Young Americans are soon, if not already, out of school for the summer months. With the massive growth of RuneScape this past year, we can count on thousands of players to enjoy the warm weather, beautiful sunshine, and birds singing... when they glimpse out their windows, while sitting in their nice air conditioned rooms, enjoying the world of RuneScape even more. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the time out of school is more important in America than elsewhere, it has just been observed that June through August tend to be the game's busiest times (or during other school vacations).
Not only will this bring more people to enjoy raising or skills with, or share (or fight over) our monsters with, but it will also give Jagex quite a handful as well. For those of you who haven't paid much attention, or been away, Jagex has been working hard to crack down on cheating, while at the same time introducing the Knowledge Base, QuestHelp System, and they even tell us a huge game engine upgrade is on the way! No matter what you say about Jagex, you can't deny that they are certainly working to improve the game, as they see it.
Some of these updates seem to make fan sites a little less useful. With the Knowledge Base, Jagex has a huge advantage over any fan site. They write the info that we have to research to acquire. They can update the Knowledge Base without any announcements being made of changes, or waiting for players to notice and submit information. They can also get screenshots of ANYTHING they desire. We could only dream of such simplicity.
So far, the Knowledge Base has indeed provided a large amount of information, but for the most part, it stops at that. Fan sites such as ours tend to offer a little more guidance. We also have our handy dandy calculators and planners, but it would not surprise me to see those addition soon. I can only imagine the submissions they get regarding what they lack, but fan sites provide, from players who can't realize that it is just a beta version, and it is not meant to be an all-inclusive guide, at least as of yet. With all the scam sites, it is probably a good thing that Jagex has introduced this, but at the same time, it would be nice for those of us who are legitimate to be deemed so.
Hopefully these updates will alleviate the amount of messages Jagex Customer Support receives due to questions that can be answered in guides, as they claim the QuestHelp will do. This will give them more time to track down and ban the macroing scum that have affected the RuneScape "economy" almost as massively as Slayer did. The only fault so far with banning macroers is that cheaters can easily make thousands of accounts and just cycle through them, selling items from the few that make it through. Hopefully we see something from Jagex to stop this!
Jagex has shown very successful in tracking real world trades recently too, even catching a once famed merchant, among others. Sadly, however, this tracking system makes gift-giving very dangerous. Giving away a party hat could be misconstrued as an illegal sale, and result in an accidental ban. With the amount of real world trades involving rares, we may see their prices skyrocket as a result of massive bans. Good time to be an old RSC packrat!
However, one can only speculate what this summer will bring. Only Jagex knows what is in store for us. All we know is that we can't wait to see it! So come on Jagex, let the fun begin!
Do you have any thoughts or comments about what you've just read? Want to discuss this article with your fellow Runescapers? We invite you to discuss the article in this forum topic.
