The Tip.It Times


Issue 26099gp

RuneFest 3 Recap

Written by and edited by MonkeyChee

As most of you know, RuneFest 2013 was held at Tobacco Dock, London last week. Throughout the course of the day, there were many jokes, spoilers, interviews, and announcements. This information was a lot to take in and some of you may have missed certain parts of the event. The event was streamed on the RuneScape official twitch channel with over 8 hours of video recorded. A lot of players couldn’t make it out to London last weekend or they couldn’t watch the stream, which is really unfortunate. This is a summary of everything that was revealed at RuneFest, but I must warn you that the following article may contain lore spoilers!

In the early afternoon of the event, Jagex hosted a session called ‘The Big Questions’. This is exactly what it sounds like: JMods took the stage and answered big questions that the community had. One of the most controversial updates of 2013 was, of course, the introduction of bonds. Jagex released some stats from bonds during this session that included the fact that 25,000 bonds have been gifted between players, 8,000,000 runecoins have been redeemed through bonds, and that 12,000 long-term free-to-play players became members via the use of bonds.

Mark Gerhard and Mod Jacmob also gave us some insight toward the legal side of Jagex. Mark said that Jagex tries to sue real-world-traders when they can, but it’s often not possible because the majority of gold-farming operations are based in China. Mod Jacmob also revealed that Jagex has an advanced tracking system that has the capability to track differences between two players and detect if two or more players are using the same account. This system is currently not in effect, however. Jacmob also stated that he highly doubts that botting, in any form, will return which is good news for the RuneScape economy.

One of the larger sessions in the afternoon was the ‘Ideas for the Future’ session. In this session, there were many ideas that were introduced to the community. Perhaps one of my personal favorite ideas was the construction rework. It was stated that instead of having fixed-sized rooms with furniture hotspots, players will have the ability to place walls of different lengths and make hallways as well as regular rooms.

With the construction rework, instead of using portals for player-owned houses, there will be roughly 20 plots in the world that are instanced, meaning in each plot, the player sees only their house. Another idea that was introduced was changing the training method so instead of making furniture, breaking it, and then re-making it again you could utilize NPC’s to train your construction skill. There weren’t many details released about the new training method.

For about a year now, Jagex has promised us an upcoming mobile version of RuneScape. Unfortunately, there is no confirmed date for the release of a mobile version but we do have some more information about it. The concept art for the tablet version shows that there will most likely not be a form of the NIS for the tablet version and that there will be fixed tabs for the user interface. Another app announced was the RuneScape Community App for iOS and Android devices. This will feature the in-game chat, the Grand Exchange, forums, and news posts among other miscellaneous features.

Perhaps the biggest session of the evening was the RuneScape 2014 session, where all the big reveals happened. Mod Mark jumped straight into the content with the largest reveal of the day: The Inventor Skill. This is the second skill that was meant to be released in 2013, but it will instead be released in quarter one of 2014. Using this skill, players can use existing contraptions with divine energy as a new defense against the Gods. There will be many different things that you can do with the inventor skill which includes using explosive, fire, and many other fun things to build “marvelous things”. There will be large workshops to train the skill in, similar to the divine locations used in Divination.

Another reveal that thrilled a lot of the RuneScape community is the mini-game revamps reveal. Mini-games will be revamped via guaranteed content polls. This means that the players will vote on which mini-games they want to be reworked and Jagex will rework them. Mod Mark wants to remove waiting-times in mini-games because, let’s be honest, sitting in a mini-game lobby sucks.

The last high-scale reveal from RuneFest 3 was the announcement of the next two world events. The second world event will feature Bandos and Armadyl in a fight to the death. This world event is going to involve Falador, which could possibly result in a graphical update to the city. World event two will include Player versus Player combat that you can toggle on and off. The result of this event is the death of one of the gods. The third world event, which we don’t know much about, will feature Marimbo and Brassica Prime.

Most of these events will occur, but we have to remember that things happen and some of these updates may not take place. These were all announced at RuneFest, and I look forward to seeing them in-game!

If you want to watch the entire RuneFest Livestream, you can view it on the RuneScape official twitch channel: twitch.tv/RuneScape!


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Tags: Future Updates and Speculation Game Mechanics Recent Updates

Will you use Menaphos to train your skills?



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