Wilderness and Free Trade Return Interview

With questions from the Tip.It Community

What do you, Jagex, plan on doing to combat RWT? Obviously, with the re-installment of Old Wilderness and Free Trading, it will spike as soon as the features are re-installed. If it gets to out of control, will you remove these features again? ~ RunesRath

We’ll be stepping up our efforts to combat RWT and botting and we’re spending more than ever in this area. We’ll be monitoring everything very closely and we will do everything in our power to ensure the gameplay and changes can remain. We are also looking into new ways of punishing cheaters who buy gold.

What D&D's will you be moving out of the wilderness? Will Penguins and Clue scrolls both be moved from the Wilderness? How about the Mage Arena? Green Dragons? ~ PereGrin

Regarding D&Ds: penguins will be staying, clue scrolls will still take you into the Wilderness on occasion but far less frequently than they do. The mage arena will be a safe area as it was originally, and green dragons will remain dangerous. It’s worth noting that content that does remain e.g. beacon networks for example will have increased rewards for those who undertake the risk.

Will Revenants drop the PVP items (Vesta, Statius, etc.)? ~ PereGrin

The Revenants are being relocated to a pvp enabled dungeon. They will have all pvp unique drops such as brawlers, corrupt dragon and the various statuettes. They will no longer teleblock or freeze you but can still change combat styles to keep things interesting!

What will happen to our combat levels and how will summoning be worked into old style wilderness? ~ Naraku893

Your level will be displayed as follows: “playername 126+12” for example. Your combat level in the Wilderness will act as though you didn’t have any Summoning, so will be the old max of 126. The Summoning level +X will simply demonstrate your “potential” to summon aid. If the player above were in level 3 wilderness he could fight those with combat levels between 123 and 126 inclusive. You would see the +12 and so you should be wary of that player having the ability to summon any familiar which could be particularly dangerous in multiway!

Will the GE volume limits remain or be removed? What about the 4 hour time limit between buying and selling the same item? ~ Impressionist

Buying restrictions will remain in place. These exist purely to reduce market monopoly and ensure a higher number of players can buy high demand objects like godswords.

How will item lending and untradable items (especially dungeoneering equipment) work with the new wilderness? ~ Impressionist

One of three things will happen to untradeables. Some objects will vanish, some will drop cash instead like the anchor and now Korasi’s sword. Finally other items will drop a tradable equivalent (like Summoning headgear that’s been enchanted would drop an un-enchanted version). Most popular untradeable PvP equipment will not vanish. Lent Items are not allowed in at all, and will be put in your bank/inventory or returned to the owner depending on inventory space.

How long has the thought of returning free trade been around? Along with that, has work been done on it before the vote? ~ Danqazmlp

We always wanted to bring back the Wilderness but we needed to know that we could do safely. The only work done before the vote was to see how long it would actually take to re-implement (Development/QA/graphics etc.) and what we would have to do to existing content. The list we came up was condensed down to the list of things that would probably need to happen that you’ve probably seen on the Referendum page.

Will there ever be new content (minigames, quests, etc) in the wilderness after free trade is brought back even though it's been said current content of these types will be re-located? ~ Den

The Referendum was to put the Wilderness and Free Trade back as close to the original as we can realistically get. There’s no reason once it’s back that we can’t put some new content in the Wilderness but it would be designed with the risk and dangers taken into account.

Will there be other "referendums" in the future regarding Runescape? ~ Earth_Poet

This Referendum has certainly been very popular and it’s great to see such a huge number of players taking part to have their say. This is certainly an option we might look at again though I feel it would depend on the topic or update we’re considering. I wouldn’t expect one for every weekly update though!

How do you feel this will effect the RS Economy? Do you believe it will make things worse, better, stay the same, or get worse/better, but balance off after a few weeks. Was the impact of the economy taken into consideration when making the decision to bring back the old ways? ~ RunesRath

We believe that returning to the free-trade model and increasing our efforts to tackle RWT, whilst giving you the freedom and increased control over prices will be better in the long run. We realise it’ll take a little while for those who remember the old days, as well as those who are currently used to the Grand Exchange.

Thanks for reading!

The discussion thread can be found here.


RuneScape 2007
Find this page on the Internet Archive with a date as close to Aug 10, 2007 as possible.

Will you use Menaphos to train your skills?



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