The Tip.It Times


Issue 14299gp

Small yet Significant?

Written by and edited by Jaffy1

On the 21st of June, an update was released but was not listed on the front page. This update was the introduction of world queuing and instances. Specially, the new instances were world instances, used for the Tzhaar fight pits minigame. The new world instance was released to allow for easier access to larger games, and most importantly, to test the new system. However, what kind of future update(s) could this be a test for?

Obviously, people suspected, and even hoped, this would be the future of all minigames. Instances would allow for easier access to larger games of already popular minigames such as Castle Wars and Soul Wars, or in the case of outdated minigames, allow for games to actually occur. For the lovers of minigames such as Shades of Mort'ton, Trouble Brewing, Fishing Trawler, and Temple Trekking, this would be a wonderful and welcomed revival. Overall, it was a small, but useful update at first glance.

This update seemed to have fit its none front page status, but on June 30th JaGex announced the future clan citadel update, scheduled for little under a month after the news post. This would bring the introduction of clan cities in the sky of Gielinor. A citadel is defined as: a fortress for protecting a town, sometimes incorporating a castle. The term derives from the same Latin root as the word "city", civis, meaning citizen. From the name even, this would be the introduction of a massive new area for game play. Furthermore, a clan would be able to build tiered resources that could be harvested for reduced experience, have multiple new meeting rooms, customize the time of day, the flags, and even have their very own battlefield, which can be customized with nearly endless combination! However, what if they choose not to add it to the game itself? What if, they choose to have designated worlds for clan citadels to load the multiple player instanced area? That would reduce world lag, allow for the massive citadels to load quicker, and be more convenient for players overall.

Ever since the introduction of the first multiple instanced area, Player Owned Houses, JaGex has been utilizing instances for many realms of game play. To date, Dungeoneering is the largest use of multiple player instances in-game. However, if clan citadels would utilize it, the instance would have to support a maximum of 500 people clan members, with the addition of possible guests. The instance would be extremely large, especially if one maximized the potential customization available. Maybe even too large for one world to support along with every other aspect of game-play. Imagine world 117 loading all the Dungeoneering instances along with the clan citadel instance, it would result in massive game lag time. It would only make sense for JaGex to use the already successful world instance program for the Tzhaar Fight Pits for clan citadels. Coupled with the phasing out of older versions of Java, announced June 7th, to support smoother running game play and more elaborate use of Java, the world instance introduction could be more significant than one first thought. It could possibly be the platform for the biggest update of this year to date, as JaGex has stated. Moreover, if world instances were used for clan citadels, what are the future possibilities of its utilization?


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