RuneScape Discussion

Welcome to the RuneScape Discussion section of the newspaper! Instead of Neo writing the intro, I, Desireful, am taking his place. This issue has a few articles that are awesome! To start off with we have Where Is The Fun In Grindscape? Merch Gwyar which talks about how some players nicknamed RuneScape Grindscape. We also have a Gnomecopter review by Dr Skull, telling you all what the real purpose of releasing the ancient gnomecopters to RuneScape. To top it off, we have an article written by Doddsy about The Pure Essence situation. I hope you enjoy this months RS Discussion articles and the rest of the paper!

-Desireful

Where Is The fun In Grindscape? - By: Merch Gwyar

Runescape has often wryly been referred to as Grindscape, as a reference to the prolification of repetitive tasks. There is a great emphasis on moving on up through the levels, until the coveted skillcape is achieved.

The players themselves talk about what they are 'training' and set goals so to keep on track, barely pausing to enjoy the rewards of their achievements, before rushing ever onwards. This onorous push for ever greater levels or better capes seems to owe more to a kind of inherent Capitalism or Protestant work ethic, perhaps saying a lot about the Western societies from which, presumably, most of the players escape into the game.

An ethos of hierarchy has built up around even the highest flyers in the race for 99s. While the owners of a skillcape are generally respected, there is an especial form of awe reserved for those who received their's because of grind in the 'old days' of Runescape Classic. Without many of the shortcuts available in today's game, these players had to grind relentlessly for months on end to earn their place at the top of the hiscores. It seems that the superiority of the seemingly elite derives from grind. Those who take advantage of any form of in-game help, from the minigames to the trading of raw materials, are disdained by those who performed endless repetitions of an action to achieve their status. It is almost a form of insult to say that someone 'bought' their 99, dismissing with a sneer the stamina involved in cooking millions of lobsters or fletching mammoth piles of longbows.

This grind ethos inevitably gives rise to long, philosophical debates, when viewed from a different angle. All is well while the patient, hardworking player considers that they are creating jewellery or crafting runes, but as soon as the bored person behind the monitor is faced with yet another million experience to gain before the next level, then it suddenly becomes so many pixels. Banks and blogs resound with the musings of disenchanted, asking what they are actually doing here? There are no real life riches for all these hours of hard labour, being survived like prisoners in a chain gang.

Yet all of this expectation, peer pressure and ethos appears to lose a fundamental point along the way. Runescape is a game. It is there for enjoyment. It is a computerised demonstration of a lot of people at play. Its position in the world is alongside sports played for pleasure, watching television, going to the cinema, registering for pub quizzes and reading a book. However, the attitude most often applied to it is more akin to the workplace. This is a paradox which Jagex may be conscious of and therefore working to counteract in their updates to the game.

For a community entrenched within their 'grind' ethic, Summoning represented a huge change of pace when it was recently released. Perhaps uniquely amongst all other skills, neither the application of time or wealth could ensure a quick 99 through an endless repetition of tasks. Reliant on non-tradeable charms, there was at least a requirement for players to engage in combat with NPCs for random drops before they could progress. It was met with an initial outcry, as players struggled to find an incentive to train it, other than the status inherent in its skillcape. Their protest was, tellingly, met by Jagex urging people to actually use the skill. It was never meant to be power-trained, it was meant to be a slow amble through the levels, enjoying the different boosts to every other skill or arena of play along the way.

Mini-games and mini-quests have also increasingly sought to inject elements of fun into rising through skill levels. Whilst the original thieves had to make do with the grind of pick-pocketing or stealing from stalls, their latter-day counterparts can nab huge chunks of experience from racing against the clock in Pyramid Plunder, dodging traps in the Rogue's Den or displaying perfect timing in the Sorceress's Garden. It's more fun, levels occur when the player isn't looking, which makes it all look like much more of a game and less of a place of work. Similarly, the early slayers had to receive assignments, then develop ways of fighting an array of monsters in order to reach their master levels, while today's slayers could just as easily visit their jade plant patch and Surok's monster on a daily basis, gaining 7500xp all told along the way. The equivalent, in grind, would be to a) be assigned and b) kill the Kalphite Queen 29 times, just to receive the same amount of experience awarded by those two miniquest rewards.

