Originally posted by Tuss

Short, sweet, to the point: Do you like runescape? As you can tell from my posts around here, I am one of the idiots that like runescape.

I'm one of those idiots too :)

October is traditionally a month of scary surprises and toothache. This month will be no different when it comes to our Hallowe’en content, with a quest AND holiday event both to be available on the free servers. For scary surprises: how about entire worlds where you can PK and hunt other players to your heart’s content? That’s right, PvP worlds are coming! But first, a few words about how we’re going to update RuneScape in the future.

During the last six months we’ve been reading through the forums, talking to you in-game and running polls on the sorts of updates you really want. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that it’s the bigger, chunkier updates that really get you excited, those like the God Wars Dungeon or a new skill. These are the sorts of updates we found that you wanted to play. Updates that you want to go back to time and time again.

So, starting from this month, we’re changing the way we release content. From now on you’ll see one massive “headline update” (such as a Recipe for Disaster or a Castle Wars) every month. On top of that, there will still be a secondary release, much more like the size of update you’re used to right now. We’re also still committed to making sure that no two weeks pass without something new.

Basically, from now on our releases will be like this:

• Four week months will have two updates: one big headline release and a secondary one.
• Five week months will have three updates: one big headline release and two secondary ones.

So, on to this month’s updates...

PvP Worlds

Ever found yourself wanting to say, “Look, it’s my tree. If you don’t stop chopping it...I’ll chop you!” Sounds cool, right? Yeah, but where could you do it? And when? The answers are PvP worlds and October!

From log-in, those that are interested in PvP content will be able to join in on special PvP worlds. The danger on these worlds will be very clear from the first messages you see, ensuring that players never log onto these worlds by mistake. After all, we don’t want players accidentally getting involved with PKing (player killing) if they don’t want to. Normal, non-PvP worlds will still act just as they do now, so don’t worry if bashing others isn’t really your thing.

Those that want to get involved will find a number of differences to the usual set-up on PvP worlds. Firstly, you’ll be able to fight people pretty much anywhere, so long as their Combat level is similar to yours (within a certain range of levels). This means that almost everywhere is dangerous. Some places, like banks and respawn points, will be deemed “safe” and no combat will be able to occur there, and some of the minigames will be disabled (you won’t be able to PK team mates while playing Castle Wars, for example) but many will still be active. Other places, like Falador, Varrock and the entirety of the Wilderness, will be considered “hot spots” where the danger will be even greater and a higher concentration of opponents.

Now, onto the money side of things. Many of you will be aware of the RWT (real-world trading of RuneScape gold for money) reasons we changed the old Wilderness. We certainly can’t just bring that threat back to RuneScape, so we have devised a system that rewards players based on a variety of factors. This means that things such as risk, level of foe and location will help to calculate rewards. Drops will be determined by a combination of drop tables and some of the gear that your opponent drops. We will go into more depth about this on the day of release.

Hallowe'en

As well as changing things around with the headline updates, we also decided to change the way we do things with our holiday events. We wanted to make the most of the little bits of fun we have every year, and give the free-to-play game a taste of the content we release in the members’ world. This year, we will be releasing a Hallowe’en-themed quest as well as the traditional holiday event. This quest will be available to our free players for the two weeks around Hallowe’en, along with the holiday event itself, and members will be able to play the quest at any time (the normal holiday event will disappear after two weeks as usual). What’s it about? Well, you’ll have to wait and see, but expect some funky decorations to start appearing.

Spooky player letters and artwork will also await those strong of stomach...so be prepared.

Updates being released after October

In case that little lot isn’t enough for you, let’s take a few moments to talk about the headline content we’re releasing in the months after October:

Stealing Creation

Not long to wait now for this crazy combination for skillers and PKers. Can you and your team work together capturing resources and equipping your warriors? Will you avoid the multitude of threats bearing down on your safe haven? Will you try to make your own way to the higher level gear, or will you just PK and destroy your opponents’ hard work? Will you be able to keep the enemy at bay while stealing creation?

Mobilising Armies

Ever fancied assaulting a castle with your very own army? You will be able to hire a mercenary force to battle against three other players, complete set objectives and earn rewards. Mobilising Armies will be a fast paced tactical minigame allowing you to control your very own RuneScape army with troops made up of humans and other races. There will also be some special effects including dive bombing gnomes and giant catapults. Will you be up to the challenge?

Have fun!

From today we have doubled (in some cases tripled) the flexibility of the player trade system. All players will notice an increase in the amount they can trade with other players.

