The Tip.It Times


Issue 199gp

Change!

Written by and edited by Tip.It

As many might have noticed, Runescape is an ever changing game. Almost every week a new update is released. Considering the complexity and size the game has achieved, every single change can have uncountable consequences. Their impact ranges from the blatantly obvious to barely noticeable. As we all know there’s a constant to all these updates: Players will rant about it.

You might think now: “What is he going to do? Rant about ranting?” This is something different and hopefully the idea will develop to the point that it leaps across to you before the end of the article.

First of all, let it be said that change is everywhere. The weather, fashion, the stock market, relationships, your mood – everything changes. Even something as static as a book or a movie will look different the second time it is read/watched. Some might object, pointing out that the book per-se won’t change – let’s leave that to another debate though. It does suffice to say that change confronts us everywhere.

Whenever change occurs, new things might have the opportunity to establish themselves and old things might lose their basis. Everything has certain parameters that allow its existence. Change the temperature on earth by 100° and a multitude of things that cease to exist. In fact a change as little as 2° will be enough to make certain things perish. That would lead to the observation that drastic changes can have devastating effects, whilst smaller and/or slower changes allow for gradual adaptation.

So while change is inevitable, it is always a danger. Some things (things can be anything from a species to a way to earn your money in Runescape) might lose their ground or even be extinguished. This is the reason why governments try to establish stability. Stability brings security. As soon as a government makes drastic decisions or is overthrown, the resulting loss in stability will result in anything from job losses to the death of millions of people.

We aren’t talking about governments though. We are talking about Runescape. Sure Runescape impacts a sizeable number of lives, yet the stakes are much lower. Admittedly there are reports that indicate that there are lost jobs and taken lives traceable to Runescape (without even getting started on chaos theory). Thankfully that’s the rare exception. Nevertheless it gives a hint on how fragile the human psyche is (or can be).

Reading through the rants and recent updates section of the Runescape forums, angry posts aren’t exactly a rare find. Mostly they are about simple observations like: “This changed therefore that.” Sometimes the assumptions and perceptions are wrong, often enough they are right. There is nothing wrong with talking about changes. The anger is disturbing though. To quote a little green guy everybody will be familiar with:

“Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate.” – Master Yoda

To quote a favourite line of a “Bad Religion song”:
“Ignorance is the root of fear, fear is the kindling of anger” – Bad Religion, News from the front

It’s probably time to wrap this up. We have established that change is a threat, yet is inevitable. Although it is true that as humans we have a certain influence on change (which wasn’t discussed during the article), ultimately we’ll have to face change. Runescape has existed for how long? 7 years? How many doomsayers have foreseen a crash in the economy, the death of a skill or similar? None of that happened. How many people have seen a constant decline in the game, have sensed it to become boring? Might it be that those individuals just expressed their personal experiences with Runescape? In their eyes it might have become boring. Nevertheless it is still going strong. In fact there are more players now then ever. It’s hard to gauge what will ultimately cause the end of the game. We just know that nothing stands the test of time forever.

In the end everybody who plays Runescape for a certain period of time will face numerous changes. It is almost guaranteed that nobody will like all of them on first sight. Given that there aren’t too many options: Rejecting change will most likely lead to a certain dissatisfaction. So it seems that embracing changes is the thing to do and this can be fun. It just might be necessary to change yourself.

Did You Know...
...that the fish that's called karambwan does not stop you from hitting and it heals 18!

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Will you use Menaphos to train your skills?



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