Runescape can be much more fun when approached as the game that it is, so workers of Gielinor, cast off your chains. I'll see you in 'Barbarian Assault' in five minutes time. That skillcape will wait a while yet and you can catch up in the mini-game just as soon as Jagex release it.

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Gnomecopters - By: Dr Skull

Gnomecopters were released about four months after the release of the grand exchange, three months after the change in the wilderness, and 2 months after the unbalanced trade removal. As Teacuptime said in one of his blog entries back in December,

"Somewhere in Jagex HQ is a spreadsheet with a number marked "cost of real world trading" on it, and another number marked "cost of cancellations". If the second number gets bigger than the first, then things WILL get put back. These changes were implemented for purely financial reasons, and it's purely financial reasons that can undo them."

This was referring to the unbalanced trade removal. It is saying that if too many members stopped their membership because of the unbalanced trade removal and the money Jagex loses because of those lost members is higher than the cost of what real world trading was costing them before they made these updates, such as the real world traders using stolen credit cards to pay for membership for their bots, then Jagex would be forced to undo the updates in order to make money instead of lose it.

Now, this is where your opinion comes in, on what exactly the gnomecopters purpose in the game is. Whether it is for freeplayers to have a little fun in members areas laughing at the names of the people and watching their actions or to show freeplayers how much more amazing member areas are than freeplayer areas. If it's the latter, than could it possibly be tied in with what Teacuptime said, back in December, about three months before the gnomecopters were released.

Could the gnomecopters be put in the game because there were too many membership cancellations after the unbalanced trade removal update and the wilderness updates? Could Jagex be pleading for new members, for they aren't making the money they were making before, but are still making just enough that they don't need to undo those updates? It's only one man's guess really until Jagex comes out to us, and tells us the truth, which in my eyes, won't happen, for Jagex's secrets would ruin them, and lose everyone.

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The Pure Esscence Situation - By: Doddsy

Before unbalanced trading was removed bots and autoers ran uncontrolled around Runescape. These autoers used many methods including collecting yew logs, fishing lobsters and sharks and mining coal and pure essence. In this article I will be concentrating on the latter method.

Mining pure essence was quite a popular and simple method to use. It only required 30 Mining and to be a member, and the $5 a month was no concern to those who ran the autoers. Rune essence was also in hot demand as the price was at around 110 gp per piece. During this time the amount of gold brought in must have been formidable. The price of essence did drop though as the common man was unable to compete with the amount of essence being sold so instead dropped his price. The price did continue to drop until it steadied out between 60-80 gp. This many seem tiny compared to the prices of yew logs but the speed at which pure essence was mined was phenomenal. During the peak of autoers many Bloggers were estimating the amount of essence brought in, in total, was nearing 1 million pieces a day. This meant that 60-80 million gp was being brought into the hands of the autoers.

Now we move forward to December 2007 when the announcements were made that the trade limit was being brought in. During the time up to that trade limit autoers were still going about their normal illegal business. The amount off essence in the world was still piling and existing in the world we play in. Once the trade limits came in this essence became practically worthless to those in charge of the autoers.

We don't know the exact specifics but generally we know now that all that essence made its way to the Grand Exchange. This meant approximately 30 million pieces (give or take a few million) were sitting in the Grand Exchange. 30 million pieces might sound like a lot in most skill but in Runecrafting the crafters often craft well over 100k pieces at a time. The stock of essence quickly reduced. 3 months later, as many predicted we have hit that situation. The essence is all but gone and the prices have skyrocketed.

The problem was only made worse with the release of the April Behind the Scenes:

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!

Post Grand Exchange merchants saw this as an oppurtunity to make money. Most of them hadn't quite understood the specifics of the reward so asumed that pure essence would now be in hot demand as leveling Ruecrafting would now require half the time and energy. This caused pure essence to rise 10gp a day until the release of Fist of Guthix. After the release of FoG and the revelation that only rune essence was required the price began to return to normal. However the price still stays higher than usual (148gp piece at the time of writing) showing that the belief that the stock pile of essence is possibly running out.

The problem of low pure essence stock needs to be sorted out and what Jagex do in the next few months will dictate the future of the Runecrafting skill. One of the most common, and generally supported, propositions is to bring pure essence back to being a F2P collectable. Keeping the 30 Mining factor but removing the membership required part. This would possibly increase the flow of pure essence. What Jagex does in the immediate future will make or break the Runecrafting skill

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