This means accounts with fewer than 10 quest points will be able to earn or lose up to 5,000 coins in wealth every 15 minutes from trading, free players will be able to earn a maximum of 10,000 coins every 15 minutes by completing the free quests and members will have access to a maximum of 60,000 coins per 15 minutes if they have 270 quest points. Your trade margin will increase with each quest point after 10 - for example, at 100 quest points you'll have a margin of 24,038 coins, and at 200 quest points you'll have a margin of 45,192 coins.

This was added to the game because we wanted to offer our players more flexibility when trading or helping friends out, without increasing the threat of real-world trading.

Mod Mark
Lead Designer - RuneScape

Note: Currently there are only 269 quest points available in the game, so no player will be able to reach the 60,000 coin margin until our next quest update, scheduled for a few weeks' time. The trade margin does scale up to that, though, so players a few quest points short of 270 will have a trade margin only slightly below it.

In other news...

We'd like to remind players that dangerous Clan Wars matches (including the dangerous free-for-all arena) now allow you to pick up some of your opponents' items to replenish your supplies - food, potions, runes and other ammunition - and that there are now NO gravestones in these arenas. This means that you will be unable to recover any items you drop, so only take items you don't mind risking.
 

Yeah! this game is probably gonna fail like funorb (well runescape too) but i hope not :) i hope that jagex learned from all the mistakes they have made in runescape 

 I still like the game  :) i have nothing against it.... well they are some things that need to be changed.

SPR

Still Playing Runescape

 That is so lame!!! well of course they will ruin this update like all the others!

The most frequent request we have received over the last few months has been to put more PvP back into the game. We want to let you know that this request hasn't gone unheard, and that we've put a lot of research into how we can introduce new PvP mechanisms. The aim is for PvP content that better replaces the old Wilderness, but without reintroducing RWT.

Hopefully, you’re already aware of the imminent Clan Wars release (see the September Behind the Scenes in a couple of weeks for more information), but there are also plans afoot for the most exciting and "old school" PvP update we have ever considered – unique PvP worlds.

As many of our long term players know, in the old RuneScape Classic days you could actually fight players just outside the gates of Lumbridge, before the days of duelling and even before the days of the old Wilderness itself. Players could hunt each other down, chasing them away from favourite resource points and generally "owning" large areas of the map.

So, in 2008, we will be bringing you special 'PvP worlds', where you can fight other players almost anywhere! In addition to all the usual content you might expect to find in RuneScape, they will also include:

• Optional sign-up – choose between PvP danger or stick to ordinary play by simply switching worlds.
• High danger with items dropped on death.
• High rewards for kills. To avoid any RWT issues the reward for a successful PK will be generated by the game, similar to when you kill a monster at the moment. We're creating generous drop tables based on factors like your levels and the impressiveness of the kill.
• These drop tables will include "PvP world specific" items like XP-modifying gear, lvl 70+ equipment and new, glorious, short-term but hard hitting gear. These will once again make PKing a viable source of income.
• PvP across 99% of the world, including the old Wilderness.
• Attack any player within a certain level of your own. Level range depends on the area, similar to the old Wilderness levels.
• ...And all sorts of other twists on interesting content... Just think of the possibilities when you can PK anywhere!

Naturally, we also have other PvP-orientated content, like Stealing Creation (a resource control game where skillers and PKers work together, creating equipment and beating up the opposition) and Mobilising Armies (a real-time strategy game where you use your hard made bows, swords, etc. to equip your own armies in 4-player battles).

Add all this to a healthy schedule of quests (featuring Arrav and the sequel to Spirit of Summer), holiday events and some unique puzzle content... and the rest of '08 has something for almost everyone.

Finally, we'd like to let you in on a little secret – we're currently working on our highest level, longest, most exciting quest ever. Not necessarily for launch in '08 (it's not something we want to rush, after all), it’s already had more development time than the entirety of "Recipe for Disaster"... but you’ll have to wait to find out more. We're adding secret hints and references all the time about this one, so if you need to know more, just look around! Leave no stone unturned....

 The wilderness was what made the game fun :)  I loved killing other players and  get their stuff!

but since the wildy is  coming back i might play runescape again :D

 The worst of all is that wildy is no more but it is coming back but you don't get the other guys stuff :(

Community suuuucks!! To make the community better jagex should make runescape the game and write a big 14+ on the front and back :)

 Alot of players are coming back when the PvP update is out!

We'll when it comes out i'm gonna play runescape for sure 

 Sure they are millions of reasons why runescape sucks but they are thousand reasons to play it :)

Well they still have to update the graphics ! (even though the graphics don't matter to me)

PvP is coming back ( well the monster drop sucks)

Lots of fun mini-games

and more

I have nothing against runescape

 Is it true that 135 million account have been created since runescape started??? if so, probably 130 millions have stop playing 

Runescape was better like 2 Years ago (except for the Graphics)