback on the Forums, we have changed the ibis, granite crab and granite lobster so that they give a small amount of Fishing experience when catching fish - a nice little bonus, we think you'll find!

A few graphical issues popped up last week: a pier in Neitiznot disappeared and a small hole opened up on Karamja! Guthix has restored the balance and these have been repaired.

Finally, a change has been made to the Culinaromancer's chest and the gnome ingredients shop at the Grand Tree. Item prices in these shops should be more attractive.

11 April 2008 - PayPal Subscription Reductions

We have changed the way that PayPal payments are made. Instead of using PayByCash to process any PayPal transactions(http://www.runescape.com/kbase/viewarticle.ws?guid=paypal_payment), you will now be making payments directly to PayPal.


This means that, in the majority of cases, we can offer a reduced subscription cost when paying for RuneScape using PayPal. This reduction may be as much as 10-20% off our previous PayPal prices.

These changes are available to anyone who has a verified PayPal account. If you wish to set an account up, please visit Paypal's website.(https://www.paypal.com/)


« Last edited by blayne on Apr 11th 2008 »

Am i the only one who like FoG?


Add me i'm warrior3257.